KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Alnoor Ladha, Mystical Anarchism in a Post-Capitalist World

This podcast series, Preparing for Profound Change, explores the shifting global landscape. Economic collapse, climate chaos, political upheaval – these may seem like forces to fear, but in fact offer us deep opportunities for transformation. A post-carbon, post-capitalist world calls for deep awakening and action at all levels – by individuals, communities and societies.

What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for what lies ahead?

Episode 1 – Alnoor Ladha, Mystical Anarchism in a Post-Capitalist World

Alnoor Ladha is founding member and Executive Director of /The Rules (/TR), a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality and poverty around the world.

Alnoor writes and speaks about new forms of activism, the structural causes of inequality, and the link between climate change and poverty. He is writing a book about the intersection of spirituality and politics.

“This current system is essentially anti-life. And we cannot go on in this way, dependent on 3% global GDP growth, and the extraction of all our resources, and taking ancient fossils from the ground to prop up a Ponzi Scheme economy.

…The system is a complex, adaptive, evolutionary system. {The market-based system} is the greatest Frankenstein or artificial intelligence we’ve ever created. And what it does is co-opt all dissent, and it rewards those people who best serve the logic of the system.

…I think this is a moment of bifurcation. There is this great sort of split happening on the planet, that I feel like the darkness is becoming extreme and the light is becoming extreme simultaneously, and they are going in these sort of two opposite directions. And I think the old strategy of reform – let’s somehow convince and persuade people to come into our camp – is not the right strategy anymore.

…As the old Buddhist saying goes, enlightenment does not happen in the cave, it happens in the mouth of the lion. It happens at that moment you are being tested. And there are omens around what the integral yoga of our time is, so incarnating in a time that is as troubled as ours is an omen for engagement. And knowing that 95% of humanity, of our brothers and sisters are suffering, that 200 species a day are going extinct, is an omen that this is the thing to work on collectively.” – Alnoor Ladha

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Download the transcript [PDF]

Links for this Podcast

The Rules: A global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researches, writers, and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality and poverty around the world

Alnoor Ladha’s work in Kosmos Journal:

Killing the Caterpillar: Competing Worldviews at the Chrysalis Stage of Humanity 

Seeing Wetiko: On Capitalism, Mind Viruses, and Antidotes for a World in Transition  (and by Martin Kirk)

Mystical Anarchism: A Journey to the Borderlands of Freedom 

Mentioned in the Podcast:

Oxfam research – Oxfam International’s new research that highlights the extreme global economic inequality of today.

IPCC Report – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest assessment of climate change related science.

Standing Rock – An assembly of indigenous tribes and water defenders at Standing Rock Reservation in protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline

Global Eco-Village Network – A growing network of regenerative communities that bridge cultures, countries, and continents

Tamera – A peace research project in Portugal working on the social, ecological, and ethical foundations for a realistic utopia.

The Transition Town Movement (in the United Kingdom) – A movement of communities coming together to re-imagine and rebuild our world.

The Zapatista Movement in Mexico – A movement that began in Chiapas, Mexico to protect indigenous rights in the face of colonialism and globalization

The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (Jason Hickel) –  “A provocative, urgent, and ultimately uplifting account of how the world works, and how it can change” 

Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Karen Barad) – Delves into Barad’s theory of agential realism, producing a new interpretation of quantum physics with far-reaching implications “…Puts Barad’s expertise in feminist studies and quantum physics to superb use, offering agential realism as an important alternative to representationalism” (Arthur Zajonc)

Sri Aurobindo: Integral Yoga – Sri Aurobindo’s teachings of Yoga practices focus on inner self-development to lead toward elevated consciousness

The Rules’s new video: Capitalism – Learn how capitalism is destroying our world and why we need to change the rule

Memory, Fire and Hope: Five Lessons from Standing Rock

2016 Kosmos Seed Grant Recipient | Activist Ashram, New York, NY

Seed Grant Alum | Activist Ashram, One Year On

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