Strength in Openness

This Editorial precedes Volume 24, Issue 1 of Kosmos Journal. Scroll down to access featured content

Dear Kosmos Reader,

Welcome to the Year of the Wood Dragon, the start of a new 20-year cycle according to Feng Shui principles, dominated by the element – fire. Who knows for certain what the world will be like in 2044? Many are preparing for profound change. Yet, change is not dictated by outside forces alone, acting upon us. We too have the capacity to be agents of transformation. The Wood Dragon symbolizes this powerful potential energy, tempered by balance and inner growth. Imagine a sacred oak tree that grounds itself, rooted firmly and growing tall, reaching for the sky. This is the invitation of the Wood Dragon.

When we are grounded in reality and understanding, we can be more open to the winds of change, outer and inner. Openness is a quality we are able to cultivate when we release fear. That the coming year is dominated by the element of fire underscores the need for courage. In this edition of Kosmos, Judy Wicks speaks openly of her feelings for Gaza and the acts of courage she has witnessed there; Riane Eisler talks about transcending inherited narratives of domination; and Robert Cobbold reminds us about our left-brain bias as a species, the side of the brain associated with rigid thinking, and how this bias is inhibiting our action to protect and restore our planetary home.

In How Well Do ‘Elites’ Understand the Metacrisis? Nat Hagens warns, “we are approaching a period where speaking truth to power is going to become more dangerous.” He advocates for a spiritual intimacy that generates the energy of openness, harmony and love. Sole survival is not the answer. Soul survival is. How we treat ‘others’ through the coming storm mirrors the quality of our hearts.

From the recent Great Transition Initiative Forum “What’s Next for the Global Movement?”, we present a trio of essays. Jeremy Lent’s call for a new Eco-Civilization Framework embodies the openness to change so needed in these times:

It incorporates Indigenous concepts such as buen vivir and ubuntu, insights from ecological economics and commons theory, and principles from the permaculture, Transition Towns, degrowth, and agroecology movements. It reflects spiritual underpinnings of Deep Ecology, engaged Buddhism, and universalist Christian theology. It embraces ideas from the anti-globalization, eco-socialist, social justice, LGBTQ rights, and Rights of Nature movements, among others. Ultimately, it has the potential to catalyze globally dispersed “blessed unrest” into a coherent, benevolent force for societal transformation.

If it is true that 2024 marks the beginning of an end, let it be the cycle of domination and greed that finally loosens its hold. In preparing for the next cycle, may we open our hearts and minds to the inflowing energy of awareness and compassion, standing like oak trees in sacred togetherness, courageous and strong.

r.fabian, for Kosmos

Kosmos Journal Volume 24 Issue 1

Values

How Well Do ‘Elites’ Understand the Metacrisis?

By Nate Hagens

I think the carbon pulse has skewed our biological template towards being individualistic and competitive and that is not our destiny or our genome. I think a lot of the people who are CEOs and national politicians do have a preponderance of narcissism...it's the way that our culture has trained our human behavior. I'm most interested in the levers and how we might be able to shift them or at least shift them in certain pockets around the world.

Peacebuilding

Gaza on My Mind

By Judy Wicks

l am an American who, like the poet Hughes, has sworn that someday America will be the country where our ideals of liberty and justice for all people will be achieved. It is vital to me that US foreign policy confirms and reflects these ideals. As I once opposed the bombing of the Vietnamese and then the Iraqis, I now oppose the US financed bombing of Gaza and uphold the right of Palestinians to self-determination.

Models

Reframing Global Citizenship

By Jeremy Lent

In the broadest terms, an ecological civilization encompasses themes of multiple groups from around the world. It incorporates Indigenous concepts...insights from ecological economics and commons theory, and principles from the permaculture, Transition Towns, degrowth, and agroecology movements. It reflects spiritual underpinnings of Deep Ecology, engaged Buddhism, and universalist Christian theology. It embraces ideas from the anti-globalization, eco-socialist, social justice, LGBTQ rights, and Rights of Nature movements, among others.

Solidarity

Building Unified Social Movements

By Dorothy Guerrero

How do we address the global imperative of building a strong and enduring global resistance against very powerful forces that are wrecking our lives and the planet and at the same time constituting another world if we are divided?

Nonduality

Transcending Inherited Narratives

By Riane Eisler

By transcending inherited social categories like religious/secular, right/left, East/West, North/South, capitalist/socialist, we see that a common goal of the consolidated regressive agenda is to restore authoritarian, top-down, punitive, in-group versus out-group systems in both the family and the state or tribe.

Living Earth

Left-Brain Bias is Harming Our Planet

By Robert Cobbold

The entire enterprise of reducing a rainforest or mangroves to so many tonnes of carbon is left brain bias par excellence. The complex web of symbiotic human and non-human life co-evolving from moment to moment in an unbroken chain which goes back hundreds of millions of years is reduced to a single metric - CO2. All so that companies can call themselves “carbon neutral” - another typically left-brain concept.