InnerSelf

by Ellen LaConte. In a perfect world, the resources that all the world's people and other-than-human species depend upon would be recognized to be a "global commons". Included in the commons would be, for example: clean air and water...

by Ellen LaConte. We are not larger than Life, and we cannot live apart from Life though we have tried mightily to do just that. Life is the only context within which we can understand what we need to do both to survive and...

by Ellen LaConte. Imagine that in this time ahead we do not live beyond Earth's means or behave as if we were larger than Life, that we live in an age in which we have helped to restore health to Earth's immune system and learned how not to...

by Eleanor Boyle. It's hard to imagine wholesale changes to agriculture and food. Eating less meat is a shift that — in small ways — is already occurring. A recent poll in the Netherlands showed that well over half of consumers...

by Miles Olson. If we take away the governing bodies that propel us to destroy our land base and each other; if the forces that domesticate us were to cease, would we naturally find balance and heal, like all other living things?

by Marie T. Russell. Someone said to me the other day that people don't change... as in "a leopard doesn't change its spots". Is it possible for a murderer, an alcoholic, a liar, a thief to be "reformed"? Is it a case of genetics and thus people can't change?

by Sylvia Clute. How to effect regime change without war was demonstrated by the nonviolent revolution in India led by Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi pioneered satyagraha, the resistance of tyranny through mass nonviolent civil disobedience. Positive change occurs when committed people work for it...

by Robert Reich. On one side are those who think of citizenship as a matter of exclusion and privilege — of protecting the nation by keeping out those who are undesirable, and putting strict limits on who is allowed to exercise the full rights of citizenship. On the other are those who think of citizenship inclusively...

by Peter Ladner. Just as spending on social housing for homeless people has been widely proven to be more cost-effective than leaving people on the streets, so too is spending on food being proven as a way to save costs. Healthy eating prevents chronic diseases among people of all ages, from pre-school children to...

by Carlos Barrios. We need to put our entire mind and heart into pursuing unity and unity now, to confront the other side and preserve life. Our planet can be renewed or ravaged. Now is the time to awaken and take action. Everyone is needed...

by Sylvia Clute. We are so accustomed to the status quo that we think this is how it has to be. Old institutions are tenacious, and they have long tentacles rooted in history and in a multitude of choices made by our ancestors. Law, history, religion, science, and culture all play a role in keeping us entrenched in dysfunctional structures...

by Jagdish Gandhi. The world is going through a crisis. Although most governments have pledged themselves to help develop a peaceful, sustainable, and socially just world, it is almost as if humankind has been gripped by a collective death wish. Though this is a time of great danger, fortunately it is also a time of great opportunity. Today, we have the...

by Kingsley L. Dennis. The struggle for our minds is about waking up to the great social and cultural change happening in our midst; pulling our minds away from distraction, ignorance, and old programming; and realizing the transitions that our physical and spiritual worlds are moving through. It is imperative that...

by Stephen Hren. Rigidity in our beliefs and behaviors is the greatest threat to our own survival and the survival of all that we've come to love in civilization. Ultimately, the question we have to ask is if our systems of politics and economy are flexible enough to become sustainable...

by Swami Beyondananda. Back here on earth, the human comedy has been renewed for yet another season. Maybe 2012 will be the year a critical mass of the heretofore-uncritical masses wake up and hear the laugh track. That’s right, the laugh track. In these serious times when there’s definitely something funny going on, laughter is key. You laugh, and I say, “Fabulous. You’re off to a good start.”

Prostitution Among Medical Students? Things are starting to get out of hand when our youngsters have to turn to the "free market" to pay for their college education. Sex work among medical students is on the rise, claims a new editorial, published in the journal Student BMJ.

by Dr. Norman E. Rosenthal. What should be done about prisoners? Should society lock them up and throw away the key? Or should we try to rehabilitate them (indeed, is it possible to do so)? Balancing the safety of society with the rights of prisoners is an old problem — and different solutions have been proposed.  At this time, however...

While many of us are working to ensure that the Occupy movement will have a lasting impact, it’s worthwhile to consider other countries where masses of people succeeded in nonviolently bringing about a high degree of

democracy and economic justice.

by Julie Holland M.D.

It doesn’t take an expert to see that things are very wrong with the current legal status of cannabis. Our government says there is no accepted medical use for it, yet it holds a patent (#6630507) for medicinal use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants, and it distributes canisters of rolled joints to a few select patients in the...

Newt Gingrich said he “offered Freddie Mac advice on precisely what they didn’t do,” and warned the company that its lending practices were “insane.” Former Freddie Mac executives who worked with Gingrich dispute that account.

Federal judge Jed Rakoff, a former prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s office here in New York, is fast becoming a sort of legal hero of our time. He showed that again yesterday when he shat all over the SEC’s latest dirty settlement with serial fraud offender Citigroup, refusing to let the captured regulatory agency sweep yet another case of high-level criminal malfeasance under the rug.

More than six in 10 Americans see a widening gap between the wealthy and the less well-off in this country, and about as many want the federal government to try to shrink the divide, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer rights group, celebrated 40 years of progress with a festive gala on Thursday, October 20, 2011. Nearly 600 friends and supporters shared the night as PC reflected on decades of amazing accomplishments and looked to the future.

by Kent M. Keith.

Most people agree on what they want out of life. They want the basics -- food, clothing, shelter, health. They want a beautiful and healthy environment. They want opportunities -- education, jobs, and personal growth. They want dignity, a spiritual life, love, peace...

by Bill Plotkin.

Lack of personal meaning and fulfillment is endemic to contemporary Western and Westernized societies. Why are depression, anxiety, and suicide increasingly common? I believe the cause has more to do with what we bring - or don't bring - to life than with...

by Robert Theobald. People can no longer leave sociocultural, as well as economic, decisions to a few controllers, while themselves concentrating on a range of personal problems from the search for shelter to a good vacation spot. We now need to admit that each of us must be concerned with the total situation of our society...

by Riane Eisler. There are two fundamentally different models for all relationships: the partnership model and the domination model. These two underlying models mold all our relationships -- from relationships between parents and children and between women and men to the relations between governments and citizens and between us and nature.

by Riane Eisler.

We have a choice. We can futilely try to protect ourselves and our families behind high walls, electric gates, etc., and turn a blind eye toward chronic human rights violations and an economic globalization that is not accountable to anyone. Or we can join with people and organizations from all the world's nations to lay the foundations for...

by Joseph R. Simonetta.

Responsible profit taking is honorable. Those who are legitimate producers deserve to be rewarded for their earnest contributions. It is when profit taking replaces concern for others or for ecosystems that a perversity occurs whereby everyone and everything suffers. At that point, we are not evolving but devolving...

by Linda Berman. Many people like to look back on history, glean from it what they can, and apply it to their everyday lives. This is done to avoid repeating past mistakes. There has been much benefit from this approach.

by Naomi Klein. When the White House decided it was time to address the rising tides of anti-Americanism around the world, it didn't look to a career diplomat for help. Instead, in keeping with the Bush administration's philosophy that anything the public sector can do the private sector can do better, it hired one of Madison Avenue's top brand managers.

by Jerry Levinson.

Everything seems to be changing! What is new is that now, at the beginning of this millennium, the whole planet is in therapy. Planetary therapy takes us on a journey in which we discover that we are all evolving into a higher level of awareness, one that is not limited by our false sense of separation and powerlessness...

by Michael Lerner. We are in the midst of an extraordinary upsurge of interest in the realm of the Spirit. Tens of millions of people in advanced industrial societies live at a level of material well-being that far surpasses the luxuries and comforts available to kings, queens, and nobles just a few hundred years ago. But many of these are in the vanguard of those who seek a new spiritual reality.