Future Primitive

Author and filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge is the founder and director of ISEC. A pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is a widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on identity, community and local economies, and is a leading proponent of ‘localization,’ or decentralization, as a means of countering those impacts.

Since 1975, she has worked with the people of Ladakh, or “Little Tibet,” to find ways of enabling their culture to meet the modern world without sacrificing social and ecological values. Trained as a linguist, she was the first Westerner in recent times to master the Ladakhi language, and co-produced the first Ladakhi-English dictionary. Her book, “Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh” has been described as “an inspirational classic,” and sold almost half a million copies. She is on the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and is a co-founder of both the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Eco-village Network.

www.localfutures.org

Helena speaks with Joanna about the pressure of globalization on traditional cultures, … the relationship between beautiful, healthy and sustainable, … local communities and economies as a sustainable alternative to global consumer culture, … the connection path of community and nature, … and her latest film as co-director: “The Economics of Happiness”…

Music: “Part 8” (from Salzau. Music on the Water) by Danielsson/Dell/Landgren

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Zev Friedman grew up in Sylva, NC and received his B.S. in Human Ecology from UNCA. Zev’s specialty is forest agriculture; he now runs the Forest Cuisine Project, which helps land owners to start forest farms and to market their products. He is particularly passionate about assisting landowners in setting up mushroom farming operations and in using fungi as remediators for damaged environments. Zev also specializes in urban permaculture design and installation, including many private residences, as well as consulting on the design of the Mars Hill town hall and grounds; he is an active member and teacher in Transition Asheville, helping to plan for Asheville’s future as an abundant, self-reliant city in the age of petroleum decline.

www.upgardens.com

Zev speaks with Joanna about permaculture and imagination, learning from indigenous societies, transitioning to an Earth-based way of living, working with the “cultural compost”, attuning to the local ecosystem through the Forest Cuisine project,…and more

Music: “Qosh tari” ( from Ouzbekistan L’art du dotar) by Hamidov, Khodaverdiev, Razzaqov

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Speaker at Bioneers By The Bay Connecting For Change (2011)

Former monk and long-term peace and environment activist, Satish Kumar is the editor of Resurgence, the longest-running environmental magazine in Britain. He is the guiding spirit behind a number of ecological, spiritual and educational ventures in UK.

His books are No Destination (autobiography), You Are, Therefore I Am: A Declaration of Dependence,The Buddha and the Terrorist, and Earth Pilgrim.

Satish is on the Advisory Board of Our Future Planet, a unique online community that enables people to share ideas, design the future and create global change in the real world. Satish teaches, lectures and runs workshops internationally on reverential ecology, holistic education and voluntary simplicity.

www.resurgence.org/satish-kumar
www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change

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Toby Herzlich is a facilitator and trainer with a focus on leadership, sector enhancement and organizational excellence. With Nina Simons, Toby is co-designer and facilitator of “Cultivating Women’s Leadership,” a program for women working toward social change and environmental sustainability, and has created networks of emerging women leaders in war-torn areas of the Middle East and the Balkans. Also a Senior Trainer with the Rockwood Leadership Institute and on the faculty of the Center for Whole Communities, Toby is currently developing Biomimicry-inspired programs to integrate nature-inspired innovations and perspectives into social change leadership.
www.bioneers.org/presenters/toby-herzlich

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Joan Halifax is a Zen Buddhist Roshi, anthropologist, ecologist, civil rights activist, hospice caregiver, and the author of several books on Buddhism and Spirituality. She currently serves as abbot and guiding teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a Zen Peacemaker community which she founded in 1990. In the 1970s she collaborated on LSD research projects with her ex-husband Stanislav Grof, in addition to other collaborative efforts with Joseph Campbell and Alan Lomax. She is founder of the Ojai Foundation in California, which she led from 1979 to 1989. As a socially engaged Buddhist, Halifax has done extensive work with the dying through her Project on Being with Dying (which she founded). She is on the board of directors of the Mind and Life Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated in exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism.

Roshi Joan speaks with Joanna about aging and death, engaged Buddhism and systemic activism, personal and social transformation, the historic significance of LSD as a Dharma door, embodied compassion with dying people, speaking truth to power…

Music: “Song without words to Bohdana Pivnenko, I.-Elegy”  (from Fleeting Melodies) by Valentin Silvestrov {Bohdana Pivnenko (violin) and Valeriy Matiukhin (piano) }

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For 25 years Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food System, a private non-profit agency that works on food and hunger issues in the Hartford, Connecticut area. During his tenure with HFS, Mark organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city’s lower income and elderly residents. Mark’s work with the Food System included the development of a commercial hydroponic greenhouse, Connecticut’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, several farmers’ markets, a 20-acre community supported agriculture farm, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.

Winne now writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community assessment, and food policy. He also does policy communication work for the Community Food Security Coalition. His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in numerous newspapers, organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. He is the author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press 2008) and Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture (Beacon Press, 2010). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

www.markwinne.com

Mark speaks with Joanna about the food system and emotional connectedness, freedom from the industrial food system, active citizen engagement, re-learning cooking skills as a life-changing shift, the nightmare of the industrial slaughterhouses, food and reinvigorating democracy…

Music: “Adagio” (from String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”) by Leos Janacek.

Note: A special thank you to Pam Roy and FarmToTable for making this interview possible.

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This is a replay of a previous interview of Dr. Sahtouris.

Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris, Ph.D. is an evolution biologist, futurist, author, speaker and consultant on Living Systems Design.. Citizen of the USA and Greece, she lives in Spain, where she works with Mallorca Goes Green toward sustainable local economy.  Fellow of the World Business Academy and member of the World Wisdom Council, her post-doctoral fellowship tenure was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; she taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts, was a UN Consultant on indigenous peoples, a science writer for the NOVA-HORIZON TV series, taught in a sustainable business MBA program and organized the Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium in 2008 and another in Kuala Lumpur in 2009.   Her books include: Biology Revisioned, A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us, EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution.

Dr. Sahtouris uses nature’s principles and practice, revealed in biological evolution, as useful models for organizational change. She applies them in the corporate world, in global politics and economics, in our efforts to create sustainable health and well being for humanity within the larger living systems of Earth. She appears in I Am a 2011 documentary film written, narrated, and directed by Tom Shadyac.

www.sahtouris.com

www.iamthedoc.com

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Nora Bateson is a media producer and educator. Her work includes documentaries, multimedia productions, magazine columns, and developing curriculum for elementary and high school students. Central to all her pursuits is the idea of utilizing media and storytelling to encourage cultural understanding, social justice, and environmental awareness. Ms. Bateson has a steadfast dedication to the possibilities of human evolution, starting with encouraging young children to see the interrelatedness of the natural world with that of the “human-made” world using all media.

www.anecologyofmind.com

Nora speaks with Joanna about the process of making the film , the concept of beauty for Gregory Bateson, story as a co-evolving relationship, art and beauty as ways of intimacy with Nature, the perception of life as a “dynamic web of interrelationships”, paradox, play, double bind, the ecological imperative of changing our way of thinking about the world…

Music: soundtrack of  the documentary “An Ecology of Mind” (voice: Nora Bateson,  original music composed and performed by: Dan Brubeck,  Miles Black, Jack Duncan, Rick Kilbourn, and Nora Bateson)

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James O’Dea is currently Co- Director of The Social Healing Project funded by the Kalliopeia Foundation. This work has led him to Rwanda, Israel/Palestine, N. Ireland and elsewhere.

He is a member of the extended faculty of The Institute of Noetic Sciences and its immediate past President. He was Executive Director of The Seva Foundation, an international health and development organization and, for ten years, was the Washington Office Director of Amnesty International.

He is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders group founded by Deepak Chopra and Diane Williams and lectures widely on emerging worldviews, and integral approaches to social transformation. He is committed to dialogue as a practice and is engaged in dialogues at SEED Graduate Institute between native elders, physicists, and thought leaders; between Israeli and Palestinian psychologists and social workers, and contributes to dialogue on systems thinking and government policy making with the DC based Global Systems Initiatives. He and Dr Judith Thompson co-led a series of international dialogues called Compassion and Social Healing.

His book Creative Stress: A Path For Evolving Souls Living Through Personal and Planetary Upheaval ( April 2010) is highly praised and featured in Kosmos Journal, Spirituality and Health magazine, The Well Being Journal and dozens of other media outlets.

www.jamesodea.com

James speaks with Joanna about social healing narratives, creative stress, “Sophianic justice”, the new skills of the peacemaker.

Music: Ajam Taronalary by Munadjat Yulchieva & Ensemble Shavkat Mirzaev

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Robert Leaver has over 38 years of experience organizing over 500 projects for clients across the country. As a teacher, he helped found Boston College’s Leadership for Change graduate program, bringing a generation of leaders into the world of “systems thinking”. As a social entrepreneur, he helped develop many long-standing organizations, including the New England Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) and the Business Alliance for Local, Living Economies (BALLE). As a convener and facilitator, he has led thousands of groups on the journey from confusion to clarity, managing each group’s unique dynamic to help them generate their best thinking, identify the connections to required capabilities and implement a clear plan of action.

http://www.newcommons.com/

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Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris is an American/Greek evolution biologist, futurist, author and consultant on Living Systems Design.  Author of Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution; A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us and Biology Revisioned with Willis Harman.

sahtouris.com

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Joanna Harcourt-Smith interviews Elisabet Sahtouris - Evolutionary biologist, futurist, UN consultant on indigenous peoples, lecturer and author.

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