Participate Joyfully In the Sorrows of the World…
"Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world," Joseph Campbell wrote. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. It is a hard saying, not an easy one. It reflects a great truth passed down for millennia. In Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, it...
Summer Reading and Listening Picks
If you are in search of some summer reading (or New School podcasts for your walks and drives), here are some suggestions: Thomas Picketty, Capital in the 21st Century. Paul Krugman says "the most important economics book of the year—and maybe of the decade. ...
The View from Tinos
On a recent trip, I visited a friend and colleague, Michael Samuels, on the island of Tinos in the Greek Mediteranean. Michael's house is poised for flight—precipitously above a steep, terraced valley flowing down to the blue water. He built the house as a temple:...
Risk Tolerance and the Search for Meaning
Each year I come to Europe for the month of May. Work brings me here. Delight keeps me coming back, as well as curiosity about the human condition. Take personal and social risk tolerances in different cultures as an example. Everywhere in Europe I see young people...
Spiritual Biography, Robert McDermott
Robert McDermott is president emeritus of the California Institute of Integral Studies. His interests include wisdom philosophy, Hindu and Buddhist spiritualities, inclusive and esoteric Christianity, higher education, and Anthroposophy. We had a wonderful day-long...
New Year Reflections
The new year is a time for reflections and resolutions. What do we actually know? We know that the biological fabric of life on earth is unraveling. We know that we are so profoundly altering the conditions of life that no corner of the earth is untouched. We know...
Conversation with Malcolm Margolin
Malcolm Margolin was born in a Jewish neighborhood in Dorchester outside Boston in 1940. He was a dreamy child with his nose always in a book. School bored him. A piercing intelligence pushed him forward. He graduated from Harvard, married his Radcliffe girlfriend,...
“Do It Yourself” and “Maker” Movements Bringing Hope
Do you know about the DIY Movement? The Maker Movement? The Great Re-Skilling Movement? If you are like me, these movements (DIY stands for "do it yourself") may at best be at the edge of awareness. I've come to know some remarkable young people in West Marin who...
Winter Gathering at the Whidbey Institute, WA
I write from the town of Langley on Whidbey Island north of Seattle. I just attended the Third Winter Gathering at the Whidbey Institute. The Gathering is led by my long-time friends Rick Ingrasci and Peggy Taylor. Life partners, they have led the Summer Gathering at...
Physicist Tom Nash on M-Theory and the Cosmos
“The room was crackling with interest—did you feel it?” my friend Jan Broek asked me. I did. The occasion was a New School conversation with physicist Tom Nash about the nature of the universe. I expected an audience of ten—but forty New School friends showed up....
Reverence and Resilience
Some preliminary notes A friend suggested to me the other day that reverence might be at the heart of our work. She proposed that there is a relationship between reverence and resilience. I asked what she meant by reverence. She said that she meant reverence for life....
The Grand Design
The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. Albert Einstein A unifying theory of the universe is the holy grail of modern physics. Einstein sought but did not find it. The great Cambridge mathematician Stephen Hawking and CalTech...