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Syntropic World

By Christine McDougall

Syntropic World is building an economy that serves people and nature.

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Beauty of Beginnings - May 9th - Respectful of diversity

Respectful of diversity I feel despair today as I watch the media doing its media thing and stirring hate. We must stop the rise of anti (insert the word of the day depending on the part of the world you are from) cry various voices in hand-wringing anguish. Neglecting to say that stopping any form of anti – towards anyone – is the only way to forge an egalitarian, respectful community. When we focus on one group of ‘victims’ of hate, placing the hate projected against them as needing a...

about 19 hours ago • 1 min read

Finding the humanity behind the chaos If we humans are to create a more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible, we must be able to come together, across a table, with our differences and find common ground. Human coordination, collaboration and co-creation are essential to our healthy future. When we sit with our petty annoyances, holding fierce to our righteousness, and project judgment upon the other, the ways of war, separation, colonisation and division thrive. Beneath the...

2 days ago • 1 min read

When they come for peace protestors join the protest First, they came for the peace protestors, and I did not speak up. Evil begins with small, seemingly innocuous acts—the kinds of acts we dismiss as too small or irrelevant. Upon the first act – for example – the act of threatening and arresting peace protesters or the explosion from a country of those who seek to speak for the oppressed – the second act builds. By our permission. Our silence makes us complicit. Genocide doesn’t happen...

3 days ago • 1 min read

Safety My safety cannot exist when your safety is threatened. If I need to protect myself against violence from others, everyone is unsafe. No walls will prevent this. Walls are signifiers of an unsafe world. The only way people can be truly safe is when no one is at risk from violence. To believe that one country can be safe only through acts of violence towards another is to deny that violence begets violence in an endless cycle of violence. I look upon the world where we are still playing...

4 days ago • 1 min read

To confront To stand in front of. To be facing. Truth is hard. It requires us to confront. Until we do, we are at the effect of what we refuse to confront. To confront threatens everything. Our worldview. Our carefully constructed life. Our history. Our identity. The stories we have told ourselves. The irony is the cry for freedom and rights is a great call for people. Yet without confronting the truth, there is never freedom or rights. Only illusion and delusion. There is no freedom without...

5 days ago • 1 min read

I stand for humanity What does this mean? I was listening to a reporter speak about Kerala State in India, where a mosque, a church, and a temple are side by side on the same street. The people of Kerala cherish religious harmony despite the Modi government’s ardent attempt to stir hate. Religious diversity and harmony are possible. I was thinking about the students protesting genocide and settler colonisation. The wearing of certain items of clothing signifies the side you stand for. What is...

7 days ago • 1 min read

Hard binaries Hard binaries are absolute. Very little in life is an absolute. Some absolute examples include. We are born. We die. We have placed absolutes hard binaries around many things because a spectrum removes simplicity and our perceived ability to control. Gender is a spectrum. The social order is easier when it is not, just as it is easier when we can fit people into neat categories. We are finally acknowledging the spectrum of multiple intelligences. Considering the absolutes we...

8 days ago • 1 min read

Greenmount Beach, solo surfer, Christine Mature Love Today is my love’s Birthday. I remember the times in my twenties when a good amount of my time and energy was focused on finding love. Even starting with the question – is this person the one – is the wrong question, for it thickens the space between with a loaded set of expectations and impossibilities. Getting to know the other with this loaded space cannot be done, as our view is so warped. I wish someone had taught me that. Do not seek...

9 days ago • 1 min read

Tangled in a state of being a victim Legitimate victims have bombs falling on them now and are caught in terrible events beyond their control. What we do with our being after the bad things that happen to us shapes our character. It is not a contest to see who has the most horrid background or luck. There is no victim status award, although I see this game played everywhere. When we live in a context where the winner takes all, everything is up to be exploited, and the powerful stack every...

10 days ago • 1 min read

Dancing with change is life The nature of change has us go from stable and satisfied to questioning and uncertain. What was once solid and real becomes rocky. As we exit the certain stable stage, the ground we walk upon appears to trip us. If it is a deep phase state change, the ground we came to rely on for years no longer holds us. This is very disorienting and can be traumatic. There is a requirement forced upon us to try new things, open our minds to possibility, and let go of everything...

11 days ago • 1 min read
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