In our Winter 2020/21 issue, our regular sustainability columnist Davie Philip wrote about the importance of local food sovereignty, and how this is key to developing our communities’ resilience in the years ahead.
Our resident sustainability and eco-living writer, Davie Philip, wrote a powerful piece on nurturing community connections in our Autumn 2020 issue. Read it below.
In our Summer 2020 issue, our resident gardening expert Hans Wieland shared his thoughts on the value of self-sufficiency: a timely and pertinent concept for our times. We loved hearing his wisdom on the subject! Read his article below.
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Sustainability and Soul: Two Leading Lights We Love
In our recently-released Summer 2020 issue, we were excited to include a ‘Sustainability and Soul’ feature, which showcased the work of two leading lights in the holistic world: eco-conscious household goods company, If You Care, and the beautiful Dominican Retreat Centre (located in Tallaght, Dublin). We love both of them, so it was an honour to ask them about their work! Read on to hear what they had to say.
We have long been huge fans of the eco-conscious household goods company If You Care, so it was an honour to feature them in our Spring 2020 issue. These environmental advocates have been flying the flag for sustainability since 1990. Read on to learn all about what they offer!
Positively Newsworthy is one of our favourite sections of the magazine. Here, we aim to highlight stories of hope, optimistic perspectives and joyous developments in our world. We hope you enjoy this extract from our Spring 2020 issue, and that you are staying safe and well at this time.
We all love a positive news story … and in our Autumn 2019 issue, we published three! The Positively Newsworthy section of our magazine is always a much-cherished read. Read on to hear about an amazing rescue, an innovative alternative plastic straws, and a sign of hope for a Central American rainforest…
We love the Mooncup® – a reusable menstrual cup that provides women with a great way to reduce waste during their time of the month. Read on to find out why!
In this sneak peek of a powerful article from our Spring 2019 issue, Davie Philip discusses how we can use new stories of hope and resilience to inspire ourselves to tackle the challenges facing our planet. To read the full article, pick up a copy of the magazine at your local stockist or subscribe here.
In this extract from our Autumn 2018 issue, Davie Philip talks about how we can change our collective mindset to one of collaboration and openness.
Thinking Differently
“With our thoughts we make the world.” – Buddha
By Davie Philips
Change is constant. However, recently the pace seems to be accelerating. To cope with this, and to make the transition to a healthy society based on fairness, wellbeing and sustainability, we need to shift worldviews and open our minds and hearts to fresh ways of thinking. So what kind of thinking would enable us to flourish in uncertainty?
Currently, we are locked into an individualistic worldview where reductionist or mechanistic thinking dominates. This mindset breaks everything down into parts to be analysed and measured. By understanding the parts and how they function, we presume we can understand everything important there is to know about something. This reductionism is useful for understanding inanimate things, or simple systems like machines, but can be destructive when applied to living systems. It also tends to lead to a silo mentality, which is inward looking and resists sharing information and resources.
We justify our superiority over the environment when we think we are separate and with this worldview we create fragile, linear systems. Through the diversity and complexity of their webs of relationships, and by sharing resources across their boundaries, living systems increase wellbeing and resilience. Observing these patterns and principles of natural systems might provide us with vital insights into how to redesign our socioeconomic systems to be collaborative, regenerative and resilient.
So, how might we shift our thinking?
Our current way of thinking is rooted in the industrial revolution. This period of human development was dependent on a mechanistic worldview and has dominated and influenced our behaviour ever since. In integral philosophy, worldviews evolve by including and transcending preceding worldviews. So rather than an ecological mindset replacing a mechanistic one, instead it provides a different perspective and access to another type of knowledge with which to navigate the world.
We cannot make the transformation the world needs without making an inner transformation in our thinking. With an ecological worldview we think in terms of process, pattern, flow, connectedness, and relatedness. I believe that as we become more conscious we evolve to hold an ecological worldview. According to theologian Thomas Berry, we will then realize that we live in a world which is a “communion of subjects,” not just a “collection of objects.”
Davie Philip is a group facilitator and trainer who manages the Community Resilience programme at Cultivate. Davie is collecting stories of transformational community led projects: if you are involved in something in your area, do send him an e-mail.
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