Скачать или смотреть The Transfigurative Community | Process Explorations

It is important that we situate ourselves clearly within the present moment of Earth history, with an acute awareness of all its momentous problems, and all its inspiring possibilities. We are now leaving the Cenezoic, an era of new life on Earth, and entering the Necrocene, an era of mass extinction and death on Earth. We are seeing the final results of a long history of various forms of Empire and domination, and of certain dominant forms of egoic identity. We are faced with the choice of either continuing on the path of social and ecological disintegration, or of initiating a new path of social and ecological regeneration.

The thesis of this presentation is that the crucial factor in determining the nature our future and the future of life on Earth is whether a certain kind of community can emerge. We might call it the Awakening Earth Community.

Such a project will require large-scale social and ecological regeneration, but it can only succeed if it is rooted in small-scale communities of liberation and solidarity, awakening and care. It is such communities that are capable of fostering fundamental personal and group transformation. Such a transformation will need to address all the basic spheres of social determination, including the social imaginary, the social ideology, the social ethos, the social institutional structure, and social materiality. Change must take place simultaneously in all of these spheres, and must take place at all levels of organization, including the personal level, the level of primary groups, the level of larger groups, and the level of the entire society. Such a project will be rooted in human experience. It can look for inspiration and guidance from the lengthy and rich global history of non-dominating communal organization, going back to the beginnings of human society. We will look at some key points in that history, including the achievements of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, the Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava, and the Sarvodaya Movement in India.

BIOGRAPHY

John P. Clark is a philosopher, activist, writer, and educator. He is Director of La Terre Institute for Community and Ecology and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University, where he taught for 44 years, was a member and former chair of the Environment Program, and directed a summer study program in India. His most recent philosophical work is BETWEEN EARTH AND EMPIRE: FROM THE NECROCENE TO THE BELOVED COMMUNITY. As his alter non-ego, Max Cafard, he recently published ANARCHY IN THE BIG EASY, a graphic history of radical New Orleans. He does educational and organizational work with La Terre Institute in New Orleans and at Bayou La Terre Woodland Center, an 88-acre site on Bayou La Terre in the coastal forest of the Gulf of Mexico. He hosts a weekly meditation and study group at the Cypress in the Garden Zendo in New Orleans. He recently finished a year homeschooling his grandson, Ethan.

___________________________________

Recording Date: May 6, 2025

Process Explorations, formerly Cobb & Friends, is a weekly gathering to engage in conversations that matter with fascinating speakers across a wide range of ideas and interests. You can find out more at https://cobb.institute/process-explor.... If you enjoy this content, please consider supporting the Cobb Institute at the Center for Process Studies by making a donation: https://cobb.institute/donate/