Iconic images of non-violence
From The Intelligent Optimist Winter 2017 Tiananmen Square After the death of pro-democracy leader Hu Yaobang in mid-1989, students began gathering in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to mourn his passing. It was the beginning of large demonstration for greater freedom that lasted seven weeks. The Read More...
Non-violence issue: Earth I love
From The Intelligent Optimist Winter 2017 The economy is based on competition—violence. Nature is exploited to make money. There can only be an end to poverty and pollution when we discover the spiritual economy that is based on relationship, not ownership, with each other and with nature. Read More...
What the wilderness brings
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 Amy Domini, Founder and CEO of Domini Social Investments and author of several books on ethical investing. amydomini.com A recent trip to Southern California brought me within an hour’s drive of the famed Joshua Tree National Park, a 1,235-square-mile Read More...
The art of trying
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 Paulo Coelho, Author of international bestsellers, including The Pilgrimage and The Alchemist. paulocoelhoblog.com Pablo Picasso once said, “God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He Read More...
Inspiration: Products and Books for The Optimist
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 An herbal skin solution Our modern lifestyle makes us an easy target for inflammation. The environment around us and our diets are full of substances that inflame our bodies—and that’s where almost every disease begins. Mainstream medicine is good at Read More...
Inspiration: A cosmonaut of consciousness
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation (TM), was one of the best-known gurus from India. The Beatles famously visited him in the Himalayas. But what is not so well known is that Maharishi, who passed away in 2008, was also trained Read More...
Possibility: Don’t wrestle with pigs, and other lessons from the ideological battlefield
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 This U.S. election season is a perfect backdrop for discussing James Hoggan’s new book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up. Hoggan’s special interests—ethical PR and climate change—merge in Read More...
Possibility: A new nation—on three square miles?
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 Liberland may be the ultimate startup. On April 13 of last year, 31-year-old Czech politician Vit Jedlicka declared a three-square-mile plot on the marshy west bank of the Danube as a new sovereign state and installed himself as president. The vote was Read More...
Possibility: The European Union: Think of it as a club
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 Commentary: Mark Schalekamp is a journalist, writer and “social entrepreneur” whose home country is the Netherlands. “Right now there are already around one million Erasmus babies,” one of my “Youropean” interview subjects remarked. Erasmus Read More...
Possibility: Scalpel, sutures, herbes de Provence
From The Intelligent Optimist Summer 2016 Students at the Tulane University School of Medicine are being trained to look not only to Big Pharma for med-ical solutions, but also to the farmers’ market. The Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at the New Orleans university is the first culinary Read More...