Here to Get Your Hopes Up
Practical Examples of the World's Better Hope
Open Horizons (process) philosophy is an outlook on life that sees beauty and value in people, animals, and the earth. It includes twenty key ideas. It sees the universe itself as a whole universe of stories.
The aim of such a philosophy is not simply to understand the world; it is to help change it inn a time of need: given global climate change, economic inequities, political repression, the rise of authoritarianism, violence and the threat of violence, spiritual despair with the shallowness of consumerism. It is to help create communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, multicultural, humane to animals, ecologically healthy, and spiritually alive, with no one left behind.
We process thinkers speak of these communities as the building blocks of Ecological Civilizations. Ecological Civilizations are civilizations in which people live with respect and care for the community of life, with special care for the vulnerable. They are the better hope of the world.
We borrow the phrase "ecological civilization" from China, which has placed the goal of developing ecological civilizations into its constitution. Much of our work is in China. See Open Horizons China.
We believe that three things can help move the world toward ecological civilizations: organic worldviews such as found in process philosophy; functional creation stories that give people a sense that they are part of a larger adventure such as are found in the Journey of the Universe story told by Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme, and practical action at local levels.
This page offers examples of practial action in the United States and Europe aimed at helping build ecological civilizations. These examples have many parallels in other nations. We call it creative localization.
-- Jay McDaniel
Practical Examples in US and Europe
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