Description
We are experiencing a cultural and social transition as our Western culture and society have become increasingly dysfunctional, creating suffering rather than health and thriving. This transition holds the potential to be apocalyptic or life giving. Worldwide and in Australia, multiple existential crises that are challenging us in all areas of life and are not only threatening our existence but all life on earth (e.g., climate change, pandemics, disasters, environmental destruction, poverty, food and water shortages, war, crime, mental and physical disease, failing systems in all areas). These crises led to our individual and collective capabilities and capacities to adapt to, and reduce, respond to and recover are increasingly declining, creating a vicious down-ward spiral. Yet, the existential crises present transformative opportunities as they create the disorienting dilemmas necessary for transformative learning. The crises create the spaces for us to transform, transmute and transcend our entire fundamental philosophical worldviews in ways that has us realise that the source of the crises is spiritual and the consequence of millennia long domestication and colonization by the Western culture, and that the solutions lie within us and in the ancient sacred nature wisdom and Laws our Western ancestors and Indigenous peoples. To move forward we need to go within and back to accomplish this paradigm shift. I will take you on a transformative journey that starts with exploring the nature and importance of philosophical worldviews and how the Western worldview is at the source of the existential crises. Next, we will inquire into the ancient Western, Eastern and Indigenous worldviews, knowledges and practices, and how they hold transformative pathways that can lead us out of our existential crises and create a culture and society that is live giving. It will become clear that building upon and ascending the metaphysical, nature-based, unified and egalitarian ancient and Indigenous worldviews will create diverse cultures and societies that cultivate individual and collective adaptive capabilities and capacities capable of us resolving our existential crises, reclaiming our freedom and power, and fulfilling our custodial role of keeping life/creation flowing by enabling harmonious relationships among all creatures that ensure the health/well-being and thriving of all creatures. Each of us stands at a critical junction – we can continue to cling and contribute to the worldview that creates the crises, suffering and extinction of life OR open up to and contribute to transforming, transmuting and transcending towards Ancient and Indigenous ways of being-knowing-doing that enable us and all creatures to live, adapt, and thrive. Which pathway will you choose and dedicate yourself to?| Period | 19 Feb 2025 |
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| Event title | ANU Fenner School Seminar Series |
| Event type | Seminar |
| Location | Canberra, AustraliaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | Local |