{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Circle For Original Thinking","title":"Can Humanity Change?","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3709,"description":"To say humanity is living unsustainably is a massive understatement. In the words of Oren Lyons, Faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan of the Onondaga Nation, humanity is like a jockey, whipping its horse faster and faster to get to the finish line, not realizing that the finish line is a brick wall.\n\n\n\nThe proliferation of nuclear weapons did not make us change. The ecological movement of the 60s and 70s, ushered in by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, helped awaken us, but not enough. After some modest improvements, the soil, air, and waters remained polluted. The rainforests continued to be cut down at an alarming rate. Temperatures continued to rise, along with the seas. It seemed we were beyond hope for change and now living in the Age of Consequences. Then, a tiny virus did what no social movement had done. It shut everything down. The incessant pressure of human economic activity ground to a halt. Amid the human death toll, the natural world was granted a reprieve. \n\n\n\nIn the midst of the pandemic, a police officer kept his foot on George Floyd’s neck, causing him to die, but giving birth to a renewed social justice movement. Social justice and ecological justice are invariably connected; the Floyd murder was a metaphor for what humanity had been doing to Mother Earth. We had been keeping our foot on her neck, paving over the natural world to pursue our short-sighted economic interests. It was Mother Earth that could not breathe. If we did not change, much of the natural world would die.\n\n\n\nIn this edition of Circle for Original Thinking, we explore how we might learn to live in a different way, renew our relationship with the more-than-human world, honor the wisdom of nature and of our ancestors, and reimagine education to be an agent of change rather than merely a reflection of the current society.\n\n\n\nWe have never lived through a time exactly like this. But we have lived through crises before. We know from experience that every crisis presents both danger and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/vSyRjf6eirP2Ay2hIpmFdcThamdhULjPmKyxBxF0Nqk/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzI3NDEyLzE2NDE5/NDkyMjUtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}