On a rocky outcropping off the northeastern coast of England, the monastery of Lindisfarne once stood as an outpost of religious, philosophic, and intellectual study against the “dark” times of early medieval Europe. Inspired by the foresight and dogged determination of these medieval monks, William Irwin Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Association in 1972 to gather together bold scientists, scholars, artists, and contemplatives to realize a new planetary culture in the face of the political, cultural, and environmental crises of the twentieth century.
Brought to you by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, The Lindisfarne Tapes podcast represents some of the most visionary thinking of the time, drawing connections between culture, economics, society, and technology. While the germs of new ideas contained in these tapes are now beginning to take root, they remain an invaluable source of speculative thinking that will continue to inspire our visions of a more just and regenerative future.
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On a rocky outcropping off the northeastern coast of England, the monastery of Lindisfarne once stood as an outpost of religious, philosophic, and intellectual study against the “dark” times of early medieval Europe. Inspired by the foresight and dogged determination of these medieval monks, William Irwin Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Association in 1972 to gather together bold scientists, scholars, artists, and contemplatives to realize a new planetary culture in the face of the political, cultural, and environmental crises of the twentieth century.
Brought to you by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, The Lindisfarne Tapes podcast represents some of the most visionary thinking of the time, drawing connections between culture, economics, society, and technology. While the germs of new ideas contained in these tapes are now beginning to take root, they remain an invaluable source of speculative thinking that will continue to inspire our visions of a more just and regenerative future.
Gregory Bateson, anthropologist, cyberneticist, and systems theorist, develops a theory of “how we know what we know” using a number of parables. Bateson is the author of Mind and Nature and Steps to an Ecology of Mind. (Episode photo courtesy of wildculture.com)
E.F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful, suggests how one might begin to transition from violent to non-violent technology, from chemical to biological agricultural methods, from cleverness to wisdom. (Episode photo courtesy of schumacherinstitute.org.uk)
British poet and scholar, Kathleen Raine, discusses religion and spirituality in Blake’s life and work. Raine is the author of many highly respected studies on the work of William Blake, W.B. Yeats, and Thomas Taylor. (Episode photo courtesy of counterpointpress.com)
Stewart Brand, editor of The Whole Earth Catalog and CoEvolution Quarterly, describes the experiences that culminated in the creation of The Catalog and leads a lively discussion joined by most of the Lindisfarne conference speakers. (Episode photo courtesy of theculturecrush.com)
Thomas Banyacya, spokesman for the Elders of the Hopi, describes his people’s prophecy and way of life. Revealing some of the “signs of the times” which guide the Hopi in the present epoch, Banyacya relates this to other great spiritual traditions. (Episode photo courtesy of windspeaker.com)
David Spangler, spiritual philosopher and author of Revelation: The Birth of a New Age, speaks on the synthesis and transformation of science, religion, and government in the new age. (Episode photo courtesy of fairycongress.com)
Rosabeth Kanter, author of Community and Commitment, analyzes the factors that determine success and failure in alternative communities. She focuses her analysis on several historical cases, including ancient esoteric communities, the Oneida community, Shaker villages, the Lindisfarne Association, and others.
Gary Snyder, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning Turtle Island, reads from his work to illustrate the way in which he is currently thinking about poetry. He suggests that poetry represents songs of the life cycle, and shares poems that embody birth, childhood, adolescence, work, love, celebration, healing, and death. (Episode photo courtesy of allenginsberg.org)
Nechung Rinpoche, the Grand Lama of Nechung Monastery, speaks of the development of compassion based on the Buddhist Path of Enlightenment. This tape retains the Tibetan spoken by Rinpoche, vigorously translated by Robert Thurman, Professor of Religion at Amherst College and the translator of The Holy Teachings of Vimilakirti. (Episode photo courtesy of nechung.org)
Architect/mathematician/designer Sean Wellesley-Miller reconceives architecture in the image of the bioshelter. The house, no longer the end point of consumption, becomes a domesticated, productive ecosystem. This new architecture cultivates a more profound attachment to place, promoting decentralization and strengthening local economies. (Episode photo courtesy of newalchemists.files.wordpress.com)
Gil Friend, former Co-Director of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, relates some of the strategies and problems involved in helping urban communities gain self control and emphasizes the importance of diverse, place-based action in addressing the formidable challenges we face. (Episode photo courtesy of natlogic.com)
Alice Tepper Marlin, President Emerita of Social Accountability International and founder of the Council on Economic Priorities, presents the methodologies and strategies she used to show big business that community interests don’t necessarily threaten corporate profitability. (Episode photo courtesy of rightlivelihoodaward.org)
David Ehrenfeld, the author of The Arrogance of Humanism, considers the teaching of stewardship implicit in Judaism. Since Jewish Law originally dictated to generations of a land-based community, he explains, it provided a forceful and specific ecological wisdom and ethic of land management from which we might gain insight at present.
Farmer/poet/essayist Wendell Berry analogizes marriage and agriculture and traces the effects of ‘divisions branching out from the division between body and soul’ in the household and in the farm community where he lives. Berry is the author of The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture; Farming: A Handbook; and A Continuous Harmony. (Episode photo courtesy of theecologist.org)
Iranian Islamic philosopher and polymath, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, offers a spiritual and historical account of the ecological crisis and emphasizes the need to rediscover the Sacred. Nasr is a Professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University and author of The Garden of Truth; The Encounter Between Man and Nature; and Science and Civilization in Islam. (Episode photo courtesy of George Washington University)
Indigenous rights activist Janet McCloud describes the struggle of her people to re-establish their traditional ways of harmony and balance and recounts anecdotes of non-Indigenous activists being both exploitative and supportive in their efforts to promote justice. (Episode photo courtesy of University of Washington Libraries)
Francisco Varela, a biologist at the National University of Chile and author of Autopoiesis and Cognition and The Embodied Mind, relates his personal experience during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état to his personal conviction that ‘epistemology does matter.' Amidst the chaos of the coup, Varela experiences a moment of clarity and begins to understands the 'logic of paradise.' (Episode photo courtesy of goodreads.com)
Quaker sociologist and renowned peace scholar, Elise Boulding, provides a historical perspective on women in community and gives her appraisal of the future success of new communities. Boulding is the author of The Underside of History and Cultures of Peace. (Episode photo courtesy of vanierinstitute.ca.)
Farmer, scientist, and ecological designer, John Todd, relates the experiences which formed the New Alchemy Institute and describes some projects in intensive aquaculture and agriculture using wind and solar energy. Todd recounts the rediscovery of a sense of place that emerges from the fabrication of these self-sufficient bioshelters.
Astronaut Russell "Rusty" Schweickart describes his experience during a camera malfunction in space. While his friend repairs the camera, Schweickart is able to take an unscheduled moment to gaze at the whole Earth from above. The result is a profound change in consciousness, an identification with the entire planet and an embodied feeling of global unity.
On a rocky outcropping off the northeastern coast of England, the monastery of Lindisfarne once stood as an outpost of religious, philosophic, and intellectual study against the “dark” times of early medieval Europe. Inspired by the foresight and dogged determination of these medieval monks, William Irwin Thompson founded the Lindisfarne Association in 1972 to gather together bold scientists, scholars, artists, and contemplatives to realize a new planetary culture in the face of the political, cultural, and environmental crises of the twentieth century.
Brought to you by the Schumacher Center for a New Economics, The Lindisfarne Tapes podcast represents some of the most visionary thinking of the time, drawing connections between culture, economics, society, and technology. While the germs of new ideas contained in these tapes are now beginning to take root, they remain an invaluable source of speculative thinking that will continue to inspire our visions of a more just and regenerative future.
