Articles

by Jason Low It’s amazing to think that Ken has been with the Human Venture community for 20 years now. With that in mind, he wanted to share something that happened around this last Remembrance Day 2020 that overlaps with the solstice season. As usual, Ken had a book that he was going to recommend during one of the bi-weekly … Read More

by Blythe Butler and Sami Berger One of the functions of pioneer leadership is to build others’ capacity to understand and act in their contexts in more adaptive ways. This means helping others see “what to do and how to do it in a given situation” (Human Venture map 12.3). Even though we work with a lot of different groups, … Read More

George Floyd protest in Grand Army Plaza June 7, 2020. Image: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons by Laura Kennett I wrote Part 1 of this article, Systems in Converging Crisis, in the spring, when I listed an array of crises that are intensifying around us, including: Now we have entered summer in the northern hemisphere and this list is … Read More

by Lindsay Mitchell “I hate black people.” – Four-year-old white girl. These are words you never wish to hear spoken at all, let alone to hear them coming from your own daughter. But they did. I remember we were driving in the car. I don’t remember where we were driving to or from, only that we were together in the … Read More

by Laura Kennett We are not only in the midst of a global pandemic; we are also experiencing a convergence of several global crises that are shedding light on glaring weaknesses in our systems, including:  Global climate change,  Global oil market collapse,   Global fracturing of truth in social media, and  Global rise in right-wing movements.  What kind of a cluster f&#% … Read More

Image: Jason Wong, Unsplash by Elizabeth Dozois “There seems little doubt that we are currently in the midst of one of the great critical transitions of the human journey, and yet it is not at all clear where we will end up once our current system resolves into a newly stable state.”  (Jeremy Lent1) “Never let a good crisis go … Read More

A view from Kim’s window, as she reflected on the pandemic, west of Calgary, March 2020. Kim was inspired to write this poem after an Alumni Community Call, reflecting on the voices we pay attention to in order to understand current events and possible paths forward. by Kim Rowe It is quieter now. Listen. Do you hear the deep voices? … Read More

Social distance on Kings Parade. Image: Gyles Glover, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons by Elizabeth Dozois Do you find yourself tearing up when you see videos of people singing to one another from their balconies? Are you moved by the multiple acts of kindness and solidarity we’ve seen over the past few weeks?  Disasters bring enormous suffering, anxiety and … Read More