Andrew Cohen

Bio & resources

There was just no way of avoiding it. The time had come to do an issue on our current global crisis. In the face of often dire and disastrous predictions, we’ve tried to present some compelling and leading-edge points of view while also making the effort to remain philosophical at all costs! (I mean, we don’t want the impending apocalypse to make us lose sight of a higher vision and an enlightened perspective, do we?) That’s what my dialogue with integral master Ken Wilber is all about in our twenty-third “Guru and Pandit” feature.

For this issue, my close colleague Carter Phipps, EnlightenNext’s executive editor, conducted powerful and thought-provoking interviews with two visionaries holding very different perspectives on our current world predicament. Global strategist Thomas Barnett has an uncanny ability to paint the biggest possible picture about where we are, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going. He does so in such a way that he always gives one a strong sense of hope that no matter how challenging things may seem in the short term, from the perspective of the developmental arc of human history, things are undoubtedly getting a lot better. And futurist John Petersen gives us quite a different way to look at our current crisis: He says we’re going down faster than most of us are aware of, and that we need to get ready and prepare for the worst!

To put everything in the kind of perspective that I personally like the most, scholar of consciousness and Western esotericism Gary Lachman reminds us, with uniquely lyrical brilliance, that dour predictions of our imminent demise have been part of the ebb and flow of the human experience since the dawn of civilization. But before you give yourself license to stop worrying, read scholar of theology and global activist Jim Garrison’s views on climate change in an informative interview with senior associate editor Ross Robertson. Garrison articulately explains why we are running out of time, and then describes in detail the exciting upcoming 2009 State of the World Forum, which will be dedicated to educating as many people as possible, all over the world, about how to respond to this crisis from an integral perspective.

So where does all this leave us? Hopefully both a little more informed and a little more inspired!