Chair: Dieter Steiner

Contributors: Ulrich Loening, Peter Merry,

Debaters: Lene Rachel Andersen, Helen Kopnina, Joachim Schütz, Michael Thonashow

Presentation by Ulrich Loening: "Harmonise with Nature"

What makes us human gives us the power to counter Nature. Nine basic habits are identified that describe how society applies this power to create industrial civilisation but also inevitably to create a suicidal planetary situation,. The diagnostic list leads to further understanding of how modern society acts differently from nature.  All these differences indicate what needs to change and show that options for change are possible and indeed emerging. The analysis can provide a framework for development that reverses current trends and leads towards planetary sustainability.   This will require a shift from the underlying motivation of power to one of cooperation with nature. One could envisage how civilisation can progress by reversing the habits that counter nature to a cooperative approach . Having laid the basis for the cultural changes needed, further discussions about science, agriculture and economics are in subsequent papers.
Together these help to approach the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Presentation by Peter Merry: "Ubiquity University - a whole new kind of education for a whole new kind of world"

The original iteration of Ubiquity University was founded in Oakland, CA in 1996 by Matthew Fox, PhD, a world-renowned educator and writer, as a non-profit graduate school called the University of Creation Spirituality. What distinguished the school was its innovative combination of intellectual and artistic learning in which all students were required to engage in equal measure to balance the left and right hemispheres of the brain and thereby engage in integrated learning. Jim Garrison, PhD, was recruited as president in 2005, renaming the school Wisdom University to broaden its scope and pedagogy. He has led the development of the university since then with a mission to create a truly global learning community based on holistic learning aligned with the larger ecology and natural systems of the Earth.