The Economics of Happiness
“A must-see film for the future of the planet.” Zac Goldsmith, Member of UK Parliament
This new film from Helena Norberg-Hodge and the International Society for Ecology and Culture shows how the lessons learned from traditional societies like Ladakh can realistically be applied to modern economies. The film illustrates how ‘going local’ is a powerful strategy to help repair our fractured world – our ecosystems, our societies and our selves. Far from the old institutions of power, people are starting to forge a very different future. Featuring Vandana Shiva, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Michael Shuman, Juliet Schor, Richard Heinberg, Rob Hopkins, Andrew Simms, Zac Goldsmith, Samdhong Rinpoche.
Ancient Futures: Lessons from Ladakh for a Globalizing World
by Helena Norberg-Hodge. Forward by H.H. the Dalai Lama and introduction by Peter Matthiessen.
Ancient Futures details the richness and complexity of traditional Ladakhi culture and what is being lost to development and modernization. Available either as a book or as a documentary film based on the book, directed by John Page.
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in a Modern World
by Wade Davis
Journey to the Amazon, the Andes, Nepal, Borneo, Australia, and Polynesia with anthropologist Wade Davis as he explores the many ways in which other cultures answer the question, “What does it mean to be human and alive?”
“There You Go!”
by Oren Ginsburg
Hysterically funny in a tragic sort of way, this cartoon book brilliantly illustrates the impact of “sustainable development” on traditional cultures.
or click HERE to read online courtesy of Survival International:
Deschooling Society
by Ivan Illich
As as radical and apt today as when it was written in 1971, Deschooling Society is Illich’s classic analysis of what happens to society when we allow top-down bureaucratic institutions to take over our natural human relationships. Two decades before the creation of the World Wide Web, Illich argued for taking learning out of its box and replacing it with “educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring.”
Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Young Children
by Meredith F. Small
A look at contemporary child-rearing through an anthropologist’s eye. Meredith Small argues that every style of parenting has benefits and costs, but that our modern way of raising our kids, rather than constituting a norm against which other societies should be measured, has in fact drifted toward one extreme on the spectrum of human possibilities.
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
by John Taylor Gatto
An eloquent plea by a former New York State Teacher of the Year, Dumbing Us Down argues that contemporary public schools have become structurally pathological in their obsession with the control, surveillance, measuring, and ranking of young people. After 30 years of teaching in some of the best and the worst schools in New York, Gatto believes that the very structure of the institution defeats the best efforts of both teachers and students – as well as the best efforts of well-meaning reformers – and can only be changed from the outside, with the creation of new social forms for learning and integrating young people back into the real world of meaningful work and experience.
