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All living beings share one thing in common. Each man, woman, child, bird, bee, and dog – all have just one life. For every living being, life begins and ends. We are all here for a very short time. Most of us live a life preoccupied by work, earning a living, being on time...
Beyond Common Sense, most Americans know little about Thomas Paine (1737-1809). Few know that at the end of Paine’s life, he had become a pariah in U.S. society, and for many years after his death, he was either ignored or excoriated—the price he paid for The Age of...
How We Are Collectively Improvising a 'New Story' About Learning
The fiftieth anniversary of the first Earth Day of 1970 will be in 2020. As environmentalism has gone mainstream during that half-century, it has forgotten its early focus and shifted toward green capitalism. Nowhere is this more apparent than abandonment of the slogan...
The world's most successful video game has, once again, pushed women to the margins. It's time that it faced proper critical scrutiny. So it's been a bad week. On Monday, I had to switch off Classic FM when it played Wagner, since he was an antisemite. Then I burned my copy...
A specter is haunting North America — the specter of postmodernism. Or at least, that’s what Jordan Peterson would have you believe. Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has entered into an unholy alliance with all the powers of the alt-right to...
Smearing a Progressive Website to Support Israel Like many other news websites, Common Dreams has been plagued by inflammatory anti-Semitic comments following its stories. But on Common Dreams these posts have been so frequent and intense they have driven away donors from a...
Courage doesn’t have to look dramatic or fearless. Sometimes it looks more like quiet perseverance.
Hydroelectric power from dams might be the thorniest issue that proponents of the Green New Deal (GND) have to grapple with. Providing more energy than solar and wind combined, dams could well become the key backup “renewable” if it otherwise proves impossible to get off of...
Ordinary people can run society — but only if we build the structures to let them.
Why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity
Three steps to help you see the truth and get back on track.
On the heels of the open letter signed by over 1,400 sociologists in the wake of the police killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown, the newly formed group Sociologists for Justice has released a list of published research that info
Bill Mckibben, Planet of the Humans, and the power we gain when we stop seeking villains
In the battle for Kobane on the Syrian border everyone talks about the enemy - IS - and the frightening ideas that drive them. No-one talks about the Kurdish defenders and what inspires them. But the moment you look into what the Kurds are fighting for - what you discover is...
Focusing on identities in our political conversations is divisive and restrictive. How can we shift the conversation back to principles?
Let me tell you a story about how the world began. I promise you the story is not completely false.
For the past twenty years, I have been carrying out experiments to find out how power is distributed in groups. I have infiltrated college dorms and children’s summer camps to document who rises in power. I have brought entire sororities and fraternities into the lab...
The peoples of earlier times prospered from the guidance of simple stories that offered answers to their deepest questions. We need those now more than ever.
Masculinity is having a moment — but it's not a good one.
Just ahead of the sixth episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” comedian John Oliver admitted on “CBS This Morning” that he and his crew are “still trying to work out what this is.” But Oliver seems to know what “Last Week” isn’t: “The Daily Show.”
He was 12, playing with a toy gun, in a locale with open-carry laws. Tamir Rice was executed for being a black boy
I founded Tiny Spark&
For major protests today, it is standard to have a media strategy. For example, there can be individuals assigned to media liaison. The location and timing of an action can be chosen with an eye toward media schedules. Some actions are designed specifically to attract media...
Attention is like a spotlight—whatever it shines on becomes brighter in the mind. This knowledge can help us build compassion, says Paul Gilbert.
Humanity has a lot of problems these days. Climate change, increasing economic inequality, crashing biodiversity, political polarization, and a global debt bubble are just a few of our worries. None of these trends can continue indefinitely without leading to a serious...
Antiracism is a favorite concept on the American left these days. Of course, all good sorts want to be against racism, but what does the word mean exactly?
Last year, Gregg Marcantel, the secretary of New Mexico's Corrections Department, voluntarily placed himself in solitary confinement for 48 hours. He was one of a rare few who could choose to do such a thing, and it was a very Gregg thing to do—dramatic, physically demanding...
In facing up to the many profound crises of our time, we face a conundrum that has no easy resolution: how are we to imagine and build a radically different system while living within the constraints of an incumbent system that aggressively resists transformational change?...
"Not everything that looks like liberation actually is, nor is every political idea which claims to help people actually helpful. Sometimes, we can dream up things which become nightmares. Sometimes, the left is actually out of touch with reality, with “larger reality.”...
Umberto Eco's 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism" informally outlines the most striking qualities of fascistic theory and practice. It remains one of the most popular tool-kits for intellectuals in discovering where the barbarity of fascism might once again materialize, for Eco was...
The following is an email interview with author and activist, Danny Haiphong, regarding the current state of capitalism, US politics, and his new book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People's History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on...
"The speedy rise of fascism always seems to hit the world by surprise. Yet what we're witnessing did not begin with the Bolsonaros, Trumps or Dutertes, just as German fascism did not begin with Hitler."
From the moment you were born, you have been accumulating an incredible array of assets. No matter who you are – your passions, knowledge, skills and access to resources are truly vast.
American capitalism has a hate-love relationship with the nation’s schools. On the “hate” side is a stream of complaints from business leaders and organizations about the many students, particularly in city schools, who fail achievement tests, are high school dropouts or, if...
I was around 14 when I heard about Concentration Camps for the first time.
The screen froze as yet another announcement crept into the cabin from the overhead speakers and through my headphones. I swore beneath my breath. For the umpteenth time, the captain spoke with that strange in-flight inaudibility and cadence: with muffled, static-beleaguered...
Seven decades on, Israel is geopolitically embattled and the Jewish community is increasingly polarized around the issue of occupation. The occupation – Israeli military control over the Palestinian West Bank and the borders of Gaza Strip – is five decades old. Entire...
Questioning the pro-digital consensus
I have never spoken with a school shooter, but I’ve talked with many teenage boys and young men who—though behaviorally nonviolent themselves—emotionally connect with the anger, alienation, and hopelessness of school shooters.
Some readers will know that I’ve contended that, despite its proponents’ assertions, antiracism is not a different sort of egalitarian alternative to a class politics but is a class politics itself: the politics of a strain of the professional-managerial class whose worldview...
Flowers In the Rain Cold, wet, and tired from the long morning rally, my eight year-old asks again why we are here. We are standing with about fifty other media people, organizers, and just your ordinary eccentrics, grandmothers and fathers, university professors, musicians...
We need a human rights movement that challenges the orthodoxy of market capitalism, writes Peter Joseph.
Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “shit-life syndrome”—and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.
What would it cost to wipe out everybody’s student loans? The answer may surprise you.
What economic system designs, out of all conceivable ones, might be among the best at helping us meet real needs?
It is my deepest desire to see the emergence of the movement we need right now—one that is open, welcoming, broad-based, strategic, and oriented to our core human needs, one that can gain the power to make this world more balanced, just, and kind.
New York City’s Fresh Air Fund has sent city kids, most of them low-income, to suburban and rural neighborhoods for two-week summer vacations for the past 140 years. Originally intended to restore malnourished, sickly and white immigrant children to health, the fund expanded...
True tribalism is a societal balance point
“I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.”  Donald Rumsfeld, September 10, 2001
Over the last 7 years, Films For Action has been cataloging an online library of the best social change films that can be watched free online. Opting for quality over quantity, the site has grown slowly to include 500 documentaries and 900 short films, trailers and...
American Sniper's Patriot Porn & Celebration of Psychopathy 8 min
Abby Martin interviews independent journalist, Rania Khalek, about the new film 'American Sniper' and why it's such a controversial choice to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
Psychedelics and How to Change Your Mind | Michael Pollan 31 min
Michael Pollan's new book "How To Change Your Mind" surveys the highly controversial terrain of the renaissance of both the science and popular usage of psychedelic substances. As one of our most brilliant and clear-eyed explorers of such topics as plant intelligence and how...
Psychedelia: The History and Science of Mystical Experience 58 min
Psychedelia takes viewers on a journey through the origins and resurgence of psychedelic research, exploring the profound, life-altering effects of these compounds in both the therapeutic setting and the world at large.
American Psychosis | Chris Hedges 15 min
Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author and activist Chris Hedges discusses modern-day consumerism, totalitarian corporate power, and living in a culture dominated by pervasive illusion.
Psychologists Explain Why Coming to Grips with Critical 9/11 Perspectives Is So Difficult 11 min
"I don't need to look at the evidence." "I wouldn't believe it even if it WERE true." "I refuse to believe that that many Americans could be that treasonous. Someone would have talked."
How Psychedelics Work: Fire the Conductor, Let the Orchestra Play | Michael Pollan 6 min
Michael Pollen explains the ego's "location" in the brain: It would be the default mode network, where much of your self-critical mind chatter happens. Taking psychedelics down-regulates this brain network.
From authoritarian power grabs to Andrew Neil’s nonsensical eulogy, the reaction to the Paris attacks proves that we haven’t learned from our past mistakes
It is said that if a modern, successful corporation were a type of person, it would be a psychopath.  With this in mind, Jason Louv assesses ‘Patient Monsanto’ An Evaluation of
The problem with banning anything out of a fear of the unknown is that many unknowns will remain. Such is the story of many psychedelic drugs in the U.S. While the government has experimented with various psychedelic compounds (take  the CIA’s secret attempts at LSD...
Psyched Out: Documentary on Psychedelics, Ayahuasca and Plant Medicine 84 min
Natural Health enthusiast and founder of Elemental Wellness Studio in Toronto, Giovanni Bartolomeo invites you to enjoy his latest project, Psyched Out, a documentary film centered around the healing effects of plant medicines like Ayahuasca and Psilocybin.
The so-called psychedelic renaissance is here. Proponents claim that the drugs can alleviate an array of psychological suffering. But while they try to gain medical acceptance, they ignore the structural factors that cause suffering in the first place. We need a revolutionary...
How Psychedelics Could Help Treat Anxiety, Addiction and Depression 5 min
Psychedelic drugs could be the key to making you happier and healthier. So why won't we research them?
If something bites you, it is inside of your clothes. —Swahili proverb I have argued that change will come not from overcoming the powers-that-be, but through their transformation. I have stated that we are fundamentally the same being lo
Santa Is a Psychedelic Mushroom - It’s Time to Embrace the Shamanistic side of Christmas 6 min
It’s the holiday season, and I’m thinking of mushrooms. The hallucinogenic Amanita muscaria to be exact — a red-and-white toadstool mushroom — most closely associated with fairy tales. At first glance, Amanita muscaria and the Christmas holiday appear to be an unlikely duo...
Coming Off Psych Drugs: A Meeting of the Minds 3 min
In June of 2012, twenty-three people came together to discuss the subject of coming off psychiatric drugs. We were psychiatric survivors, therapists, mental health consumers, family members, and activists, united by a passion for truth-telling. More than half of us had...
Is the Psychedelic Renaissance Doomed? | Jamie Wheal 45 min
Jamie Wheal documented the new psychedelic renaissance in his bestselling book 'Stealing Fire', where he talked about the transformative potential of flow states and psychedelics. Since then he has become increasingly concerned and disillusioned with the direction of the...
As the United States steps up covert drone strikes on Yemen, with
I’m republishing this article I wrote a few months before the 2016 election because it contains an analysis which is absolutely essential for anyone who wishes to participate in transforming American political, economic, social, cultural and intellectual reality. Some of it...
Sophisticated Psychological Profiling is The New Tool Being Used to Influence Elections 13 min
Was Britain’s EU referendum hijacked by the American alt-right using a technique known as psychographics? Gabriel Gatehouse reports on the data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica.
Psychiatrist Explains Why You Feel Tired All The Time (No Matter What You Do) 19 min
Discover the surprising truth about tiredness.
Try Psychedelics, Access Transcendence | James Fadiman 6 min
Expert James Fadiman explains how psychedelics have the power to expand consciousness, enhance creativity, and deepen our connections to the world.
Contemplations: On the Psychedelic Experience 2 min
Contemplations is a documentary film exploring the furthest reaches of psychedelic exploration.
Psychedelic Psilocybin Magic Truffle Veteran Retreat 39 min
In September 2021 a diverse group of veterans from The Netherlands participated in a psychedelic nature retreat organised by Psychedelic Insights, called Psychedelic Warriors.
The Cure For A World Run By Psychopaths | George Monbiot 7 min
What if the world we live in isn’t broken by accident but by design? And what if the path to fixing it has been within us all along?
The Right-Wing Witch Hunt Against Charlie Kirk’s Critics is Legitimately Psychotic | The Humanist Report 17 min
More than 60 Americans have been fired or disciplined after being accused of “celebrating” Charlie Kirk’s death. In reality, most of these individuals did not “celebrate” his death, they quoted him or criticized his rhetoric. Regardless, right-wingers have launched an all-out...
Is Facebook Psychologically Profiling Users Sharing Political Content; Survey Says YES 16 min
One of my followers (Martin Bishop) recently shared an album of screenshots he took of a survey that was generated when he shared one of my videos to his FB wall (video linked below). It, of course, was highly political in nature and talked about Bernie Sanders forming an...
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