Category: Commentary

John Vucetich and Michael Nelson say that hope in the face of hopelessness is not enough to rescue us from ecological disaster. In fact, it may be guaranteeing failure.

Do you “hope” that everyone will see the light and start living more sustainably to save the environment? If so, you may be doing more harm than good.

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John A. Vucetich, Ph.D., assistant professor of animal ecology, Michigan Technological University.

As we all witnessed in last weeks "chimps gone mad" news story, wild animals like chimpanzees may be adorable, but that doesn't mean you should give them a room in your home. This article, from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, explains why.

Exotic creatures like chimpanzees, pythons, kinkajous and scarlet macaws have captured the hearts of animal-lovers looking for companions; but keeping exotic animals as pets can come with hidden costs - both for people and animals. Wild animals have lived for thousands of years without the direct influence of humans. They are adapted for survival in complex, wild environments. They are not well adapted to living with humans or in a house.

Here at AlternativeApproaches.com, we've had a long running love/hate thing going on with the term "New Age." The trouble is, although everybody hates the term, it's the only thing we've got. Everybody knows what the "New Age" is, which doesn't apply to other suggested names. Kyva Holman's come up with a new, perhaps more precise, certainly more acceptable name for the New Age. We suggest it's adaptation, so we can finally lay the term "New Age" to rest.

The remarkable election of an African American junior senator to the highest office in the land speaks volumes to our collective desire for a radical departure from the politics of the last eight years. Barack Obama’s “change” mantra, not new to the American campaign lexicon, took on a palpable urgency this season. A tangle of emotions: hope, pride, outrage and fear, swept the long shot candidate to victory and at the outset of 2009 the world watches and waits anxiously to learn exactly what mode of reality we are substituting the former one for. In this time of peril and destabilization, a critical re-examination of our definitive terms and their underlying principles seems to be in order.

This week, our editor Christine Hall asks the question often asked by new magicians: Does Magick really work?

For the last month or two, I've been leading our magickal group, the Guardians of the Phoenix Star (GPS), through a series of planetary workings. The purpose of the workings is to expose our group to the energies of the planets, hoping that they will balance themselves within the planetary energy by the time we are through. We started with Saturn and are working our way down the tree in order.

Our editor reports that this hasn't been the best of summers for her - and offers some advice on how you interpret your stars.

As I usually do on my birthday, when I turned 57 on May 27th I figured out my "life lesson" number for the upcoming year. This is the number that gives me a clue as to what will be my major lesson to learn during the upcoming year, until my next birthday. This year, my lesson number is a six, which corresponds to The Lovers card in the Tarot, which I thought was great. The Lovers is Gemini, and since I'm a Gemini this would be a pie year. All I'd have to do is to just learn to be myself - and I've already had 57 years experience doing that.

What impresses us the most about this quick look at Facebook is that the writer, a resident of Stockholm, is just as concerned about the CIA as we, even though he's well outside the "official" grasp of the U.S. government. Perhaps we're not so paranoid after all.

What is Facebook? Is Facebook an idealistic social project allowing people to become friends worldwide or an American company making money?

Here in the West, we take our freedom to openly practice meditation for granted. However, on some parts of our planet, people are forced to meditate in secrecy.

Each one of these healing methods is thousands of years old. The exact origins of meditation and self-hypnosis are not known. We do know that Yoga existed over 5,000 years ago in the Indus Valley. Despite the evidence that each of these methods creates peace of mind, within the practitioner, they have only recently gained worldwide attention for their results.

It's often been noted that sometimes we miss out on the incredible beauty of the journey by focusing on reaching our destination. Kaya McLaren illustrates this point beautifully.

I love to paint, to feel the creamy goo under my brush. I spread it out like butter across canvas. I turn the music up loud and almost dance with my brush. I paint about simple things that make me happy, or simple things I find beautiful. Georgia O’Keefe is my hero for that reason - for taking the simple beauty of a flower and using paint to make it obvious to even the busiest and most distracted person, for using paint to help everyone see the beautiful colors of dirt. I love how paint allows the painter to editorialize her perception.

The rapidly emerging, exceptionally well-financed, and theologically questionable megachurches in our country have been debated and examined recently by journalists, lawmakers and theologians alike.

The rapidly emerging, exceptionally well-financed, and theologically questionable megachurches in our country have been debated and examined recently by journalists, lawmakers and theologians alike.

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Inside the Crystal Cathedral megachurch.

No longer is the problem just that we need to slow down. Now we need to quit trying to do twenty things at once and learn to focus on the task at hand.

A few weeks ago, I returned to the classroom of Dennis Dalton, the most important college professor of my life. From the back of an amphitheater seating several hundred students, I realized how much things had evolved at Columbia and Barnard. The lecture hall was now equipped with a wireless sound system, webcams, video projectors, wireless internet. Students were using computers to record the lecture and to take notes. Heads were buried in screens, the tap tap of hundreds of keyboards like rain on the roof.

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Josh Waitzkin's latest book, The Art of Learning.