DECEMBER 20, 2022  BY ROB BREZSNY (NewCity.com)

Photo: Arjan de Jong

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries author Eric G. Wilson has written a book that I might typically recommend to forty percent of the Aries tribe. But in 2023, I will raise that to eighty percent of you. The title is “How to Be Weird: An Off-Kilter Guide to Living a One-of-a-Kind Life.” According to my analysis of the astrological omens, it will make sense for you to stop making sense on a semi-regular basis. Cheerfully rebelling against the status quo should be one of your most rewarding hobbies. The best way to educate and entertain yourself will be to ask yourself, “What is the most original and imaginative thing I can do right now?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): One of your potential superpowers is cultivating links between the spiritual and physical worlds. If you develop this talent, you illuminate the ways that eternity permeates the everyday routine. You weave together the sacred and the mundane so they synergize each other. You understand how practical matters may be infused with archetypal energies and epic themes. I hope you will be doing a lot of this playful work in 2023, Taurus. Many of us non-Bulls would love you to teach us more about these mysteries.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Here are fun and useful projects for you to cultivate in 2023: 1. Initiate interesting trends. Don’t follow mediocre trends. 2. Exert buoyant leadership in the groups you are part of. 3. Practice the art of enhancing your concentration by relaxing. 4. Every Sunday at noon, renew your vow to not deceive or lie to yourself during the coming week. 5. Make it your goal to be a fabulous communicator, not just an average one. 6. Cultivate your ability to discern what people are hiding or pretending about.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): In 2023, I hope you will refine and deepen your relationship with your gut instinct. I will be ecstatic if you learn more about the differences between your lucid intuition and the worry mongering that your pesky demons rustle up. If you attend to these matters—and life will conspire to help you if you do—your rhythm will become dramatically more secure and stable. Your guidance system will serve you better than it ever has. A caveat: Seeking perfection in honing these skills is not necessary. Just do the best you can.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom wrote, “The question of meaning in life is, as the Buddha thought, not edifying. One must immerse oneself into the river of life and let the question drift away.” But Holocaust survivor and philosopher Viktor Frankl had a radically different view. He said that a sense of meaning is the single most important thing. That’s what sustains and nourishes us through the years: the feeling that our life has a meaning and that any particular experience has a meaning. I share Frankl’s perspective, and I advise you to adopt his approach throughout 2023. You will have unprecedented opportunities to see and know the overarching plan of your destiny, which has been only partially visible to you in the past. You will be regularly blessed with insights about your purpose here on earth.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): As a young woman, Virgo-born Ingeborg Rapoport (1912–2017) studied medicine at the University of Hamburg in Germany. But in 1938, the Nazis refused to let her defend her PhD thesis and get her medical degree because of her Jewish ancestry. Seventy-seven years later, she was finally given a chance to finish what she had started. Success! The dean of the school said, “She was absolutely brilliant. Her specific knowledge about the latest developments in medicine was unbelievable.” I expect comparable developments for you in 2023, Virgo. You will receive defining opportunities or invitations that have not been possible before. Postponed breakthroughs and resolutions will become achievable.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Of the 2,200+ humans quoted in a twenty-first-century edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” 164 are women—a mere seven percent! At least that’s more than the four females represented in 1855’s first edition. Let’s take this atrocious injustice as our provocation for your horoscope. In accordance with astrological omens, one of your assignments in 2023 will be to make personal efforts to equalize power among the genders. Your well-being will thrive as you work to create a misogyny-free future. Here are possible actions: If you’re a woman or nonbinary person, be extra bold and brave as you say what you genuinely think and feel and mean. If you’re a man, foster your skills at listening to women and nonbinary people. Give them abundant space and welcome to speak their truths. It will be in your ultimate interest to do so!

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): To prepare you for 2023, I’m offering you wisdom from mythologist Michael Meade. Of all the signs in the zodiac, you Scorpios will be most likely to extract riches from it. Meade writes: “Becoming a genuine individual requires learning the oppositions within oneself. Those who fail or refuse to face the oppositions within have no choice but to find enemies to project upon. ‘Enemy’ simply means ‘not-friend’; unless a person deals with the not-friend within, they require enemies around them.”

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “I will always be as difficult as necessary to achieve the best,” declared Sagittarian opera singer Maria Callas (1923–1977). Many critics say she was indeed one of the twentieth century’s best. The consensus is that she was also a temperamental prima donna. Impresario Rudolf Bing said she was a trial to work with “because she was so much more intelligent. Other artists, you could get around. But Callas you could not get around. She knew exactly what she wanted and why she wanted it.” In accordance with astrological omens, Sagittarius, I authorize you, in your quest for success in 2023, to be as “difficult” as Callas was, in the sense of knowing exactly what you want. But please—so as to not undermine your success—don’t lapse into diva-like behavior.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): To inspire your self-inquiry in 2023, I have chosen a passage from Hermann Hesse’s fairy tale, “A Dream Sequence.” It will provide guidance as you dive further than ever before into the precious mysteries in your inner depths. Hesse addressed his “good ardent darkness, the warm cradle of the soul, and lost homeland.” He asked them to open up for him. He wanted them to be fully available to his conscious mind. Hesse said this to his soul: “Just feel your way, soul, just wander about, burrow into the full bath of innocent twilight drives!”

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Cardiovascular surgeon Michael DeBakey lived till age ninety-nine. He almost died at ninety-seven, but was able to capitalize on an invention that he himself had created years before: a polymer resin that could repair or replace aging blood vessels. Surgeons used his technology to return him to health. I am predicting that in 2023, you, too, will derive a number of benefits from your actions in the past. Things you made, projects you nurtured, and ideas you initiated will prove valuable to you as you encounter the challenges and opportunities of the future.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I decided to divine the state of your financial karma. To begin, I swirled a $10 bill through the flame rising from a green candle. Then I sought cosmic auguries in the burn patterns on the bill. The oracle provided bad news and good news. The bad news is that you live on a planet where one-fifth of the population owns much more than four-fifths of the wealth. The good news is that in 2023, you will be in decent shape to move closer to the elite one-fifth. Amazingly, the oracle also suggests that your ability to get richer quicker will increase in direct proportion to your integrity and generosity.

Homework: What circumstance in your life is most worthy of you unleashing a big “Hooray!”? Testify! Newsletter.FreeWillAstrology.com

Moon Wobble Late Dec, peaks January 29 Click here to see the Moon Wobble Chart   *** General suggestions / observations *** • This cycle is based on empirical data meaning enough data was observed and recorded to make it possible to suggest attitudes and  reactions.  Keep in mind that we all have free will and thus results will vary from one individual to another. • The graph shows the energy high at the beginning of the cycle (not unlike any other astrological aspect) followed by a slow down before it gets strong and again this reflects years of tracking and noting feedback from our many students .• If you are making a decision during this time you might want to let it set for a day or two then check your decision again to see if it still makes sense. However, you can feel into the ebb and flow and find good times to work on self emotionally in both the low and high points. Impatience, emotion and acts without thinking are common. • With practice you can feel when the energy is there to help bring completion to tasks, goals and projects you may be working on. Aloha, The Prosperos

New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove • Dec 18, 2022 Debashish Banerji, PhD, is Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and Chairman of the East West Psychology Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He is author of Seven Quartets of Becoming: A Transformative Yoga Psychology Based on the Diaries of Sri Aurobindo and also The Alternate Nation of Abanindranath Tagore, a book about his great grandfather. He edited an anthology about his great uncle, Rabindranath Tagore in the Twenty-First Century. With Robert McDermott, he has coedited an anthology titled Philo-Sophia: Wisdom Goddess Traditions. In this video from 2016, he describes how Aurobindo retreated to a spiritual life in the city of Pondicherry in south India that was under French control. During this period, he developed (or “received”) a detailed and extensive program of yoga. He also kept a very meticulous yoga diary that combined English and Sanskrit terms. He also began to experience a variety of paranormal abilities, documenting them in his diary and experimenting with them in various ways noting both his successes and failures. He also endeavored to integrate his spiritual and his political inclinations. Ultimately, he developed an approach to yoga that endeavored to achieve integration of all opposites. Integral yoga, therefore, entails a multi-dimensional experience of reality. New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). He is also the 1st Prize winner of the 2021 Bigelow Institute essay competition regarding the best evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. (Recorded on December 20, 2015)

David Fernandez • Jun 5, 2012 Music: Karl Jenkins Choreography: David Fernandez Dancers: Amar Ramasar, Ask La Cour, and Chase Finlay

Renerqi Premiered Sep 25, 2022: Here is your 2023 Chinese Zodiac Animal Sign Prediction & Forecast with overview guide to help you gain clarity with Chinese Astrology 2023 and Bazi Destiny Chart in this Year of The Rabbit. In this 2023 Year of Water Rabbit, most of the 12 animal zodiac sign will gain different energy influence and how it will affect their luck and opportunities. Like this video and hit the subscribe button so you can first discover your upcoming monthly forecast, and my upcoming detailed individual forecast and strategy for each 12 zodiac signs. Here I have simplified the content timestamp to help you navigate; — Video Content Table —00:00 – Introduction 0:11 – Plot your Bazi Astrology chart & How To Read at : https://youtu.be/VAYB7e-ZbK4

Rupert Sheldrake Dec 20, 2022: After more than a hundred hours of private conversations on Zoom, Rupert and physicist turned neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín meet in person to discuss some of their favourite themes. In this installment, they address the problem of memory localization. Rather than taking for granted that memories are “stored” inside our heads and rushing to speculate about where and how, they instead entertain the idea that memories could be both everywhere and nowhere in particular — memories are in time, not in space. To make such thoughts more thinkable, they discuss the recurrent historical failures to find actual memory traces in brains and bring forth some of the pioneering ideas of the French philosopher Henri Bergson in the context of current neuroscience. They also discuss concrete experiments to test such hypotheses and reflect more widely on the nature of form and the idea that the laws of nature may be more like habits than eternal edicts. They end by discussing the need for scientific pluralism.

Astro Butterfly Dec 21, 2022

On December 23rd, 2022 we have a bold New Moon at 1° Capricorn.

The New Moon is tightly square Jupiter at 0° Aries, so we’re dealing with a very powerful cardinal, initiating energy.

This is the best time to make your New Year’s resolutions.

You don’t want to leave it until January 1st, because by then Mercury will be retrograde, interfering with your best judgment.

The New Moon is as Capricorn as it can get: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Pluto are all in Capricorn, so we’re having a Capricorn stellium, or Capricorn energy on steroids.

On one hand, there is a tremendous pressure to “do” something. 6 out of 10 planets are in Cardinal signs!

On the other hand, the New Moon ruler, Saturn is almost unaspected in Aquarius. While still within orb, Saturn is officially “done” with the Saturn-Uranus square.

Saturn square Uranus has been one of the most challenging transits of the last couple of years. In 2021 and 2022, Saturn has constantly reminded us of what’s not working in our life, initiating a systemic change.

Saturn has gone “all in” relentlessly changing, bit by bit, different aspects of our life, pushing us outside our comfort zone and asking us to “do the work”.

Now that Saturn has achieved what he was set to achieve, he’s left a bit disoriented. At the time of the New Moon, no other planets (except from a loose square to Uranus) aspect Saturn. He’s been there, done that, now what?

It’s not that, with such a powerful Capricorn energy, we’ll lack ideas of what to do in 2023. Most of us probably have a long laundry list. But what the New Moon ruler, Saturn, suggests, is to consider a different approach.

2023 is not about “doing more”. Is about being clear of what you want to focus on.

How do we get this clarity?

It may sound simple, because it is:

Who are you and what do you want?

“Who are you” because a New Moon (Sun conjunct Moon) is always an invitation to go back to the center.

When in Capricorn, the Sun and the Moon are not as much concerned with “who am I” but rather with “who do I want to become”. Capricorn is the mountain goat, the strategist, the high achiever of the zodiac.

So when we have a New Moon in Capricorn, we have a tendency to focus not on who we are and what makes us happy, but on what the next best version of ourselves is (it’s no coincidence that we do New Year’s Resolutions around the time of the year when there’s a New Moon in Capricorn).

However, the Jupiter in Aries square is here to remind us of who we are now, in the present moment.

What drives you? What fuels your heart with passion and excitement? What’s a clear “Yes”?

Since the New Moon in Capricorn is square Jupiter in Aries, there is of course a conflict between that side of us that wants to achieve and evolve, vs. that side of us that lives in the present moment, and is guided by intuition (Aries), not plans (Capricorn).

A square is an invitation to integrate two energies that initially seem to be at war with each other.

The answer to the New Moon square Jupiter conflict is not, “stop making plans and be true to yourself” nor “you can do better; go and set some goals”, but something in between.

Something that can honor the creative spark of genius that’s found inside each of us, but also something that is clear and measurable enough that will remind us of who we are vs. who we want to be, and push us to go to the next level.

At the New Moon, instead of writing down your NYE laundry list, take your journal and answer this question:

Who am I and what do I want?

DEC 18, 2022 7:00 AM (Wired.com)

The rise of agnotology will equip us with the tools to tackle mis- and disinformation, whatever its source.

THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL on Climate Change was founded in 1988 after scientists had spent decades raising the alarm about global warming. Thirty-five years later, there is effectively zero binding international policy to address climate change. In the United States, the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses and second-largest polluter today, there have been repeated legislative failures, including the recent Supreme Court ruling limiting the government’s authority to regulate power plant emissions.

We now know that a large part of the reason for the political failure to act on climate change is because the fossil fuel industry built a network to challenge the science and policy of climate change. The industry’s efforts, which are ongoing, have included at least 4,556 individuals with ties to 164 different organizations. The investment in climate change denial—at least $9.77 billion from 2003 to 2018—bought the companies a half-century to continue the extraction of fossil fuels and delay the transition to clean energy.

For instance, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA)—bankrolled by BP, Shell, Chevron, and other fossil fuel corporations—has challenged climate change’s existence and blamed termites and volcanoes for climate change. Now, as the science has become more difficult to challenge, it creates doubt about policies. As an example, in response to student movements to encourage universities to divest their endowments from fossil fuels, the IPAA bought the website “divestmentfacts.com” in 2015 and funds professors and consultants to write reports about why divestment won’t work.

The study of the deliberate production of ignorance or doubt—or agnotology—is on the rise. For example, the Climate Social Science Network launched out of Brown University in the fall of 2020 now includes approximately 300 scholars (including me), and is largely dedicated to studying climate policy obstructionism around the world, such as the important role of public relations firms. In 2023, universities will begin to establish entire research units dedicated to finding ways to protect scientific knowledge from the interests of government, religion, and free enterprise.

Agnotologists will investigate and teach the dark arts of denial and disinformation—how big data, graphs and figures, and digital communication technologies can all be used to challenge independent scientific research findings. Students will learn how various tools (such as academic experts, public relations firms, and lawyers) and arguments (such as “the problem is too complex” or “there are bigger contributors to the problem”) are used across industries (including by pharmaceutical, tobacco, and fossil fuel companies) and understand how to recognize common patterns of denial. When these students encounter a pro-genetic modification “grassroots group,” they may recall how since the ’90s, major pesticide and herbicide manufacturers have paid public relations firms to create these groups, and what appears to be grassroots might actually be astroturf—when the world’s most popular climate activist is a teenager from Sweden, a German teen can easily be fashioned into an “Anti-Greta” and push against “climate alarmism.”

Students of agnotology will also explore the pros and cons of government secrecy, such as the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that designates all knowledge about nuclear fission as classified (still in effect). They will examine the history of the Evangelical church’s objection to evolution being taught in schools. They will dissect current examples of disinformation, including the claim that spread in China and France that smoking could prevent Covid-19, and how the meat and dairy industry downplays the contributions of cows to climate change—including the new Dairy Farmers of America advertisement featuring a man in a white lab coat, labeled as a “scientist,” claiming consumers can actually help fight climate change by buying milk and cheese. 

In 2023, agnotologists will work to create a set of standards to combat the creation of ignorance, including building firewalls between industry money and university research and putting more pressure on social media to prevent “superspreaders” of disinformation. Society’s trust in science can mean the difference between life and death: A study of 126 countries found that where trust in science is high, citizens are more confident about vaccination (controlling for the individual’s own trust in science).

As knowledge remains our best hope to save the planet and ourselves, in 2023 a deeper understanding of ignorance will help us learn what the powerful do not want us to know.

In the context of leadership, separation manifests as leadership by domination—those trying to achieve power over others rather than finding power with others.

By Dar Vanderbeck Oct. 12, 2022 (SSIR.org)

(Illustration by Luca Di Bartolomeo)

“Love and justice are not two. without inner change, there can be no outer change; without collective change, no change matters.”—Reverend angel Kyodo williams

As a professor at Princeton in 1949, Albert Einstein reflected on the place of human beings in the universe. In correspondence with a rabbi, he wrote that due to our limitations in our ability to experience the universe, our species is prone to a fundamental misunderstanding about our place in it. He wrote that the human “experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.”

Pivotal Moments on the Leadership Journey

This series, sponsored by the McNulty Foundation and Aspen Global Leadership Network, explores pivotal moments in the leadership journey through the eyes of funders, practitioners, and others who share the mission of catalyzing and sustaining high-impact leaders.

FOLLOW THIS SERIES

Here, Einstein wrote of one of the most persistent and vexing problems of our species: the myth of separateness. Scholar and Director of the Center for Othering & Belonging john a. powell has taken this further, describing the four great separations of our time: separation of people from nature, separation of people from one another, separation of mind from body, and separation of people from institutions. We can track the expressions of these separations everywhere: authoritarianism, racial injustice, the climate crisis, disease, to name just a few. In the context of leadership, separation manifests as leadership by domination—those with power and those without, and those trying to achieve power over others rather than finding power with others.

Overcoming this myth of separateness may be the test of our time for our species. We need leadership that is both bold and tender, leadership that radically welcomes the stranger while revolutionizing the systems that create the stranger in the first place. And we need our understanding of leadership to evolve, too. How might leadership be a practice that expands our moral imagination to include us all? And, lastly, how might we seed, protect and grow the spaces to practice this type of leadership?

Countering the Myth of Separateness

Throughout this series, we have explored key inflection points in the lives of individuals doing the hard work of leading social change: from cultivating moral courage, to the sparks that ignite action, to transitioning in and out of roles in the service of a greater purpose. We see how individuals cultivate themselves and lead their organizations, and we see their impacts ripple into different domains.

I’d like to close out the series calling on the idea of fractals in social change movements as a way to understand how massive societal transformations can occur through the idea of interconnection. I first encountered the concept in the book Emergent Strategy, by author and activist adrienne marie brown. They write, “How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale… what we practice at the small scale sets the patterns for the whole system.” So too will the leadership skills we practice within our hearts shape our impact on organizations and the world.

As we have seen, doing the inner work to find moral courage can set leaders down the path of sustained leadership. Many of them have taken the time to examine who they are, what they need to flourish, and what we need to collectively flourish. For me, as a white woman in the United States, this has meant reckoning with the ways in which I am complicit in producing and reproducing injustice, especially along lines of race. As someone from New Jersey who spent most of their adult life in Atlanta, I had to interrogate the othering I did to other white people—othering into good ones and bad ones, asleep ones and awake ones, Northern ones and Southern ones. What did I get from the idea that the racist white people were out there, elsewhere, but definitely not here, in me? In fact, it has been a liberating process (a journey that begins and never ends, as the adage goes) to explore, understand and ultimately figure out how to undo the ways in which I am so desperate to create others. When we pull the other closer, when we consider ourselves to be the same as those we are othering, we are afforded more pathways to a more just world.

While the story of our separation is pervasive, it is something we have the power to design our way out of. There are many examples of leaders countering this myth, like the Fellows in the Civil Society Fellowship. A partnership between the Anti-Defamation League and the Aspen Institute, the program creates community among civic leaders of diverse backgrounds and beliefs who counter the narrative that America’s social fabric is irrevocably torn. They are working collaboratively in community and solidarity to confront injustice and to bring together the stakeholders within systems to co-create solutions for change. They are humble in their roles as members of larger movements, recognize their interdependence with others, and create the conditions needed to sustain both themselves and the change they seek to bring forth. These leaders are embodying a new story based on the idea of our interconnection.

Investing in the Hard Work of Interconnection

This series started with an examination of how people often needed to explore their souls, strengthen their internal navigation systems and choose—day-in and day-out—to treat leadership as a practice, not position. The Aspen Institute has found our particular approach to this work through creating environments that foster deep introspection of one’s values and actions in the company and trust of others doing the same. While it might seem contradictory, the work of interconnection starts from within.

Where does one go to cultivate this? We must look beyond leadership development as an education in technical skills, and instead focus our attention on elevating the ideas of interconnectedness, humility, and collective liberation.

In order to see a world in which the actions of good leaders are the fractals that scale up into just systems, we need to learn from and amplify the wisdom of others. Below, I’ve started to synthesize learnings from friends and colleagues who are co-conspirators in the world we want to see.

An Invitation to Belong

Transformation is an invitation, not a coercion. If we accept that large-scale change requires more people involved over time, then we must find ways for more people to receive and accept the invitation.

“What we’re asking is for people and institutions to participate in their own transformation,” says Deena Hayes-Greene the Managing Director of the Racial Equity Institute and a Partner at The Groundwater Institute, organizations dedicated to creating racially equitable organizations and systems.

One way they create the conditions for opting in is through a multi-phased approach that helps people create shared language and uncover internalized narratives about inequity and injustice in their lives and organizations. They start by moving clients away from thinking of racism as something associated with personal bigotry and bias toward an understanding that is historical, cultural, and structural. The process is a catalytic experience that creates the conditions for deeper introspection, which in turn leads to more authentic action. By helping people rethink their systems, the ways racism is rooted in their institutions, and how it affects them personally, she helps create the conditions for cultures where all people can flourish.

Creating these conditions takes long-term focus and care. As we saw with KC Hardin and his organization, Esperanza, in Panama City, their success at its peak was based on a process that convinced gang members themselves to leave their collective identity as a gang behind, forgive their rivals, and take part in the formal economy. It required care for the whole person that permeated deeply, and in turn, resulted in deeply rooted conviction. The care they were shown was an invitation to transformation. And while this work is hard to scale and needs continued maintenance, showing care to others is a practice we can all do to create our sense of belonging to a greater whole.

Leadership Beyond the Limelight

As a social entrepreneur, and especially as a founder, it is all too easy to embrace the allure of the limelight. In many ways, our philanthropic and social sector ecosystems reward the “man at the mic” or “sage on the stage” type of charismatic individual. We know from novelist Chimamanda Adichie about “the dangers of a single story,” but what about the dangers of a single entrepreneur? Many philanthropists and investors deeply diligence a leader’s ability to assure shareholders and persuade consumers; what if we put the same intention and attention to ensuring leaders build strong and inclusive leadership teams? What if we pressed for ego in the same way we press for sound financials?

As leaders practice self-awareness and moral courage, opportunities and incentives must be created to channel energy into empowering others to see change in the long run. Just as Réjane Woodroffe created systems at the Bulungula Incubator to shift power to the community and Jordan Kassalow shifted his focus to mobilizing groups of organizations towards a systemic approach, sustainability must come out of the “we” instead of the “me.”

“What we’re trying to do is less an infiltration and more an invitation,” says Dr. Katherine Wilkinson, leader of the All We Can Save Project, an organization that nurtures leaders in the climate community, “like opening a door to something else and welcoming people in, which is something that the climate space has been woefully bad at.” She suggests centering the “who”—the people, communities, and networks that make transformation possible in the climate movement—rather than the “whats” (new renewable technologies, for example) and the “hows” (political advocacy campaigns, say). “How do we create that sense of warmth? …and nurture the relational web between us?… I think that’s how we stay in the work.”

Here again, transformation is an invitation.

Love People to Shove Systems

Organizations like the Rockwood Leadership Institute, the Schusterman Foundation, and the Aspen Global Leadership Network have found real value in cohort-based models of leadership development. At Aspen, we use text-based dialogues occuring around a seminar table of about 24 leaders as the unit of transformation. In small groups of leaders, people can be vulnerable, explore difficult topics away from public judgment, and create systems of nourishment over the long haul. As Brene Brown writes, “People are hard to hate close up. Move in.”

Each of these organizations prioritize the conditions for trust to flower and deep relationships to root. When we learn to love each other across lines of difference, working to create a more just society is just the rational next step.

In our fellowships at Aspen, we see that the sustained relationships developed by our fellows are a well of inspiration and counsel that they return to as they confront new and challenging situations. Because they are held in community—by peers that know their deepest hearts—fellows have the strong lateral, cohort-based relationships outside of the organizations they’re leading, to lead with more courage, clarity and conviction. In our most recent survey of the impact of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, 92 percent of our alumni reported that, because of their Fellowship experience, they lead their companies and organizations with values and greater clarity of purpose. Nearly 90 percent reported they took on risks or new challenges that they would not have pursued otherwise, including launching new social impact ventures, taking on leadership in the civic and public arenas, and using their platforms and voices for change. Through the years, we have seen fellows both support each other through personal and professional challenges as well as collaborate for greater impact.

These communities can look different depending on the context, but the lesson is that community is a key factor in the nourishment of leaders and the sustainability of their actions. Creating and connecting based on trust is how we scale the idea of our interconnectedness.

To Change Everything, We Need Everyone

There was a moment when the COVID-19 pandemic began that many people thought it could be the great equalizer—something we could all share, that puts life-or-death stakes against realizing our interconnectedness. Imagine a world where we all acted out of our mutual care of one another—taking steps to protect each other, while seeing the humanity in those that may have thoughtfully disagreed. Imagine the solidarity we could feel if we all stood with each other in loss—the loss of loved ones, loss of “normalcy,” and the loss of agency. Imagine the collective joy we might share if we also shared in one another’s grief and anguish. Imagine a world where leaders invigorated and restored our collective imagination of what binds us together rather than feeding the beasts that keep us apart.

Unfortunately, today, nothing could be further from those worlds. By any measure, we as a human species are more polarized, less free, and less equitable than when the pandemic began. Where justice could have emerged, injustice prevailed instead. Where a collective spirit might have emerged, the myth of the individual—the myth of our separateness—reigned. We have seen with startling clarity who is allowed to be alive in this world, for whose lives our systems are designed, and what needs to be transformed—on the individual and systems level—for us all to be able to live while we are alive.

How do we take these lessons and apply them to the urgency of our current context? From climate change to racial injustice, from polarization to the rise of authoritarianism—there is no shortage of crises that require immediate action. Crisis as a context, however, too often leads to rapid, short-term, inequitable decisions.

We must create the conditions for thoughtful, interdependent leaders to emerge and for their wisdom to be heard.

There is an unlimited need for containers and communities that bolster moral courage, worldwide. We are coming out of an era of the entrepreneur—a media, educational, and funding ecosystem that supported and strengthened the idea that a single entrepreneur can and should change the world. It is time to name this a relic of the past and instead adopt a more honest, humble perspective: social transformation takes all of us; transformation occurs in community; and saying ‘yes’ to the challenge of leadership is significantly easier (and more fun) when we are held by a courageous community.

It is a tremendous task to swim against the tide, to lead in a way that defies an unjust system or goes against what is efficient in favor of what is life-giving. To lead from a wider frame or a deeper sense of heart, takes much more than skill. It takes a deep soul, a soft heart and a strong back. It takes a profound connection to one another. It takes us all.

Read more stories by Dar Vanderbeck.

Dar Vanderbeck is vice president of the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Global Leadership Network, a growing international community of people and partners committed to lifelong, values-based leadership. Her vocational focus is transformation—how we imagine, innovate, and create the structures and systems we need to bring about a just and vibrant world for all of us.