Website Newsletter
(2004-2017)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Books (1971-2012)
 
Articles, etc (1978-2013)
 
 
TOES & NEF
(The Other Economic Summit
& New Economics Foundation, 1983-2000)
 
 
 
Hard Copy Archive  
Extras
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
   
 

Introduction

Those who should find interesting information and ideas on this website will include:

people who are already committed to helping to change the direction of human progress for the better - for example, as active supporters of social and economic justice (including monetary and financial justice), or peaceful, people-centred development, or healthier societies, or human rights, or conserving energy technologies and other aspects of environmental sustainability, and so on;

people who sense that a change of direction is needed and are wondering how they could help to make it happen;

people who are professionally interested in possible future trends, but not necessarily themselves committed to the need for change; and

academics and students who are exploring how perceptions of world political and economic development have been changing in recent years, and some of the activities and initiatives of some of the people involved.

Different people will come to the website looking for different things. For example, people who are interested in large ideas such as changing worldviews and the evolution of consciousness, or in personal lifestyle changes such as growing more food or generating electricity for our own households,may not be so interested in the practicalities of changing the institutional structures and processes of government, money, etc; and vice versa.

However, the institutional structures and processes of government, money, etc must change to reflect change in dominant ideas and to meet growing pressure for change in dominant lifestyles. That many educated people are comparatively uninterested in the connections between changes in ideas, lifestyles and institutions is due to today's pervasive tendency to specialise - and, in particular, to keep ethical and spiritual values in separate compartments from politics and government, and economics and money.

To achieve a sane alternative future based on principles of enabling and conserving, those gaps must be bridged. Questions that need to be asked include:

  • What does "enable and conserve" mean for the institutions that govern our ways of living?

  • What does "enable and conserve" mean for our work, our health, our lifestyles, our values, our education, our use of energy, our treatment of the environment, our technologies, our economic system, our view of history, and so on?

  • And how can we help to bring about necessary changes in those and other fields?

So the website aims to help people both to find the points that interest them and also to place them in a larger context.

Meeting those two aims is the purpose of the Subject Guide, which provides a list of topics, including Environment and Energy, Health, Money, Technology and Wealth, and suggests some resources for exploration.

You will find that many of the same subjects are covered in different items on the website.

This reflects the development of ideas and experience since the early 1970s. It also reflects the need to present ideas and proposals in different contexts on different occasions to different readerships and audiences. Some users of the website may be interested in these variations, others may find them boring. I hope the website's contents are well enough signposted to enable users to select how much they want to look at.