Questions of Courage

In this episode Nathaniel Williams turns toward Hari Kunzru’s novel Red Pill, published in 2020, as an image of what contemporary human experience. It depicts a journey of a writer who is driven to confront unsettling questions about life, the place of violence and human dignity while society around him is seething. To join with the world, we are given into the jaws of violence, even if it is simp...

Thousands of satellites are being launched each year as part of efforts to build out the infrastructure for our digital technologies and networks. The night sky is now crisscrossed by traveling techno-stars visible to the naked eye. The celestial order of the constellations host more and more movement, and light pollution, which has led many astronomers around the world to protest. There is also a...

 Recently we have seen how much courage is required to advocate for peace, which is understood as a simple cessation of war and terror. Beyond this we are faced with the grand challenge of peace, of how to imagine a resilient peace, how to become articulate and effective peace workers. One area that people all over the world share as a possible field of collaboration, where we can all work for pea...

Social thinking is not simply a nice way of looking at life, an optimistic or positive orientation. Characteristically it involves thinking in an inclusive way, somehow considering the varied interests of everyone in society. Many people cling to the stubborn ideas of naked capitalism, that self-interest leads to social wealth, even while we see that the idea is undermining everything that is valu...

In this episode excerpts from the Journey of the Peacemaker are described, a journey that led to the founding of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, Confederacy. It is a story of how, within the time span of one life, one biography, a region of war, violence, evil and cannibalism became the first constitutional, and democratically oriented, confederacy of North America. Alongside influences from Europ...

This episode explores current interest in spiritual dimensions in art, and how this appears on the backdrop of social/political critiques of modern art and economic opportunism. Through passages from Mary Caroline Richard’s Centering a spiritual significance is highlighted connected to the decline of conventional art and the challenge of developing an art with new, vital and immanent spiritual qua...

In this episode, Nathaniel Williams shares from a recent forum that took place at the Goetheanum World Conference on Peacebuilding. Reflecting on forum presentations from Friedrich Glasl on the Logic of War and Logic of Peace and comments from forum members he asks: how can we understand the place of boycotts and non-violent action in a comprehensive imagination of peace? This was an issue that Ma...

There is a deep feeling among many young people that economics and financial institutions need to be aligned with human values, justice, and solidarity. Is this possible? In this episode Michael Sandel’s book What Money Can’t Buy sets the context for an exploration of associative economics, a perspective on economics first formulated by Rudolf Steiner a century ago. References: “B Lab Global Site....

Exploring the intersection of consumerism and spirituality, Nathaniel characterizes the new and widespread orientation of encounter and how this orientation can lead to confusion and destruction when we don’t recognize where it is justified. This new sensitivity for the human being brings with it a destructive potential when comes to consumerism. He suggests by seeking self-expression through cons...

In this episode a challenge is introduced concerning the intersection of spirituality and psychedelics, namely integrating experiences that emerge while under the influence of psychedelic substances into normal consciousness and understanding. By comparing a gradual and incremental approach to the spirit with an immediate encounter facilitated through psychedelics some basic contours of the challe...

In this episode two powerful gestures are explored in their connection to spiritual development. The first gesture is present in the urgency and pressure that we feel in connection to everything having to do with our shared lives on the earth; the ecological crisis, economic and social challenges and climate change. The other gesture moves in the opposite direction, into expansion, dispersal and a...

This episode explores crucial questions that emerge when we think of meditation as a knowledge practice. How is it different from understanding meditation simply from a psychological perspective? What happens when we take a spiritual worldview and contemplative practices such as we find in Buddhism out of context, and interpret them within the Western paradigm of science and faith, without taking...

In this episode of Questions of Courage, Nathaniel discusses the effects of digital technology on young people today, and particularly how the youth's experience contrasts and compares with generations of the recent past. This discussion touches on digital avatars, behavioral psychology, and a picture-based consciousness that began in the 1960’s, which has become prevalent and foundational to our...

In this episode Nathaniel discusses anthropological efforts of the 1960’s and 1970’s often were reductivist and condescending towards the groups of people who were being described. Through the context of Marshall Sahlins’ book “The New Science of the Enchanted Universe,” Nathaniel points us towards the spiritual experiences of the world that non-European cultures had, which were being spoken of in...

In this first Episode of Questions of Courage Nathaniel Williams maps the historical path of youth movements and revolutionary moments from the 1950’s to today, with a particular awareness to the quality of spiritual seeking that has underscored this series of events in both Europe and The United States. He lays out the intention behind Questions of Courage, this new Podcast and video project, whi...