Intro post - Terry CD

Welcome
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Hi everyone, I’m Terry. I came across Life Itself and Second Renaissance through Substack and comments on @rufuspollock’s Substack articles.

I retired from paid work at the end of 2018 (when I was just short of my 77th birthday), having started and run a small but global project management consulting business, serving as visiting faculty at Universities in UK, Australia and France, and being a Lay Preacher in the United Reformed Church.

I am passionate about the need for humanity to exploit what Michael Mann calls “Our Fragile Moment” to make the changes we need to how we govern our activities on the planet we all share. You can get the flavour at A Philosophy for a World in Crisis: Evolving the Enlightenment for Sustainability - In Search of Wisdom

I’d love to share ideas with like-minded people.

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Hi Terry, great to have you here. Your ‘philosophy for a world in crisis’ lines up really well with the Second Renaissance concept - would be very interested to hear your thoughts on our White Papers which make similar arguments, not sure if you’ve checked them out yet. Look forward to seeing more posts and comments from you!

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Hi Jonah, thanks for the encouragement. I’ve downloaded the White Papers and I’ll be glad to respond after reading and reflecting on them.

At present I’m working on a presentation and workshop design that have been accepted for a Symposium on Sustainability and Spirituality: Building Ecologies of Hope organised by UK-CSR and hosted in Canterbury, UK in September. My accepted abstract was entitled “Secular Leaders and Spiritual Responsibility”.

I’ll have that in mind when reading the White Papers…

More later.

Terry

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Hi again, Jonah,

Thanks for the warm welcome! I’ve had a look at your White Papers, and I can see a great deal of alignment between Ecologies of Hope and Second Renaissance. We’re both exploring how to navigate the profound transition humanity is facing and how to consciously shape a wiser, more sustainable future.

Where I see a particularly interesting point of discussion is in our approach to change. Second Renaissance places strong emphasis on cultural paradigms, inner development, and emergent communities as the seedbeds of transformation. In Ecologies of Hope, I frame the challenge more in terms of redirecting human energy within planetary boundaries, integrating governance, leadership, and ecological self-regulation.

I’d love to explore the interplay between these perspectives. How do you see the balance between cultural evolution and governance-level intervention? Are there ways to integrate systemic regulatory shifts with the bottom-up emergence of new paradigms?

Looking forward to the conversation!

Terry

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Hi Terry! I like the phrase/name/term “Ecologies of Hope” – and thanks for sharing the link to your work on a philosophy for a world in crisis. I’m curious to read it, and am also interested in the question of how similar theories of change (e.g. that of Second Renaissance) align and differ.