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The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

Progress

Quote 2743

We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us - Charles Bowden in Blood Orchid

Quote 2742

The idea of progress is detrimental to the life of the spirit, because it encourages us to view our lives, not under the aspect of eternity, but as moments in a universal process of betterment. We do not, therefore, accept our lives for what they are, but instead consider them always for what they might someday become - John Gray

Quote 2741

The enormous gains of civilisation are constantly being called into question. What were once, rightly, seen as huge benefits to humanity are now viewed with anxiety. The water that we drink and use to clean ourselves is seen as a scarce resource. Cheap food - which has liberated us from the curse of constantly living on the edge of starvation - is blamed for causing obesity. Long-distance travel is stigmatised. Cars are blamed for causing pollution and contributing to global warming. Aircraft are also accused of damaging the environment and the passengers they carry are criticised for undermining local cultures. Attacks on modernity have their origins in the West rather than the Middle East. If a war is to be fought it should be against the ideology of anti-modernism emanating from Western societies - Daniel Ben-Ami is a writer on economics and author of Cowardly Capitalism: The Myth of the Global Financial Casino.

Quote 2740

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other - Henry David Thoreau

Quote 2146

We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathisers, pattern recognisers, and meaning makers - Daniel Pink, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html

Quote 2145

We think our civilisation near its meridian, but we are yet only at the cock-crowing and the morning star. In our barbarous society the influence of character is in its infancy - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote 2144

We are an exceptional model of the human race. We no longer know how to produce food. We no longer can heal ourselves. We no longer raise our young. We have forgotten the names of the stars, fail to notice the phases of the moon. We do not know the plants and they no longer protect us. We tell ourselves we are the most powerful specimens of our kind who have ever lived. But when the lights are off we are helpless. We cannot move without traffic signals. We must attend classes in order to learn by rote numbered steps toward love or how to breast-feed our baby. We justify anything, anything at all by the need to maintain our way of life. And then we go to the doctor and tell the professionals we have no life. We have a simple test for making decisions: our way of life, which we cleverly call our standard of living, must not change except to grow yet more grand. We have a simple reality we live with each and every day: our way of life is killing us - Charles Bowden in Blood Orchid

Quote 2143

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have enough; it's whether we provide enough for those who have too little - Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Quote 2142

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man - George Bernard Shaw