Jeremy Lent

Jeremy Lent is a speaker and author of the award-winning book, "The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning." His new book, "The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe," will be published in June 2021 by New Society Publishers (USA/Canada) and Profile Books (UK & Commonwealth). Author website | Blog: Patterns of Meaning.
Articles by this author
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Views Friday, February 19, 2021 Transforming to an Ecological Civilization: The Alternative Is Unthinkable As a new, saner administration sets up shop in Washington, D.C., there are plenty of policy initiatives this country desperately needs. Beyond a national plan for the COVID-19 pandemic, progressives will strive to focus the administration’s attention on challenges like fixing the broken health care... Read more |
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Views Friday, October 12, 2018 We Need an Ecological Civilization Before It’s Too Late We’ve now been warned by the world’s leading climate scientists that we have just twelve years to limit climate catastrophe. The UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has put the world on notice that going from a 1.5° to 2.0° C rise in temperature above preindustrial levels would have... Read more |
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Views Friday, March 23, 2018 Culture Shift: Redirecting Humanity’s Path to a Flourishing Future What do all these ideas have in common—a tax on carbon, big investments in renewable energy, a livable minimum wage, and freely accessible healthcare? The answer is that we need all of them, but even taken together they’re utterly insufficient to redirect humanity away from impending catastrophe... Read more |
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Views Saturday, February 10, 2018 What Does China's 'Ecological Civilization' Mean for Humanity's Future? Imagine a newly elected President of the United States calling in his inaugural speech for an “ecological civilization” that ensures “harmony between human and nature.” Now imagine he goes on to declare that “we, as human beings, must respect nature, follow its ways, and protect it” and that his... Read more |
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Views Sunday, December 03, 2017 AI Has Already Taken Over. It’s Called the Corporation. Some of the leading thinkers of our time are unleashing a stream of warnings about the threat of artificial intelligence taking over from humans. Earlier this month, Stephen Hawking predicted it could be “the worst event in the history of our civilization” unless we find a way to control its... Read more |
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Views Friday, November 10, 2017 Resisting Trump? Five Tips from the Hunter-Gatherer Playbook The recent election results in Virginia and elsewhere suggest that the tide may be turning away from the egregious behavior exhibited by Donald Trump, and back toward a sense of decency in American politics. How can we keep that momentum going over the next three years? In researching my book, The... Read more |
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Views Friday, September 15, 2017 The Climate Catastrophe We’re All Ignoring Imagine you’re driving your shiny new car too fast along a wet, curvy road. You turn a corner and realize you’re heading straight for a crowd of pedestrians. If you slam on your brakes, you’d probably skid and damage your car. So you keep your foot on the accelerator, heading straight for the crowd... Read more |