John Renesch

May 2012 Have you ever watched a TV report on a public demonstration and you identified with the people demonstrating? Or participated in a demonstration yourself? If so, have you noticed the people who are drawn inevitably to large gatherings, and who take great delight in becoming the center of attention? I call them exhibitionists […]

April 2012   While having breakfast with a couple of friends the other day the subject of addictions came up. The conversation turned to how various addictive behaviors allow us to avoid some unwanted experience. Both of my friends are long time members of a 12 Step program. One is a member of several. Together […]

March 2012 One of my heroes died late last year. Vaclav Havel was a source of much inspiration for me ever since he came into office as the first President of the newly-formed Czech Republic back in 1989. He was one of the first prominent political figures I knew of who publicly spoke of consciousness […]

February 2012 When we use the word tyrant we are usually referring to a despot of some sort, perhaps a dictatorial boss at work or the iron-handed ruler of a country. These are personal tyrants. They can be overthrown, fired, easily identified and replaced, even if a revolution is required to do so. The Arab […]

January 2012 Duane Elgin asks us how mature we are Since the publication of my new book – The Great Growing Up – in October I have been getting asked what I mean by, “as a species, we are still in the adolescent phase of our development.” I attempt to make a case for our […]

December 2011 A couple of years ago, just after receiving the Nobel Prize, Mohammad Yunus was speaking in Washington and I happened to catch in on C-Span TV. One thing he said has stuck with me ever since. He asserted that poverty was not a people problem; it was a systems problem. This seemed a […]

November 2011 There are many, many things forms of addiction – ranging from substances like alcohol, painkillers, heroin and other drugs to activities such as the Internet, gambling, television, sex and work, But little is said about the one of the biggest addictions for the Western world – compulsive thinking. My definition of an addiction […]

August 2011 The person who discovered it was the Sun, not the Earth, that was the center of our solar system was a mathematician, physician, scholar, translator, artist, cleric, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat and economist who held astronomy as little more than his avocation! The creator of the most effective treatment for alcoholism was […]

July 2011 Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are even more like people than the law previously adjudicated, less-than-ethical business leaders can take even more advantage of the market, tilting the scales of fairness even further in their favor. Thus the gap between the richest one-percent and the rest of us […]