Essays – broadly

Joie De Vivre, 1946 by Pablo Picasso Not recognizing the magic of the present moment may just be a crime against our humanity. David Andersson August 5, 2025 TFF publishes this with particular joy because, while we have always been pro-peace, future-oriented and proposal-making, we need even more of that now: Peace is to be FOR something and go for it. In my recent article, From Personal Development to Human Development, I explored the imbalance between our inner growth and society’s relentless focus on external activity. One of the greatest obstacles to genuine human development today is the sheer level of negativity we encounter daily. As an editor, I regularly receive submissions from Western contributors. Many center on themes like political corruption—even among progressive leaders—technological control, cognitive warfare, genocide, alarming climate forecasts (“only three years left to avoid the worst”), and Europe’s persistent, deadly hypocrisy. The list continues, each entry more...

Peter Ross From invading Afghanistan to dismantling Confederate monuments, George Orwell has been pressed into the service of all sorts of causes. But the real Orwell remains unknown. August 31, 2023 “It was a bright cold day in April,” said Richard Blair, “and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Blair is seventy-three and the son of George Orwell. To witness him stand at a lectern and read the opening line of his father’s great final novel, 1984, is to experience a sense of completion, an equation solved. We were in Senate House, now part of the University of London, for 1984 Live. For the first time in the United Kingdom, the book was to be read aloud publicly from start to finish. It had been estimated that it would take sixty or so readers—well-known journalists, academics, actors, activists—thirteen hours, that Orwellian number, to get from the bright cold day to the gin-scented tears. “All...

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, 1889 Edward J. Curtin, Jr. August 29, 2023 Originally published on Curtin’s homepage on August 11, 2023 Because there is so much personal anguish, unhappiness, and human mental and physical suffering in the world, many people often wonder how they might personally change to find happiness, contentment, or some elusive something. Or even how to change other people, as if that arrogant illusion could ever work. This question of significant personal change is usually couched within the context of narrow psychological analyses.  This is very common and is a habit of mind that grows stronger over the years.  People are reduced to their family upbringings and their personal relationships, while the social history they have lived through is dismissed as irrelevant. The United States is very much a psychological society.  Sociological and historical analyses are considered insignificant to people’s identities.  It’s as if...

“Ingsoc. The sacred principles of ingsoc. Newspeak, double-speak, the mutability of the past.” – George Orwell, 1984 Edward Curtin January 24, 2023 As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground.  As light snow began to fall, I felt a deep mourning in my soul as a memory came to me of another snowy day in 1972 when I awoke to news of Richard Nixon’s savage Christmas bombing of North Vietnam with more than a hundred B-52 bombers, in wave after wave, dropping death and destruction on Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam.  I thought of the war the United States is now waging against Russia via Ukraine and how, as during the U.S. war against Vietnam, few Americans seem to care until it becomes too late.  It depressed me. Soon after I was greeted by...

“When I went to China, I went to teach; but every day that I stayed I thought less of what I had to teach them and more of what I had to learn from them,” Bertrand Russell’s notes in 1920 (British Philosopher 1872-1970) In 1922, Bertrand Russell published a book “The Problem Of China” – see below – based on his study and also experience during his year in Beijing teaching at the University of Peking as Professor of Philosophy. While many books about China have a shelf life of actuality merely lasting for months to a few years, Russell’s book “The Problem Of China” has stood the test of time mapping out where China would stand about a century later. Although the title might appear as anti-China, it is quite the opposite. It predicts China’s resurgence and outlines the strength of Chinese civilization with opportunities and threats. In the...

Edward Curtin February 11, 2022 Despite its pedigree as a fundamental element in civilization’s greatest stories, nostalgia has come to be associated with treacly sentimentality, defeatism, and spurious spiritual inclinations.  Homer, Vergil, Dante, the Biblical writers, and their ilk would demur, of course, but they have been dead for a few years, so progress’s mantra urges us to get on with it.  This is now. Originally posted on Transcend Media Service on February 11, 2022 But now is always, and like its twin – exile – nostalgia is perpetual.  The aching for “home” – from Greek algos, pain + nostos, homecoming – is not simply a desire for the past, whether in reality or imagination, time or place, but a passionate yearning for the best from the past to be brought into the future. Nostalgia may be more a long ache of old people, but it is also a feeling that follows...

TFF Associate and friend over decades, Richard Falk, last year turned 90. Read more about him here – and use the search engine to find lots of his writings. The latest we’ve published is on championing lost causes... Eric Walberg March 10, 2021 Writing this memoir has been as much about discovering my story, that is, myself as it is about telling it. That’s Falk’s version of Socrates’ ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’ Or should I say, Forrest Gump’s? Falk’s life reads like a storybook, starting with meeting Supreme Court judges with his father at age 9 in 1939, making friends with Claudette Colbert, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liz Taylor (long story) at age 15, befriending and befoeing many of the dramatis personae of the Cold War throughout his long and productive life, finally landing on the shores of democratic socialism as the US charges towards the (literal) finish line. Falk came...

Welcome to my worldmoires – a word I have invented for the occasion. It means writing about my life in the perspective of global affairs and trends that have influenced my work and myself since I was born in the middle of the preceding century.  And the occasion? I’m approaching the 50th anniversary of my work as a peace, conflict and future researcher.  The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF, that my wife Christina and I have established turned 35 on January 1, 2021.  I hope you will find something of interest and follow the creation of the book – of which only the first small fraction is hereby launched. Now explore…

Photo: We suffer through today’s difficult, complicated and partially obfuscated time (Photo credit: wsimag.com) By Ellyn Kaschak October 3, 2020 It is hard to know where things began when we are already in the middle of it all. This is especially so as we suffer through today’s difficult, complicated and partially obfuscated time. Originally published at Wall Street International Perhaps the beginning occurred in 1865 when the American Civil War was officially declared ended, but continued to seethe in less organized ways. Maybe the declaration by the American government in the 1950’s that Italians, Irish and Jewish people were now suddenly and irrevocably considered to be White is part of it. Perhaps some more seeds were planted during the presidency of Ronald Reagan or carefully cultivated as a backlash to the first presidency of a Black man, Barack Obama. The causes of and connections to the current multiple crises are...

Gordon Dumoulin July 27, 2020 While most people all over the world are debating the current health, geopolitical, and economic developments in the COVID19-era, the history train has already left the station quite some time ago for a drastic new destination as this era is a transformative time for humanity and earth; whether we like it or not, the train is already moving and shall not stop for a while – hopefully as that would not be good, to say the least. Although each cultural and geopolitical region having their own wagon and nations having their compartments, we are all onboard the same train. While people are discussing if tea or coffee should be served on the train, whether the train should run electrically or on fuel or if and how WIFI should be allowed, few people talk about the train’s destination. However, the destination will be the historical event...

Världen efter Corona – konstruktivt Hur kommer världen att se ut de närmaste årtiondena?Vilka val har vi? Hur kan fred och rättvisa fortfarande bli möjliga? 11:e juni 2020 Jan Öberg I maj höll jag en internationell föreläsning i två delar om förändringarna i världsordningen och om hur framtiden kan bli bättre för oss alla. Den var på engelska. Jag har nu spelat in en svensk version, dock med viss anpassning här och där till svenska förhållanden och en svensk publik. Det är en föreläsning som var tänkt att hållas i Henåns Kulturhus för Fredsrörelsen på Orust, Nordens bästa. Men den fick ställas in med anledning av Coronan. Här har du den i två delar – som den också finns på på TFF:s Vimeo-kanal: Del 1 Del 2 Stort tack om du kan hjälpa sprida budskapet eller återanvända föreläsningen i dina sammanhang – t ex i seminarer, undervisningsförlopp eller på din...

Imagine, it is the year 2050 and we are looking back to the origin and evolution of the coronavirus pandemic over the last three decades.  Extrapolating from recent events, we offer the following scenario for such a view from the future. As we move into the second half of our twenty-first century, we can finally make sense of the origin and impact of the coronavirus that struck the world in 2020 from an evolutionary systemic perspective. Today, in 2050, looking back on the past 40 turbulent years on our home planet, it seems obvious that the Earth had taken charge of teaching our human family. Our planet taught us the primacy of understanding of our situation in terms of whole systems, identified by some far-sighted thinkers as far back as the mid-nineteenth century.  This widening human awareness revealed how the planet actually functions, its living biosphere systemically powered by the...