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HUMANITY AT A CROSSROADS

PUT THE PIECES TOGETHER AND REVEAL THE BIGGER PICTURE OF WHERE THE HUMAN FAMILY IS HEADED IN THE 21ST CENTURY.

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Course Content

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  • About the Film
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  • Reflect and Share
  • Related Material
  • References
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  • Related Material
  • References
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  • References
  • Watch Film
  • Meet the Filmmaker

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Description

Crossroads: Labor Pains of a New Worldview is a documentary-course exploring the depths of the current human condition and the emergence of a worldview that is recreating our world from the inside out.

Weaving together insights and findings from biology, psychology, network science, systems science, business, culture and media, the film reveals the inner workings of the human experience in the 21st century, urging viewers to step out of the box and challenge their own assumptions about who we really are, and why we do what we do.

Crossroads places evolutionary context to today’s escalating social unrest, natural disasters, and economic failures. It illuminates the footsteps of an integrated worldview, penetrating its way through the power of social networks to the forefront of our personal and collective awareness.

A refreshing reality check for all viewers and a clarion call for those who carry the seeds of the emerging worldview.

Scientists and thinkers featured in Crossroads include: Amit Goswami, Neale Donald Walsch, Elisabet Sahtouris, Bruce Lipton, Peter Joseph, Caroline A. Miller, Nicholas Christakis, James Fowler, Michael Laitman, Ervin Laszlo, Dean Radin, Dave Sherman, Annie Leonard, Jairon G. Cuesta, and John St. Augustine.

Who Is This Course For

This course is aimed at anybody interested in causes and solutions to the world’s current problems—personal, social, economic, ecological, and global.

speakers

Amit Goswami

Amit Goswami, PhD is professor emeritus in the theoretical physics department of the University of Oregon, where he has served since 1968. He is a pioneer in the new paradigm of science called “science within consciousness.”

Best known for his role in the film What the Bleep Do We Know!?, Goswami is also an accomplished author. His highly successful academic textbook Quantum Mechanicsis used in universities throughout the world, and his many popular books exploring the relationship between quantum physics and consciousness, including The Self-Aware Universe, Physics of the Soul, and Creative Evolution, have been widely read.

Goswami’s ideas about physics, evolution, and consciousness will be featured in the 2009 documentary The Quantum Activist.

Annie Leonard

Leonard is best known as the creator and narrator of the animated documentary about the life-cycle of material goods, The Story of Stuff (2007). The documentary began as an hour-long talk and was made into a condensed film version based on popular demand. She also published a book version of the film.

After The Story of Stuff, she created Story of Cap and Trade in 2009, which is on the topic of emissions trading, as well as, in 2010, The Story of Bottled Water, The Story of Cosmetics and The Story of Electronics. In March 1, 2011, Leonard released The Story of Citizens United v. FEC and later that year, The Story of Broke.

In addition to her work on the Story of Stuff documentary, Leonard is also co-creator and coordinator of GAIA (Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives) and serves on the boards of International Forum on Globalization and the Environmental Health Fund. She previously held positions with Health Care Without Harm, Essential Information and Greenpeace International, and was coordinator of the Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption. In 1992 she testified in front of the US Congress on the topic of international waste trafficking.

Bruce Lipton

Bruce H. Lipton, scientist and lecturer, received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (1971). He served as an Associate Professor of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine. Lipton’s research on mechanisms controlling cell behavior employed cloned human muscle cells. In addition, he lectured in Cell Biology, Histology and Embryology. Bruce resigned his tenured position to pursue independent research integrating quantum physics with cell biology.

His breakthrough studies on the cell membrane, the “skin” of the cell, revealed that the behavior and health of the cell was controlled by the environment, findings that were in direct contrast with prevailing dogma that life is controlled by genes. Lipton returned to academia as a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s School of Medicine to test his hypotheses (1987-1992). His ideas concerning environmental control were substantiated in two major scientific publications. The new research reveals the biochemical pathways connecting the mind and body and provides insight into the molecular basis of consciousness and the future of human evolution.

Caroline Adams Miller

Caroline Adams Miller is an internationally-known coach, author and speaker on the topic of goal accomplishment and its connection with happiness, and is recognized as one of the world’s leaders on this research and how it can be applied to one’s life for maximum transformation and growth. Ms. Miller is one of the first coaches in the world to gain the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology credential from the University of Pennsylvania, which she uses in her performance coaching practice with individuals, teams and groups. Her specialty is in goal-setting theory and its intersection with well-being, which she often addresses in speeches, teaching venues and articles. Caroline is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University, as well as an ACC- credentialed coach through the International Coach Federation. Her books, starting with the groundbreaking “My Name is Caroline” in 1988, have been translated into multiple languages, and have been featured in worldwide media.

Dave Sherman

Dave Sherman, DM is President of Dave Sherman & Co and Associate Partner, Blu Skye Sustainability Consulting. He helps executives formulate and execute breakthrough strategies that combine stakeholder-based insights with industry and company specific sources of advantage. He has been instrumental in developing Blu Skye’s approach to industry-level sustainability initiatives for the dairy and magazine industries. In 2004 Dave partnered with Jib Ellison to start Wal-Mart on its sustainability journey. He was a founding partner of Sustainable Value Partners and a Vice President at A.T. Kearney where he led an Asia-based practice. Clients include: Wal-Mart, Bunge, Cathay Pacific, Philips Electronics, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Staples and Waste Management. He earned his doctorate in management at the Weatherhead School of Management where he researched social entrepreneurship. He also holds an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University.

Dean Radin

Dean Radin, PhD, is Senior Scientist at the INSTITUTE OF NOETIC SCIENCES (IONS) and Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Psychology at SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY. His original career track as a concert violinist shifted into science after earning a BSEE degree in electrical engineering, magna cum laude with honors in physics, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and then an MS in electrical engineering and a PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. For a decade he worked on advanced telecommunications R&D at AT&T Bell Laboratories and GTE Laboratories. For over two decades he has been engaged in consciousness research. Before joining the research staff at IONS in 2001, he held appointments at Princeton University, University of Edinburgh, University of Nevada, and several Silicon Valley think-tanks, including Interval Research Corporation and SRI International, where he worked on a classified program investigating psychic phenomena for the US government.

He is author or coauthor of over 200 technical and popular articles, a dozen book chapters, and several books including the bestselling The Conscious Universe (HarperOne, 1997) and Entangled Minds (Simon & Schuster, 2006). Both of these books are in print, and so far they’ve been translated into six foreign languages. A new book will be published in 2013. His technical articles have appeared in journals ranging from Foundations of Physics and Physics Essays to Psychological Bulletin and Journal of Consciousness Studies; he was featured in a New York Times Magazine ARTICLE; and he has appeared on dozens of television shows ranging from the BBC’s Horizon and PBS’sCloser to Truth to Oprah and Larry King Live. He has given over 200 interviews and talks, including invited presentations at Harvard (medical), Stanford (medical and statistics), Cambridge (physics), and Princeton (psychology), for industries including GOOGLE and Johnson & Johnson, and for government organizations including the US Navy and DARPA. In 2010, he spent a month lecturing in India as the National Visiting Professor of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, a program in the Indian government’s Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Elisabet Sahtouris

Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris is an internationally known evolution biologist, futurist, author, business consultant and speaker. Citizen of the USA and Greece, she lives in Spain, where she works with Mallorca Goes Green toward sustainable local economy.  Fellow of the World Business Academy and member of the World Wisdom Council, her post-doctoral fellowship tenure was at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; she taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts, was a UN Consultant on indigenous peoples, a science writer for the NOVA-HORIZON TV series, taught in a sustainable business MBA program and organized the Hokkaido Foundations of Science Symposium in 2008 and another in Kuala Lumpur in 2009. Her books include EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution, A Walk Through Time: 

from Stardust to Us and Biology Revisioned, w. Willis Harman. 

Dr. Sahtouris ever updates her model for a living universe integrating physics, biology and spirituality. She sees solutions to our social and economic crises in the evolution of Earth’s ecosystems and works passionately for the health and well-being of our global family. 

Her venues have included top government agencies in Australia, New Zealand, Brasil and the Netherlands, The World Bank, UN, UNESCO, EPA, Digital Earth Society, Boeing, Siemens, Tokyo Dome Stadium, Sao Paulo’s leading business schools, State of the World Forums (NY & San Francisco), First Rand Bank Group S.Africa, World Parliament of Religions, and many more.

Michael Laitman

Michael Laitman is a global thinker dedicated to generating a transformational shift in society through a new global education, which he views as the key to solving the most pressing issues of our time.

His vision for solving the global crisis at all levels, including education, climate change, hunger, and all social and economic problems, involves implementing a new, comprehensive global and integral education program.

The combination of his academic background in hard sciences, humanities, and his research in the field of education make him a prominent global thinker and a sought-after speaker.

Dr. Laitman is Professor of Ontology and the Theory of Knowledge, and PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah, titles awarded by the Moscow Institute of Philosophy at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has an MSc in Medical Cybernetics, awarded by the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University.

Paul Bloom

Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field.

Dr. Bloom has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of three books, including How Children Learn the Meanings of Words, Descartes’ Baby, and How Pleasure Works.

His newest book, Just Babies: The origins of good and evil, is coming out in 2013.

James Fowler

James H. Fowler is a social scientist specializing in social networks, cooperation, political participation, and genopolitics (the study of the genetic basis of political behavior). He is currently Professor of Medical Genetics in theSchool of Medicine and Professor of Political Science in the Division of Social Science at the University of California, San Diego. He was named a 2010 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Fowler earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1992, a master’s degree in International Relations from Yale University in 1997, and a Ph.D. in Government from the Harvard University in 2003. He was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador from 1992 to 1994. In 2010, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers.

Neale Donald Walsch

Neale Donald Walsch is an author of the series Conversations with God. The nine books in the complete series are Conversations With God (books 1-3), Friendship with God, Communion with God, The New Revelations, Tomorrow’s God, What God Wants and Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends. He is also an actor, screenwriter, and speaker.

This With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching millions of lives and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives. In addition to authoring the renowned With God series, Neale has published 16 other works, as well as a number of video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, each of the CwG dialogue books has made the New York Times Bestseller list, Conversations with God-Book 1 occupying that list for over two and half years.

Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Macchu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peters Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in China. And everywhere he has gone-from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul, Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live, at last, in peace and harmony.

Jairon G. Cuestra

Jairon G. Cuesta is an anthropologist working as a counselor and adviser in Oslo, Norway. He has done ethnographic field work in the Galapagos Islands, and has been doing research in psychology for the past 35 years.

John St. Augustine

John St. Augustine is a best-selling author of Living An Uncommon Life and Every Moment Matters and a U.S. national radio show host of the program Power Thoughts. He has been a speaker for TED, Windstar, Fortune 500 companies, and The History Channel. His radio shows have been broadcast on WGN, SiriusXM, Overnight America, Coast to Coast AM and Oprah Radio. John St. Augustine is an award winning radio host, sought after speaker and author who has inspired thousands with his platform performances, and has been honored as one of “200 Visionaries for the Planet.”

Nicholas Christakis

Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, is a social scientist and physician who conducts research on social factors that affect health, health care, and longevity. He directs the Human Nature Lab at Harvard University. He is Professor of Medical Sociology in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School; Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He is the Master of Pforzheimer House in Harvard College.

 Dr. Christakis’ lab is currently focused on the relationship between social networks and health. People are inter-connected, and so their health is inter-connected. This research engages two types of phenomena: the social, mathematical, and biological rules governing how social networks form (“connection”) and the biological and social implications of how they operate to influence thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (“contagion”). Other ongoing investigations in the lab consider the biodemographic determinants of longevity and the genetic bases for human behaviors.

 Along with his long-time collaborator, James Fowler, Dr. Christakis has authored a general-audience book on social networks: Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, which has been translated into nearly 20 foreign languages.

Peter Joseph

Peter Joseph is an American born Musician, Filmmaker, Author and Activist; best known worldwide as the creator of the controversial and award winning “Zeitgeist Film Series” and founder of the “The Zeitgeist Movement”, a social sustainability advocacy group which currently operates in over 70 countries. He is also the curator for the Annual Zeitgeist Media Arts Festival and is on the Advisory Board/Steering Committee for “Project-Peace on Earth.”

Joseph lectures around the world on the topics of cultural/social sustainability and the importance of critical thought and scientific literacy. He has been featured in the New York Times, The Huffington Post, TEDx and is also a frequent guest/economic critic for Russia Today. Joseph is an active musician and performs around Los Angeles, where he currently resides. 

Joseph’s broad focus is on media related expressions with the intent on affecting society in a positive way.

Ervin Laszlo

Ervin Laszlo is a systems philosopher, integral theorist, and classical pianist. Twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, he has authored more than 70 books, which have been translated into nineteen languages, and has published in excess of four hundred articles and research papers, including six volumes of piano recordings.

Dr. Laszlo is generally recognized as the founder of systems philosophy and general evolution theory, and serves as the founder-director of the General Evolution Research Group and as past president of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. He is also the recipient of the highest degree in philosophy and human sciences from the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, as well as of the coveted Artist Diploma of the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest. Additional prizes and awards include four honorary doctorates.

His appointments have included research grants at Yale and Princeton Universities, professorships for philosophy, systems sciences, and future sciences at the Universities of Houston, Portland State, and Indiana, as well as Northwestern University and the State University of New York. His career also included guest professorships at various universities in Europe and the Far East. In addition, he worked as program director for the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). In 1999 he was was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Canadian International Institute of Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics.

For many years he has served as president of the Club of Budapest, which he founded. He is an advisor to the UNESCO Director General, ambassador of the International Delphic Council, member of both the International Academy of Science, World Academy of Arts and Science, and the International Academy of Philosophy.

Director
Joseph Ohayon

Joseph Ohayon, a filmmaker, writer and speaker based in Israel and New York, is best known for his relentless quest to put pieces together and look at the big picture. Joseph directs, writes, and hosts documentaries and talk shows on Israeli and US television, and also lectures on the need to adapt to an increasingly interdependent world.

Viewer Feedback

“Life-changing. Watch the film not once, but several times.”

Cristian Muresanu
Science Journalist, TVR Clug

“A fresh perspective on the future of human experience.”

Gray Scott
The Futurist

“A uniquely optimistic view of political and social change.”

Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall
Resilence

“Time to shift to a new integrated worldview, to reevaluate everything.”

Brendan Barrett
UN University

“Who are we? Who do we really choose to be? … Crossroads delves deeply into these tough questions.”

Margaret Chew Barringer
Founder of American Insight