#4 Materialism The Elephant in the Room-A conversation with Molly Young Brown

While capitalism continues to be the dominant economic system with benefits we describe as innovation, wealth, and prosperity, there is a dark side.   Materialism, consumerism, and the financial pressure for continuing economic growth all come with a steep price to pay which includes enormous environmental and social justice impacts that endanger life on Earth.      

Our guest today, Molly Young Brown, believes that our society is in the midst of a Great Turning from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life Sustaining Society.  Molly’s unique areas of study and experience have prepared her well to help guide us on the Way Forward to regeneration.

Molly earned a master’s degree in humanistic and transpersonal psychology and a Master of Divinity.  She has extensive training and coaching experience in Psychosynthesis. 

 Molly describes her life’s work as based on living systems – which move towards integration, wholeness, learning, complexity, and self-organization.  She describes human beings and all their organizations as living systems.  She holds possibilities for all of us because living systems are always open to evolution, change and adaptation.

She describes herself as being steeped in psychosynthesis and then discovering the work of Joann Macy.  She found this was a logical extension of the work she had been doing and allowed her to bring what she had learned about herself into service to the larger world.

Molly sees us all interconnected. Therefore, in the Work That Reconnects she talks about honoring our pain for the world.  This helps us move beyond denial and paralysis by taking action on behalf of life.

Molly talks about how the Great Unraveling is happening because of our need to possess, control, and extract. These needs underlie the current trend toward fascism and authoritarianism all over the world.

Molly has published several books on Psychosynthesis and co-authored, with Joanna Macy, two editions of the book Coming Back to Life. She trains facilitators of the Work That Reconnects and edits the online journal Deep Times: A Journal of the Work that Reconnects.

Molly describes how the Elders Action Network has taken a lead at addressing the issues of our time with the intent of leaving future generations a more loving and sustainable world by offering a doorway to elders to become empowered to make a difference.