Four Dutch Hospitals take on Big Pharma

Revolutions have always fascinated me. When we were students we imagined them to be glorious with people overthrowing dictators and breaking down the walls of privilege and palaces. And then of course the Arab spring came and the Orange revolution …and they went again. But while in Cuba people are in the streets protesting I wonder if there are perhaps revolutions taking place under our noses every day. That we need to look for the cracks in the system more than the ruptures. The silent clashes taking place away from the public eye.

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Our world is moving ever faster, we have ever increasing connections and yet we feel detached. Detached from each other, detached from nature, detached from ourselves. In trying to repair my own feeling of detachment there was a time I steered away from social media. I felt that networking was part of that world that I was tired of. So when I’m invited by Lauren Minis to a ‘speed networking event’ termed regeneration pollination, my first reflex is to politely decline. But curiosity beats discomfort.

I find myself jumping on Zoom At 8 am Pacific time for the pollination event.

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In my previous article I suggested that a more symbiotic relation between humans and nature might be possible. Here I’ll go a step further and argue the ‘symbiocene’ is already here. You just have to know where to look. In the coming weeks I will write a series to show you a society that does not depend on scale at all, which is why most fail to see it. It is altogether built on a different fabric: relations.

As a first step we must pick up a magnifying glass, much like a biologists studies an ant heap. When we zoon…

Moving away from the direct consequences of COVID-19, leaving behind me the sense of loss and the suffering, I find myself taking a look at our species from an entomologist perspective. I’m not the first to use biomimicri to understand social behaviour. In the nineteenth century Peter Kropotkin published a series of essays under the title ‘Mutual Aid; a factor of evolution’. Like him I draw lessons from positive examples of mutualism, but I also see an important warning: plagues tend to either be controlled by natural enemies or because they ‘implode’ as they consume the basis of their existence…

Why women are leading the change

Women are more prone to poverty, earn less then men and tend to be undervalued for their non-monetary contribution. I used to get really frustrated about these facts and sometimes I still do. But frankly, I got tired of feeling frustrated. I felt the need to stop talking. To do something. To create. To create is to feel power, this creative power is given to us by nature itself. It is not ruled by economics, nor by men.

So why are women leading the change we are seeing today?

I’d like to introduce a…

Moving beyond good intentions

I’ve witnessed my childhood paradise being transformed from a garden of Eden to a concrete and plastic covered desert. As I read in the news that this same country is now embarking on the biggest tree planting initiative on earth, my heart jumped. But I am also painfully aware of how poverty and destruction are linked.

When I first visited my fathers country Pakistan at the age of 6, it was 1983. I’m a skinny legged girl in a skirt. In my father’s house I meet brothers, cousins, aunts, grandparents and many more relatives that come…

now I’m a gardener with a vision

There is very little more revolutionary then gardening. And by gardening I mean, working with nature rather then against her. Here’s why. Nature creates abundance by perpetually reusing a limited amount of elements and by using smart forms of collaboration between species. Economy is based on the opposite; it uses an infinite amount of money to create scarcity and promote competition between people. Adhering to natures mantra essentially shakes the very foundations of patriarchal society and capitalism.

Boom.

There’s not a lot of people who will tell you this. You definitely won’t hear…

Lately I was speaking to a good friend. I told her: “I think I’m done doing big ambitious projects. In fact I’m done trying to change the world. I’m happy if I can change a little part of the world or even doing something that really matters to a single person.”

She was quiet for a bit. And then she said;

“ I can’t make up my mind if you are incredibly wise or incredibly selfish.”

Then we both laughed like we are always able to laugh at whatever crossroad we find ourselves on. But the questions lingered with me…