Alnoor Ladha – Courageous optimism

Local Futures Podcast

In this episode, Helena Norberg-Hodge talks to Alnoor Ladha. Raised in Canada, Alnoor comes from a Sufi lineage, and today lives in community in Costa Rica. He is an important and incisive activist whose work brings together political organizing, systems thinking, structural change and narrative transformation. His conviction that the spiritual and political are fundamentally inseparable underpins his writings, which have been published in Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Truthout, Huffington Post and more. Alnoor was on the board of Greenpeace International, and has directed organizations such as The Rules and Culture Hack Labs, and is the co-author of Post Capitalist Philanthropy: The healing of wealth in the time of collapse.

Helena and Alnoor have a deep friendship and a long-standing collaboration. In this episode, they explore politics and spiritualism together, and delve into their own philosophies of change, sketching a holistic political vision that goes beyond the left-right divide. They analyse the outrageous and deeply abstract ideologies of today’s global elite, and contrast those with lessons from intact indigenous cultures. They name value shifts and structural changes that are integral to healing the world.

It is all too rare to find two individuals so deep in the action of systemic change. An informed and courageous optimism pervades their conversation.

Intro music by Gillicuddy (CC BY-NC 3.0)