Seminario Latinoamericano en Politica y Manejo Forestal

We warmly invite you to the first of a series of symposia to be held annually under the auspices of the Beshara School in the Borders of Scotland. We believe your insights and experience will make an invaluable contribution to this new cross-disciplinary conversation, as they already do in the wider global dialogue. 

Humanity is currently facing such a range of unprecedented, inter-related problems that added together they might appear immense, complex and daunting. There are, to name but a few, the established facts of climate change, population growth, depletion of natural resources, and dwindling bio-diversity on the one hand, and on the other, the lack of global political institutions and will, national self-interest, cynicism and defeatism. In the past few months we have in addition been witness to two unprecedented meltdowns, first of the Arctic icecap and then of the global economy.  

However even more recently we have experienced a massive and inspiring vote for change and for hope in the American Presidential election. 

Our symposium is dedicated to a unified and global vision of humanity today and its responsibility to itself, the world and to all its inhabitants. Our aim is to reach towards a unified perspective on what is happening in the world today. Can we see it better, more clearly, and simply? Can we find a point of vision from which rather than a great number of different issues to be tackled all at once, these interrelated factors may be viewed as so many symptoms of a single cause?   

It is self-evident that the very interrelatedness of these manifold aspects indicates an underlying unity. It is fundamental to the Beshara School’s education that it is within our human potential to observe this unity in a closer way, from unity itself. We have found here through practice that when people come together with a real question, to discuss and converse together as a single body, the very oneness that is our common foundation can express itself through us and as us, all together. And that it is from here that all real and lasting change proceeds. 

We sincerely hope that you will be able to come to join with us in this endeavour, and that it will be fruitful, rewarding and enjoyable. 

Peter Young  

Principal, Beshara School