Each of us carries within us a worldview, a set of assumptions about how the world works - what some call a paradigm - that forms the very questions we allow ourselves to ask, and determines our view of future possibilities.

Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities.

What an extraordinary time to be alive. We're the first people on our planet to have real choice: we can continue killing each other, wiping out other species, spoiling our nest. Yet on every continent a revolution in human dignity is emerging. It is re-knitting community and our ties to the earth. So we do have a choice. We can choose death; or we can choose life.

With an eco-mind, we get ready for surprises, for we realize it's just not possible to know what's possible.

What we see today is a world movement represented by the World Social Forum, involving all sorts of interactions across cultures, not to create some new "ism," but to learn as we walk and to create more democratic forms of social organization that re-embed economic life in community.

How we frame the world - how we talk about it and define it - affects how we see things and how we live.

We can't see ahead of time what actions are going to be the ones that move history in dramatic ways.