Understanding
the times.
How can we make sense of the world in 2024 and beyond?
This site is on hold while the team reflects and reconstitutes!
“Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning”
William Arthur Ward (1977)
~ American writer and poet
How can we make sense of the world in 2024 and beyond? Are we asking the right questions?
Both for personal insight and for the common good we have an intergenerational responsibility, to understand what is going on. A healthy curiosity is needed to join-the -dots. What wisdom can we gain from the wealth of information, literature and communications around us?
Understanding sees right to the heart of an issue.
Deepening global crises present a destabilised climatic system, mounting geopolitical tensions, and migration, inequalities, and human rights issues which are all intensifying. Platforms for an open conversation are essential. These can inform leadership and policies, navigate us through unchartered waters, and guide actions from local to international levels.
A willingness for reflection and measured reaction are pressing. Equally, we need diplomacy, buoyant creativity, and the propagation of ingenuity.
Ancient writings state that, ‘those who have insight, will give understanding to the many’. UTT aims to promote discussion and maturity in thought, counterbalancing narrow echo-chambers and polarisation, with a sense of direction and common humanity.
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We publish our writings monthly - welcoming guest contributors - and meet online via Zoom to build the dialogue together. Sign up and join our community. Click Subscribe / Contact us, to submit a comment.
This is Our Schema
Geopolitical
International affairs have been shaped by historical, cultural, and geographical factors. These include physical landscapes, the competition for resources, demography, economic systems, and the dynamics of power, conflict, and resolution.
Geopolitics is once again on the rise, brokering the demands of climate, nature, population pressure, and international accord. Can we hold them all together?
Digital
Science, technology, and AI are formed around a mathematical understanding of the world. Digital evolution and practices raise significant questions for life in the 2020s. These are issues shaping humanity.
As we participate in 24/7 communication and contribute to global knowledge doubling daily, how can we gain wisdom and influence the path ahead?
Cultural
Ideologies and social trends have formed a tapestry of culturally diverse societies. We risk abandoning our roots, including the arts, at a high price. Despite multiculturalism, homogenisation is rife.
Are we becoming unhinged from our cultural foundations, and eroding vital forms of social cohesion?
Prophetic
Where is the prophetic voice in current times? Who owns this voice and speaks with authority?
The assertions of faith seem to sit uncomfortably alongside those of secular society, with their competing projections and followers. Is there space for faith in the conversations of late modernity, and ultimately, what does the future hold?
Article of the month
The apparatus of Government created in the Soviet Union, following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, applied the principle that ‘the end justifies the means’. Elimination of effective opposition through State sponsored terror was at its core, carried out by the ‘Cheka’, forerunner to the KGB and FSB. The same principle continues to this day, silencing voices of dissent. Alexei Navalny, lawyer and former leading opposition figure discovered that as he grew in prominence (eg gaining 28% of Moscow’s mayoral vote in 2013), intimidation, spurious accusations, isolation and assassination attempts followed. Consigned to prison, like the prophet Jeremiah who was thrown into a well to die, Navalny used courtroom appearances in 2013 & 2021 to affirm his faith and speak out against the corruption of the Russian State. His words live on.
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