Earlier this year I posted a piece by Michel Bauwens that reviewed and excerpted Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World (2009), and she recently appeared at TEDx Manhattan Beach to talk about relational reality.

Relational Reality: Charlene Spretnak at TEDx Manhattan Beach

Published on Dec 27, 2013


Charlene Spretnak is an author and activist who has long been fascinated with the subject of interrelatedness. In her talk, Charlene sites several recent discoveries indicating that all of physical reality, including humans, is far more dynamically interrelated than our modern schooling had supposed. These new discoveries reveal the impact of our relationships -- with other people and with nature -- on childhood development, intelligence, healing, and our life-long health and well-being.

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Charlene Spretnak has been intrigued throughout her life as a writer, speaker, and activist with dynamic interrelatedness. She has written eight books on various subjects in which interrelatedness plays a central role. She is particularly interested in 21st-century discoveries indicating that the physical world, including the human bodymind, is far more dynamically interrelated than modernity had assumed. Such discoveries are currently causing a “relational shift” in our institutions and systems of knowledge, as she suggests in Relational Reality (2011). Several of her books have also proposed a "map of the terrain" of emergent social-change movements and an exploration of the issues involved. She has helped to create an eco-social frame of reference and vision in the areas of social criticism (including feminism), cultural history, and religion and spirituality. Since the mid-1980s, her books have examined the multiple crises of modernity and furthered the corrective efforts that are arising. Her book Green Politics was a major catalyst for the formation of the U.S. Green Party movement, of which she is a cofounder. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. She is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion. She hosts a weekly radio program about the Relational Shift, "All Together Now," on the Progressive Radio Network (prn.fm).

She is currently working on a book about the spiritual dimensions of modern and contemporary art from the 1800 to the present (Palgrave Macmillan, Fall 2014).

In addition to many articles, op-ed pieces, and reviews, she has written the following books (plus others not listed):

Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World (2011)
Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her ReEmergence in the Modern Church (2004)
The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World (1997)
States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning the Postmodern Age (1991)