Today’s episode is about the concept of the 200-year present. It’s an idea from Elise Boulding (that I learned about from Krista Tippett), the Quaker sociologist, poet and peace researcher, who was born in Norway in 1920 and moved to the US with her parents when she was 3 years old. 

It was Germany’s attack on Norway in World War II that shook her and her family deeply: seeing her peaceful homeland violated, she recognized violence as a systemic global concern. At that point she began to engage in building peace, starting with anti-war activities, moving into the academic field, in sociology at Dartmouth College – where she developed the first Peace Studies program in the States.

When we think about the bigness of time, it’s hard to grasp, and so Boulding’s concept is meant to help us reflect on the specific span of time - “the 200 year present” - that each of us  in fact inhabits.

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