"We may need to redefine “discipline” from the ability to write and publish something every day to the ability to hold back. What if people started to produce content when they had actually something to say, rather than coming up with something to say in order to fill another slot?"
This feels so alive to me in the context of the first impulse you shared on multi-species collaboration, a dear topic of mine and the raison d'être behind https://sympoiesisworld.substack.com/ and yet it goes against my background as a communications manager where we want to grab as much attention all the time, polluting people's attention landscape with sometimes great but mostly mediocre content just to conform to the pace of the algorithm.
Sometimes it feels like we humans are stuck in our own echo chamber, mute to the diverse voices and the underground rhythms of the earth and the tremors of worlds speaking their urgent message to us. We know how to speak but can we become better listeners again?
How we become better listeners is a great and super important question! Especially in an age in which we are constantly bombarded and overwhelmed with I'd say mediocre information.
These two quotes are from my article about Cultivating A New Worldview:
“The fact that many of the sensory modalities that we use, and other creatures use, are being cut and fragmented now is a crisis on the same level as the crises of chemistry, of pollution, and of species loss. In fact, to speak of them as separate things is a lie, because climate change and species loss and the loss of sensory connection between creatures and sensory diversity are intersecting and tangled with one another. […]
If we’re not paying attention through our own senses, we have disengaged from the primary mode in which every creature since the origin of life has connected to its environment.”
– David G. Haskell
And:
“Hunters and trackers learn not only to understand intellectually a bunch of facts about the animal they follow, but to feel their way into the very being of the animal.” – Ian McGilchrist
Thank you for another great article. It makes hopeful. However, I also sense the fear that humanity will faster use up the ressorces that are available on our planet for destruction than regeneration.
Let's hope and work for the future you're making tangible with your work.
I heard this saying the other day: When you are accelerating towards a wall and know you won't be able to stop the car before hitting it, you still(!) wanna hit those breaks! :)
Or what I also like: It's not about being successful (i.e. avoiding climate collapse – although we do of course want to achieve that) but about doing the right thing; living the right kind of way.
'How to live in a digital city' was fascinating! I jumped to the article immediately and the part I liked the most was them saying:
'Valdez: So right now, it’s like the sparkle and spectacle of the shininess of the internet, it’s started to fade, and we’re really aware in this moment of, you know, trash in the comments and crowds on the timeline and, you know, misinformation graffiti on the walls.'
'Garber: Misinformation graffiti is going to haunt me. But, cities, over time, learned how to deal with those problems to make cities more livable—but the web is so relatively new that we just don’t have many of those systems on it yet.'
"We may need to redefine “discipline” from the ability to write and publish something every day to the ability to hold back. What if people started to produce content when they had actually something to say, rather than coming up with something to say in order to fill another slot?"
This feels so alive to me in the context of the first impulse you shared on multi-species collaboration, a dear topic of mine and the raison d'être behind https://sympoiesisworld.substack.com/ and yet it goes against my background as a communications manager where we want to grab as much attention all the time, polluting people's attention landscape with sometimes great but mostly mediocre content just to conform to the pace of the algorithm.
Sometimes it feels like we humans are stuck in our own echo chamber, mute to the diverse voices and the underground rhythms of the earth and the tremors of worlds speaking their urgent message to us. We know how to speak but can we become better listeners again?
Thanks for sharing, Thomas!
How we become better listeners is a great and super important question! Especially in an age in which we are constantly bombarded and overwhelmed with I'd say mediocre information.
These two quotes are from my article about Cultivating A New Worldview:
“The fact that many of the sensory modalities that we use, and other creatures use, are being cut and fragmented now is a crisis on the same level as the crises of chemistry, of pollution, and of species loss. In fact, to speak of them as separate things is a lie, because climate change and species loss and the loss of sensory connection between creatures and sensory diversity are intersecting and tangled with one another. […]
If we’re not paying attention through our own senses, we have disengaged from the primary mode in which every creature since the origin of life has connected to its environment.”
– David G. Haskell
And:
“Hunters and trackers learn not only to understand intellectually a bunch of facts about the animal they follow, but to feel their way into the very being of the animal.” – Ian McGilchrist
Thank you for another great article. It makes hopeful. However, I also sense the fear that humanity will faster use up the ressorces that are available on our planet for destruction than regeneration.
Let's hope and work for the future you're making tangible with your work.
I heard this saying the other day: When you are accelerating towards a wall and know you won't be able to stop the car before hitting it, you still(!) wanna hit those breaks! :)
Or what I also like: It's not about being successful (i.e. avoiding climate collapse – although we do of course want to achieve that) but about doing the right thing; living the right kind of way.
'How to live in a digital city' was fascinating! I jumped to the article immediately and the part I liked the most was them saying:
'Valdez: So right now, it’s like the sparkle and spectacle of the shininess of the internet, it’s started to fade, and we’re really aware in this moment of, you know, trash in the comments and crowds on the timeline and, you know, misinformation graffiti on the walls.'
'Garber: Misinformation graffiti is going to haunt me. But, cities, over time, learned how to deal with those problems to make cities more livable—but the web is so relatively new that we just don’t have many of those systems on it yet.'
Yes I really loved that part as well! Interesting reframing