Category: Culture

In this Culture post I want to take quite a broad look at podcasts and what they have to offer. And when I talk of podcasts, I’m naturally thinking of those I choose to listen to (Rich Roll, Tim Ferriss, and On Being mainly) but I imagine similar things can be said of others.

I think what I like most about them is how it’s listening to the art of conversation and to a fuller expression of human nature than many forms of modern media afford us. There’s something very human about hearing people speak together – their language, tone, pace, humour, and the conversational gestures and interactions that emerge. Even when things veer off track or the people themselves seem to not quite connect, there’s a truth in what’s created. And, without the visual distractions of an image, we’re called on to tune in more to that.

All this seems to revive the world of technology by allowing the conversational human element, rather than the echo chamber of our perceptions. As mentioned in Reality as a sense check, when we’re dealing only with written text I feel there’s a tendency to “hear things with our own voice” – for our ideas, tone, moods and so on to shroud the words with our own preferred meanings. In podcasts you get to hear the other, the nuances and intentions they bring to their words, and the values or attitudes that shine through them.

As discussed in “Towards a New World View” there’s also something beautiful about hearing mutual understanding emerge, as people share their humanity and seek to move common understanding forward through exploring interests and experiences. This links in a way to my thoughts on Communication and the process of change, Value of each human being, and Community – what it was, what we lost in that we all have something to offer and much to learn from one another and the truth of personal experience.

Connecting into Tech as an evolving second life, there also seems something valuable in receiving information and ideas through the eyes and words of human beings. It seems a refreshing return of the purely spoken word and to what is added through bringing our humanity into modern culture, where trends often seem inclined more towards novelty and superficiality. In hearing what people are passionate about, the lessons they’re learning in life, and the messages they wish to impart there seems a sense of community emerging across it all.

Maybe that’s a little idealistic; I can be guilty of focussing more on the possibility rather than the reality of situations. Clearly personal inclinations factor in the choice of material we listen to, and the choices those creating this content make in terms of who they work with and the questions they ask – as ever, there’s a need for discernment. But generally it seems quite democratic, quite laid bare for us to take in as we will rather than overly crafted and controlled – the human voice can be heard.

Here I’ll be talking about the book “Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature” by Ian McCallum (as opposed to many others of a similar name). It’s not a book that seems to have a large following, but its premise and the converging interests and expertise of the author make for an interesting and insightful read.

The author draws on his own personal and professional experiences in the fields of psychology, poetry and nature to weave together science, language and mythology in a consideration of what it means to be human and what we are facing up to in the world around us.

Charting the course of evolution, humanity is placed within the context of the natural environment, both scientifically and poetically, bringing us to consider self-consciousness and the human ego: “like the conductor of an orchestra, it has an orientating function … as well as acting as a point of reference as to who we are and what we might become”. McCallum highlights the intricacies of our psychological existence and the challenges of truly knowing ourselves as human beings – of coming to terms with our shadow or dark side. Notions of repression, projection, and the psychological journey to wholeness are framed as part of an archetypal struggle as well as a personal and environmental one.

The author talks of our psychological interaction with our surroundings and the role this plays in cognition and our sense of self; how “The mind, which includes a tiny, conscious portion known as the ego, has evolved not only to reach out into the world but to be receptive to that which is reaching for us”. As in  “Response Ability” by Frank Fisher, the view here is that our consciousness or mind is formed in a way by our environment; and, building on this, that the extent we now shape that environment ourselves will “acquire central importance in the environment to which we then have to adapt ourselves”.

It’s really a very ambitious book that seeks meaning between divergent ideas; talking on one side from a highly scientific and psychological perspective, then on the other with an imaginative, poetic voice. In concluding, McCallum speaks of the need to live within our environment rather than attempt or pretend to control it; drawing together the threads and looking for ways of reconciling them through the worlds of science, poetry, ecology, religion, psychology, and nature.

While I may not agree with all the premises and conclusions of the book, I love the way the diverse ideas and insights are drawn into a fascinating and informed dialogue that seeks to bridge the chasm between science and poetry quite beautifully: “The paired words ‘yes’ and ‘no’ … convey a simple wisdom: everything is in process … every idea, every interpretation and every strategy has at least two sides … yes and no are the two most powerful words in the vocabulary of a species that has become capable of deciding what to do about its future.”

Reference: “Ecological Intelligence: Rediscovering Ourselves in Nature” by Ian McCallum, (Africa Geographic, Cape Town), 2005.

A few years back, someone introduced me to the writing of the late Frank Fisher and while this can be fairly academic compared with most of the texts I’ll be dipping into here, its rigorous and lively thinking strives to connect with the challenges of modern life in such an important way.

“Response Ability” explores various issues (environment, energy, transport, illness) alongside the process of “social construction” as a way we can come to understand the structures we create together; the essence of “response ability” then being for the individual to begin an active, intelligent engagement with living.

The section on “Technology and the loss of self” raises some interesting concerns that may be worth getting our head around. As its starting point, technology is taken as “an expression of purpose which may or may not be clear to its users”. Fisher then goes on to outline the ways design and social context exclude us from “the meanings (workings) purposefully, i.e. known to be, built into devices”.

Here we are talking about the way technology is created, marketed, maintained and how the face presented to us is one we cannot fully understand but one we relate to in a way somewhat distanced from the realities and meanings nested there. For example, the differences between the control and understanding of a manual car, versus the ease of an automatic; or the reliance on specialists as technology becomes increasingly inaccessible to everyday comprehension.

Using technology without seeing all it entails has the “capacity to trivialise both our understanding of nature and the meaning of the relationships we have with it”. Through a discussion of the nature of self, language and the construction of meaning Fisher then draws us to an understanding of how “meaning arises in recursive interaction between people in language” and “self and selfhood arise in the development of meaning in an individual”, so “where our access to meaning is restricted, our access to self determination, the means to construct our selves, diminishes.”

As I said, this is quite academic, quite deep. But for me, the essence of what’s being said here is that meaning and self arise out of a process of communication within society, so by technology mediating certain relationships we risk losing that feedback, and therefore our capacity to personally understand and respond in an informed way.

It seems Fisher isn’t so much critical of technology itself, but concerned over the degree of understanding of the subtle ways it distances us from nature/reality: “In addition to knowing ‘how it works’, we must know conceptually how it ‘fits’.” These tools arise out of a culture, and in using them we must understand them otherwise we risk being limited by their design. We must understand what we are doing, how we are doing it, and why.

This has clearly been a heavy post, and it’s been challenging to write, but that’s why I’ve stuck with it – if the realities behind technology and our relationships with it and with the world around us are that complicated to grasp, should we abandon the effort? If what’s really at stake is an understanding of self and our relationship to reality, then it seems troubling to shrug such concerns off.

Rather than being swept along somewhat unthinkingly with the tide of progress, we need to be aware of what we risk – to do so more consciously, more intentionally. To assert our selves, our humanity and insist on more transparency, meaning, and social context in what technology helps us to do.

Reference: ‘Technology and the loss of self’ from Chapter One of “Response Ability: Environment, Health and Everyday Transcendence” by Frank Fisher, (Vista Publications, Melbourne), 2006.

There are some books I simply love and this is one: “Small is Beautiful” by E. F. Schumacher. I considered writing this post purely on the tagline “A Study of Economics as if People Mattered”, but was won over by some of the ideas discussed in the first chapters.

In essence, the first chapter looks at our economic system and its treatment of ‘natural capital’ as a foundation we both eat away at and mistreat through our interference: “Modern man does not experience himself as a part of nature but as an outside force destined to dominate and conquer it. He even talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.” Taking the natural environment as a given or as a system we don’t have a strong duty to understand and maintain seems so relevant to ideas and conversations being held today, given that nature is an “irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.”

At times it seems current debate gets derailed by trying to ascertain if we are directly responsible for climatic and environmental changes, or whether they are natural occurrences. For me this slightly avoids the issue of the nature of our relationship with our environment, the fact we know it to be a delicately interwoven ecosystem, yet how we persist in careless practices ‘until evidence definitively proves otherwise’. Surely the wiser move may be to accept that we are acting out of balance and, rather than wait for the consequences or a more fragile reality to wake us up, to develop more integrated and wholesome practices now?

Chapter Two then looks further at our ways of being and whether this can lead to permanent peace: “The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features, but the very causes of its expansionist success … If human vices such as greed and envy are systematically cultivated, the inevitable result is nothing less than the collapse of intelligence. A man driven by greed or envy loses the power of seeing things as they really are, of seeing things in their roundness and wholeness, and his very successes become failures”.

Schumacher goes on to challenge the notion of prosperity as a goal, calling for a return to wisdom in the search for a more peaceful co-existence through economic activity built on sounder principles. It’s a challenge to summarise this writing, as the ideas are dense and well-argued, but these chapters seem increasingly relevant to the situations we are finding ourselves in now.

I’ll likely revisit this text later as the chapters on Education and Technology are also timely, but I think there’s great value in exploring this book as a way of looking at modern activity with fresh eyes and evaluating which ideas still stand up well in that respect.

Reference: “Small is Beautiful. A Study of Economics as if People Mattered” by Dr E. F. Schumacher (Abacus edition, Sphere Books, London) 1974.

I wasn’t sure where to begin with Emerson because he explored so many rich and powerful thoughts. In the end I’ve chosen a topic I’ve had many conversations about lately and one that also crops up in relation to modern life: Friendship.

A recent study into perceptions of friendships highlighted some of the challenges of social media and recognising reciprocity.  To this I would add the greater mobility of our lives now – moving to new places, changing jobs more frequently, the overwhelm of things calling for our attention, and the practical inability to manage and maintain so many demands and friendships.

It’s an area of life that seems to have evolved of its own devices – life’s changed at a dramatic pace and existing notions of social etiquette seem to have been contorted to fit new realities. Work friendships are often circumstantial and indeed in any situation we find ourselves it is often expedient to create the illusion of friendship to smooth our experiences. There’s almost an unspoken code that we all know it’s an act.

Maybe that’s “modern life”, but to me such an instrumental approach seem a wasted opportunity to get to know another human being and quite a strange social reality. As with everything, there’s a balance, and the pace of life now may “demand” an economising of social connection in order to get things done, but the way Emerson spoke of Friendship resonates with me more strongly:

“Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fibre of the human heart. The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and of morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit, to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters must ripen.”

“Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man. Let us not have this childish luxury in our regards, but the austerest worth; let us approach our friend with an audacious trust in the truth of his heart, in the breadth, impossible to be overturned, of his foundations.”

“Let him be to thee for ever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devoutly revered, and not a trivial conveniency to be soon outgrown and cast aside.”

There’s a lot more to the Essay but, to me, it’s essentially describing a more fundamental perspective of knowing who you are and relating that to the mystery of others. Emerson seems to have been looking to what it means to be truly human, which seems an interesting challenge we are now facing.

I know that modern life and professional connections in particular don’t really lend themselves to that level of connection, but it would be nice overall if the social fabric of our times was a little more honest and authentic.

Reference: ‘Friendship’ in “Essays” by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, Bungay, Suffolk) originally published in 1841. A copy of this essay is available online at www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm.

This post refers to the text “Towards a New World View: Conversations on the Leading Edge” edited by Russell E. DiCarlo, published in 1996.

Clearly this isn’t an overly recent book and it isn’t one that seems to have much of a following from what I can gather online, but it’s a nice starting point for considering how we live and the kinds of reasoning behind that.

The book takes a conversational format and explores what was ‘new thinking’ back in the late nineties and still remains pretty far from generally accepted ideas today. Russell E. DiCarlo interviews people from across the fields of human activity – history, philosophy, medicine, psychology, science, business and education, among others. He takes an intelligent, open minded, curious, informed approach to exploring these areas of interest and enquiry, and in doing so he raises so many fascinating and beautiful questions and possibilities.

For me, as I say, it’s a great starting point for looking at what ideas, assumptions and beliefs underpin an individual world view and how we might go about taking a more conscious role in crafting how we look at the world and our existence within it.

With books like this published before the widespread advent of technology, what I find particularly valuable is that the impending transformation of society is anticipated but discussed within a time where people still engaged mainly with more tangible ideas and approaches to life. Often with writing after the spread of technology this sense of groundedness disappears, as people respond to specific realities or try to understand the rapidly-changing phenomena of modern life.

As with podcasts, the interview format adds a beautiful human dimension to this quest for knowledge – between the lines of the questioning, the exploration of ideas and the paths these conversations take, real human beings with genuine concerns and insight and an often passionate faith in the potential of the future emerge. It comes across as a real celebration of humanity and also models a wonderful form of communication – a process of mutual discovery rather than an attempt to convince.

There are also firm calls to more awakened engagement with our way of living and the risks and pitfalls that could be approaching. There are conversations around crisis and chaos and the breakdown of civilisation, but also of potential paths to take through that – I see much of this as building bridges from where we were to where we are and where we are hopefully heading.

Overall it’s deeply empowering: that we all have a role to play, that our participation in life matters and that if we open our minds and loosen our rigid judgements there can be room for a very inclusive and progressive future.

I haven’t done it justice, but I love this book simply in terms of raising reasonable questions many of us may not have thought to ask.

Reference: “Towards a New World View: Conversations on the Leading Edge”, Russell E. DiCarlo, Publisher (UK) Floris Books. A selection of interviews also seems to have been made available through the healthy.net website.