Love & Work
A notebook about how we work, learn, love and live.
As the days and nights get colder our garden is putting on an encore. In front of a backdrop of blooming grasses, flowers that had gone by weeks ago are taking the stage one more time. Some of June's day-lilies are showing their faces again, as are July's coneflowers, August's black-eyed Susans, and even roses.
Change can be so assuring.
Happy Friday.
How We Live
How the myth of human exceptionalism cut us off from nature
"For much of human’s time on the planet, before the great delusion, we lived in cultures that understood us not as “masters of the universe” but as what my Haudenosaunee neighbors call 'the younger brothers of creation.'
"Long before Aristotle placed our species atop the anthropocentric Scale of Nature, long before Western religions declared that only humans were made in the image of God, the peoples of Turtle Island were guided by the kincentric worldview of 'all my relations.' It is a philosophy and set of practices based on knowing that the same life force animates us all and binds us as relatives—tree people, bird people, and human people. This kincentric way of being grew from the understanding that we are linked in webs of reciprocity, where the survival of one depends upon the survival of the other. Simultaneously scientific and spiritual, this way of thinking has evolutionary adaptive value in guiding ecological relationships toward mutual flourishing.
"But a few centuries ago—an eyeblink of time in the lifetime of our species—humans forgot this truth and began an unwitting social experiment in worldview. The Western world seems to have asked the question 'What would happen if we believed in a pyramid of human exceptionalism, the notion that our species stands alone at the top of the biological hierarchy, fundamentally different and superior to all others? What if a single species, out of the millions who inhabit the planet, was somehow more deserving of the richness of the Earth than any other?'" - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Book Excerpt: Portraits of Earth Justice: Americans Who Tell the Truth
Futures Thinking
"We may well look back upon 2022 as that moment when the global simultaneity of climate calamity finally crossed an epistemic threshold."
 Apollo 11 astronauts took this photo of Earth on July 20, 1969. NASA/Flickr
In a recent issue of NOEMA, editor Nathan Gardels suggests that just maybe complacency is over and political will has arrived. But, our previous complacency leads to a conundrum.
"The same political will that has moved the needle beyond complacency now faces new conundrums that only emerge as newfound climate awareness clashes with the carbon infrastructure upon which growth and prosperity still largely rests.
"Examples abound. To compensate for the lost generation capacity from hydroelectric dams due to the drought in Sichuan, China looks to plug the gap in demand with new coal-fired power that will only worsen the warming that causes drought in the first place. As gas supplies from Russia to Germany dwindle, one of the otherwise greenest polities in the world is compelled to bring mothballed coal-fired plants back online to warm winter homes and turn the faltering turbines of industry.
"Resolving these quandaries in favor of sustainability is where the rubber meets the road, where political will meets political skill. Balancing the interests of present constituencies against future repercussions is the key challenge on the immediate horizon, when time has become an ethical dimension as the window to avoid an irreparable cascade of climate consequences is closing."
"...Despite the present obstacles and so far unresolved conundrums, the globally simultaneous experience we are living through today would seem to inexorably precipitate synchronous cooperation around convergent imperatives shared by all." - Nathan Gardels
Article: A Premonition Of The Planetary Future
How We Live
How did the word "utopian” become associated with negative connotations like impossibility, naïveté, and dunderheadedness?
The Oneida Community, a 19th-century polyamorous Christian socialist community in upstate New York.
"As a Victorian literature scholar, I’m a little surprised at how pejoratively the word 'utopian' is used today. Because I immerse myself in another historical period for my research and teaching, I am forced to move back and forth, somewhat vertiginously, between the Olden Times I study and the present moment; just like H. G. Wells’s Time Traveller, I sometimes find it takes a few moments to blink away the 'veil of confusion' occasioned by my most recent trip home from the nineteenth century. For the Victorians the word 'utopian' did not carry the negative connotations of impossibility, naïveté, and dunderheadedness that it does for us now—the writers and thinkers who used that word were for the most part engaged in actual utopian projects, whether literal or literary (or both)...Why, and how did we turn our backs on utopia? Or have we?" - Deanna Kreisel
Article: Whence, Wherefore, Whither Utopia?
How We Live
How to shift the mindset around climate action from mitigation to net positivity: empower women
 W+ Standard
"If we want to solve the climate crisis, we must empower women — just ask the United Nations and SB Brands for Good, both of which have called it out as a top priority in creating a flourishing future. Giving young women and girls an education and support in family planning, and bolstering women-run businesses are fundamental to adapting to our changing planet and reversing global environmental destruction.
"Don’t take our word for it: Women’s empowerment as an effective climate solution was also highlighted by Paul Hawken’s climate-mitigation plan, Project Drawdown, dubbed 'the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming.' In it, he describes 100 solutions — ranking them in order of their potential to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Alongside the usual suspects — shifting to renewable energy and regenerative agriculture, and reducing food waste — are educating girls and family planning, ranked sixth and seventh, respectively." - Tom Idle
Article: Quantifying the Benefits of Women’s Empowerment: The Missing Metric for Game-Changing Climate Action
Learning
Every human brain is different. Our individual experiences of the world are different too.
"It may seem as though the world just pours itself directly into our minds through the transparent windows of our eyes and our ears. But psychologists have long known that perception is not simply a “read out” of sensory information. We are strongly influenced by context. From the effect of shadows on how we perceive the brightness of a surface, to our tendency to interpret facial expressions depending on what we think is happening, context permeates all our conscious experiences, and it does so in a way that we are typically never aware of.
"Some researchers, myself included, go even further. Instead of context merely influencing the contents of perception, the idea here – which builds on the legacy of the great German polymath Hermann von Helmholtz – is that perceptual experience is built from the top down, with the incoming (bottom-up) sensory signals mostly fine-tuning the brain’s “best guesses” of what’s out there. In this view, the brain is continually making predictions about the causes of the sensory information it receives, and it uses that information to update its predictions. In other words, we live in a “controlled hallucination” that remains tied to reality by a dance of prediction and correction, but which is never identical to that reality.
"A striking consequence of this is that since we all have different brains, making slightly different best guesses, we will all have different perceptual experiences too – even if we are faced with the same objective external reality. Just as the blueness of the sky may be different for each of us, all our experiences may differ – does a peach taste the same to me as to you? Unlike our external differences, differences in perception are private, subjective – hidden beneath the common language we use to describe them." - Anil Seth
Article: The Big Idea: Do We All Experience the World in the Same Way?
History
The Hindu ascetic who promoted a more inclusive vision of religion
Vivekananda at the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions (front row, second from right) Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
"One morning in September 1893, a 30-year-old Indian man sat on a curb on Chicago’s Dearborn Street wearing an orange turban and a rumpled scarlet robe. He had come to the United States to speak at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, part of the famous World Columbian Exposition. The trouble was, he hadn’t actually been invited. Now he was spending nights in a boxcar and days wandering around a foreign city. Unknown in America, the young Hindu man, named Vivekananda, was a revered spiritual teacher back home. By the time he left Chicago, he had accomplished his mission: to present Indian culture as broader, deeper and more sophisticated than anyone in the U.S. realized.
"Every American and European who dabbles in meditation or yoga today owes something to Vivekananda. Before his arrival in Chicago, no Indian guru had enjoyed a global platform quite like a world’s fair. Americans largely saw India as an exotic corner of the British Empire, filled with tigers and idol worshippers. The Parliament of the World’s Religions was meant to be a showcase for Protestantism, particularly mainline groups like Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and Episcopalians."
"...Vivekananda spent many of his remaining years traveling around the U.S. and Europe. He died of mysterious causes in 1902, at the age of 39. But generations of Indian gurus who traveled to the West went on to follow his highly successful approach, whether visiting British spiritualist societies or lecturing to middle-aged audiences in Los Angeles living rooms. In the 1960s, the Beatles launched a more youthful wave of interest when they visited India. But the underlying message of teachers from the East has changed little since Vivekananda’s first visit: The individual is cosmic, and meditation and yoga are universal tools for experiencing that underlying reality, compatible with any culture or religion." - Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
Article: The Indian Guru Who Brought Eastern Spirituality to the West
Innovation, Sustainability
Impossible, meet Five Guys
This one was pretty easy to see coming.
Article: The Half-Meat-Half-Veggie Burger Is Here
One-liners
Article: Pop-Up libraries are helping Melbourne move on from lockdowns
Article: How public spaces can keep small businesses open
Article: Cars are vanishing from Paris
Article: A Denver dance company quit social media. Their subscriptions are soaring
Playlist
This week my friend, Vincent Valvo, told me that while listening to one of his favorite radio stations, WUMB, a window showing the playlist triggered some interest. He clicked it to find this: RUMBLE, The Indians Who Rocked the World. I’m sure you will be familiar with the opening guitar instrumental. From one of Vincent's favorite DJs:
"I love having my mind opened. Over the holiday weekend I discovered a film on one of the streaming services called Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World. It was released in 2017, so perhaps I’m a bit late to the game. The focus of the film is to reveal the indigenous roots of North American music of the 20th century, from Charley Patton to Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis and Robbie Robertson. The stories in the film are fascinating and add to the weave of histories and complexities that make 20th century North American music so wonderful." - Brendan Hogan
As Little Stevie says at the end of this trailer: "From Charlie Patton to Link Wray; Robbie Robertson invented the field; Jimi Hendrix, the best in his field; Jesse Ed Davis, everybody wanted him. Well that's interesting, isn't it?"
I had no idea that Charley Patton’s Delta blues were rooted in indigenousness chants. But I'm going to listen differently now. Thanks Brendan, thanks Vincent.
Article: RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World
Movie Trailer: RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World – Official Trailer
Image of the Week
A photograph titled Hildegarde repairing the windows posted on the subreddit r/AccidentalRenaissance by u/AL-Walker
"Welcome to r/AccidentalRenaissance, the subreddit that showcases photographs that inadvertently resemble well-composed Renaissance style art. We recognize that there are many related art movements between the 14th and 19th centuries including: Baroque, Neo-classicism, Romantic, Dutch Golden Age, amongst others. All of these styles are appreciated and welcomed within this subreddit!"
subreddit: Today's Photos on Yesterday's Canvas
What's Love & Work?
Love & Work is the weekly newsletter by me, Mitch Anthony. I help people use their brand - their purpose, values, and stories - as a pedagogy and toolbox for transformation.
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