Empathy. Not only empathy for humans, but also for non-humans. What empathy routines and practices? What empathy tools and technologies? What empathy machines? Like the Decoded Neurofeedback (DecNef) / fMRI-based machine deployed in Richard Power’s novel Bewilderment, what technologies might alter our neural pathways and mental states to increase human empathy for non-humans?
Humility. Text…
Kinship. Text…
Reciprocity. Text…
Punk Culture. Text…
Slow Food. Text…
Description. Text…
The Humbling Sciences. The Human Sciences: those that amplify our ability to control and master and manipulate our situation on Earth (and to understand ourselves). The Humbling Sciences: those that point our attention away from ourselves and onto other living things. The Humbling Sciences are moving our conception of what the living world is from one totally dominated by evolution through competition to one that begins to acknowledge just how important hybridity, cooperation, and interdependence are for evolution. Sure, competition is everywhere in nature, but so too is symbiosis. What were talking about here is the New New Synthesis (aka. the Extended Synthesis). They include (among others) critical zone sciences, earth system science, dendrology, bryology, pedology, mycology, ecology, but also environmental and natural history. I sometimes think of these as the “Othering” Sciences.
Richard Powers. Text…
Curiosity. Text…
Spectrum Thinking. Recognizing Divergence/Difference/Diversity. As a counterbalance to normalizing, correcting, and medicating. How else are we going to get out of our current mess? We need a broad(er) spectrum of ways of thinking we consider acceptable, logical, reasonable. Genetic diversity makes it more likely a particular species will successfully survive an natural selection event. Why wouldn’t we embrace diverse ways of thinking?
Anthropology. See Ingold’s Anthropology and/as Education, but also the success of Latour’s anthropology of science (science studies)
Awe/Amazement. Text…
Anna Tsing. Text…
Old Growth Forests. Text…
Translation. Latour highlighted the value of “translation tables” used by an Egyptologist to show how Alexandrians moved through a highly diverse society. Acts of translation, although laden with deformation and corruption, might be one of our greatest technologies for generating greater empathy (“Ah, I see now, what you call X is what I call Y. Our difference is also a commonality.”).
Amplification. It’s time to stop reducing: Let’s amplify. Let’s diversify. Let’s multiply. Let’s complexify. Let’s resuscitate. Let’s vivify.
Wonder. Text…
Bruno Latour. Text…
Creativity. Text…
Environmental Humanities. Text…
Education. Schooling, we should remember, is not the same as education. Education consists in what a community does to promote learning and understanding of what it values. Schooling is a particular technology for doing education in some human communities, but it is by no means the only educational technology available to us. Education still makes sense to me, but most schools no longer do. Education still ignites my passions, but most schooling no longer does. We urgently need new technologies for doing education.
