I’d like to dedicate my work as a researcher and consultant to playfulness and active participation – what does it take to notice and support what’s valuable and interesting to myself and others, wherever I go? Here and now, through the depth of my home place, in inspiring interactions and journeys through strange places.
I experience a lot of trust and curiosity for the world in which we genuinely encounter and act together with the concrete others that make up our environment.
For example:
What does an education look like that is focused on following and honing everybody’s particular curiosity? Learning and developing skills and interests in relation to diverse (resource-full) environments and others.
How could organisation and government evolve around assisting exchange and collaboration within a specific ecology / group of people or beings that are bound together through shared vulnerability and interest? Supportive infrastructure – platforms and habits – regularly updated routines that help us reflect on our values and put them into (best) practice.
What would it be like to watch/hear/read news that prepare and prompt us to reflect and act more fully towards the developments of our time? Stories that build bridges between diverse everyday lives, that expand and inspire individual meaning-making.
How can research be a practice and tradition that deeply invests us into the habitats and ongoing needs of diverse populations? Long-term commitment that braids finely honed observation and analysis skills with hands on experimentation and embodied creativity.
A number of shifts may be needed to ‘re-imagine’ these branches of societal activity as such:
- “connecting to self”: moving away from defending, emanating and demanding neutrality (an objective stance), towards clearly articulating one’s viewpoint and approach.
- “connecting to other”: moving away from knowing and informing (top-down), towards asking questions, building and sharing lessons learnt together, at eye’s level.
- “connecting to environment”: moving away from purchasing (industrial goods produced around the globe) and complying (with rules and regulations instantiated by distant powers), towards co-creating an ‘eco-logical’ lifestyle: developing sensitivity to what is available through and around us, as participants to rich and diverse webs of bioregional activity.
- “staying in inquiry and continuous development”: moving away from performing, competing and leading, towards skilful relating. Practicing listening as an activity, being able to sustain murkiness (lack of clear goal or frame – embodied transformation takes time), leaving space for the unknown/other (step by step dialogical development), acting so as to invite exchange and support (response-ability).