Saving the World (Together with Everybody Else)

Overview

When?

5th April - 2nd May 2023

What?

When a few people spend as much time discussing a big question as they would watching a super-hero movie, often somebody overhearing them will make the cliched remark:

“so, have you saved the world?”

The remark’s ironic implication is, basically, that big picture discussions of better societies are exercises in fantasy or delusion — inconsequential imagination done for their own sake.

This residency challenges this attitude, seeing big topic conversations as a crucial job of citizens in a democracy. It will feature emotionally aware dialogue about our societies’ greatest challenges and our part in responding to them. These will be held with humility, curiosity, and a sense of duty to our fellow humans, future generations and life on Earth. As in all residencies, these practices will be woven into a daily routine that allows residents to work a job remotely with group cooking, dance, walks and more. Group inquiry sessions take place in the evening and will be held with attention to our intention and emotional balance.

The ideal participants will be looking to use the conversations to help fuel their own decisions about how they personally will be part of something larger.

The Life Itself practice hub is, itself, a concrete place that started with a "saving the world conversation" and with ideas that were put into practice. It exists to create a space for the culture of tomorrow, which embraces the poetic/spiritual and the intellectual. This residency is not about privileging the intellectual but giving it its place and interweaving it with the "practical" and poetic.

Where

The Life Itself Praxis Hub in Bergerac, France.

Democracy cannot work without intense discussion and moral imagination of possibilities that nobody, alone, can make real. So isn't our aversion to looking at the big picture a major reason why so many now think our world is in peril? The trick is to see and imagine oneself as deeply a part of something larger, rather than as "the one" who must change everything. We’re living in a time when searching podcasts for new perspectives is mainstream. Millions of people are dreaming of a better world, right now as you read this. Let's be both humble and serious about it.

The dismissive attitude towards big discussions was a hallmark of post-modernity — defined by acceptance of lives that we don’t believe in. The next cultural era is starting as business-as-usual, politics-as-usual, and thinking-as-usual have lost their aura of invincibility. Come and join us in preparing for your perspective, imagination and emotion for the exciting times ahead!

Emotionally, we will also prepare ourselves to be open-minded with embodied practices and bohmian dialoguing. We will deal with the resistance to imagining a better world because this creates disappointment with life as it is.

The Arc of the residency will move over the weeks from a start with a sense of grounding and discussion of the immediate threats of the polycrisis and misinformation to the wider arc of cultural change.

Facilitators

The residency will be faciliated by Life Itself co-founder, Liam Kavanagh and Victoria Wilding.

Liam Kavanagh

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Liam is a cognitive and social scientist and co-founder of Life Itself, and co-director of the Climate Majority Project a climate organisation devoted to spreading consensus for serious climate action across cultural boundaries. He draws on cogntive scientific, meta-modern theory, contemplative practices, and collective wisdom to navigate the tensions that immobilise cultural imagination. His book with Perspectiva "beyond the shadows of the enligthenment" explores how contemplative practices such as Zen can help us to actually move past addictions to ideas of (over)rationality, individualism and moral superiority by addressing their emotional roots (like ad addiction) rather than disputing them on an intellectual level. He also loves to dance and cook.

Learn more about Liam and his work here.

Victoria Wilding

victoria-wilding

Victoria is an evolutionary activist with a particular interest in advancing human development. Her focus is on the development of a new level of psychological management and its importance to facilitating large scale systems change. She believes humanity needs to consciously and intentionally develop their social, emotional and cognitive capacities to envision and build systems that serve all life on the planet.

Victoria is most well known for her breakthrough work synthesizing practice and knowledge around presence and meta-systemic cognition. She is quick to get to the core of an individual’s thinking and facilitates deep understanding, new perspectives and innovative solutions.

While Victoria brings enormous and credible knowledge and experience to the table, her real magic exists in her presence. Victoria is wildly irreverent, fun, and always a straight shooter. She has an unparalleled ability is to get right to the heart of a matter with profound compassion and breathtaking clarity.

Learn more about Victoria and her work here

Questions – To be questioned, changed, and added to by participants.

Big Questions:

World Care:

As the climate change and biodiversity crises become too obvious to ignore, is the time ripe for a new politics that can help to address larger issues and unite a polarised society?
How can a widespread cultural movement toward a saner balance of having and doing (emphasizing things and accomplishments) with “being” (appreciation of life and finding content) be built.

Self Care

How can we work for social transformation without falling into delusional “messiah complex” taking the weight of the world on our shoulders? Is messianism an outcome of pathological individualism?
Likewise how do we use reason without “fixing”? Is fixing an outcome of inflated belief in our intellect?
Can daily imaginative awareness of ourselves as part of something larger address our feelings of smallness?
How do we draw motivation from our moral imagination?

Some “Smaller” questions:

Can political identity be (re)built around pragmatism and integration of different viewpoints?
How can we understand skepticism towards opinions of “elite” middle-class urban educated people who dominate environmentalism (and likely are most of our participants), and asking what we need to do to be more trust-worthy.
Why do we need to plan for a movement towards slowing down and appreciating what we have (“just being”)?
How do we find synergy between global warming, "poly-crisis" and prosocial culture change?
Is “worldwide awakening” really a viable strategy?
Being realistic about the gravity of climate and biodiversity predicaments and the political inaction behind them v. The need for optimism. Not being bound either by the myth of certain progress or trapped by opposition to it.
Maintaining commitment to social justice on the world stage without becoming immobilised by hopes and demands for unattainable perfect climate justice.
Taking advantage of improved technology while not simply depending on technology and market forces to achieve transition.

We will set the big questions together, and the rules. The important principles that will be used are:

Building understanding together rather than competing to be in the right.
Listening deeply and responding to what people actually say, steelmanning not strawmanning.
Respect for the importance of the intellect, and humility about its limits.
An ideal of free discussion between skilled conversationalists, who do not need to be bound by rules because of their grace and skill, and a pragmatic acceptance that rules are often helpful because none of us are perfectly graceful or skillful.
Experimenting with various methods of discussion.

Some examples of world saving questions are below. Which ones we explore will be negotiated among participants.

How do we address polarisation?
How can we address global warming?
How can we promote recognition of the value of all life?
How do we address the massive economic equality, racism and historical injustices that are rife across the globe?
How can education be done much better?
How can societies be happier and live in harmony with each other?
What is consciousness and will changing attitudes towards it change civilisation?

Apply now!

Price

850-1200 GBP for the whole month, including all food. Partial stays are possible.

The principles of this residency

We will respect the importance of the intellect, while also trying to be pragmatic and humble.

Accepting the importance of “the life of the mind”, even if it is exaggerated in our culture.
Asking questions that matter to the joy and suffering of living beings.
Realising that thinking about big questions should be a responsibility in a democratic society, even if it is in practice a privilege accorded to few. (see below for more on these points)
Not being ashamed of big words and complex ideas, while not being indulgent.
Accepting that intellectual indulgence is something real, but that throwing this or related terms around has a chilling effect.
Refraining from long lectures about anyone’s superior practicality.

We will do our utmost to have discussions that are really about getting somewhere together rather than scoring points.

Respond to things that others actually say, rather than what we would like them to have said, so that we can have a devastating argument.
Making sure we understand thoughts correctly, before contradicting them.
Having good taste about when we interrupt one another.
- For example, somebody may “go on” too much. There’s no right answer about when to interrupt them, but there is good taste and bad taste.
Assuming that others mean the smartest things that they might mean, given the inevitably manifold interpretations of their words. (steelmanning)
Appreciating one anothers contributions, and diverse perspectives, especially their civility and even-handedness.

Having an ideal of free discussion between skilled conversationalists, who do not need to be bound by rules because of their grace and skill, while accepting that rules are often helpful because none of us are perfectly graceful or skillful.

Experimenting with various methods of discussion:

Bohmian dialogue where participants speak with mindfulness is one tool we will use.
So is good old fashioned civil “good faith” debate and discussion where sides promote opposing views but with respect, rather than adversariality.

We’ve all been there: the conversation turns to the big picture, what a wonderful world we could have if we could just set our mind to it? Why does the better world we imagine elude us? Why can’t we make it like this? Why is our society seemingly in disarray? The questions come fast and furious.

Apply now.