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Undoing Agency
Podcasts Channel
Our world is rife with growing polarisation. Not just politically but also in relation to where we are and where we want to be. Between the have and have nots. Between needs and resources available. Between the action required to prevent environmental collapse and the action being taken. Between the capacity to affect change and the need for change. Between noise and signal. Between content and context.
Why is the most complex object in the universe, the human brain, failing to adequately address these highly complex problems of its own making? This is a Zen koan for the Anthropocene. It’s a lived koan, taking a heavy toll on our general well-being and mental health.
How do we solve it? Same koan, no? More content creation on which to ruminate, to discrepancy process. More thoughts to think. What other capacity does the brain have other than to point and name and compare?
There is one advantage to the capacity, unique to humans, of pointing and naming. We can make an orthogonal shift – a 180 turn in our pointing and follow where that finger directs. Not towards more content creation – things to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think about, feel about, experience, understand, and eventually know. No. Rather, towards context – that which is seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, thinking, feeling, knowing, experiencing. A destination ultimately unknowable.
Undoing Agency is about context orientation. So whatever content we create is to orient towards context. Context can't be consumed. It is our undoing.
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