What is a Good Life? #98 - Embracing Ambiguity with Nora Bateson

Nora Bateson, is an award-winning filmmaker, research designer, writer, educator, international lecturer, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute based in Sweden. She is the creator of the Warm Data theory and practices. Nora’s work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems. She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father Gregory Bateson.

Her first book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity. In her latest second book Combining, Nora invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity.

She was the recipient of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity in 2019.

In this engaging conversation, we delve into the dangers of certainty and the pursuit of fixed answers, exploring how moving beyond polarities can lead to mutual learning and understanding. We discuss the weaponisation of language, the impact of divisive discourse, and how more generative and sacred communication can guide us toward deeper connection and shared presence.

This conversation invites you to engage more fully with life as it is—its beauty and its horror, its creativity and its destruction. It’s a call to hold life’s complexity with openness, to embrace it, and to let it go as the flow of life continues to unfold.

For further content and information check out the following:
- Nora's Warm Data work: https://www.warmdata.life/
- Nora's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nora-bateson-b4a2456/
- The International Bateson Institute website: https://batesoninstitute.org/nora-bateson/

- For the What is a Good Life? podcast's YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/@whatisagoodlife/videos
- My newsletter: https://www.whatisagood.life/
- My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mccartney-14b0161b4/

Contact me at mark@whatisagood.life if you'd like to explore your own lines of self-inquiry through 1-on-1 coaching, take part in my weekly free silent conversations, discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your leadership teams, or you simply want to get in touch.

00:00 Teaser
01:43 Introduction
04:50 How not to get caught looking for answers
09:43 A quest for systems change

13:30 Holding possibility open

17:50 Taking a stand and taking a stance

20:15 The significance of how we communicate 

24:50 Belonging, certainty, and polarity

30:50 The problem of grabbing answers

37:23 Generative and sacred communication

42:35 Paying attention to moment and context

48:20 Practice of improvisation

55:30 The implications of concrete answers

01:02:58 What is a good life for Nora?