The Ecology of Communication: Moving Beyond Polarization in Service of Life | Reality Roundtable 10
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2024
⏱️ 109 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
(Conversation recorded on June 14th, 2024)
Show Summary:
There's a growing understanding of the need for biodiversity across ecosystems for a healthy and resilient biosphere. What if we applied the same principles to the way we communicate and use language to relate to each other and the world?
Today Nate is joined by Nora Bateson, Rex Weyler, Vanessa Andreotti, and Daniel Schmachtenberger to talk about the ecology of communication. This important conversation addresses some of the traps and pitfalls of modern relating, including the use of increasingly performative language and the erosion of authentic connection, both of which can leave us feeling isolated from one another. The panelists then offer ideas for how to shift from this axis of polarization into a space of mutual learning together, no matter how disparate each other's views may seem at first glance
What if we were to start conversations from a place of commonality, without choosing sides, to create more inquisitive exchanges that lead us to deeper insights about one another amidst a cacophonous world? Why is it crucial to consider the broader context in which conversations unfold - nestled within people, ideas, and cultures - in order to fully grasp the complexity of the relationships that connect us all? How would shifting the way we communicate help us ask the right questions about the species-level challenges we face, and better equip us to hear the answers?
About Nora Bateson:
Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, as well as President of the International Bateson Institute, based in Sweden. Her work asks the question "How can we improve our perception of the complexity we live within, so we may improve our interaction with the world?"
An international lecturer, researcher and writer, Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her 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. Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles, released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016 is a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity.
About Rex Weyler:
Rex Weyler is a writer and ecologist. His books include Blood of the Land, a history of indigenous American nations, nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; Greenpeace: The Inside Story, a finalist for the BC Book Award and the Shaughnessy-Cohen Award for Political Writing; and The Jesus Sayings, a deconstruction of first century history, a finalist for the BC Book Award.
In the 1970s, Weyler was a cofounder of Greenpeace International and editor of the Greenpeace Chronicles. He served on campaigns to preserve rivers and forests, and to stop whaling, sealing, and toxic dumping. He currently posts the "Deep Green" column at the Greenpeace International website.
About Vannessa Andreotti:
Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change and a former David Lam Chair in Critical Multicultural Education. Vanessa has more than 100 published articles in areas related to global and climate education. She has also worked extensively across sectors internationally in projects related to global justice, global citizenship, Indigenous knowledge systems and the climate and nature emergency. Vanessa is the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism, one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective and one of the designers of the course Facing Human Wrongs: Climate Complexity and Relational Accountability, available at UVic through Continuing Studies.
About Daniel Schmachtenberger:
Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue. The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal.
Towards these ends, he's had a particular interest in catastrophic and existential risk, with focuses on civilization collapse and institutional decay. His work also includes an analysis of progress narratives, collective action problems, and social organization theories. These themes are all connected through close study of the relevant domains in philosophy and science.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I want to invite you to think about the question, are we holding each other trapped in various forms of communication? |
| 0:14.0 | And what kind of colonialism, industrialism, mechanistic processes, these habits that run so deeply into ideas of effectiveness, |
| 0:25.1 | of optimized productivity, so that what we are actually doing is trapping each other. |
| 0:32.5 | So growing up in the 70s in California, there was a whole lot of people who were working |
| 0:37.2 | toward the |
| 0:37.8 | betterment of the individual. And there was a question, how do I be a better person? I've pushed |
| 0:46.4 | that to a different question, which is, who can you be when you're with me? Who can I be when |
| 0:51.8 | I'm with you? And already in those questions, we're looking at a much more |
| 0:56.7 | ecological question, right? When you're in context with me, how do you shift? What stories do you |
| 1:02.7 | tell? What tonalities do you use? What comes to mind? What do I remind you of? Right? This whole |
| 1:09.7 | world comes to life in our relationships. |
| 1:16.9 | You're listening to The Great Simplification. I'm Nate Higgins. On this show, we describe how |
| 1:22.8 | energy, the economy, the environment and human behavior all fit together and what it might mean for our future. |
| 1:30.2 | By sharing insights from global thinkers, we hope to inform and inspire more humans to play |
| 1:36.2 | emergent roles in the coming great simplification. |
| 1:52.9 | How do you communicate in your own life and how does your unique perspective on the human predicament, climate change, the meta-crisis, interact, conflict, differ, or merge with others |
| 2:00.5 | in different environments? How can we nurture better conversations |
| 2:04.8 | and what does it even mean for a conversation to be better? Today's conversation is with four |
| 2:10.5 | individuals who are all uniquely bringing their voices and perspectives to the metacrisis space |
| 2:15.6 | and to the questions I just asked. |
| 2:22.1 | They also all happen to be friends of mine and former guests on the Great Simplification. |
| 2:45.7 | This conversation, I've said that word four times already, focuses on the ecology of communication, more specifically, taking a closer look, not at the problems our culture faces per se, but how we discuss the problems and what we might do in the future to create more diverse, vibrant and productive conversations in service of life. |
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