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Thomas Hübl sits down with celebrated speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, and author Bayo Akomolafe to explore the leading edges of spiritual thinking and human identity. Bayo is a deeply experimental thinker, informed by the African cosmologies of the Yoruba and Igbo traditions. He leads an exploration into a new paradigm of healing that de-centers the individual to focus on the village, on the communal. He and Thomas discuss how modernity, especially in Western cultures, creates a false dichotomy between spirituality and science, pathologizes behavior that should instead be integrated, and offers a reductive, motionless view of the self. Bayo offers a different perspective, one in which the self or the psyche is always moving in an interconnected dance with our lineages, with evolution, and with the mysteries of the material realm. Bayo also explores how modern spiritual models contribute to systems of oppression, stressing the importance of spaciousness, non-conformity, and relationality in spiritual thinking and practice. Click here to watch the video version of this episode on YouTube:
On this episode of the Planetary Regeneration Podcast, host Gregory Landua sits down with philosopher and poet Bayo Akomolafe during a Regen Network retreat at Race Brook Lodge. Together they explore AI as trickster, the sacredness of incompleteness, and what it means to build tools for ecological governance in a world unraveling. From Yoruba cosmology to Karen Barad's agential realism, this conversation weaves themes of decoloniality, relationality, and the possibility of new rituals in the cracks of modernity. Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) is an author, speaker, and founder of the Emergence Network. Trained as a clinical psychologist and rooted in Yoruba tradition, his work invites us to meet the world differently. X: @gregory_landua LinkedIn: @bayoakomolafe
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
The Creative Process in 10 minutes or less · Arts, Culture & Society
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
LOVE - What is love? Relationships, Personal Stories, Love Life, Sex, Dating, The Creative Process
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Today, we present a wild and flowering conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers, and theobiologians Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand. This conversation is from a 2022 SAND Community Gathering. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it here (with SAND Membership). In Greek Mythology, the Titan Kronos eats an indigestible stone and vomits up the new Olympic pantheon of gods. In our current time, people planted in stratigraphic layers of shared trauma find themselves uniquely ill – physically and mentally. We are unable to digest food and unable to digest violence. What if indigestion – practical and mythical – was a sign that a new world was threatening to be born? The very basis of our nucleated cells is an ancient botched bacterial cannibalism. What if our inability to digest certain injustices was an invitation to vomit up a new pantheon? And in an age when we are all threaded through with microplastics and blood pressure stabilizers, what does it mean to start to physically grow into new shapes around incursions we cannot properly assimilate or expel? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Yet it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she'll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients. She is the author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine and The Madonna Secret. She is also finishing a collection of essays about navigating an incurable genetic disease and early trauma through ecological storytelling. You can subscribe to her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com, and follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com. Topics 00:00 Introduction and Welcome 01:35 Introducing Dr. Bayo Akomolafe 04:11 Introducing Sophie Strand 06:35 Starting the Conversation: New Gods in Challenging Times 13:54 Exploring Mispronunciation and Evolution 27:27 Animist Perspectives on Trauma 28:17 Healing in Yoruba Culture 30:29 Bioelectric Signals and Embryogenesis 35:40 The Role of Trickster Gods 38:26 Invasive Species and Ecosystem Dynamics 47:25 Disability as an Invitation to Community 55:32 Concluding Thoughts on New Gods Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member
As we head into times where rising temperatures, superstorms, and mega-fires dominate the headlines, what has happened to our disaster-averting solutions? In this episode, we explore 'The Carbon Conundrum' and rethink our relationship with nature. Join host Jack Eidt as he features a discussion with post-humanist philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé and environmental leader and author Paul Hawken, moderated by Alex Forrester, Board Member of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and Co-Founder of Rising Tide capital. They delve into the failures of current climate strategies, the pitfalls of solutionism, and the importance of reconnecting with Traditional Ecological Knowledge. This enlightening conversation challenges listeners to reconsider their approaches to environmentalism and climate action. Support the Podcast via PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Paul Hawken [https://paulhawken.com/] starts ecological businesses, writes about nature and commerce. He has written nine books, including six national and NYT bestsellers: ‘Growing a Business', ‘The Next Economy', ‘The Ecology of Commerce', ‘Blessed Unrest', ‘Drawdown', and ‘Regeneration'. His latest book, ‘Carbon, The Book of Life', is available from Penguin RandomHouse in February 2025. Paul is the founder of Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration (https://regeneration.org/), which is the world's largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. Báyò Akómoláfé Ph.D., [https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/] rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is a posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo Akomolafe is the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene that seeks to convene new kinds of responsivities, sensuous solidarities, and experimental practices for a posthumanist parapolitics. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations. A frequent keynote speaker and guest lecturer, Dr. Akomolafe's critically popular expression, “the times are urgent, let us slow down,” with which he attempts to frame new concepts (such as ontofugitivity, the Afrocene, iatropolitics, curapoiesis, white syncopation, ecocognitive assemblage theory, postactivism and parapolitics) that reframe and renaturalize human action, agency, and responsibility in an immanent, agonistic worlding of possibilities for life-death. Dr. Akomolafe is a Member of the Club of Rome and an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. He is currently writing his third book, ‘An Ocean of Milk: Morality, Desire, and the Monster at the Edge of the World'. Jack Eidt is an urban planner, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. He is Co-Founder of SoCal 350 Climate Action and Executive Producer of EcoJustice Radio. He writes a column on PBS SoCal called High & Dry [https://www.pbssocal.org/people/high-dry]. He is also Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia [https://wilderutopia.com], a website dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Executive Producer and Host: Jack Eidt Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats Episode 249 Photo credit: Carbon book cover
For The Wild is thrilled to share that we're launching our second Slow Study with Bayo Akomolafe and The Emergence Network. These slow studies are a unique collaboration between The Emergence Network and For The Wild focused on making the We Will Dance With Mountains course accessible in an asynchronous, self-paced manner so you can embrace slowness and integration in your study. The segments featured in this Slow Study were recorded in 2023 as part of the We Will Dance With Mountains: Vunja! live sessions attended by over 1400 people around the world. We have edited the conversations and added supplementary materials so that you are able to go about this immersive, transformative course at your own pace.The full package includes eight audio sessions with lectures, practices, music, poetry, and conversation from Bayo and his brilliant crew of co-conspirators. These are accompanied by recorded practice prompts from Jiordi Rosales and a text-based coursebook with details on each session and additional extrapolations.For The Wild is deeply grateful to Bayo and our partners at The Emergence Network for this collaboration. We hope you enjoy this experience.Welcome to the carnival, let's dive into the cracks! Presale for the course launches today! The slow study course will officially launch on December 30th, and those who order during presale will receive the digital download of the course then. To celebrate those ordering early- use code SLOWSTUDY10 to take 10% off of your purchase. Visit forthewild.world/Vunja to learn more and purchase! Support the show
In this TIMELESS episode we hear from Sophie Strand and Bayo Akomolafe. Together, we explore how the sacred is less about certainty and mastery and more about dwelling in the unknown, the disruptive, and the in-between. As we open ourselves to this journey, we consider how unlearning and openness might guide us toward a deeper, more grounded sense of the sacred—one that emerges in moments of humility, fragility, and genuine encounter. “And I was thinking that, at least in my own situated experience, my approach to the sacred would be to flip the paradigm and to ask, what if the sacred researches you?” Sophie Strand As a writer, Sophie focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially between beings, ideas, differences, and mythical gradients. Bayo is a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor, and chief-curator of the Emergence Network. He curates this earth-wide project for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilisational crisis. We hope this TIMELESS episode invites you to pause and reflect on the sacred in new and unexpected ways. Links from this episode and more at allthatweare.org
When Wholeness Arrives with Bayo Akomolafe (Part 2)Ilia Delio and Bayo Akomolafe continue their conversation about navigating the legacy of modernity and our journey into the future as a species. Bayo shares his perspective on the legacies of ingenious thought—particularly how it's seen from the West. They ask, whether we ever arrive at wholeness? And what, if anything, does politics have to do with it?ABOUT BAYO AKOMOLAFE“The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.”Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he acts as the Forum's “provocateur in residence”, guiding Forum members in rethinking and reimagining our collective work towards justice in ways that reject binary thinking and easy answers. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Read his introduction penned for the Democracy & Belonging Forum here. To learn more about his work, visit Bayo's website at here, and view the work of the Emergence Network here.Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Support 'Hunger for Wholeness' on Patreon as our team continues to develop content for listeners to dive deeper. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
How (Post-)Humans Evolve with Bayo Akomolafe (Part 1)Ilia Delio is joined by the prolific writer and activist Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo shares with us about his Christian background, growing up as the son of a diplomat in Nigeria. Ilia asks Bayo about how he has uniquely wrestled with the legacy of modernity and Western thought and his own unique approach to process and post-humanist thought.ABOUT BAYO AKOMOLAFE“The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.”Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he acts as the Forum's “provocateur in residence”, guiding Forum members in rethinking and reimagining our collective work towards justice in ways that reject binary thinking and easy answers. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Read his introduction penned for the Democracy & Belonging Forum here. To learn more about his work, visit Bayo's website at here, and view the work of the Emergence Network here.Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Support 'Hunger for Wholeness' on Patreon as our team continues to develop content for listeners to dive deeper. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Bayo Akomolafe is a posthumanist thinker, philosopher, poet, author and founder of the Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. Through Bayo's writings, speeches, and work he inspires new ways of thinking and being in the world, inviting us to ask questions that undermine everything we are told to believe. * In this episode, Bayo is joined by artist, writer, mindfulness practitioner, facilitator, and emerging filmmaker Damali Robertson as they explore postactivism and how this concept, which is so imbued with possibility and creativity, can be supportive of pathways to healing. * This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 14th, 2024. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. * We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for growth, and that our listeners will use them as a starting point for further introspection. Many of the topics discussed on our podcast have the potential to bring up feelings and emotional responses. If you or someone you know is in need of mental health care and support, here are some resources to find immediate help and future healing: * -Visit 988lifeline.org or text, call, or chat with The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 from anywhere in the U.S. to be connected immediately with a trained counselor. Please note that 988 staff are required to take all action necessary to secure the safety of a caller and initiate emergency response with or without the caller's consent if they are unwilling or unable to take action on their own behalf. * -Visit thrivelifeline.org or text “THRIVE” to begin a conversation with a THRIVE Lifeline crisis responder 24/7/365, from anywhere: +1.313.662.8209. This confidential text line is available for individuals 18+ and is staffed by people in STEMM with marginalized identities. * -Visit translifeline.org or call (877) 565-8860 in the U.S. or (877) 330-6366 in Canada to learn more and contact Trans Lifeline, who provides trans peer support divested from police. * -Visit ciis.edu/ciis-in-the-world/counseling-clinics to learn more and schedule counseling sessions at one of our centers. * -Find information about additional global helplines at befrienders.org. * LINKS * Podcast Transcripts: https://www.ciispod.com/ * California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) Website: https://www.ciis.edu/ * CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ciispublicprograms * CIIS Public Programs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ciispubprograms/ * Mental Health Care and Support Resources: https://988lifeline.org/ https://thrivelifeline.org/ https://translifeline.org/ https://www.ciis.edu/ciis-in-the-world/counseling-clinics https://befrienders.org/
On this episode, my guest is Craig Slee, a disabled writer, consultant and theorist dealing with mythology, folklore, magic and culture, exploring life through the lens of landscape, disability and fugitive embodiments.He has contributed essays and poetry focusing on the numinous and disability to various anthologies including The Dark Mountain Journal. Craig has also co-facilitated multiple seminar series at the Dresden Academy for Fine Arts, regarding ableism in the arts, as well as how ableism affects our relationship to space. In 2023 he was one of the speakers at the World Futures Studies Federation 50th Anniversary Conference, introducing the concept of (Dis)abling Futures. Craig resides in the northwest of England.Show NotesCornwall and the Seasons Who Gets to Decide What it Means to Know a Place?The Folding in of Identity to TourismA Question of Productive vs Generative AbilityAbleism and AttentionFinger Bending and the Freedom of MovementRedefining and Remembering Other Forms of MovementWhat is Stillness?The Dance of MountainsObeying LimitsHomeworkCold Albion (Craig's Blog)Goetic Atavisms (Hadean Press)Craig's Blue Sky Page | Facebook PageTranscriptChris: Welcome to the End of Tourism, Craig. Craig: Thank you for having me. Chris: Yes, it's great to be able to speak with you today. I've been ruminating for a couple of years now as to the themes that we might speak of. And I was introduced to you via a mutual friend and have come closer to your work via the Emergence Network's online gathering, We Will Dance With Mountains, in the last quarter of 2023.And so, to begin, I'd like to ask you first where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you, where you are. Craig: Where I find myself today is by the canal in my flat, looking out the window, just as evenings coming in, in the northwest of England, in Lancaster, and it's chilly here which is actually a good thing, I guess, these days.Chris: Perhaps I could ask you to elaborate a little bit on what Lancaster looks like, but I know that, you know, from our conversations previous that you grew up [00:01:00] in Cornwall, a place that was previously, a town, an area devoted to fishing and mining, and from what you've told me, it's also become a massive tourist trap that you know, from the little that I've seen online, that the area receives around 5 million visitors a year, and tourism makes up about a quarter of the local economy.So I'm curious what you've seen change there and what do you think has happened to Cornwall and its people as a result and maybe there's something in there as well regarding Lancaster. Craig: Yeah, so I should emphasize this. I was born in Cornwall. My family has been lived down there for many many generations anyway and my father's side of the family actually, at various points, worked in the tourist trade as well before they went on to other things.And, [00:02:00] yeah, I mean, I left because, frankly, there was no jobs that weren't tourism. I came to Lancaster to study because one, I have a physical disability which means that Cornwall is a very rural area, so you need to drive everywhere, and that's fine, I drove at that point, but for good or ill, a more urban center was better for me later in life as I left.But the way that it shifted, even in the years when I was growing up, was that, you know, essentially was a rural area where nothing really happened socially or culturally that much until the summer seasons. So, you were very, very aware of the seasons in terms of, you'd have visitors [00:03:00] starting, and that was when the town would wake up, and then it was kind of dead for the rest of the year, so it was very much one of those things where the tourist trade has actually made me more aware of human rhythms in the natural world than perhaps I would have been, because it's so based on seasonal stuff.And just looking at the way the infrastructure because a lot of the towns and areas, they boomed a little bit well, quite a lot in certain areas with the tin mining of the 19th century. But a lot of the architecture and things like that was 19th century. So you had small villages and slightly larger towns, and they have very, well, I guess some people, if they were tourists, would call "quaint, narrow streets."And when you have that many visitors, in the summer, you can't get down the streets. [00:04:00] You can't drive it because it's full of people walking. You know, there's an interesting anecdote I'd like to recount of when my father, he was a vicar, he was a priest, moved to a new area he would go to the local pub and all the locals would greet him as the priest and be like, very polite.And then when it would come out that my dad was actually a local, that he was born down there and part of the family, everybody would relax. And there was this real sort of strange thing where people came and stayed because it was a lovely area, but there was still that whole issue with second homes and certainly keeping an eye on things from a distance here during the pandemic when people left cities during the pandemic, they went down there amongst places in Britain.And that meant that, [00:05:00] literally, there were no houses for newly starting teachers, you know, teachers who had got jobs and were moving down there, couldn't find places to live because during the 2020 and sort of 2022 period, everything was just opening up either as Airbnb because there was this influx from the cities to the more rural areas because it was supposedly safer.You know, and I feel like that's a reflex that is really interesting because most people think of it as, oh, "a tourist area," people go there for leisure, they go there to relax and get away from their lives, which is true, but under a stressful situation like a pandemic, people also flee to beautiful quotes isolated areas, so there's that real sense of pressure, I think and this idea that we weren't entirely sure, growing up, [00:06:00] whether we would have a place to live because a lot of the housing was taken up by people with second homes. And plenty of people I went to school with because it's a surfing area took the knowledge that they learned in the tourism trade, and actually left and went to Australia. And they live on the Gold Coast now. So it's this self perpetuating thing, you know? Chris: Well, that leads me to my next question, which kind of centers around belonging and being rooted and learning to root, maybe even becoming a neighbor or some might say a citizen of a place.And with tourism or a touristic worldview, we seem to be largely stunted in our ability to know a place, to become part of that place in any significant or enduring sense of the word. And so, I'm curious what your thoughts are on what it means to know a place, [00:07:00] and perhaps on the often mad rush to say I know a place for the sake of social capital, you know, given the context of the kind of relative difficulties that one might incur, or in a place like Cornwall, and the relative degree of exile that forces people out.What do you think it means to know a place in the context of all of these economic pressures denying us that possibility, or at least making it really, really difficult. Craig: I think we have a real problem in modernity with the idea of knowing as a sense of capture, right? So if I know you, I have this boundary of this shape, this outline of Chris, right, that I can hold, that I can grasp. And I think sometimes when we say, "oh, I know a place," or, "oh, I know a person" there's no concept of the [00:08:00] ongoing relationality. You know, you capture the image and then you keep it. And it's a whole construct of extractive knowledge that really, I think, comes down to the idea that the humans are the ones who get to decide what a place is, right?So. I could say in the standard sense, "Oh, I know Cornwall because I, you know, I grew up there for nearly 20 years." My family has been there since about the 1500s. You know, "I know a place, it's in my bones." Yada yada yada. All the metaphors you want to use. But the fact of the matter is, the place itself influences me more than I influence it. So there's this strange sense of belonging in which modernity [00:09:00] says "I belong" or "it belongs to me" rather than perhaps the place has extended hospitality to me and allowed me to grow and I could live/work in a place for 30 years and never know it because we're not comfortable as a culture with the idea of going, "I don't know this place."And it's a variety. It's always changing. And I think about all the times I used to watch the sea and talk to folks whose parents were fishermen or lifeboatmen, and they'd be like, "Yeah, we know the waters, but the waters can change. We know roughly what they do under certain conditions, but we don't know them completely, because they can always surprise us."And So, when somebody says, "oh, you're from Cornwall, you're a Cornishman," and all that sense of identity, [00:10:00] I'm like, "yeah, but that's, that's both really fluid for me, because, you know, there's a lot of history." Is it the tourist world of the 20th and 21st century, or is it the farming and the mining that goes back to the Neolithic?How we relate to a place purely in a modern sense isn't, to my mind anyway, the only way to conceive of belonging because, even though I'm now 300 miles away from there, I have its isotopes, its minerals from drinking the water in my teeth, you know. So, on some level, the idea that you have to be in a place also to belong to a place is something that I'm curious about because, there's this whole notion, [00:11:00] "you're only in the place and you've been in a place for this long and that means you know it and you're local." Whereas growing up, there was this sort of weird thing where it was like, "yeah, you might have been here 30 years and everybody knows you, but you're not a local." Right? You still belong, but there was this other category of " you're not local or something like that."And so it's complicated, but I really do, for my personal take, tend to look at it as a, the landscape, or wherever it is, influences my sense of belonging in a non human context, or more than human context, if that makes sense. Chris: Hmm. Yeah, there's so much there. Yeah. I mean, I'm also, in the context of identity, also wondering in what ways, not only has the tourism industry shaped one's identity of being local, which [00:12:00] is, I think, a huge issue in over touristed places in the last, you know, 10 or 20 years, as identity politics rises into the mainstream, and but then also not just the industry and the interaction with foreigners or, or guests, or tourists, but the way in which the image of that place is crafted through, often, ministries of culture or heritage, you know, so you could grow up in a place that isn't necessarily overly touristed or anything like that. But then have your identity crafted by these ideas of culture or heritage that the government's, federal and otherwise, have placed on people.Craig: And especially because where I come from, Cornwall, actually had its own language, which died out, which was on the verge of dying out in the 19th century. And slowly there are more speakers of it now. And you go back there now and you'll find, [00:13:00] even when I was growing up it wasn't so prevalent, but you'll find a lot of the signs for the street signs will have the English and the Cornish.So that's where the government has embraced this identity and enhanced it after people have been saying, you know, "this is a language we've rebuilt it. It's cousin to Welsh and Breton. We should use it. It's part of our identity and it's got folded into that." And so the infrastructure itself is now been part of that. You know, those very same streets have a name that wasn't known for like, 50, 60, maybe to 80 years, and suddenly people are now deliberately using the old names in non English languages because of that. And it's very strange because, especially in the UK, what with all [00:14:00] of Brexit and all that, there is a very weird sense wherein the rest of England, i. e. North and London and those sort of areas don't understand because Cornwall was a peripheral area and much like Wales, there's a lot of distrust of central government. Hmm. So, you've got this whole construction of a personal identity of nobody actually really understands what goes on outside. Either they're incomers, either they're emmets. You know, which "emmets" is the old English for "ants." Referring to tourists as ants in a kind of, yeah, they get everywhere. And the whole notion of who we are is always constructed. But in that case, going away and coming back to visit, I'm going, "Well that street didn't [00:15:00] have that label on it when I left. But it does now. And so in a certain sense it's the same place, but it's got this overlay of somewhere different that really enhances that sense of layers for me of "which Cornwall?" "Which of any of these places are we talking about?"Like you say, is it the one you see on a picture postcard or an Instagram or is it the ones who sat there as kids going, right, 'there's nothing to do, let's go and drink in a field?' You know and all of these things can co exist.Chris: Hmm, right. Yeah, I just interviewed a friend of mine, Christos Galanis, who did his PhD on hillwalkers, as well as homecomers in the Scottish Highlands, so people who spend their weekends climbing, summiting the Highland Mountains, and also the Canadian or Americans who travel to Scotland on heritage trips or ancestral [00:16:00] journeys. And he mentioned how in the Highlands that the governments have placed the original Gaelic place names on all of the the signs there, whether you're entering a village or perhaps on the street signs as well.And that he said that something like "only three percent of the of the people in Scotland actually speak, speak Gaelic," so they see the sign, they see the name, the vast majority of people, and they have no idea what it means. And I also remember the last time I was in Toronto, which is where I'm from originally, or where I grew up.And my family grew up in the east end of town, and the main thoroughfare in the east end of town is largely referred to as "Greek Town." You know, when I was a kid it was certainly Greek Town. The Greek letters, the Greek alphabet names as well as the English names of the street signs in that area.But it's much, much, much less Greek than it was 25 years ago, right? So again, [00:17:00] this question of like, is that to some extent trying to solidify the kind of cultural geography of a place. That people come to that street and that neighborhood because they want to experience Greekness in its diasporic kind of context.And yet, so many of those people, so many of those families have moved on or moved along or become more Canadian in their own sense of the word, so. Craig: Yeah. It's very strange as well because things like that attract... there's a loop obviously, because you'll get people coming to experience the greekness or the cornishes, and people will be like, oh, we should open a business that will enhance the greekness or the Cornish of the place, and that will draw, and it just becomes this thing and, yeah.Yeah, it's very strange. And I would totally agree with you on that one. Chris: Yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. Until like a Greek person from Greece or a Cornish grandmother comes into town and says like, what? No, that's not Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'd like to shift the conversation, Craig, a little bit towards ableism, and begin with this question that comes from our dear mutual friend Aerin and who admits that she's happily robbed it directly from Fiona Kumari Campbell.Yes. So, you might have heard this question before but she she felt the need to kind of pose it anew and and so the question is this. How does disability productively color our lives and Aerin wanted to ask it, to modify it slightly and ask, how does disability generatively or creatively color our lives? Craig: I can't speak to anybody's life other than my own really. But I would say that for me disability has, [00:19:00] one, given me a real sort of ability to look at the world and go, "you guys think this is how everything works and it clearly doesn't."You know, it has given me a generative gift of going, "hold on, what people think of the default really isn't the default, because I was never born as the default, and so I've had to find my own way of relating to the world" and that means that anybody goes anytime anybody goes "Oh, well, everybody knows..." or "the only way to do it is this?" I am always going "are you absolutely sure about that?" You know, "are you absolutely sure that what you're looking at or experiencing or noticing is only perceivable in one way, it's only ever [00:20:00] frameable, in one context?" But also this idea for me that disability is simply a fact.It's not good or bad. It is a thing that exists in the world and ableism is essentially the urge to measure against the vast field of disability and impairment and go, "We don't want that. That's the worst thing to be. So, we will strive to not be that." As Fiona Kumari Campbell would say, " It sets up a ranking and notification and prioritization of sentient life."So, this is why we, to a certain extent, we have such a obsession with youth culture. Young, healthy, fit folks are in some way better than the elderly. Oh god, nobody wants [00:21:00] to get old cause, if you're of white extraction, "oh, they'll probably stick you in a home."Nobody wants to conceive of the idea that actually you can have a generative and intimate relationship with somebody, not necessarily a romantic one, but a deep, deep friendship that also involves, frankly to put it crudely, perhaps wiping somebody's arse, right? There's this whole notion of messiness and failure and why Aerin reworded it from "productive" to "generative" is that whole idea of being productive, of having capitalist use, to produce, to make for purposes. And for me, disability and the field of disability in which I exist says "I exist and I don't have to be productive." it really [00:22:00] challenges the capitalist framework for me. And also, ableism, because it's set up to rank things like speed, mobility, all kinds of things like that, having a disability where you're sitting there going, but there are other ways to do this. There are other ways to exist. To notice the way our bodies move that are mostly ignored in the sense of "yeah, we don't pay attention to our posture or our muscle structure or what our guts are doing because we're all already forced along to the next thing.You know, we're already touring from, "okay, I've got up in the morning. Next thing I've got to do is have breakfast," right? And if you can easily shift between those stages, so you get up in the morning, start your breakfast, put your clothes on easily. [00:23:00] You don't think about it as much, but if it takes you 10, 20 minutes to even get out of bed and you have to do specific things, maybe exercises, maybe things like that, the whole process thickens.And in a sense, for me, it's an antithesis to escapism because there are things you cannot escape. There are things you have to deal with. And because there are things you have to deal with, you have to pay attention to them more. And that means the most ordinary mundane thing becomes or can become, if you're willing to gently sense it, a lot richer.So, this is one of those interesting things where if people want to go places to experience new things, Okay, that's a whole issue that you've obviously talked about throughout the podcast, but there is a certain sense in [00:24:00] which we don't even know where we started from. We've not explored our own bodies.I mean, I wrote a piece in 2020 when all the lockdowns hit that got shared around various bits of the internet and I think even in the newspaper at one point in, but I got a request to syndicate it, of how to exist when you're stuck in your house. You know, what do you do to "keep," in inverted commas, "sane," which, of course, is an ableist framework, but what do you do to stop yourself from losing mental health? How do you function? And I broke it down and I sort of made practical suggestions of, this is how I, as somebody that doesn't actually have a, quotes, "normal life," and spends a lot of his time unable to travel or go out much, stops myself from feeling isolated, [00:25:00] because I've ended up having to learn to explore what some might regard as a limited domain.But to me, that limited area, that limited domain has given me this sense of vastness that's, you know, I can't remember which philosopher it is, but there is a philosopher who basically says, I think it is a Camus, who says "you just need to reopen when you're in your room and the whole world will reveal itself to you."And when you don't have a choice, when you're stuck in chronic pain, or sickness, or something like that and you have to work out what to do with your limited energy, to embrace life, there becomes a sort of challenge, to go, "okay, how can I feel like things are enriching? How can I, almost metabolize the things that other people would reject.⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.You know, [00:26:00] because disability is so "Oh, it's so sad he's disabled. Or we've got the cure for this and that. And we've got to cure it." And it's not really about ameliorating suffering. Which is a good thing. It's an analoid good to ameliorate any form of suffering. But there is this sense that the only way to perceive the world is through a so called "non disabled" abled body.The only way to experience a rich world, and again, I'm not knocking people who do a lot of travelling per se, but the only way to experience the world is to go on long journeys, and backpack and explore you know, new ways of thinking. That's great. And I'm not saying you can do exactly the same at home, but you can also become radically hospitable to yourself and to the environment in which you find [00:27:00] yourself.And that opens a whole lot of doors that I think I would regard as generatively colouring life and revealing life. In a way that was possibly occluded before. Chris: Yeah, I mean, so much of what I've come to in the research around tourism and hypermobility is this question of limits.And that certainly comes up in other themes, in other contexts. But not just the limits to one's place. Like, where does your place end? But also the limits of the human body. And, when we talk about freedom generally in the West, or in, in the context of modernity, it's so often pinned or underpinned via the freedom of movement, in part, because I know you're coming from the other side of the Atlantic, but certainly in, in this part of the [00:28:00] world, in the Americas and especially North America, freedom is understood as freedom of movement because that's in part how, the states and, and the nation's existences are justified.And so, I would just ask you what you think of that in the context of freedom being, of course a synonym for liberation. And how so many of our western notions of freedom are attached to movement and have. To a large degree become glorified in the hyper mobility of our times.Craig: I would agree with you. I think it was always there because of the colonial urge, but I think North American notions of freedom have, through a certain cultural hegemony, filtered back. You get it in the media, even Star Trek, you know, the final frontier, you know. Things like that. Or wide open spaces. There's still this notion of, freedom to move, room to live. It has its own European context and [00:29:00] horrors, unfortunately.But also, I think the notion of freedom as freedom to move. There is a question there for me, because I'm not sure we know what we're doing when we move. Right? And one of the questions that always was raised for me is, if I raise my finger, as I'm doing now, and I bend it so it's 90 degrees, how did I do that?What did I do? Well, science would say, okay, you used all your tendons and so on and so forth, and I'm like, yeah, "okay, those are nice descriptors. But what did I actually do?" Where's the connection between the impulse and the urge to bend my finger? Right. I don't know what I did there. I just thought I'm gonna bend my finger and the [00:30:00] finger bent But there's a whole bunch of stuff going on.So when I'm thinking about freedom of movement First the question is, "freedom to move in what way?" Right? So the the classic example is, in perhaps North America and and English speaking countries is "to go where I want, when I want, with none to to gainsay me, none to say you can't go there," which has been problematized thanks to the history of enclosure of land and capture by state and political actors, but also this notion that if you get into a city and you can go and people go, "Oh, I'm free to go wherever I want."I always sit there and I'm going, "yes, but you can go wherever you want, but if a place has stairs and no lift..." right? I [00:31:00] can't go there. So do I have less freedom? Well, according to the traditional notions of freedom, yes. I am less free. When I grew up, as an example in the UK I went to America when I was about four or five, and I was absolutely stunned by the amount of public toilets that had a disabled toilet.Right? Because virtually nowhere where I grew up at that point had a disabled toilet. This was due to the fact that the U. S. has a disability rights movement that was slightly ahead of the U. K. 's. So I was freer to go about my holiday in the U. S. than I was technically at home. I couldn't go certain places because there weren't toilets, or there weren't ramps, because that had not been legalized. You know, there'd been no legislation. In the UK, there was [00:32:00] no disability legislation until 1995. You know, so technically, I was born in 1981. I had no specific extra legal rights that I needed for 14 years. Now some would say, "oh, that, you've got freedom there... the law has given you freedom.It's giving you the ability to move, but it's only given me the ability to move in approved ways, right? And so every single time somebody talks about room to move, my query is always, okay. "One, as I said, move in what way? And two, who taught you what method of movement is approved or disproved?" So, particularly in Europe, we have folks like the Romani, the Irish travellers, [00:33:00] even the so called New Age travellers, right, who are nomadic folks.And despite this obsession with freedom, the idea that people are nomadic, are shiftless and rootless, still exists. Yes, a degree. The degree of privilege, the degree that I could be, quote, "more confident going into public spaces." And you'll see this in American history and throughout European history as well.And when I was talking about the nomadic folks, I was saying, you know, there are only certain people who are allowed to move in certain ways, to travel in certain ways that are approved. In similar ways with disability there were only certain kinds of people who were allowed into public spaces.They might not have been legislated against in the mid twentieth century. They might have struck those off the books, but at [00:34:00] various points, at least in the US, if you look up the Chicago Ugly Laws, people who were regarded as vagrants or unsightly, were not allowed in public spaces. They could be jailed for that.It's not just loitering. It was very much anything that could give offense because they were physically disabled. Or, the idea that the physically disabled are more likely to be begging or doing things like that. That was all folded in. So, this notion of freedom as the ability to move and move in space.Despite the North American urge to be like, "well, nobody can tell me what to do." There's still a certain level of certain forms of movement are privileged or regarded as normal versus others. So, you know it's weird if you don't stay [00:35:00] in one place or perhaps, it's weird if you don't have a reason for your seasonal job, right?When I was a kid and a teenager... like I said, where I grew up was kind of known for surfing, right? And I met folks who would come from places like Australia and live in Volkswagen transporter vans and work in the seasonal hotels and then go surfing. And then sometimes in the winter they disappear off to Morocco.And you wouldn't see them for six months and they'd come back and there's all this kind of idea of Differing rhythms, which has really influenced my entire life because those folks, they were there there were hundreds of them you could see them parked on every road and I knew several of them very very well, but the fact of those seasonal rhythms, which weren't [00:36:00] approved. It wasn't approved that they didn't stay in one place and pay taxes. To some that might be, you know, "Oh, that's freedom! That's telling the government, I don't have to pay your taxes or I don't have to stay in one place and be a registered visible citizen. I can be a free spirit and go to Morocco whenever I want. But, the fact of it is, if you walked on the, on the roads, people would look at you funny, right?If you look at people who do long distance walking in areas that are drivable, I mean, especially I guess in North America, that's looked at as very, very, very strange, because you guys don't have the infrastructure. So, for me, it's this really strange notion that we're fixated on particular kinds of movement to do with agency and power, right?And we, we will say, "oh, [00:37:00] that's mobile, that's fast, that's quick, that's agile." And I'm always curious about what criteria we're using to say, "oh, that's fast, that's agile, that's nimble," when you look at the so called natural world, and you've got plants that are seemingly immobile, but they actually turn to the sun.You just don't notice it until you stick it on a stop motion camera. And then you're like, "wow, they move." But you could go past that plant every single day and be like, "yeah, it doesn't move. It's a plant. It just stays there." Right? Because our perception of what movement is and what is approved is based around one, what we're taught and two, what we see every day.But also three. What we can't notice unless we're forced to look at the same thing over and over again, right? [00:38:00] Because our tendency is to see one thing, think, "Oh, I know it. I've spotted it. I know what it is. I've identified it. It's fitted into my matrix of identity. I can move on now. It's all sorted." But the whole ethos, I guess, that I'm coming at iswhat if you don't know? What if you don't know? What if that microphone that I'm speaking into and you're speaking into it looks like a particular thing and you think you could describe a microphone to somebody but go down to say the flows of the electrons and it's a context issue. You know? And, and So, I'm interested in thinking about what are the contexts are in the room with us right now that we're not even paying any attention to, and not even in the room, in our own bodies, in our own language.Chris: Wow. Yeah, again, there's so much there. My [00:39:00] my thoughts just flew off into a million different directions. And I feel like it would probably take me a while to to gather them in.Craig: No problem. You do what you need to do. I mean, that's, that's the whole point. Chris: Yeah. So I had a queer crip travel writer named Bani Amor on the podcast in season three.And we were talking about the fallout and the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic. And she said something like, you know, "the settler can't stay still. That the pandemic showed us that we can't stay still." In the context of that time that so many people who had been engaged in and who glorify or who simply have been taught to live a hyper mobile life, that there was this opportunity to question [00:40:00] that, to bring it into a different context.And I know a lot of people, couldn't necessarily leave their houses in the quote unquote lockdowns. But I don't think that wouldn't necessarily stop people from tending to or allowing themselves to witness the more than human world in that way. And so, my question is, assuming we have the opportunity, in some manner, in any manner, how do you think we might have our understandings of movements subverted, or at least challenged, by virtue of looking at the movement in the more than human world.Craig: Great question. I think one of the biggest notions, and I just want to return to that phrase, "the settler can't stay still." And really, agree with that, and so add to secondary things of what actually is stillness, right? We have [00:41:00] this idea of stillness as immobility, as, as, as perhaps staying in one place.Not moving, but actually, if we look at what we're doing when we're actually apparently still, there's still movement going on, right? There's still movement going on in our bodies. There's still a different kind of mobility going. And we're not the only ones, right? The more than human does this exactly as well.If you look at a rock, oh, you think a rock doesn't move? I mean, it doesn't move, but then you have erosion, right? Then you have the rain, and the way that particles are shaved off it, and it shifts. So, when we're thinking about outside, when we're thinking about... and when I say "more than [00:42:00] human," I'm not saying "better than human," I'm saying "exceeding the human," I just want to make that clear, it exceeds the boundaries of the human. Disability as mutual friend Bayo would define it is, I believe he said "it's a failure of power to contain itself." So, that's Bayo Akomolafe. And this notion that the world and the modern human flows through and beyond any sort of boundary, right? So, any outline we form is not immune in the sense of there's no boardwalk, right?A wall is not an untouchable upright edifice. It's actually touched and permeated, right? So everything in the more than human context interrelates and is, to a certain extent, degrees of [00:43:00] permeable. So, yeah, our cells keep certain things out, and let certain things in, but even the things they keep out, they're in contact with.They're relating to. Right? Because in the same way, with COVID 19 vaccine, people think, "oh, it's a vaccine. It's immunity, right? It'll stop me getting COVID. Or it'll stop me getting this, or stop me getting that." What it actually does is it has an interaction with your, the vaccine has an interaction with your immune system.There's a dialogue, there's a discussion, a call and response, which then engenders further responses in your body, right? So, there's constant relation that is ongoing. So, nothing is one and done, right? To borrow from Stefano Hani and Fred Moten No motion is ever completed, right? Nothing's [00:44:00] ever finished. It's not like we're gonna get off this and, and you'll be like, "oh, I've finished recording the podcast." Sure, you've hit the stop recording button, but the recording of the podcast is still ongoing. And there's this fundamental ongoingness, which is a product of the world.The world is worlding, right? And that means the most ordinary, mundane thing you can think of is ongoing. The mug I have right in front of me right now with tea in it. It's ceramic. It's been painted, but it's still ongoing, right? It still has the relation to the machines that shaped it. And it also has this ongoingness with the human history of pottery.Right? And people go, Oh, that's ridiculous. That's not practical. You know, "it's a mug," but I always [00:45:00] think. Isn't that just commodification? Like, is that not just saying it's a commodity, it doesn't have a story? Like, I don't want to get all Marxist here, but there's that real alienation from ongoingness and the fact that we also are ongoing attempts at relation. We're not even fixed identities. Our movements cannot be technically circumscribed because I have a disability which means I can't dance. Right? I use a wheelchair. I can't dance. I can't do the tango. Right? Okay. But everybody uses dance in a context of bopping to the music and doing all this thing and it's a bit like freedom. You know, everybody assumes that dance is a particular thing.But as Bayo and We Will Dance with Mountains, the course, the whole point of it being [00:46:00] called We Will Dance with Mountains is the fact that mountains don't dance like humans. Mountains dance like mountains. And the only way we spot how mountains dance is to actually pay attention to them and attempt to relate to them.We can't get out of our framework completely, but we can be open to say, what does our framework for a mountain miss about those massive landforms? What are we missing when we say a mountain doesn't move? And that's where you have references to indigenous and local stories that actually talk about these landforms, these places, these folklore places, as the living, moving beings that they actually are.Hmm. You know. Yeah, "okay, that stone circle over there was because a bunch of women were dancing on a [00:47:00] Sunday and in a Christian country, that's bad, so they got turned to stone," or in Scandinavia, "that rock there, it's actually a troll that got caught out in the sun." that these are living, ongoing beings and events, which it's not woo, it's actual or intellectual, I think.If you look at anything for long enough, you start to notice what's ongoing with it, even something that's solid and fixed. And that, to me, the gripping is the bending of the perception, right? That is queering, but crip-queering is that point where you have the restriction involved. People will talk about queer liberation, and yeah, we want crip liberation. That's cool. But if you think about crip liberation as, it might actually be the limits that bring us liberation.And then, if you track back [00:48:00] into mythologies long enough. You've got figures like Dionysus or then poetic gods who say, they're the ones that fetter you. They can bind you, but they can also set you free. And that is really interesting to me that a lot of these liberational figures also have a side that they can tie you up.And I don't just mean in a bondage sense. It's this notion that the two things, the two complexes are part of a whole thing, and you can't divide it into restricted and free and you can't escape. You can't pull a Harry Houdini from existence, which, to a certain extent, some people, when they go on holiday, engage in tourism, they're trying to escape for a little while, their other lives. But we all know you can't escape them. Mm-Hmm. But the inescapability of it is not bad. Right. By default, it's not [00:49:00] bad. It can be, but the assumption something is inescapable, just like, oh, something is disabling. Mm-Hmm. the assumption of good and bad. If you can hold that in abeyance and actually look at it for a second and go, Okay, what's going on here?Maybe our conceptions of this need reevaluating. Now the reason we don't do this on the regular, even in modernity, is because it takes a lot of effort and time to focus. And that's another benefit that I get as a disabled person, right? Because I can't use my time for a whole bunch of things that non disabled folks can.So I've got more time, I've got a different relationship to time and space, which means that I can sit and look at things with that differing relation to time and space, and be like "Huh, I never noticed that." And then I get to talk [00:50:00] about this stuff to folks like you, and people get surprised.And they're like, "you think about this all the day." I'm like, "no, I don't think about this. This is my life. This is how I live. This is my embrace of life, right? And this is my freedom to literally, Be like, " well, okay, my restrictions. How do they actually open me to the world?" And I'm not offering a prescription here, because everybody's different.But it strikes me that even the most nomadic person always carry stuff with them, right? And to borrow from Ursula K. Le Guin with her "Carrier Bag Story of Fiction," which Bayo talked about in We Will Dance The Mountains, the idea of what we're carrying is really interesting, but how often do we rummage in our own bags?Hmm. [00:51:00] Right? How often do we take off our backpacks and rummage just for the sake of it? Often we just look in the backpacks for something specific. Hmm. Right? Oh, I need a map. Oh, I need a chocolate bar. Oh, I need my, you know my iPad. We rarely stick our hands in and notice the way our clothing might shift around our fingers or the way, you know, the waterproofing is possibly coming off and means that the fabric has these different textures because we don't take the time and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the fact that we don't have that relationship to time and space.And babies, kids do. It's why kids put things in their mouth. All those things where you're like, "Oh no, don't put that in your mouth, it's bad for you." They don't know that. But the whole point of putting it in their mouth and feeling it is to try and not [00:52:00] understand it, not get it.There's nothing there in a baby in its early function that says, "I must understand what that is." The understanding comes upon you through experience. But there's no bit, at least as far as I can work out, that's like, "I must understand what it is that I'm putting in my mouth."It's more like, "hmm, that tastes interesting, it has some interesting textures," and then your brain does all the work or your brain and your body mind do all the work, but the personhood isn't also doing all the work, just like the "I" of my body, right, my relationship with the "I", as in my sense of self, I have to expand that to my entire body, You know, because there's so much going on right now in this conversation that I'm not aware of, right?There's stuff going on in my room that I'm [00:53:00] not aware of, but it's going on now. And so I have to expand and that expansiveness also means I sometimes have to venture into realms of pain, right? Because I have chronic pain. And in order to fully experience that, sometimes I have to encounter that pain.I have to slow down and focus and go, "Oh, the chronic pain that I was mostly ignoring because just in the background, it suddenly leaped to the fore because I'm paying attention." Now, modernity says you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do stuff that causes you pain. Understandable in a certain context, but If I didn't understand that the pain was also part of the experience and changes how I move, if I didn't understand that chronic pain changes how time stretches, then I wouldn't be where I am.So the more than human permeates the human in ways [00:54:00] that the human is either deliberately trained to deny or doesn't even know is going on and the pandemic basically was, in my eyes, the more than human kind of knocking on the door going you are not this completely hermetically sealed box, right? Your society is not a hermetically sealed box. Chris: Amen. Amen. I mean, could have gone in a lot of different directions, but here we are, at least being able to reflect on it in a good way, and I'm reminded, this notion of abeyance and attention and, and the expansion of the I.I'm reminded of this, this line from Simone Weil who said that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." And so, I think that it, something like that is worthy of the times we, we wish to live in and perhaps sometimes do. Craig: [00:55:00] Definitely.Chris: And so, you know, I wish we had more time, Craig really getting into some beautiful black holes there. But hopefully we get the opportunity to speak again sometime.Craig: I'd be, be happy to. Be happy to. Chris: And so before we depart, I'd just like to ask the kind of token question that always comes at the end of interviews, which is where can our listeners find your work?And I'm pretty sure you had a book that came out last year entitled, Goetic Atavisms, if I'm not mistaken. Craig: Yes, I did. So you can find me on my mostly moribund, but strange little blog at cold-albion.net. And you can also pick up the book, which is, to be clear, more of an occult angle on this, but it also brings in the disability angle directly from the publisher Hadean Press or you could get it from, you know, the Bezos Behemoth, if you really [00:56:00] wanted. I am also not really on social media as a project, but I'm also on you know Blue Sky, so you can search me up there, or Mastodon, which you could always search me up there, and I occasionally post things on there.Chris: Wonderful. Well, I'll make sure that all those links and connections are available for our listeners once the episode launches. And I very much look forward to reading Goetic Activisms myself. So, thank you so much, Craig.Chris: Thank you, Chris. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Dr. Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains' and currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023).Finally Bayo is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. In This EpisodeDr. Bayo Akomolafe's WebsiteBayo's writingsSocials: FB: bayoakomolafeampersandIG: @the_emergence_networkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
In this episode, Philipa and Daniel talk about post-activism, border transgressions and making sanctuary with Dr Bayo Akomolafe and Dr Tyson Yunkaporta. Bayo Akomolafe is a widely celebrated international speaker, post-humanist thinker, philosopher, writer, activist and professor of psychology. He is the author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo is the Founder of The Emergence Network and and a Global Senior Fellow at the University of California Berkeley. He is also the Inaugural Scholar in Residence at the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, educator, maker, researcher, and poet. He is the founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and the author of two books, the bestselling “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World” and the recently published “Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking”. Tyson's work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.Explore links and resources, and find out more at https://www.thersa.org/oceania/regeneration-rising-podcast Join the Re-generation: https://www.thersa.org/regenerative-futuresReduced Fellowship offer: In celebration of the launch of Regeneration Rising, we're offering a special promotion for listeners to join our global community of RSA Fellows. Our Fellowship is a network of over 31,000 innovators, educators, and entrepreneurs committed to finding better ways of thinking, acting, and delivering change. To receive a 25% discount off your first year of membership and waived registration fee, visit thersa.org and use the discount code RSAPOD on your application form. Note, cannot be used in conjunction with other discount offers, such as Youth Fellowship. For more information email fellowship@rsa.org.uk.
In this episode of Hawthorne Valley's Roots to Renewal podcast, we are honored to welcome Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Post humanist thinker, poet, teacher, essayist, and author. Together, he and our host, Martin Ping share a thought provoking conversation exploring a rich tapestry of ideas, beginning with Bayo's inspiring fellowship at the Schumacher Center for New Economics. The conversation delves into the concept of drifting and its relevance in our current times, the value of embracing uncertainty, grieving as a form of politics and so much more. It's a deep and reflective dialogue you won't want to miss. Learn more about Bayo's work and explore his writings and offerings at his website, https://www.bayoakomolafe.net. To get tickets for the carnival, Vunja: A Gathering of the Seeds, with Bayo Akomalafe and Friends at the Schumacher Center in Great Barrington on August 6-8, visit https://centerforneweconomics.org/events/vunja-carnival-2024/.More About Bayo:Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023). He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and has been Commencement Speaker in two universities convocation events. He is also the recipient of the New Thought Leadership AThanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley's Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you'd like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!
Posthumanism invites us to think beyond human-centric thinking and embrace a more inclusive, interconnected worldview. By confronting cultural challenges and seizing opportunities in life's unexpected disruptions, we can transform our understanding of the world and our role within it. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, and professor from Nigeria. He is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online course, 'We Will Dance with Mountains'. Dr. Akomolafe's work explores themes of post-humanism, decolonization, and the deconstruction of conventional Western paradigms. He seeks to challenge and reframe dominant narratives around human supremacy, individualism, and progress. What Is Post-Humanism? Post-humanism is a philosophical perspective that seeks to de-center the human as the sole source of importance and beauty in the world. It recognizes the significance of other beings and the interconnectedness of all life, inviting us to embrace a more holistic view of the world and our place within it. Cracks Are Opportunities: “Cracks" are disturbances or disruptions in our conventional ways of thinking and being. These cracks serve as openings for new ideas, dialogues, and ways of engaging with the world to emerge. We can challenge dominant narratives and explore alternative perspectives by embracing these disruptions. Reframing Your Relationship With the World: Recognize that you are a part of the world you aim to protect, rather than separate from it. This reframing encourages us to cultivate humility and a sense of stewardship, understanding that we are in service to the Earth and all its inhabitants. Embracing Diversity and Alternative Ways of Knowing: Post-humanism invites us to value and engage with diverse perspectives. By embracing alternative ways of knowing and being, we can enrich our understanding of the world and foster more inclusive and ecologically attuned approaches to the challenges we face. Sponsors and Promotions DUER To experience the ultimate blend of style, comfort, and performance in your denim, head to shopduer.com/DIVINE and get 20% off sitewide on DUER's revolutionary stretch jeans and apparel. https://www.livemomentous.com, and use code DIVINE for 20% off your first order. Defender Ready for adventure? With a family of vehicles to choose from, you'll have the space, technology, and performance to go further than ever before. Explore the Defender lineup at https://www.LandRoverUSA.com/Defender Wild Health Visit WildHealth.com/UNBEATABLE and enter the promo code UNBEATABLE for an exclusive 20% discount on membership. Embrace this opportunity to prioritize your health. Start your journey to wellness today. SealFit ElectroGreens: Fuel your body and conquer your limits with SealFit ElectroGreens - a USDA organic superfood packed with over 25 organic fruits, vegetables, and electrolytes. Head to Amazon, search for "SealFit ElectroGreens," and use code SEALGREENS25 at checkout for 25% off your order. Links for Dr. Bayo Akomolafe Website Facebook Twitter YouTube
Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, writer, activist, professor of psychology, and executive director of the Emergence Network. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/
Neste episódio, entrevistei o Nuno da Silva sobre o seu trabalho no desenvolvimento de pessoas e organizações. Nuno explica a importância de adotar um paradigma de sistemas vivos para enfrentar os desafios atuais e destaca a necessidade de mudanças para uma abordagem mais integrada e harmoniosa com a natureza. A conversa também aborda a evolução da vida e os ciclos de mudança ao longo do tempo. Enfatiza a importância de olhar para os sistemas vivos de forma integrada e reconhecer a interdependência entre os organismos. São discutidos os desafios e os passos necessários para promover a mudança em níveis individuais, relacionais e sistêmicos. Um dos temas centrais foi também a importância de uma educação mais orgânica, que leve em consideração o contexto e as necessidades individuais dos alunos. A conversa também aborda a desconexão entre a escola e a natureza, a padronização e desigualdade na educação, e a crescente tendência do homeschooling. Nesta parte da conversa, o Nuno fala sobre a busca por formas de desenvolvimento humano fora do sistema público, que podem levar a uma vida de excelência e plenitude baseados na sua experiência de trabalhar no sistema público de ensino e como isso o levou a buscar novas formas de contribuir para a mudança. Para além da educação um outro tema foi o curso TRP (The Regenerative Practitioner Series) e como ele ajuda as pessoas a desenvolverem uma perspectiva regenerativa. E a importância da práticas regenerativas e de como elas pode contribuir para a mudança positiva. Por fim refere-se o futuro das práticas regenerativas e a importância de navegar o caos e absorver a regeneração de forma mais profunda e com isso trás a necessidade de não competir, mas nutrir a mudança e trabalhar em conjunto para enfrentar os desafios futuros. No final houve ainda espaço para o Nuno referir o projeto Lúcida e seu papel na transformação. Enfatizando a importância de criar campos energéticos que atraiam outras pessoas para a mudança. No Final o Nuno conclui com uma mensagem de esperança e um convite à ação, incentivando as pessoas a encontrarem sua tribo e contribuírem para a mudança. Pontos chave desta conversa Adotar um paradigma de sistemas vivos é essencial para enfrentar os desafios atuais e promover um desenvolvimento sustentável. É importante reconhecer a interdependência entre os organismos vivos e olhar para eles de forma integrada. A evolução da vida ocorre em ciclos de mudança, e estamos atualmente em um momento de transição para uma nova fase de desenvolvimento humano. Para promover a mudança, é necessário trabalhar em três níveis: individual, relacional e sistêmico. Existem formas de desenvolvimento humano fora do sistema público que podem levar a uma vida de excelência e plenitude. A mudança de perspectiva e a busca por novas formas de abordar os desafios são essenciais para promover a mudança. Há exemplos de projetos e comunidades que estão promovendo a mudança em diferentes territórios. O curso TRP (The Regenerative Practitioner Series) ajuda as pessoas a desenvolverem uma perspectiva regenerativa e a capacidade de promover mudanças. O futuro das práticas regenerativas depende da absorção profunda da regeneração e da navegação do caos. A prática regenerativa é uma forma de contribuir para a mudança positiva e enfrentar os desafios futuros. É importante nutrir a mudança em vez de competir, trabalhando em conjunto para criar campos energéticos que atraiam outras pessoas. O projeto Lúcida tem um papel fundamental na transformação, trabalhando com empresas e ajudando-as a desenvolver uma cultura de desenvolvimento. É essencial criar clareza sobre o que cada um pode contribuir para a mudança e encontrar sua tribo para trabalhar em conjunto. Apesar dos desafios e da incerteza do futuro, é importante manter a esperança e focar no potencial de transformação. Sobre o Nuno da Silva: É Co-fundador da Lúcida, facilitador e designer de processos de mudança sistémica e inovação desde 2015. É igualmente educador em desenvolvimento regenerativo no Regenesis Institute for Regenerative Practice, formador da Bolsa de formadores do Conselho da Europa e da Transition Network, fundador da Emergence Network. Tem licenciatura pré-Bolonha em Economia. Dedicou a primeira década profissional ao trabalho como educador e formador de formadores e trabalhadores juvenis em metodologias de aprendizagem experiencial, colaborativa e participativa, em Portugal, na Europa e um pouco por todo o mundo, e em temas como Participação e Cidadania, Educação Global, Educação para a Paz, Aprendizagem Intercultural, Direitos Humanos, Diversidade e Inclusão, Desenvolvimento Organizacional e Gestão de Projetos. Trabalhou com entidades diversas do setor público, privado e sociedade civil, nacionais, internacionais e intergovernamentais, tais como: Conselho Nacional de Juventude, Secretaria de Estado da Juventude, Centro Norte Sul, Comissão Europeia, Conselho da Europa, Fundação Ásia Europa, Banco Mundial, Programa de Desenvolvimento das Nações Unidas. Nuno Da Silva Linkedin profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/silvamago/ LÚCIDA - Pensamento Regenerativo para Ações Claras - https://www.lucidathinking.com/ Regenesis Institute for Regenerative Practice - https://www.regenerat.es/ The Conflict Transformation Online Summit - https://www.conflicttransformationsummit.org/ The Emergence Network https://www.emergencenetwork.org/
In this thought-provoking episode of The Sanctuary Podcast, host Angell Deer engages esteemed posthumanist thinker Dr. Bayo Akomolafe for a deep dive into the mysteries and complexities of life. Dr. Akomolafe, an internationally recognized speaker, author, and the visionary behind the Emergence Network, opens the door to profound insights about our rapidly changing world and our role within it. Throughout the enlightening discourse, the wisdom-packed conversation navigates through societal behaviors, cultural paradigms, and post-humanist intelligence, underscoring how our actions often depend on complex factors including technologies and societal structures. The conversation turns its gaze to the influences of Liberalism and Capitalism on societies, and the quest for grounding amid global crises. The dialogue concludes with a reflection on uniformity and diversity, examining the possibility of embracing the tumultuousness of life rather than attempting to control it. Alighting on notions of belonging, injustice, and compasses amidst rising conflict and crisis, the episode elucidates not just human suffering, but an interconnected web of pain and co-existence extending beyond human limits. The narrative delves into the concept of justice as a tangible entity rooted in public order, accompanied by a gripping discussion on the meaning of solidarity in times of distress. The episode concludes in a contemplation of rituals and ceremonies, serving as anchors in a chaotic world and the necessity of embracing our alien self. Join us in this exploration of wisdom, spirituality, and the mystery of existence. Discover new perceptions and question your existing ones with this episode of The Sanctuary Podcast.
In this wide ranging discussion, the School of Law's Dr Peter Doran, meets Nigerian scholar, writer and philosopher, Dr Báyò Akómoláfé. The context is Dr Doran's upcoming report for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (Ireland) on the role of the artist in advancing the wellbeing economy, and the topics covered include 'postactivism', decoloniality and modernity. Báyo has recently taken up the position of Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance worldwide, and is founder of The Emergence Network. "The task for today's activist," comments Dr Doran, "is to 'stay with the trouble' and avoid reaching for illusory solutions framed by the logics and power configurations that have brought us to the brink. In Báyò's words, 'times are urgent, it is time to slow down.' " Join us for a profound exploration with Báyo, delving into the depths of colonisation, perception, and art. Unpack the power of "ontological mutiny" and discover how getting "lost" can be our path to freedom. Dive deep, challenge norms, and reshape your understanding of the world.
The full title of today's episode is: “They thought they buried me; They did not know I am a seed” In this community conversation from June 2023, SAND co-founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo host Bayo Akomolafe and Chief Oluwo Fayemi peeling back the layers of history and tap into the wellspring of resilience that resides within us all. Weaving Bayo's wisdom and Chief Oluwo Obafemi's ancestral knowledge, they enture into this mystical landscape, navigating the intricacies of existence, embracing the profound beauty of the unfolding journey. Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. Chief Oluwo Obafemi Fayemi Epega is a world-renowned Babalawo and the founder of O.I.D.S.I. (Obafemi Institute for the Divine & Universal Study of Ifa). He was initiated as a priest of Obatala in 2004, and received his Tefa in 2005. He strongly believes that the restoration and preservation of African divine sciences and traditions can restore psychological balance and personal empowerment to all people. A lecturer, teacher and healer and the author of Who is Sambo?, Baba Femi has facilitated Ifa workshops all over the world. He has been invited to share his knowledge and insight on countless radio shows, major universities and colleges. In addition to overseeing more than 400 ceremonies and rituals, Baba Femi has either directly facilitated, or served as the principal liaison for the initiations of more than 50 Ifa and Olorisha priests. With the blessings of Olodumare, his ancestors, and Ifa, this life has allowed him to fully embrace and experience that which his heart has chosen. He is proud to be an African American man, native Houstonian, descendant of slaves, priest of Ifa, teacher, author, mentor, son, a friend to many, a loving husband, and most importantly, an honorable father. We invite you to connect further with Bayo Akomolafe in an immersive recording from the SAND co-presentation Three Black Men Trauma, Ritual & the Promise of the Monstrous live in Los Angeles from June 2023 with your guides: Bayo Akomolafe, Orland Bishop, and Resmaa Menakem for nearly six hours of talks, video, and explorations.
How are the crises of our times crises of being, crises of becoming? In this week's conversation, Ayana is joined by returning guest Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé. Ayana and Báyò dance together through questions of crisis, identity, and rupture. As we attempt to break from the monoculture that cements us as citizen subjects of empire, Báyò suggests that we need an ontological mutiny. Pointing out the possibilities of a more generous and spacious politics, Báyò calls listeners' attention to the duplicity of safety. Perhaps the things from which we recoil contain promise. As we try to stabilize, cracks will emerge, and Báyò invites us to nurture each other through the ruptures. How might we descend to the crises of our times, and embrace the decay and compost that modernity has come to detest? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. For an extended version of this episode join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.Music by Julio Kintu (Chloe Utley), Jahnavi Veronica, Leyla McCalla, and Los Hombres Calientes. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show
In this week's episode of How We Live Now, Katherine speaks to author and public intellectual Báyò Akómoláfé. We consider how we can step out of the belief that humanity is in control of a passive planet, and instead wonder how we can learn to read the intelligence of the systems and landscapes that we inhabit. We meander our way to autism, and begin to think about how we can create a new language of neurodivergent experience that resists the labels applied from disinterested - or disgusted - outside viewers. And we take a look at ‘hushes', the shadowy, scuttling figures that disrupt Báyò's narratives.Born in Nigeria, Báyò is a writer, speaker, teacher and founder of The Emergence Network who finds his most sacred work in fatherhood. His book, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, is an extraordinary meandering through the cutting edge of contemporary philosophy framed in letters to his daughter, Alethea. He is also the editor of We Will Tell Our Own Story, an anthology exploring Black African scholarship and knowledge. He now divides his time between Germany, India and the USA.Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UKLinks from the episode:Bayo's websiteBayo's book, These Wilds Beyond Our FencesJoin Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdesFind show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.Follow Katherine on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
On the 17th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast I am joined by Bayo Akomolafe, who is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, professor, public intellectual, essayist, and author. Bayo is the Founder of The Emergence Network, he currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, and the University of Vermont, and was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of the University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany.In this episode, Bayo shares with us his journey of moving beyond the confines of final statements, final destinations, and boundaries, to an ongoing emergence, or flow. This conversation delves into the abstract, the philosophical, and the practical, as well as Bayo's personal experiences of what his son with Autism is teaching him about wisdom.We discuss the importance of cultivating bewilderment, wonder and inquiry, and disrupting the logic of continuity, for new ideas and solutions to emerge - to break the cycle of problems and solutions feeding each other. This episode will challenge your thinking and perhaps inspire you to new ways of problem solving and understanding, while it may also require you to listen with more than your ears and your mind.Subscribe for weekly episodes, every Tuesday, and check out my YouTube channel (link below) for daily clips and reflections.Running Order: 01:44 Podcast begins02:42 Is there pain in Heaven?05:12 Is there another colour?08:02 A problem with a "perfect" city12:44 Creating the space for observing the emergent17:13 The role of the monster / questioning stability21:36 Holding fixed views when everything is in flux23:29 There isn't an originary point to return to31:44 His son becomes his teacher and coach40:14 Shifting perspectives to navigate the world42:59 Communicating from a different dimension of thought45:39 Rejecting walls49:17 What's more than a solution?55:04 What's required beyond information?59:09 What is a good life for Bayo?For further content and information check out the following: - For the 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/- Bayo's Website: https://www.emergencenetwork.org/- Bayo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bayoakomolafe/
Conversar com a Sofia não é linear pois o seu discurso move-se de uma form aberta e disponível e cheia de possibilidade. Existe um acto, qual arqueóloga, de trazer algo orgânico e elástico à vida para poder acomodar aquilo que é único e frequentemente esquecido. Não se trata de trazer velhos costumes e conceitos, mas sim saber observar o que sempre esteve aqui e pela escuta dos nossos múltiplos sentidos criar uma ligação e colaboração com o meio que nos cerca. Sobre a Sofia e segundo ela mesma: (Re)Aprendo a viver na imanência, na pertença e em consciência, abraçando a eco-mitologia, ecopsicologia, eco-filosofia e a eco-espiritualidade, a decolonização, e múltiplas formas de arte. Falo a partir do pós-activismo mitológico e filosófico*, para recriar rituais, histórias e mistério — pois, os três M's: Mistério, Metáforas e Mitos recordam a nossa sabedoria primordial e complexa do paradoxo. Sou ‘designer' por formação académica, professora por acaso, escritora por necessidade visceral e investigadora independente por curiosidade natural. Sou mamífera, autora, mãe, mulher e tecelã de perguntas. Desajeitada poetiza de prosas sem conhecimentos gramaticais. Peregrina entre paisagens interiores e exteriores, recordando práticas cósmico-ctónicas* em presença radical, escuta activa, arte, êxtase e escrita. Sou certificada em Ecopsicologia pela Pacifica University, nos EUA. Aprendo com Bayo Akomolafe e sou Warm-Data Host da linha sistémica de Nora Bateson. Identifico-me como pós-activista, contribuindo para The Emergence Network. Em 2022, um dos meus ensaios, The Blind Oracle, foi seleccionado para a Participação Global Doing Things with Stories (DTwS), da ArtEZ University of the Arts, Oxfam, e Radboud University. Autora de oito livros publicados, editora da revista ‘online' gratuita, Vento e Água e Podcast Remembrar os Ossos – tudo em português. Podemos saber mais sobre o trabalho da Sofia aqui: Revista Vento e Água: https://ventoeagua.com/ Site pessoal: https://www.sofiabatalha.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/serpentedalua/ Bem hajas Sofia e obrigado pelo teu trabalho.
Thomas and celebrated international speaker, post-humanist thinker, and author Bayo Akomolafe delve into the pitfalls of modernity and modern psychology, and the need for new ways of navigating hidden and invisible thresholds. Bayo discusses his work tracing stories, folklore, and archetypes and how they invite us to do something akin to activism - a sensorial politics that he refers to as “post-activism.” They discuss the need for fresh modes of responding to crises that can invite us to develop new intelligences. Key Points: 01:00 Parenting & disruptions of time and space 10:36 New Institute Fellowship 15:00 Bayo's upcoming book 18:46 What is post-activism? 24:52 The response to the crisis is part of the crisis 31:14 Psychology is the policeman of capitalism 39:17 A new perspective on politics 47:33 Losing our way in order to create change ---------------- Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online post-activist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, and the University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of the University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Website: bayoakomolafe.net ---------------- Thomas Hübl is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator whose lifelong work integrates the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since 2004, he has taught and facilitated programs with more than 100,000 people worldwide, including online courses which he began offering in 2008. The origin of his work and more than two decades of study and practice on healing collective trauma is detailed in his book Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds Connect with Thomas here: Website: https://thomashuebl.com/ Facebook: https://facebook.com/Thomas.Huebl.Sangha/ Instagram/Twitter: @thomashuebl YouTube: https://youtube.com/@thomashuebl Sign up for updates by visiting our website:
Welcome to the fourth episode of SPIRIT & RECOVERY, our 5-part podcast series exploring powerful healing modalities, philosophies and soulful practices that are designed to support recovery - on all levels - from trauma, addiction, harmful behaviors and more. How do you define recovery? I think of recovery as the process of recovering the initiation and the potentiality of your life. It can also be seen as an opportunity to explore new and innovative ways of healing, growing and flourishing in a rapidly changing world. In this episode we're joined by Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, a celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, psychologist and author. Rooted with the Yoruba people, Dr. Bayo is the Founder of The Emergence Network, host of the online postactivist course/festival series, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains' and lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont. In this conversation we explore the redefinition of recovery and re-pair, the power of uncertainty and the reevaluation of what we fear. *Warning: This episode includes conversations about trauma, addiction, abuse and other subjects and situations that may be triggering for some listeners. Our intention with this series is to educate and inspire, and while mental health professionals are being interviewed, this podcast does not offer personalized medical advice. If you need help or are in crisis, please seek medical attention and advice from a professional. >>> For takeaways & transcripts check out our show notes HERE >>> Stay informed and be the first to know about exclusive offers by subscribing to Colette's newsletter HERE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We are so honored to share an episode with you from one of our favorite podcasts, FOR THE WILD. --- “The fugitive is the figure of the Anthropocene, a political invitation to unlearn ‘mastery,' to fall to the Earth, to learn how to commune with soil… In a sense, the fugitive answers the question that is hidden within the words of my Elders, when they say: ‘in order to find your way, you must become lost.'” Returning guest Bayo Akomolafe guides listeners on a journey to lose oneself and leave behind the ties that bind us to world views that do not serve humanity's wholeness. Touching on the historical roots of fugitivity from the politics of the slave ship and beyond, Bayo challenges us to lean into the “political un-project” that is fugitivity, blurring societally-imposed binaries, in order to better understand the human territory and to make more-than-human sanctuary through post activism. If justice is an action and not a static state, how can we embody it? Twisting and turning through the contours of human consciousness and understanding, Bayo and Ayana dive into meaningful and existential questions. How do we cope with the complexity of being “imbricated with the things we are trying to escape from?” What is the shape and form of accountability? How do we commune with the unknowable? Rooted in trickster philosophy and abundant spirituality, Bayo encourages mindful and playful questions. These are times in which we must reframe our understanding of justice, of history, and of humanity. At the heart of the complex questioning in the episode, lies the vital question of our time – what does it mean to be a human in times such as this? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Visionary Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. The music featured in this episode is “Humm” and “Wild Seed” by Dzidzor and “Spiritual” by Lady Moon and the Eclipse. To learn more about For The Wild's Slow Study course with Bayo, We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks!, visit here. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world/message
Every colonized country has a history of trauma and grief. Today's guest Bayo Akomolafe, is a Nigerian man passionate about decolonized landscapes, writing, and poems. Today, he is here to blow our minds with his philosophy, no kidding. If you press play, get ready to listen about decolonization, trauma, grief, mental health, psychotherapy, and how this influences and affects us as individuals. ABOUT BAYO AKOMOLAFE Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, writer, activist, professor of psychology, and executive director of the Emergence Network. CONNECT WITH BAYO Website: https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/ WHAT YOU WILL HEAR [2:43] Who's Bayo Akomolafe? [14:14] How do traumas and stories play together? [21:27] Reframing trauma in modern civilization [25:48] How to heal the past? [29:51] What's generative incapacitation? [32:31] What would Bayo currently change in society? [38:25] Reshaping the system. [45:44] Grief in America. [51:21] Where to find Bayo. If you look at the civilized world and think, "no thank you," then you should subscribe to our podcast, so you don't miss a single episode! Also, join the uncivilized community, and connect with me on my website, YouTube, or Instagram so you can join in on our live recordings, ask questions to guests, and more. Take a look Behind the Mask as we dive into elements of masculinity with Anger, Relationship, and Sex. Get a copy of one of my books, Man UNcivilized and Today I Rise Click here to sign up for the Kill the Nice Guy course.
In this conversation with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe we explore the beliefs that underlie our collective culture, the epistemology of identity, hypo-subjects, the decentralization of humans, how the world is more than story and potential in the instability of our times. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, professor and poet renowned for his unconventional views on global crises, activism, and social change. He has taught at various international universities and currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute and the University of Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality. Bayo is Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Emergence Network, author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences and We Will Tell our Own Story, and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'. Visit coachesrising.com to see our acclaimed online coach trainings and other offerings.
An excerpt from the four day webinar The Wandering, Winding Way of the Wound with Bayo Akomolafe and Sophie Strand exploring the Politics of Cure, the Shadows of Harm Reduction, and Transgressive Networks of Care at World End. You can enroll in the Course here: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/webinar/wandering-winding-way Also coming up a Community Gathering with Sophie Strand is happening next week at SAND. We Must Risk New Shapes with Sophie StrandWednesday, December 28, 2022 10–11:30am PST A live online conversation facilitated by Zaya & Maurizio Benazzo Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions in Fall 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com. Follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com. Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. www.bayoakomolafe.net Science and Nonduality is a community inspired by timeless wisdom, informed by cutting-edge science, and grounded in direct experience. We come together in an open-hearted exploration while celebrating our humanity.
Today we're super excited to share an organic and wild conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers and theobiologians (that's Bayo's term) Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand. This conversation was hosted by Science and Nonduality's Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it here. https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/webinar/new-gods-at-the-end-of-the-world Also if you want to go deeper with Bayo and Sophie as well as Tyson Yunkaporta and Vanessa Andreotti and if you're listening to this before the workshop starts on Oct 19 2022, please go to the website science and nonduality.com and consider registering for their three-day workshop. This workshop is entitled The Wandering, Winding Way of the Wound and it's a chance to explore our shared global trauma as the modern grammar of loss. So if you're listening when this is released you have time to register before it starts register here: https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/webinar/wandering-winding-way Today's discourse between Bayo and Sophie is a wild exploration of words, ideas, memes, biology, and ecology. Their dialog touches and weaves into so many territories. They touch into: Environmental collapse Catholic Saints Joan of Arc Glitches in Evolution The power of mispronouncing COVID Ecotomes The diaspora of the body Babba Lau (who was recently featured on our SAND youtube channel) DSM Manual (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) Bdelloid rotifera (Sophie's Substack has more info on this creature) Transatlantic slave trade Tardigrades as gods Rewilding Pigs If this sounds like a lot, this is just a taste of what you're in for! Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. www.bayoakomolafe.net Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions in Fall 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com. And follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com. Science and Nonduality is a community inspired by timeless wisdom, informed by cutting-edge science, and grounded in direct experience. We come together in an open-hearted exploration while celebrating our humanity. scienceandnonduality.com
“The fugitive is the figure of the Anthropocene, a political invitation to unlearn ‘mastery,' to fall to the Earth, to learn how to commune with soil… In a sense, the fugitive answers the question that is hidden within the words of my Elders, when they say: ‘in order to find your way, you must become lost.'” In this week's episode, Bayo Akomolafe guides listeners on a journey to lose oneself and leave behind the ties that bind us to world views that do not serve humanity's wholeness. Touching on the historical roots of fugitivity, Bayo challenges us to lean into the “political un-project” that is fugitivity, blurring societally-imposed binaries, in order to better understand the human territory and to make more-than-human sanctuary through post activism. If justice is an action and not a static state, how can we embody it? Twisting and turning through the contours of human consciousness and understanding, Bayo and Ayana dive into meaningful and existential questions. Rooted in trickster philosophy and abundant spirituality, Bayo encourages mindful and playful questions. At the heart of such complex questioning, lies the vital question of our time – what does it mean to be a human in times such as this? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Visionary Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'. Music by Dzidzor and Lady Moon and the Eclipse. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
On this episode, our guest is Bayo Akomolafe, a speaker, author, fugitive neo-materialist com-post-activist public intellectual and Yoruba poet. But when he takes himself less seriously, he is a father to Alethea and Kyah, and the grateful life-partner to Ej as well as the sworn washer of nightly archives of dishes. The convener of the concepts of ‘postactivism', ‘transraciality' and ‘ontofugitivity', Bayo is a widely celebrated international speaker, teacher, public intellectual, essayist and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. He is also the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'. Bayo joins me to speak about lostness as a relationship, his unique take on escape and exile, migrant bodies in the tourist wake, the place of decoloniality and post-activism in a tourist world, making sanctuary from fugitivity, and the monster as the face of hospitality. Enjoy! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bayo Akomolafe's Official Website The Emergence Network We Will Dance With Mountains Course Bayo's Facebook Page ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the pod & movement via our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theendoftourism Discover more episodes and join the conversation: http://www.theendoftourism.com Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter @theendoftourism
Today we host a deeply inspiring and perspective-shifting chat with the one and only Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is a father, son, brother, life partner, author, poet, teacher, public intellectual, international speaker, post-humanist thinker, and so much more. He is also the visionary founder of the Emergence Network and the host of the online course We Will Dance with Mountains.For the show notes, visit: https://www.lifteconomy.com/blog/bayo-akomolafeSubscribe to Next Economy Now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Google Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you find podcasts.---LIFT Economy NewsletterJoin 7500+ subscribers and get our free 60 point business design checklist—plus monthly tips, advice, and resources to help you build the Next Economy: https://lifteconomy.com/newsletter---Next Economy MBAThis episode is brought to you by the Next Economy MBA.What would a business education look like if it was completely redesigned for the benefit of all life? This is why the team at LIFT Economy created the Next Economy MBA (https://lifteconomy.com/mba).The Next Economy MBA is a nine month online course for folks who want to learn key business fundamentals (e.g., vision, culture, strategy, and operations) from an equitable, inclusive, and regenerative perspective.Join the growing network of 350+ alumni who have been exposed to new solutions, learned essential business skills, and joined a lifelong peer group that is catalyzing a global shift towards an economy that works for all life.Learn more at https://lifteconomy.com/mba.---Show Notes + Other LinksFor detailed show notes and interviews with past guests, please visit https://lifteconomy.com/podcastIf you enjoy the podcast, please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts by visiting: https://bit.ly/nexteconomynowTwitter: https://twitter.com/LIFTEconomyInstagram: https://instagram.com/lifteconomy/Facebook: https://facebook.com/LIFTEconomy/YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/LifteconomyMusic by Chris Zabriskie: https://chriszabriskie.com/The spring cohort of the Next Economy MBA is officially open! Save 20% when you register before 1/29 with our early-bird sale ➡️ https://lifteconomy.com/mba
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Visionary Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'. ON THIS EPISODE: Bayo Akomolafe | @bayo_akomolafe Adam Jackson | @adam___jackson SACRED SONS TRAININGS & EVENTS: EMX | AUSTIN | JUNE 9 - 12 | The Embodied Masculine Experience is a 40 man initiatory event. Join us in Austin, TX for 4 days of Connection, Confrontation, and Celebration with Sacred Sons regional Leadership. SSI | EUROPEAN TOUR | SUMMER 2022 | Sacred Sons Immersion is coming to Europe! The Sacred Sons Immersion is an invitation for potent connection and authentic relating with men in your local community. With confrontation as the barometer for growth, men are guided to their edges through embodiment practices to awaken the integrated self within. The Immersion is your local home for clarity and connection PRIME LEADERSHIP | SELKIRK, SCOTLAND | JULY 13 - 17 | This NEW European offering is 5 days of connection, confrontation, and integration in the rolling hills of Scotland. This is an intimate experience, and designed for men who are ready to embody their purpose, within leadership. CONNECT: Shop | Sacred Sons Apparel & Merch Website | sacredsons.com YouTube | Sacred Sons Instagram | @sacredsons Events Calendar | All upcoming Sacred Sons Trainings and Experiences!
Trained in clinical psychology, Bayo Akomolafe, Ph.D. now works as an author, speaker, and professor. He is recognized worldwide for his thoughtful and unconventional take on global crises, trauma and social change. Bayo starts off by sharing a proverb from his Yoruba people: “In order to find your way, you must become lost”. This leads to an invitation to being in the world in a different way. He offers an alternative, non-pathologizing way to think about trauma and our adaptations to it. Instead of pathologizing what we are afraid of, he invites us to “lean into the cracks, the failures… and maybe by performing your way through those cracks, you may find other ways of being in the world.” Throughout this episode, Bayo offers a possible new vision through stories of transformation. About Bayo: Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online post-activist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'. Learn More: www.bayoakomolafe.net www.emergencenetwork.org www.facebook.com/bayoakomolafeampersand To read the full show notes and discover more resources visit http://www.narmtraining.com/podcast *** NARM Training Institute http://www.NARMtraining.com View upcoming trainings: https://narmtraining.com/schedule Join the Inner Circle: https://narmtraining.com/online-learning/inner-circle *** The NARM Training Institute provides tools for transforming complex trauma through: in-person and online trainings for mental health care professionals; in-person and online workshops on complex trauma and how it interplays with areas like addiction, parenting, and cultural trauma; an online self-paced learning program, the NARM Inner Circle; and other trauma-informed learning resources. We want to connect with you! Facebook @NARMtraining Twitter @NARMtraining YouTube Instagram @thenarmtraininginstitute
Spiritually Inspired show with Bayo Akomolafe, Author, Philosopher, Psychologist.Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, professor, and poet. He is a teacher and public intellectual renowned for his unconventional views on global crises, activism, and social change. Bayo dreams of composing a “weird politics”, a postnationalist emancipatory network of making sanctuary as inquiry, a village of technologies for fugitives. In 2014, Dr. Akomolafe was invited to be the Special Envoy of the International Alliance for Localization, a project of Ancient Futures (USA). He left his lecturing position in Covenant University, Nigeria to help build this Alliance. Bayo has been Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, where he taught on his own formulated concepts of ‘transraciality' and postactivism. He has also taught at Sonoma State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Schumacher College (England). He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and the University of Vermont, as an adjunct and associate professor, respectively. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (SAND).Bayo is a widely celebrated international speaker an award-winning public intellectual, essayist and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. He is also the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network. He is writing his third book about the spirituality lessons of the transatlantic slave journeys, called “The Times are Urgent, Let us Slow Down”. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/https://course.bayoakomolafe.net/www.claudiumurgan.comwww.patreon.com/claudiumurganclaudiu@claudiumurgan.comSubscribe for more videos! youtube.com/channel/UC6RlLkzUK_LdyRSV7DE6obQ
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, originally aired in January of 2020. Our hearts and minds are set to work by the urgent eco-social crises of this time. Caught in a cultural twitch of frenetic production and the sticky paradigms of modernity, we've penned vocabulary and designed technologies, manufactured frameworks and crunched numbers in an effort to diagnose and “treat” planetary collapse. We are invited by this week's guest, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, to pause and abandon solutionism, step back from the project of progress, and dance into a different set of questions: What does the Anthropocene teach us as a destabilizing agent that resists our taming? How can we show up in our movements of justice if “the ways we respond to crisis is part of the crisis”? What happens when we unfurl into a space of slowness and relinquish human mastery to a wider cosmic net of relations? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden—and their mother, his wife and "life-nectar,” Ijeoma. An author, speaker, renegade academic, and proud father, Bayo is Chief Curator and Director of The Emergence Network, a constellation of humans and nonhumans working together trans-locally to curate projects, rituals, conversations and events that nurture senses of the otherwise via practices that trouble the traditional boundaries of agency and possibility. Bayo is also a visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, and has taught in universities around the world. He is a consultant with UNESCO, leading efforts for the Imagining Africa's Future (IAF) project. Bayo has authored two books, We Will Tell Our Own Story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home, and has penned forewords for many others. Music by Daniel Higgs Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
Dr Bayo Akomalafe is a philosopher, writer, activist, professor of psychology, and executive director of the Emergence Network. In this chat, Dave talks to Dr Bayo about: unschooling and non-schooling community as an organism trauma as an invitation to reimagine rupture and repair - individually and collectively surrendering to the non-human world localisation And so much more. To learn more about Bayo - https://www.bayoakomolafe.net To learn more about Regenerative Ways - www.megberryman.com
How can we reimagine and reorient our curiosity during civilisational crisis? In this episode Amisha brings together Sophie Strand and Bayo Akomolafe. Sophie is a writer, who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients. Bayo is a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor and chief-curator of the Emergence Network. He curates this earth-wide project for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilisational crisis. Sophie and Bayo unfold a playful conversation taking us on a wild journey of how we might research the sacred, investigate that which interconnects us and re/imagine education. They consider that our troubling times call for us to become prolific in indeterminate research that takes it away from academia and humanist claws; forms of research that allow for playful, tactile and intimate spaces, where our bodies are ecological experiments and investigations into past ecosystems, where we might allow furniture to do research and allow for the fact that the weather is doing research with our bodies. Emerging from their intimate enquiries is a call for animist reorientation that fundamentally questions our conditioned point of view and serves as an invitation to marvel at the invisible, the uncertainties and the deep questions it raises. Inviting people into spaces to share food is an ‘outrageous' and simple invitation where new enquiries can sprout from our bewilderment. They encourage us to understand our bodies as psychedelic, sensory portals that do not need medicines to encourage our ecological awakeness. We learn that every decision is an opportunity to risk doing the most interesting thing. Blossoming our curiosity will open up our understanding of the sacred as an emergency and simultaneously as an emergence, where we may understand ourselves as patterns rather than matter. This alternative opens spaces where we can re-orient, articulate hope, and think about the future as computational, algorithmic, cybernetic flows beyond us during civilisational crisis. Links from this episode and more at www.allthatweare.org
Chloë Goodchild in conversation with visionary speakers, essayists & authors, Bayo Akomolafe & Charles Eisenstein, discussing friendship, public speaking, voice, sound, language, and much more.The VOCE Dialogues offer a simple, accessible in-depth ground for poets, authors, musicians, visual artists, and visionary teachers to share and disseminate their insights about the transformative practice of contemplative, creative and compassionate communication.Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, post-humanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo Akomolafe is the Visionary Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online post-activist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'.https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/http://www.emergencenetwork.org/Charles Eisenstein is a father of four, essayist, speaker, and the author of several books, including The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible.https://charleseisenstein.org/Chloë Goodchild is an international singer, innovatory educator, author and founder of The Naked Voice (1990) and its UK Charitable Foundation (2004), dedicated to the realization of compassionate communication in all realms of human life. Deafness in childhood catalysed Chloë's deep encounter with her inner self, and began a lifetime's experiential research into the voice as a catalyst for personal evolution and global transformation.https://www.chloegoodchild.com/
Shadiin and Delma discuss the horrors of Ukraine, what it brings up for them-including how this moment mirrors so many others. From the systemic assault of women to the systemic racial bias in it's coverage, our hosts grapple with what it means to be a human consuming information that deeply impacts our sense of safety, well-being, and our sense of responsibility to this global community we call home. Our hosts then welcome Chief Curator of The Emergence Network, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. A speaker, author, fugitive neo-materialist, com-post-activist, public intellectual and Yoruba poet-Dr. Akomolafe offers a series of fundamental questions about the nature of justice, race, privilege, failure, and experimentation--For instance: Do we strengthen the role of oppression by seeking recognition from the very systems we seek to create? Is justice enough? What do we lose when we live in our privilege?
Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “language is fossil poetry.” If that's true, then Báyò Akómoláfé is one of the most remarkable archaeologists and excavators of language's hidden meanings and of our shared human past. What I love about Báyò is his capacity to reformulate, reimagine, reconfigure, and remember. He works with language in a way that deepens our understandings of what's true and real, and also what is untrue and unreal. He weaves those understandings together to help us move towards the boundaries of conventional life, where we might truly learn, grow, and discover.He's an author, a speaker, a teacher. He's also the executive director of The Emergence Network and the chief host of the wildly popular online/offline course and festival, we will dance with mountains. But another way we might talk about Báyò is that he's a self-styled trans-public intellectual, which is a concept imagined together with and inspired by a much more ancient idea of a shamanic priesthood of the Yoruba healer trickster Eshu, who we talk about in our conversation.It's possible that you'll hear some of Báyò's formulations and be struck with a sense of, "what does that mean?" In fact, I hope that's the case! And I invite you to deepen into that encounter. That when faced with the unknown, you're not immediately and unconsciously repulsed by it. Rather, you stop and ask, "What is the trick here? What is hiding inside these words? What is waiting to break open a belief or way of seeing that I need to let go of? That no longer serves me or the world?"Get Connected:The Wonder Dome Newsletter http://bit.ly/3dTfdPiFollow Andy on Twitter http://twitter.com/cahillaguerillaFollow us on Instagram http://instagram.com/thewonderdomepodLike us on Facebook http://facebook.com/mindfulcreative.coachConnect with Báyò:BayoAkomolafe.netfacebook.com/bayoakomolafeampersandlinkedin.com/in/bayoakomolafetwitter.com/bayoakomolafe
28 October 2021Bayo AkomolafeBecoming Black – The Colonial Grammar of Settlement and the Promise of Fugitive Flighthttps://hessische-theaterakademie.de/de/ringvorlesungBECOMING BLACK - THE COLONIAL GRAMMAR OF SETTLEMENT AND THE PROMISE OF FUGITIVE FLIGHTDie darstellenden Künste lenken unsere Aufmerksamkeit auf den Körper - sie laden uns ein, uns auf "seine" Anforderungen, seine Lebendigkeit und seinen pulsierenden Platz innerhalb einer Politik zu konzentrieren, die dazu neigt, Sprache und Diskurs als das A und O dafür zu betrachten, wie die Welt zu Bedeutung kommt. Ein Teil der Weisheit der Künste besteht jedoch darin, den Körper und seine gesetzten Grenzen zu stören, die ihm zugewiesenen Grenzen zu überschreiten, seine Stabilität und Sicherheit zu stören und Überläufe und neue ethische Formulierungen zuzulassen. Was könnten die Künste in einer Zeit rassifizierter Spannungen, in der bestimmte Körper, nicht ganz menschliche und nichtmenschliche, durch die Intensität und die libidinösen Kräfte der weißen Moderne unfähig, behindert, belagert, unsicher und unzureichend gemacht werden, zum Wunsch nach einer dekolonialen Zukunft beitragen? In diesem Vortrag, in dem Bayo Akomolafe sein Konzept des Schwarz-Werdens erkundet, schlägt er vor, dass die Unsicherheit von Körpern, die Minderheiten angehören - die oft im Rahmen einer Politik der Inklusivität korrigiert werden -, begehrliche Ouvertüren zu anderen Orten der Macht sein können, die die Algorithmen der staatlich geförderten Gerechtigkeit übersteigen. Wenn verunsichert zu sein bedeutet, sich der Verständlichkeit des Kolonialen zu widersetzen und sich auf eine neue, produktive und einladende Tiefe einzustellen, wie könnten uns dann die Künste lehren, verunsichert zu werden, Schwarz zu werden?BIOGRAPHIEBayo Akomolafe ist ein nigerianischer Philosoph, Aktivist und Dozent. Er wurde 1983 in einem christlichen Elternhaus und als Sohn von Yoruba-Eltern im Westen Nigerias geboren. Nachdem er seinen Vater, einen Diplomaten, durch ein plötzliches Herzleiden verloren hatte, zog sich Bayo als Teenager zurück und versuchte, dem "Kern der Sache" auf den Grund zu gehen, um seinen schmerzlichen Verlust zu verarbeiten. Er versuchte, die Extreme seiner sozialen Konditionierung, seines Glaubens und seiner späteren Ausbildung zum klinischen Psychologen auszuschöpfen - nur um festzustellen, dass etwas anderes, das sich nicht artikulieren ließ, an seinen Ärmeln zerrte und wahrgenommen werden wollte. Nachdem er im Rahmen seiner Suche nach einem neuen Verständnis von Trauma, psychischem Wohlbefinden und Heilung mit traditionellen Heilern zusammengetroffen war, verdichteten sich seine tiefgründigen Fragen und seine Sorge um dekolonisierte Landschaften zu einem Leben, das der Erforschung der Nuancen einer "magischen" Welt gewidmet ist, die "zu vielseitig ist, um in unsere liebste Vorstellung von ihr zu passen". Er ist geschäftsführender Direktor und Chefkurator des Emergence Network (ein post-aktivistisches Projekt) und Gastgeber des Online-Schreibkurses "We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence".
Bayo Akomolafe is a prolific essayist, speaker and activist, a professor of psychology, a master wordsmith and executive director of the Emergence Network. An acute observer of our troubled times, Bayo has a gift for capturing the awkward confusion of our present predicament in phrases like “the times are urgent, let us slow down.” In this conversation, Bayo invites us to sit with our awkward confusion as we explore vulnerability as strength, the acceleration of history, race and reparations, the “mind forged manacles” of our times, as well as agency in times in crisis, and much, much more. This was a real mind-bending or, more accurately, question-bending conversation, we hope that you enjoy it as much as we did. Bayo Akomolafe writes at his website: https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/ And tweets @BayoAkomolafe: https://twitter.com/BayoAkomolafe Some of the essays that we discussed in this conversation include: • ‘Dear White People': https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/dear-white-people • ‘Let's Meet at the Crossroads': https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/lets-meet-at-the-crossroads • ‘What Climate Collapse Asks of Us': http://www.emergencenetwork.org/whatclimatecollapseasksofus/ • ‘The Times are Urgent: Let's Slow Down': https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down • ‘I, Coronavirus. Mother. Monster. Activist': http://www.emergencenetwork.org/icoronavirus/ The Emergence Network website can be found here: http://www.emergencenetwork.org/ You can find out more about his course in ‘postactivism': ‘We Will Dance With Mountains' at this webpage: https://course.bayoakomolafe.net/
Bruce Reyes-Chow joins the pod to talk about the importance of kindness, explains how its different from being "nice," and navigates the complexity between kindness and privilege. He also shares how he was re-inspired to pickup the project after watching the documentary on fellow Presbyterian pastor Mr. Rogers, who himself inspired many to confront justice and hold systems accountable without attacking the person. Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow is a 3rd generation Chinese/Filipino who is deeply committed to the intersection between faith, politics, and social justice. Bruce has been a Presbyterian Pastor for over 25 years serving a diversity of congregations in the San Francisco Bay Area. Bruce hosts the podcast, BRC & Friends, is a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach, and is a Senior Consultant and Coach with the Emergence Network. He is the author of five books, most recently, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World (Chalice Press 2021). The Future Christian Podcast is a production of Torn Curtain Arts and Resonate Media.
Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian author, professor, chief curator of The Emergence Network and is often known for his poetic and provocative take on big topics such as global crisis and social change. We talk about what he calls 'generative incapacitation' and the kind of leadership that's needed in these times, how the Covid pandemic is disrupting our norms, embracing failure and allowing ourselves to be lost... and I also posed some questions to him about my worries regarding the reinventing work movement. It's a deep conversation so perhaps listen to this out on a walk! Resources: Bayo's website A beautiful conversation with Bayo on For The Wild on slowing down for urgent times A video of Bayo being interviewed by friend of the Leadermorphosis podcast Skeena Rathor for Extinction Rebellion ideas exchange (And you can listen to my conversation with Skeena here, Leadermorphosis ep. 47) The conversation with Miki Kashtan I reference (Leadermorphosis ep. 37) The conversation with Margaret Wheatley I reference (Leadermorphosis ep. 33)
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden – and their mother, his wife and “life-nectar”, Ijeoma. “To learn the importance of insignificance” is the way he frames a desire to reacquaint himself with a world that is irretrievably entangled, preposterously alive and completely partial. He is the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network (A Post-Activist Project] and host of the online writing course, ‘We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence'. As Coordinating Curator of The Emergence Network, Bayo hopes to inspire a diffractive network of sharing – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise'…one that does not treat the crises of our times as exterior to ‘us' or the ‘solutions' that conventional activism offers as discrete or separate from the problems that we seek to nullify. Bayo is author and editor of ‘We will tell our own story!' with Professors Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye, and ‘These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to my Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home‘ (North Atlantic Books, 2017). Ej and Bayo are ecstatic parents of Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi. His most fervent passions are Ej, drawing, singing, writing, designing, speaking, and traveling. Visit Bayo's website and learn more. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– To support this podcast, please visit https://activistheology.com/give. To follow Activist Theology on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook: @activistheology To be in touch with Dr. Robyn: robyn@activistheology.com or @irobyn To be in touch with Rev. Anna: anna@activistheology.com or @unholyhairetic The Activist Theology Podcast is an Irreverent Media Podcast.
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden – and their mother, his wife and “life-nectar”, Ijeoma. “To learn the importance of insignificance” is the way he frames a desire to reacquaint himself with a world that is irretrievably entangled, preposterously alive and completely partial. He is the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network (A Post-Activist Project] and host of the online writing course, ‘We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence'. As Coordinating Curator of The Emergence Network, Bayo hopes to inspire a diffractive network of sharing – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise'…one that does not treat the crises of our times as exterior to ‘us' or the ‘solutions' that conventional activism offers as discrete or separate from the problems that we seek to nullify. Bayo is author and editor of ‘We will tell our own story!' with Professors Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye, and ‘These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to my Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home‘ (North Atlantic Books, 2017). Ej and Bayo are ecstatic parents of Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi. His most fervent passions are Ej, drawing, singing, writing, designing, speaking, and traveling. Visit Bayo's website and learn more. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– To support this podcast, please visit https://activistheology.com/give. To follow Activist Theology on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook: @activistheology To be in touch with Dr. Robyn: robyn@activistheology.com or @irobyn To be in touch with Rev. Anna: anna@activistheology.com or @unholyhairetic The Activist Theology Podcast is an Irreverent Media Podcast.
Green Dreamer: Sustainability and Regeneration From Ideas to Life
What does it mean that we have a crisis in form—that our problems go deeper than the visible systems we often attribute them to? What might we gain from surrendering human control and centrality, slowing down even as we feel increasing urgency to address social injustice and climate change? In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, Bayo is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains'. The musical offering in this episode is I'm Not a Mountain by Sarah Kinsley. Help us reach our Patreon goal: Patreon.com/GreenDreamer Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast and multimedia journal exploring our paths to collective healing, ecological regeneration, and true abundance and wellness for all. Find our show notes, transcripts, and newsletter at GreenDreamer.com. *Our episodes are minimally edited; please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each topic explored.
In These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books, 2017), leading edge thinker and post-activist Bayo Akomolafe embraces some of the world's most profound questions through the intimate lens of fatherhood. Creatively using memoir and the epistolary format, Dr. Akomolafe offers an engaging, thought-provoking look at a range of timely subjects, including the myths of modernity, climate change, food systems, and what it means to be human. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a writer, lecturer, and public intellectual. He is Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online writing course “We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence.” He is co-author and co-editor of “We Will Tell Our Own Story!” and creator of a new work called “I Coronoavirus, Mother, Monster, Activist,” which is available at bayoakomolafe.net. Dr.Susan Grelock Yusem is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/spiritual-practice-and-mindfulness
In These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books, 2017), leading edge thinker and post-activist Bayo Akomolafe embraces some of the world's most profound questions through the intimate lens of fatherhood. Creatively using memoir and the epistolary format, Dr. Akomolafe offers an engaging, thought-provoking look at a range of timely subjects, including the myths of modernity, climate change, food systems, and what it means to be human. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a writer, lecturer, and public intellectual. He is Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online writing course “We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence.” He is co-author and co-editor of “We Will Tell Our Own Story!” and creator of a new work called “I Coronoavirus, Mother, Monster, Activist,” which is available at bayoakomolafe.net. Dr.Susan Grelock Yusem is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
In These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books, 2017), leading edge thinker and post-activist Bayo Akomolafe embraces some of the world's most profound questions through the intimate lens of fatherhood. Creatively using memoir and the epistolary format, Dr. Akomolafe offers an engaging, thought-provoking look at a range of timely subjects, including the myths of modernity, climate change, food systems, and what it means to be human. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a writer, lecturer, and public intellectual. He is Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and host of the online writing course “We will dance with Mountains: Writing as a Tool for Emergence.” He is co-author and co-editor of “We Will Tell Our Own Story!” and creator of a new work called “I Coronoavirus, Mother, Monster, Activist,” which is available at bayoakomolafe.net. Dr.Susan Grelock Yusem is an independent researcher trained in depth psychology, with an emphasis on community, liberation, and eco-psychologies. Her work centers around interconnection and encompasses regenerative food systems, the arts and conservation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Bayo Akomolafe is globally recognised for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on the world's interlocking social and environmental crises. He is the Executive Director of the Emergence Network. A Post-Activist Project making radical and creative inquiries into the frameworks that govern our orthodox modes of responding to crises.Bayo has authored two books: ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story' and ‘These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters To My Daughter on Humanity's Search For Home.' He considers learning how to be with his daughter, son and their mother, his most sacred work.Learn more about Bayo Akomolafe's workThe conversation was real yet touched upon the mysterious, we talked about:- Post-activism: an invitation to be present with and listen to the troubles in the world- Questioning concepts of “rightness,” “whiteness” and what it means to be “appropriate”- The importance of becoming strangers, to “lose our way” to find new ways of living- Embracing obstacles as gifts and allies on our path- Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary world- The failure of our politics in dealing with colonization and racismYou can connect with Bayo and his work on the web here.For more information about upcoming speakers on the series and to donate visit: The Human Potential Series.To learn more about Earth Beat Festival and the values behind our organisation please go to: earthbeatfestival.comWe deeply appreciate your support and generosity. Thanks for tuning in and if you feel inspired please leave us a review on iTunes.Music courtesy of East Forest. Listen to his latest album Spores.
This conversation has invited me to look at those in my mirror. Where I try to polish and where I accept the invitation. In the broader scale where we in West are so busy polishing that our arms are falling off. It takes some breathing deeply and a commitment to not turn away. About Bayo Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains’.
How can we re-contextualise our relationships and interactions in a time of post truth and late stage capitalism? In this episode Amisha talks with Alnoor Ladha, political strategist, writer and activist. Alnoor's work focuses on the intersection of political organising, systems thinking, structural change and narrative work. He comes from a Sufi lineage and writes about the crossroads of politics and spirituality in troubled times. He was the Executive Director of The Rules (TR), is a co-founder of Tierra Valiente and a board member of Culture Hack Labs and The Emergence Network. Amisha and Alnoor contemplate our current moment of polarisation as an initiation into non-dualistic thought and being, where we face our personal role in the destruction, entitlement and victimhood paradigms of late stage capitalism, so we may become comfortable with its complexities and garner spiritual practice from its currents. Alnoor believes that our spiritual work accelerates our political work and that solidarity is not a political concept, but an embodied spiritual practice and a pathway to spiritual development. He reveals that in order to re-contextualise our dominant political and value constructs, we need to replace these with containers of deprogramming and contemplation, where our ideas can transcend traditions of ownership, growth, accumulation, destruction, and where we can plant roots in shared values, so our souls can do the work we being called forth to do. We learn that we have to take back responsibilities of meaning making, so that we may birth new stories and context moving beyond our belief systems of false gods. Synthesising wisdom traditions with Western technique may be the way to remove the psychosis of colonisation, hierarchy, domination and extraction; and to be in dialogue with our living planet and in practice of solidarity, contemplation, spiritual practices, meditation or work with psychedelics will guide us to become initiated into the bounty of life that we have been entrusted with. Links from this episode and more at www.thefutureisbeautiful.co
What can we do to honour those that hold the world together? In this episode Amisha brings together Manish Jain (E39), an un-educator, giftivist, writer and co-founder of the Unschooling movement in India, Bayo Akomolafe (E13), a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor and curator of the Emergence Network and Charles Eisenstein (E98) a social philosopher, author and public speaker; three leading thinkers and visionaries seeking to understand and shape the fabric of our earthly communities in new ways. In this life-affirming conversation they share their observations and insights of what is unfolding in their respective cultures during the current season of change. As invisible ‘secrets', rituals and mythologies that bind or polarise our communities are revealed, they invite us into exploration of how we might change our worldviews relating to death, education, power dynamics and trust. They talk about how with care for community, village economies and mutual aid, we may form life experiences that counteract our sense of separation and the fragile hostile global systems we have constructed. They reveal our current transformation as an opportunity to ask new questions about how we hope to shape this moment and how we might grow new fields of trust honouring the exponential possibilities we could seed. Their heart-led approaches encourage us to envision these possibilities as sacred sanctuaries where we might encounter things that are greater than ourselves. Their deep bond of brotherhood invites our spirit of playfulness to seek out wilder forms of thinking and education, wilder forms of coalitions, wilder forms of communication and change to shape new patterns of interbeing. Links from this episode and more at www.thefutureisbeautiful.co
Caroline welcomes word-crafting wizard Trickster ally, Bayo Akomolafe, and his publisher Tim McKee of North Atlantic Books… at this Dark o Moon Before Solstice, as we animate the desirable guiding story. Bayo is “a lecturer, speaker, and proud diaper-changer, Bayo curates an earth-wide project for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilizational crisis – a project framed within a feminist ethos and inspired by indigenous cosmologies. He is the Executive Director and Chief Curator for The Emergence Network.“ http://bayoakomolafe.net/ Support The Visionary Activist Show on Patreon for weekly Chart & Themes ($4/month) and more… *Woof*Woof*Wanna*Play?!?* The post The Visionary Activist Show – Animating the Desirable Story appeared first on KPFA.
I'm very excited to share my conversation today with Bayo Akomolafe, an international speaker, poet and activist in service of a radical paradigm shift in consciousness and culture. He is globally recognised for his unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action and social change. Bayo is also Chief Curator for The Emergence Network and the author of two books, including “These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.” I first crossed paths with Bayo at the New Story Summit in Scotland, back in 2014, and since then have followed his genre-bending wonderings about how things came to be as they are, often crafting his lectures and essays with surprising and beautiful associations of language and imagery. In this episode, we cover a range of topics, including: Understanding fatherhood as a community, the need to confront the monstrosities of masculinity, and the tender wound that may lie at the heart of the patriarchy.
The Numinous Podcast with Carmen Spagnola: Intuition, Spirituality and the Mystery of Life
Tending The Threshold is an event happening in Ashland, Oregon, on May 26 and 27th, 2018. Tickets can information can be found at tendingthethreshold.com It is a gathering of Change-makers, Bridge builders and Edge Dwellers, with no agenda other than to practice being together, and to learn how to take care of each other and the world, in these challenging times. The container at this un-conference will be held by a group of ten co-facilitators from three countries and many walks of life. The group includes: Poet and spoken word artist, Tannur Ali Conflict Engagement and Resolution practitioner, Aftab Erfan Equity and Inclusion Consultant, Desiree Adaway Clinical Psychologist and Author, Bayo Akomolafe Social Entrepreneur, Donnie Maclurcan Artist and Death Doula, Rachael Rice Educator, facilitator and Indigenous rights activist, Aaron Ortega Videographer and artist, Bec Stupak Therapist, ritualist and conference founder, Holly Truhlar And myself, Carmen Spagnola. *** Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) is a renegade academic, lecturer, speaker, and proud diaper-changer. Bayo curates an earth-wide organization, The Emergence Network, for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to the civilizational crisis--a project framed within a feminist ethos and inspired by indigenous cosmologies. He considers this a shared art--exploring the edges of the intelligible, dancing with posthumanist ideas, and dabbling in the mysteries of quantum mechanics. In short, Bayo has given up his longing for the "end-time" and is learning to live in the "mean time." In the middle, where we must live with confusion and make do with partial answers. He speaks and teaches about his experiences around the world, and then returns to his adopted home in Chennai, India - "where the occasional whiff of cow dung dancing in the air is another invitation to explore the vitality of a world that is never still and always surprising." Bayo has authored two books, ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story!' and ‘These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.' http://bayoakomolafe.net
Donate to The Permaculture Podcast Online: via PayPal Venmo: @permaculturepodcast What can I say, 2016 was a tumultuous year for many. As this latest trip around the sun drew to a close there were many memes and references that 2016 was a year where people would make sure to stay up to midnight just to watch to it die, while looking forward to 2017 being an entirely different, perhaps brighter, year. I don't put much stock in a year being good or bad, as even with all my own ups and downs, a divorce, two moves, and some health issues, I'm quite pleased with what happened over the last 12 months: time spent with my children, dozens of interviews recorded, hundreds of phone calls and emails responded to, people met, and projects launched. Already this new year, 2017 is shaping up to be beautiful. But, there was some big news this year. Out of everything that happened around the globe, perhaps the biggest news for our community as a whole was the loss of two important figures to the movement: one of the founders and one of our best communicators. I speak of course of Bill Mollison and Toby Hemenway. I never knew Bruce Charles “Bill” Mollison, who passed away on September 24, 2016 at the age of 88, but I wouldn't be here without his efforts to popularize the ideas he developed with David Holmgren. Slow to build in the early years, seeing the number of trained practitioners grow from dozens to hundreds throughout the 1980s, and the books rise from a handful to perhaps a dozen, we are now seeing a flourish of activity building upon what Bill started with David more than 40 years ago. When I first came to permaculture nearly two decades ago, Mollinson's The Designers' Manual, the big black book of Permaculture, was about all we had to go on in the West. Starting in the early 2000s with Gaia's Garden, the number one selling book on permaculture thus far, the roots of this discipline took hold and allowed the rest to flourish. It is with a still heavy heart that I hold the loss of Toby Hemenway, who passed away on December 20, 2016. I had the good fortune to get to know him through correspondence and our interview together . Though Gaia's Garden touched many, it was his second book, The Permaculture City, that continues to hold my thoughts because of the critiques he offered on running away to the countryside, as opposed to being where people are: in our cities. He also throughout those pages encouraged us to focus on our talents and to create systems that account for them, rather than pushing to embrace someone else's example of what to do. To truly design our systems around ourselves. I was looking forward to a follow-up to that book, and was outlining a second interview with Toby when word of his illness reached me. Not long after, he passed. Both Toby and Bill will be missed and I'm thankful for the time they did have to share their thoughts through their writing, interviews, and, thanks to the good fortune of the internet, videos. With the big news from our community, there is the smaller news of this show, which entered it's seventh year in October, 2016. Between guest host David Bilbrey and myself, we produced forty-seven episodes this year. If you are new to the show, or want to check out some highlights, some shows that I recommend include: Mary Reynolds, the Irish author of The Garden Awakening, shared with us a way to reconnect with the stories of a place and to become a guardian of Earth. To listen to the myths and legends of the people and the land to reconnect with what we've lost culturally. Whatever our backgrounds, we come from somewhere and should get to know that where. Steven Martyn, The Sacred Gardener from Canada, reminded me, in a similar way to Mary, for the need to reconnect, by creating a relationship with the land that we are on. For those of us who can look to our ancestors and know that their stories are not those of the land we are on, we can reach back to those who called the ground we walk on home and learn about and from them the wisdoms of the first people, while also being allies to their cause, as continues to happen with the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at Standing Rock. I also think, from Steven's examples, about how many of us are displaced from the places where our stories come from and how we were once all indigenous. Those traditions, stories, and folkways often still exist, we just call them myths, legends, and old wives tales, and can rediscover them by connecting to our families or the land they come from. Moving from the land to our social and economic structures, both of the conversations with Shaun Chamberlin bring his work with David Fleming, and David's legacy, to life. Surviving the Future and Lean Logic, both books on my Best Of for this year, create a connection between the long standing work of permaculture to build in the landscape, and take it a step closer towards meeting the needs of our social and economic systems by addressing the tension we feel between our always on, just-in-time economy, and the slower traditions of community. David's vision, continued by Shaun, is not rooted in some sense of nostalgia, but on the prospect of what the world will be like when energy and employment cease to exist as we know them today. We can slow down and react through an outreach of our gifts throughout our community, which is what Eric Chisler, my dear brother, joined David Bilbrey to share his thoughts on. This subject dear to my heart as the boundaries of permaculture continue to push beyond the roots in the landscape, and Eric shared his own experiences and current efforts with The Emergence Network to create the opportunities the future will require. The interview with Eric meant a lot for me personally because it was recorded just as he and I were preparing to leave Seppi's Place, as that project came to a close. I give thanks for my time with Eric and how our conversations drove me deeper into exploring community and alternative structures as we spent late nights in the kitchen cleaning and preparing food, wrapt in conversations, while listening to heavy metal in the background. A colleauge of Shaun's, whose work he extended in The Transition Timeline, is Rob Hopkins, originator of the of Transition Town movement, joined me shortly after the Brexit vote, while we American's were reaching the zenith of the United States presidential election, to talk about the current state of Transition. During that conversation we also look at some of the critiques of permaculture to accomplish the work that is necessary to create not only permanent human agriculture, but also permanent human culture that can survive the climate crisis that is already upon us, and the looming thread of energy descent. Though we may not talk about these two motives for permaculture, especially as oil prices drop and we adjust to the “new normal” of weather weirding, but the dangers are not going away and soon will come to call. Dr. Talia Fletcher and her family visited me while still living at Seppi's Place. There we got to know one another and discuss a holistic approach to veterinary medicine, which we then turned into a later interview. For those of us practicing permaculture, we have allies among all disciplines, we just need to find them, as demonstrated in the conversation with Dr. Fletcher Just as we can find allies around us, we can also be allies in our communities, as I found from interviewing Robyn Mello, the program director of The Philadelphia Orchard project. After provided an introduction to that project, Robyn shared her own story about the community choices she's made by living in the inner city of Philadelphia. Having known Robyn a long time, she remains someone whose work I follow to remember what is possible in the urban environment. While others are still formulating and collecting their thoughts, she is actively doing the work through POP and her own life choices, all while living in the fifth largest city in the United States. Ending the retrospective on interveiws a conversation that started the year: Taj Scicluna, the Perma Pixie. In this continuation of the conversation we had at the end of 2015, Taj shared her experiences as a small business permaculture practitioner and what it means to straddle economics and earth care. I'm often reminded that 80 % of business fail in the first year and a half, so it's clear that being an entrepreneur isn't a straight shot at success, and still if we are going to continue to practice permaculture in the world that we find ourselves in, with liberal economic policies focused around market capitalism, there are structures that we can play with in by owning our own labor, or looking to work outside of those systems through structures like the gift economy, and by making changes in our own lives to live with less financial capital, while we build the social and otherwise. Myself, Taj, Shaun Chamberlin, and many others are choosing to live differently. I won't say that it is easy, but each day we can make the shifts that get us closer to where we want to be. It is a long game we are participating in. Industry, capital, and environmental degradation didn't begin overnight and we're not going to solve these problems either. As a mentor of mine used to say, “fast, cheap, or easy: pick two.” Let's make it cheap and easy by going slow. One day, one small act at a time. With these conversations that were all recorded via wire, also check out the group conversations from my trips to Clear Creek , Kentucky; Philadelphia , Pennsylvania; and Baltimore, Maryland. In those you can hear a multitude of voices come together in conversations about community, fellowship, and creating in urban and rural spaces. Live events like these are always fun, and I like going out to meet and speak with folks in person. If you would like to host an in-person recording of The Permaculture Podcast, and are somewhere near the East Coast, let me know. While recapping this best of from the show, I'd like to give a shoutout to Jason Godesky for creating The Fifth World role-playing game. Though it's been awhile since Jason was on the show as a guest, I got to hang out with him and Giuli at the convention Save Against Fear in October of 2016. During our time together I got a chance to play The Fifth World for the first time and in that process they evoked an Animist experience for me within the game when, for a few moments, I had to face the personification of my character's disconnect from family. It left me shaken for a few moments thanks to the power of the storytelling moment. Whatever your background, be it gamer, storyteller, or an interest in myth, check out TheFifthWorld.com. If you are looking for new books to read, some releases from 2016 I recommend picking up are Lean Logic and Surviving the Future, both edited by Shaun Chamberlin. Rewild or Die by Urban Scout, a persona of Peter Michael Bauer from Rewild Portland, and The New Wildcrafted Cuisine by Pascal Baudar. Lean Logic and Surviving the Future , as mentioned in my interviews with the editor Shaun Chamberlin, fill the gulf between Permaculture and Transition, bridging the landscape and the new culture needed for a bountiful future that acknowledges scarcity and embraces it. Rewild or Die , though a snapshot of a particular moment in time for the rewilding community, is one of the earliest books on Rewilding. I recommend this for everyone interesting in permaculture, rewilding, and the modern primitive skills movement. As someone knowledgeable of permaculture, Peter is able to provide insights on the intersection between the world that arose from agriculture, and what we have to learn from indigenous traditions, all delivered with a bit of snark and sarcasm. On the other side of the spectrum is Pascal Baudar's The New Wildcrafted Cuisine , which takes wild foods and turns them into high culinary fare in a way I've not found elsewhere. Yes, many field books will teach you what to eat and how to make it edible, but Pascal is creating foods that one would want to eat, or even see served in a Michelin rated restaurant. As part of the interview with Pascal, I also appreciate hearing about how many classes and workshops he took in order to learn all that he did to create the book. This is a valuable lesson for all of us to slow down and take our time collecting our experience and understanding our chosen discipline. Looking forward for 2017 and the 7th year of the show, I'm continuing to step into what it means to slow down and take a sabbatical where I reinvest in myself and the podcast. I'll continue to produce new long form interviews, as you're used to, while leaning on friends like David Bilbrey to have other conversations and add unexpected voices to the conversation. Behind the scenes, I've asked by friends at Liminal Collective to take on more of the work that happens when the microphone is off, like social media and the newsletter, so that I can focus on those interviews and The Possibility Handbook . After a long year processing over 1,000 pictures, hours and hours of audio, and generating hundreds of pages of notes, everything is compiled in a way that I can begin writing the book itself. There are, of course, other projects and things we have in the wings for you, but I'm in a place where I'm trusting the process of it all, and will make some announcements as they come together. Throughout everything, my door remains open if you have any questions or would like to talk about anything you heard here, from an episode in the archives, or on a future episode of the show. . Email: or send me a letter: The Permaculture Podcast The Permaculture Podcast Until the next time, create the world you want to live in by taking care of Earth, your self, and each other.