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Entangled World explores the interrelated, existential social, economic, ecological, and technological risks we face, their underlying drivers, and how a more beautiful world might emerge.
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Today on the podcast, I talked with Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti. Vanessa is the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism, which is a beautiful and critical read for our times in which we must all navigate the global crises we face.
In this episode, we discuss the implications of modernity and what is required of us today, to plant the seeds for a more just, beautiful future for all. Vanessa shares insights from her work in Brazil and with Indigenous communities, highlighting the artificial divide between humans and nature and modernity's impact on our neurobiology.
We discuss cultivating a sense of relational maturity, emotional sobriety, and intellectual discernment and why a move from narrow boundary intelligence, or “either/or,” thinking to wide boundary intelligence, which considers “both/and,” is essential to perceive and then appropriately and morally navigate our actions.
We also discuss how the pattern of modernity is to project an image of the future with fixed form and fixed meanings, so that we can engineer a perfect world. But this is actually a trap that keeps us bound in problematic ways of thinking that have resulted in the existential crises we face. So rather than trying to imagine objective forms, such as what does the future we want look like, we can focus on the vibrational field, how do we want it to feel and how do we work backwards from that? What does it require of us today? What control and certainly must we give up?
This was a thought-provoking conversation about what it means to live more consciously in our paradoxical world and the role that each of us can play as we navigate from modernity to relationality.
00:00 Introduction to Entangled World
01:03 Meet the Host: Najia Shaukat Lupson
02:07 Guest Introduction: Vanessa's Story
02:34 Vanessa's Background and Family History
04:11 Challenges and Paradoxes in Vanessa's Upbringing
06:25 Vanessa's Journey in Education and Indigenous Work
10:55 Exploring the Root of Global Crises
13:12 The House of Modernity: A Metaphor
19:43 Navigating the Meta Crisis
23:54 The Role of Education in Addressing Crises
30:36 Imagination and Relationality
34:09 The Concept of Entanglement
35:33 The Role of Imagination in Creating the New
36:07 Wisdom and Intelligence: A Southern Perspective
37:25 Navigating Modernity: From Narrow to Wide Boundary Intelligence
38:27 The Complexity of Wisdom
41:53 Educational Challenges and Breadcrumbs of Wisdom
48:45 The Seven A's and E's of Modernity
57:12 Neurobiology and Modernity's Impact
01:03:36 Final Thoughts and Future Conversations
Vanessa’s Links:
Portfolio of Vanessa’s work
Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira:
Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective
From Modernity to Relationality | Vanessa Andreotti