About This Blog

At a time of immense turmoil

…as the life systems of our Earth home are damaged by human action

– I feel the need to assert that we are part of this wondrous interconnected whole. All the long pathways of our mammal evolution we were, and are – animals who have evolved the ability to create transformative art and stories, to cause immense suffering, and to act with courage to prevent suffering.

We are capable of discernment, reflection and observation. Our beliefs, norms and behaviours are networked, for good or ill.

At our best, we’ve organised to change things for the better through social movements and campaigns – a good kind of collective agency. At our worst, we’ve unleashed genocide and mob aggression, and also via ideologies of the Right, and of the Left.

We are capable of denying what’s before us… such as the global heating and destruction that comes from our activities. Once our network locks on to an idea we lose the ability to notice facts that challenge it. More recently there’s a trend to deny that biological sex is real. But no matter how much we want our ideas to hold sway, the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere is real, extinctions are real, evolution is real, and for mammals like ourselves… biological sex is important, and real. Our life on Earth is grounded in material reality.

I’m interested in how we use networks to protect Nature. More recently I’m interested in the converse of this kind of agency. For example how, if we give up agency to interrogate ideas, we can cause unintended harm.