Ab Aeterno #2
Hey there! Perhaps you have noticed that this newsletter is very delayed. It should have been sent to you 2 weeks ago..but, well, here we are. This is what happens when babies take over and discipline becomes impossible. Anyways, let’s get straight to it.
1. The IPPCC UN Climate report.
This past week I guess the UN Climate Report is all over the place. It’s a depressing read, and I haven’t really decided what to do about it all and how to react. Should one just become a full on hedonist? Should I travel to the Maldives now with my daughters so they at least can see them before they disappear? Should I teach them survival skills? Should I just ignore it all? I really don’t know. Reuters wrote a nice overview for those that don’t have the time to read it all.
2. How Friendships Change When You Become an Adult (The Atlantic, soft paywalled)
”Perhaps friends are more willing to forgive long lapses in communication because they’re feeling life’s velocity acutely too. It’s sad, sure, that we stop relying on our friends as much when we grow up, but it allows for a different kind of relationship, based on a mutual understanding of each other’s human limitations. It’s not ideal, but it’s real, as Rawlins might say. Friendship is a relationship with no strings attached except the ones you choose to tie, one that’s just about being there, as best as you can.”
A touching story, about the southwestern US, the tribes who call it home, and their poignant relationship with water (which mostly comes from snowmelt).
”The story of the Navajo people is written into these landscapes, and we are reminded in our songs of this connection. But we are also living on a warming planet. For the many tribes in the Southwest, the future of the ecosystems and the cultural traditions that depend upon snowpacks and snowmelt is also uncertain. The loss of snow will inevitably impact ceremonial cycles, languages and sacred histories. Certain medicinal plants are harder to find, now, having migrated farther upslope to cooler temperatures. On some slopes, the plants have run out of elevation to gain, forcing me and my relatives to travel farther north to other mountain ranges to find them. Some elders say that when we lose connection with the land, the land will die and so will we. Now, as a heating climate reshapes the landscape, their words carry even more weight”.
4. This course by Bayo Akomolafe
I’ll be joining this course this fall - if you’re interested in challenging your mind and how you think about the world then it is perhaps for you.
Hundreds of people from across the world, with different cosmovisions and persuasions, gather to lean into the cracks, to try new moves, to revisit the ordinary, to stray generously from the assured. The course emerges as a post-nationalist invitation to fugitive inquiry, local practice, and celebration beneath the surveillance of modern anxieties, motivations, and ethical contrivances
Anne is hilarious and deep.. and just everything I needed to hear when I listened to her. Soul-soup.
6. Why You Should Read Ursula Le Guin Right Now - Popula
”To see life through different eyes is, for me, the only way to ward off the feeling of powerlessness. To know that our society is barbaric and unnecessary, and that it will not last forever, does not necessarily inspire the imagination of a better one. The power to transport you into a new world, one with social and political norms that conflict entirely with ours, cannot be understated. This is Le Guin’s greatest work: the creation of an “ambiguous utopia,” an imperfect and improvable reality, but one that is beautiful and superior to our own”.
If you haven’t read anything by Le Guin, consider her!
Have a wonderful week ahead!