on agency & what it gives us
Power may really live in the hands of just 50 people, but the way it is experienced in our day-to-day lives is far more diffuse. It’s the constant feeling that anywhere and at any given moment, at the nail salon, the grocery store, while you’re walking from your front door to your car, something is being siphoned away from you without you knowing.
... See moreJasmine Bina • Repricing the Human Experience
Most of us really have very little say in the diagnoses we get, even though we all carry a lot of self-knowledge about our bodies and minds. You see the impacts of this a lot when it comes to mental health and neurodivergence: people fighting for years for their autism or ADHD diagnosis, or trying to get an eating disorder diagnosis despite their
... See moreDazed • This New Book Asks Whether Capitalism Really Is Driving Us All Crazy
“Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope is a practice. It points us toward a way of life that enriches rather than depletes our world.”
Medium • Welcome to Terranascient Futures Studies & Foresight
When we do not know what we should hope for, we can hope to learn. There is room for what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls “radical hope … directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is”.
Kieran Setiya • What’s the Use of Hope?
On the other hand, I am a believer in radical hope, by which I mean recognising that the chances of success may be slim but still being driven to act by the values and vision you are rooted in. Time and again, humankind has risen up collectively, often against the odds, to tackle shared problems and overcome crises.
The challenge we face as a
... See moreTo make diagnosis something ‘empowering’, the first step is to completely break it apart and acknowledge all of its potential different and conflicting functions. Diagnosis can give you access to community, or cut you off from community. It can give you access to benefits, or it can bar you from income through employment. It could get you your
... See moreDazed • This New Book Asks Whether Capitalism Really Is Driving Us All Crazy
Chat” evokes what search engines and databases cannot: a sense of personal involvement. It implicates one’s selfhood, which helps cultivate certain behaviors
Anna Wiener • The Age of Chat
guerrilla gardening is a way that people can take back not only their present, but also their future – even as it seems under dire threat from an economic and social system apparently hellbent on human self-eradication.
Damien Gayle • ‘I Call It Botanarchy’: The Hackney Guerrilla Gardener Bringing Power to the People
Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,
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