On Being is a favorite podcast of mine, one I’ve listened to more or less since I discovered the world of pods, which might have been some 8-10 years ago or so.
Today, walking barefoot in the park, I had Ocean Vuong and Krista Tippett accompany me. Listened to the edited version, and once it was done (by then I had walked home, donned socks and gotten on my bike) I immediately started on the unedited one. By the time that one finished (which had me in garden garb, busy sowing sallad, digging up a few stray herbs and replanting them in the herb garden, cheered on by Pop the cat), I pressed PLAY yet again.
That’s how good it was. Or is.
I urge you to listen, for yourself, to see what you pick up on.
What calls to me most, right now, is this passage on Noah’s Ark:
[…] the preacher kept talking about Noah’s Ark, and I was so infatuated. I think it embedded into my psyche in really everything that I do, even to this day. What an incredible mythos to work and live by, which is that when the apocalypse comes, what will you put into the vessel for the future?
What a marvelous question, accompanied in the unedited version, with this:
The demand on an assessment of human good and value. And then also the abandonment of what is not useful. That confrontation of filtering for gold for the future.
Today, in a world suffering a global pandemic, this is a very apt perspective to take on.
To address. Not necessarily to answer, straight up and down, but to work with. Sit with. reflect upon. Talk about.
I, for one, have definitely thought more than once how glad I am that some (or perhaps even a lot?) of the – in my view, judgmental, I confess – mindless consumption of shit and stuff, has stopped, only to read the following in a New York Times-article:
Millions Had Risen Out of Poverty. Coronavirus Is Pulling Them Back.
Experts say that for the first time since 1998, global poverty will increase. At least a half billion people could slip into destitution by the end of the year.
Reading.
Forcing me to consider that, of course, there is a whole chain of people dependent upon just that mindless consumption, and if one stops, so does the economic wheels of the other.
And what bothers me the most is how it’s always the poorest and most exposed that bear the brunt of it. Regardless of what it is. Be it war, economic recession, pandemics or weather conditions…
This, for me, is one aspect of what #tankespjärn is.
Shifting perspectives, insights that however much I would like for there to be, there very rarely are Right’s or Wrong’s, making me reexamine my stance on things, my beliefs, my prejudices.
“Forcing me to consider that, of course, there is a whole chain of people dependent upon just that mindless consumption, and if one stops, so does the economic wheels of the other.
And what bothers me the most is how it’s always the poorest and most exposed that bear the brunt of it. Regardless of what it is. Be it war, economic recession, pandemics or weather conditions…”
I wish it was otherwise … how can we slow the consumption and still let the poor have a good life?