"The person figured here is not an autonomous, rational actor but an unfolding, shifting biography of culturally and materially specific experiences, relations, and possibilities inflected by each next encounter (...) in uniquely particular ways." (Lucy Suchman, Human-machine reconfigurations: plans and situated actions, 2009, 281)
"Creativity, while it needs certain conditions to flourish, refuses to become subject to prediction. The creative process moves from disorder towards some kind of order which may include the order of random patterns. But it does not know in advance which order will emerge." Helga Nowotony (2016). The Cunning of Uncertainty. Painting by Menez (Maria Inês Ribeiro da Fonseca).
"Turning points in a life that seemed set on a predictable path suddendly emerge. (...) a reality check sets in. Once past certainties have collapsed, one begins to look at the world with different eyes. Emotions change. (...) The cunning of uncertainty lets in the unexpected. It makes room for the new, even if the new is often made from clever and unexpected recombinations of already existing elements. Poised on the threshold between the present and the unknowable future, it invites us to join the dance." Helga Nowotony (2016). The Cunning of Uncertainty. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).
Call it what you will - futures, utopias, dreams - but remeber they "are imperfect, they are imaginative, they are joyful and wild, they are shamelessly emotive, and they are growing up through the cracks in extractivist capitalism." So today, like Malaika Cunningham, I invite you "to look for the roses around you. Those things which bring you pleasure, meaning and peace for no discernible reason other than they are beautiful and, for this, they make your world better." in Bread & Roses. Image of organic city garden, taken March 1, 2022, by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).
As earthling, living in Portugal, I can´t imagine what Ukraine beings are going through in these hours, or what it must feel for Russian beings, having someone decide in their name to commit such an atrocity, so contrary to human species default to protect, care and blossom. Amidst another much bigger war of infinite greed, we add the greed for more territory, more resources, more terror, more power. Enough should be enough to concentrate on the habitability of the finitude of our Planet.
What is happening is an aberration, an abnormality of the system, a hideous crime against us all. The system must be corrected. We are all encoded to be kind by default (*). We need to remind ourselves that what makes vibrant communities is respect, communion, sharing, and a lot of love for the extra energy to transcend ourselves (and endure in the most difficult of times).
(*) Be alert for manipulation! We have been manipulated throughout history to believe that greed is our nature. It is not. More about it in Rutger Bregman (2021). Humankind: A Hopeful History.
"(...) I can think of no better form of personal involvement than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden (...) organically, is improving a piece of the world. (...) A person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set [her or] his mind decisively against what is wrong with us." Wendell Berry (2021). What I Stand for Is What I Stand On. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).
"I comb through the mess of existing worlds-in-the-making, looking for treasures - each distinctive and unlikely to be found again." Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2017). The Mushroom at the End of the World: on the Possibility of Life in capitalist Ruins. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA (CC).
Labels:
biological indicators,
climate emergency,
code red,
define,
life,
Nature,
phenology
"We use brut force reactions to have elements to bond or break apart. Life uses a small subset of the Periodic Table - the safe elements - and then very, very, elegant recipes. Low temperature. Low pressure. Low toxicity. That's Nature chemistry. A very different paradigm." in Biomimicry video from Biomimicry Institute. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA.
«Data protection in EU: Comparative Study of National Reports» "a document aimed to produce a panoramic vision of the legal and ethical framework both at the national and EU level, complementing PANELFIT Guidelines. (...) The present study includes a comparative analysis of data protection in the 27 countries of the European Union. Offering stakeholders and end users a synthetic and simplified version. The national reports produced by our network of experts, so far, are reproduced as well." See legal data and comments for data protection in Portugal. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).
"The Natural World definition of success is not keeping offspring alive in a generation. Success is keeping offspring alive for 10 000 generations or more. This is the magic of Nature." But since "you are not going to be here to take care of 10 000 generations from now, what organisms learned to do, is to take care of the place, that's going to take care of their offspring. (...) Life has learned to create conditions conducive to life (...) that's also the design brief to us. We have to learn to do that." in Biomimicry video from Biomimicry Institute. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA.
Labels:
biodiversity,
Biomimicry Institute,
Lisbon,
magic,
Nature,
seeds,
success,
sustainability,
video
