Why
Modern life is grounded in separation and rationalisation. Today’s society believes we can understand the whole by understanding the parts and that only logic has value.
Our society is now deeply based around individualism, not recognising our innate deep interdependencies. Our modern view of reality is strongly based in industrialisation, seeing living systems through the prism of a mechanical metaphor.
However, we are gradually awakening to the realisation that this way of living has consequences, that have not been costed into our understanding of how we live life.
Globally we are facing many interconnecting crises and societally we are increasingly living with loneliness, a sense of emptiness, lack of meaning, mental health issues, burnout and addictions of all types, including technology. We have been living a false story of progress, and for many there is a deep feeling of dissonance with this world we have created.
But modernity has brought many great advances also, so how do we discern what we want to keep and what needs to evolve? Poesis will help us explore this.
Both the wider society we live in and our inner life
Both how/who we want to be and what we want to do
Both the human and more-than-human world
Relationships, connections and wholeness
Supporting both healing and agency
Creating a space in which to flourish and thrive
Sensemaking and meaning making in service of wisdom
Our embodied experiences not just our cognitive thoughts
Our deeper awakening to our planetary predicament and honouring that reality
Hand, heart and soul, as well as systems and society
Creating a space of joy that also allows for grief
Both mitigation the world’s predicaments, and adaptation to the world as it is and the planetary changes that are to come.
A place that can allow for emergence of what is needed
A ‘re-growing of a living culture’ in the words of Doughald Hine