^ February 25 to April 1, 2021. 1 hour a week. Every Thursday. 0900 New York, 1500 Zagreb, 1930 Mumbai
Designed over 6 sessions, we will begin by talking about biophilia and the global consequences of a lack of biophilic design intentions in this world. We will then delve into a series of practical exercises (solo and in pairs) and meet every week to share insights and experiences. Through these six weeks, you will:
- Open your eyes and mind to the non-human life forms within a 5-km radius of your house through cartography
- Find things to eat in unexpected environments and break myths about what is edible
- Examine the effect of “natural” and “artificial” everyday objects on our wellbeing
- Invent creative ways to introduce the connection with nature in your online and offline…
^ February 9 to March 16. 1.5 hours a week. Every Tuesday. 0900 New York, 1500 Amsterdam, 1930 Mumbai
Why should you come?
Understanding oneself is an essential part of being human. We create meaning in our lives by interpreting our experiences. This interpretation relies on our memories of the past and is also inevitably grounded in our present. We recreate ourselves every time we tell our story to ourselves or to someone else. Our fast-paced, interconnected, information and other-people’s-lives-loaded life of today may leave little time for us to ponder about who we are.
Who we are now. Who we were before. And how we got from “what I was” to “what I have become”.
Understanding oneself is not possible without placing one’s life in context. For example, when we come across art objects, although we sense their emotional effect on us, it is the understanding of their context — their unique stories — that provides us with the most incredible insights and a sense of deep appreciation. One’s life can be looked at in a similar way. The sense of awe that your own life can evoke in you when you look at it with new understanding is a powerful and enriching experience. …
Please could Nick draw your head, shoulders and background?
[Upcoming Course] Exploring Ways of Knowing
^ December 27 to January 31. 1 hour a week. Every Sunday. 0800 Amsterdam, 1230 Mumbai, 1600 Tokyo
Why should you come?
Being able to discern what is ‘true’ or valid and reliable knowledge is an essential skill in today’s information-loaded landscape. We’re constantly bombarded with messages to believe things: Should I believe this research that says that sugar is bad for me? Should I believe him when he says he will never do it again? Should I believe in God when there is no evidence?
Assessing what to believe requires us to think critically and examine how we know what we know. How can we rank the various ways of knowing: senses, emotions, reason, intuition and word, to make sense and make sound decisions? …
^ December 27 to January 31. 1 hour a week. Every Sunday. 0800 Amsterdam, 1230 Mumbai, 1600 Tokyo
Why should you come?
Being able to discern what is ‘true’ or valid and reliable knowledge is an essential skill in today’s information-loaded landscape. We’re constantly bombarded with messages to believe things: Should I believe this research that says that sugar is bad for me? Should I believe him when he says he will never do it again? Should I believe in God when there is no evidence?
Assessing what to believe requires us to think critically and examine how we know what we know. …
Welcome to our first quartely newsletter. The idea behind this quarterly is to keep you abreast with the changes, discussions, and reflections across our platform. WLWG is spread across two channels: a Mighty Network community platform and this Medium Blog.
< 001. Understanding Violence
We kicked off the Mighty Network community with a short course on Understanding Violence with Cary Reid in October. One participant suggested it should be called Understanding Conflict, as the key idea behind the course was conflicts are useful, and we can resolve them peacefully or violently, but when does which route apply? A participant shares their testimonial.
I found a beautiful community of amazing women (plus Cary) who I felt almost instant connection with. That was really unexpected and a lovely bonus. Also, I realised just now that the course has helped me de-stigmatise violence. I think that’s an amazing thing because violence thrives on silence and stigma. I came here thinking that violence is something “bad” that we do in/to an otherwise peaceful world, but now I see that we live in a (structurally/culturally and sometimes directly) violent world and that gives us a choice to make it less violent or more violent through our actions. — Julie…
An interview with Veljko Armano Linta, biophilic designer and architect
The term Biophilia was first used by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), which described biophilia as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.” The term was later used by biologist Edward O. Wilson in his work Biophilia (1984), who proposed that the tendency of humans to focus on and to affiliate with nature and other life-forms has, in part, a genetic basis.
The biophilia hypothesis suggests that humans seek a connection with nature and other parts of life. That we psychologically benefit from being in close relations with our environment.
Let’s go further. …
^ October 8–29, Thursdays, 7:00–8:00 pm India time | 8:30–9:30 am Jamaica time
Why should you come?
Everyone is aware of how destructive violence is and we all want less violence in our world. However, violence is usually not physical and we are not always aware of all the ways in which violence occurs. This course will help you to become aware of the ways in which violence affects us all and the ways in which we may contribute to violence. In this course, you will
- understand the different kinds of violence — direct or structural or cultural
- be able to identify violent actions, structures, and cultures
- learn strategies to transform violent actions, structures, and cultures
- become self-critical of your own violence as well as supportive of others and know when to “call out” offenders vs “call in”…
Presented at WISE Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined Part II
I was recently invited to speak at a WISE conference on how aspects of current education models can be reformed to make systems as a whole more resilient to the evolving landscape of the 21st century. I was especially impressed with their diverse curation of people and learnt about different interesting projects around the world working in the same spaces.
The constraint was three slides and seven minutes. Here is the script and the three slides. It is interesting how with each presentation, things become more clear and lucid and how ideas evolve.
To start off, I would like to highlight four key transformations that everyone in the world of education needs to start thinking about. …
Jaya Ramchandani
A colleague recently pointed me to The Four Tendencies framework when I asked for some advice on how to advise learners who display resistance, even though they want to learn something. The Four Tendencies has been devised by Dr. Gretchen Rubin, and the goal of the framework is to explain “why we act and why we don’t act.” By asking the suspiciously simple question “How do I respond to expectations?”, she discovered that people fit into four tendencies: Questioners, Obligers, Upholders, and Rebels.
It is a relatively new work in human nature, and like with all attempts to classify human behaviours, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt and understood to make it work for you. She warns that this is not an all out personality diagnosis, but useful to understand behaviours in response to inner and outer expectations. …
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