Living Your Questions: A Pathway Through the Unanswerable with Krista Tippett
Jul 3, 2024
auto_awesome
Peabody-award winning broadcaster Krista Tippett discusses the intersection of science and spirituality, emphasizing the importance of asking deep questions to navigate the challenges of the modern world. They explore moral imagination, transformative change, and the evolution of journalism, highlighting the need for personal growth to drive societal transformation.
Embrace moral imagination and transformation to overcome existential challenges.
Contemplate unanswerable questions to guide meaningful discernment amidst uncertainty.
Cultivate unity and calmness as a species to address societal distress collectively.
Deep dives
The Importance of Moral Imagination and Transformation
The podcast delves into the necessity of embracing moral imagination and transformation in the face of existential challenges. It emphasizes the shift in values needed for humanity to navigate the complexities of modern life, moving away from measuring success with numbers and money. By focusing on inner growth and deep introspection, individuals can contribute to a pathway forward that prioritizes flourishing over mere survival.
Wisdom in Living and Embracing Unanswerable Questions
The discussion explores the significance of contemplating unanswerable questions and living with uncertainty, drawing inspiration from poet Rilke's advice to embrace and love the questions themselves. This approach encourages reflection and discernment, highlighting the importance of holding questions as guides for meaningful and substantive discernment, especially in times of existential crisis and profound societal transformation.
Nurturing Wholeness and Healing Collective Distress
The episode underscores the need to cultivate wholeness and unity as a species, moving beyond the era of separation and individualism. By calming communal nervous systems and creating spaces for quiet reflection, individuals can address societal distress and anxiety collectively. The conversation advocates for practices that foster calmness, encourage naming stressors, and emphasize community support to navigate turbulent times and promote overall well-being.
Importance of Accompaniment and Resilience
Being hopeful and resilient can be challenging alone, emphasizing the significance of surrounding oneself with individuals who offer accompaniment and support, especially during hopeless or despairing times. The notion of holding resilience collectively for each other is highlighted, reinforcing the idea that real change does not require unanimous engagement from the entire population but relies on those who can contribute by fostering hope and resilience within their communities and environments.
The Complexity of Truth and Embodied Intelligence
Challenging the traditional concept of objectivity in journalism, the complexity between facts and truth is explored, acknowledging that objective reporting alone is insufficient to convey truth. The podcast delves into the importance of embodied intelligence, emphasizing the significance of intuitive and gut feelings in decision-making, highlighting the limitations of rational thought and the evolving understanding of human cognition in navigating truth and information dissemination.
At the intersection between science and spirituality lies some of the most profound questions we can ask ourselves about the future - the answers to which could mean the difference between humanity’s mere survival or a flourishing.
Today’s episode with Peabody-award winning broadcaster Krista Tippett is an exploration into what it means to be human in our modern world and engage as individuals in the inner work required to create outward transformation.
What does it mean to ask questions that include the layer of a “Deep How”, and how can we learn to hold, love, and live into the questions themselves when their answers may not exist yet? How could ‘moral imagination’, intentional conversation, and slowing down the pace of change lead to a longer lasting, sustainable evolution in human society? What would it take for us to finally grow up as a species and step up to face some of the most existential challenges in the history of our existence?
About Krista Tippett:
Krista Tippett is a Peabody-award winning broadcaster, National Humanities Medalist, and New York Times bestselling author. She created and hosts On Being, which has won the highest honors in broadcast, Internet and podcasting. Her newsletter, The Pause, and On Being Project are evolving to meet the callings of the post-2020 world — and to accompany the generative people and possibilities within this tender, tumultuous time to be alive. Her most recent book is Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.