Vanessa Andreotti: "Hospicing Modernity and Rehabilitating Humanity"
May 29, 2024
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Educator and indigenous researcher Vanessa Andreotti discusses 'hospicing modernity' moving beyond failed promises of modernity, emotional resilience, intergenerational knowledge transmission, regenerative inquiry, and the impact of experiencing ayahuasca on wisdom.
Hospicing modernity involves facing unsustainability of modern systems built on separability and hierarchies.
Transformation in education is necessary to confront deep-rooted denials and prepare for coexistence.
Emotional sobriety and interconnectedness are vital for addressing societal and ecological crises with wisdom.
Deep dives
Understanding the Critique of Modernity and Hospicing the Current System
Vanessa Andriati discusses the concept of modernity and its inherent flaws in her book 'Hospicing Modernity'. The modern system, built on separability and hierarchies, is unsustainable and exceeds planetary boundaries. Critical walls like the modern nation-state and universal reason shape this system. By offering palliative care to the dying system, there is an opportunity to imagine and create something truly different.
Challenging Education to Address Denials and Anchored Ignorance
Vanessa Andriati explores the role of education in addressing sanctioned ignorance and denials rather than mere ignorance. She highlights the denial of complicity in violence, unsustainability of growth-based economies, lack of recognition of entanglement, and underestimation of current challenges. By transforming educational approaches, individuals can confront and address deep-rooted denials and prepare for a different form of coexistence.
Navigating Complex Emotions and Developing Wisdom for Change
The discussion delves into affective responses and the need for emotional sobriety, relational maturity, intellectual discernment, and intergenerational responsibility to address societal and ecological crises. Vanessa Andriati emphasizes the importance of developing the capacity to face complexity without a fixation on certainty, control, or simplistic solutions. By fostering a deep sense of accountability and interconnectedness, individuals can navigate difficult emotions and advance towards wisdom in addressing current challenges.
Understanding the Narrow Boundary Framework and Its Impact on Cognitive Processing
The podcast delves into the concept of narrow boundaries as a heuristic tool to analyze the effects of colonialism on cognitive processing. It discusses how narrow boundaries influence moral, epistemic, and political authority within modernity, emphasizing the conditioning towards individualism, autonomy, and accumulation of capital. By exploring the limitations imposed by narrow boundaries, the episode highlights the need to address the restrictions hindering holistic relationality and interconnectedness with the environment.
Exploring Metabolic Literacy and Its Relevance to Education and Societal Wellbeing
The episode examines the concept of metabolic literacy in contrast to the dopamine-focused education prevalent in society. Metabolic literacy emphasizes a deeper understanding of interconnectedness and exchanges within ecosystems, challenging the mastery-based education focused on individual accomplishments. It raises concerns about the current educational system's role in shaping neurochemical responses and advocates for depth education to promote intellectual discernment, relational maturity, and emotional sobriety in facing the complexities of modern challenges.
In this episode, Nate is joined by educator and researcher Vanessa Andreotti to discuss what she calls “hospicing modernity” in order to move beyond the world we’ve come to know and the failed promises that “modernity” has made to our current culture. Whether you refer to it as the metacrisis, the polycrisis, or - in Nate’s terms - the human predicament, Vanessa brings a unique framing rooted in indigenous knowledge and relationality to aid in understanding, grieving, and building emotional resilience within this space. What does it mean to live and work within systems that are designed to fail, embedded in an aimless culture? How do we as individuals steady ourselves and create inner strength before engaging with such harrowing work? Importantly, what could education look like if founded in the principles of intergenerational knowledge transmission and emotional regulation, that are centered on our collective entanglement with the Earth?
