Homeward Bound (including The Great Humbling)

In this episode, my guest is Dr Ashley Colby for a joint episode with her Doomer Optimism podcast. Ashley is hosting a weekend retreat around my work in Chicago as part of next month’s North American tour.* Read more & register for the Chicago Retreat: https://bit.ly/dougald-retreat* The rest of the American tour: https://dougald.nu/america/Thanks for reading Homeward Bound! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.We talk about how long it is since I last visited the US. Back then, I was travelling as part of an internet startup, School of Everything, inspired by Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. Among my co-founders was Mary Harrington, who describes her experience the mess of that start-up experience early on in Feminism Against Progress – and it turns out that Ashley also features later on in that book.Chicago is Ashley’s hometown. She talks about how she and her husband moved away, after she got “doom-pilled”, and about their decision to return a few years later. This is partly about getting away from “spreadsheet mind”.It’s important to me to have these urban examples of what “regrowing a living culture” can look like. However much we may be working for what Chris Smaje calls a “small farm future”, there’s also a need for examples of what it looks like when we start from the places where many people find themselves. One example for me is the small community of radical hospitality in south London that Elizabeth Oldfield writes about in Fully Alive. Ashley talks about the retreat she hosted last year with Paul Kingsnorth at the Wagon Box in Wyoming – and how she seems to have fallen into the role of helping Dark Mountain co-founders find their bearings in North America.We discover a mutual admiration for Richard D. Bartlett’s approach to bringing groups together – and Ashley talks about how this shaped her approach to convening co-created retreats like the one we will be holding.I look back on experiences with the community of Ivan Illich’s surviving friends and collaborators, a way of gathering around the table that is an antidote to the “conditioned air” of institutional academia. (For more on this, see Illich’s ‘The Cultivation of Conspiracy’.)Ashley introduces me to the concept of a Jeffersonian Dinner – and we decide we’ll host something like this on the Saturday evening of the Chicago Retreat.We talk about some of the other events I’ll be doing on the tour, including conversations with Bayo Akomolafe at the Schumacher Center in Great Barrington, Lewis Hyde in Boston, and with Adam Wilson of The Peasantry School Newsletter. I give a shout out to Ellie Robins’s excellent post, “This moment needs your deep weirdness and your intellectual rigour”, and quote something Lydia Catterall once said to me: “I’ve realised that there can be a gift in things you could never have asked for.” I think of that often when reading Nick Cave’s replies in The Red Hand Files.Ashley quotes something Paul Kingsnorth said years ago in a New York Times article about Dark Mountain: “I’m increasingly attracted by the idea that there can be at least small pockets where life and character and beauty and meaning continue. If I could help protect one of those from destruction, maybe that would be enough.”We talk about using the retreat to explore examples, to invite people to bring a diversity of stories of what the work of regrowing a living culture looks like in practice – and also working out the challenges and contradictions, navigating the tensions. Ashley talks about making community in an urban neighbourhood, also about joining the La Leche League as a new mother and the sharing of experience and advice from multiple voices that she experienced in those meetings.Talking about pockets takes me to Brian Eno’s concept of “scenius”, the conditions under which a group of artists become capable of making work that exceeds anything they had previously achieved on their own. (For more on this, see this post of mine and Austin Kleon’s Maps of Scenius.)It also brings me to Laura Fabrycky’s essay, ‘The Witness of the Weak Centres’, about how her admiration for Dietrich Bonhoeffer developed from a story of his individual heroism to a recognition of “the small, mysterious, slow, even weak places of life—home, family, friends” that shaped the resistance to the Nazi regime.Thanks for listening – and for reading these notes. Head over to my website to find all the details for the Chicago Retreat and the rest of the American tour.Further episodes of Homeward Bound are coming soon, along with a new series of The Great Humbling later in the autumn. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.homewardbound.org

As the fifth season of The Great Humbling came to an end, we recognised that what we’ve been doing is letting you listen in on a conversation that we would want to have anyway – and this inspired us to expand the podcast, to bring you overheard conversations with other friends, co-conspirators and people who get us thinking.We’re calling this Homeward Bound, a title that started off as the name of the first online series that Dougald Hine taught with a school called HOME in 2020. For a few series now, we’ve used homewardbound.org as the home for The Great Humbling. These are two images that gesture in the same direction: they name a need to come down to earth, to be called back from the fantasies of endless growth and technological progress, to face the depth of the trouble around and ahead of us, to find the kinds of agency that make sense now.We’ll continue to make new episodes of The Great Humbling with Ed and Dougald and you’ll find those here, but alongside them there will also be other conversations that pick up on the themes you’ve heard us speak about. To set this rolling, we’re going to put out the podcast version of the series of “overheard conversations” that Dougald has been hosting this spring over at Writing Home, starting with this conversation with Caroline Ross.This conversation took place on Zoom in March with a live audience made up of subscribers to Writing Home and Uncivil Savant. You’ll hear the first forty minutes of conversation between Caro and Dougald. If you’d like to watch a recording of the Q&A that followed, then head over here and sign up for a paid subscription.As mentioned in the intro to this episode, this week also sees the start of Further Adventures in Regrowing a Living Culture, a five-week online series where you can join Dougald and other participants from around the world to explore the work of becoming realists of a larger reality, starting where we find ourselves and finding the courage to act. Full details at aschoolcalledhome.org.Thanks for listening!ShownotesFollow Caroline Ross’s work by subscribing to Uncivil Savant and find details of her book, Found and Ground: A practical guide to making your own foraged paints, on her website.Theresa Emmerich Kamper is the experimental archaeologist who Caro brought to Östervåla last year for a session in Skolunkan, the old shoe shop at a school called HOME.Antonio Dias wrote about Viking boats in ‘Notes on Ritual’.David Fleming’s Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It is online here.Iain McGilchrist’s work on the divided brain is presented in The Mastery and His Emissary and The Matter With Things. Watch Caro’s conversation with Iain here and the story of Dougald and Caro’s trip to visit him on Skye in February 2023 is here.Here is a taste of the polyphony of Le Mystére des Voix Bulgares.Matthew B. Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft was published on this side of the Atlantic as The Case for Working With Your Hands.The quote Dougald struggles to remember from an early president of the United States is this one from John Adams.Here’s a taste of Caro’s sojourn in the music world, from the album she made with Rothko.CreditsThe music for this episode is ‘Hope and the Forester’ by Blue Dot Sessions. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.homewardbound.org

The end of this fifth series of The Great Humbling finds us looking back over the loose ends from earlier episodes, exploring the wider field of “Humility Studies” and asking who exactly we think we’re talking to, anyway?We start with Ed reporting back from The Fête of Britain, the inaugural festival of the Hard Art collective, which took place in Manchester last week, where he found himself hosting a gameshow whose panellists included Clare Farrell, Lee Jasper and the folk singer Jennifer Reid, who specialises in singing broadside ballads to reconnect audiences with the working class tradition of the northwest of England. Other goings-on included our friend Elizabeth Slade of the Unitarian Church leading a “Sunday Service” which included a choir conducted by Brian Eno and a “sermon” from Jarvis Cocker. Ed also describes his late-night outreach in a Salford bar, where “Psychedelic Pete” thanked Hard Art members for bringing this chaos to the city.Among all these adventures, there’s a serious question that we take with us on into this episode, one that’s been put to us by our friend Jamie Kelsey Fry: who do you think you are talking to? In any of the work we’re doing, are we preaching to the choir, or talking a language that can bridge across boundaries and invite all kinds of other voices into the conversation? And does this matter? Our first answer is: there’s room for each of these kinds of talk, but it’s good to know which you’re actually doing.Dougald chases up a few other loose ends from this episode. He and Alfie have reached the ninth instalment of The Bagthorpe Saga, but despite the efforts of listeners, the elusive tenth book is still out there, so the search continues! (And a reward awaits the finder of a copy of Bagthorpes Battered.)Talk of “burning a million quid” – from our early episodes on the KLF (S5E3, S5E4) – gets woven into the earlier thread of Making Good Ruins (S5E1), because Drummond and Caughtie’s ritual on the Isle of Jura anticipates the project of using economic resources in ways that make no sense according to the logic within which our economic system imagines them. During a conversation with Chris Smaje and Christopher Brewster, Dougald finds himself scrawling “Let’s burn a billion dollars!” across a page in his notebook. But as Ed suggests, what’s at stake might be not so much burning money as composting it, or ploughing it into the soil.Ed introduces us to the concept of “zombie leadership”, drawing on a paper about the “Dead ideas that still walk among us”, brought to his attention by professor of leadership, Jonathan Gosling. (We’re also introduced to the word “demulcent”, which sounds like something you might use on your skin.) And we learn about the US Department of Defense Strategic Command paper on “Counter-Zombie Dominance”, which reminds Dougald of the hugely popular study circle run by Sweden’s Workers Learning Association around Zombie Apocalypse Survival. Turns out that zombies are – as the anthropologists say – good to think with. [Insert joke about brains here—Ed.]We discuss Donald Trump as an exemplar of zombie leadership – but Dougald points out that Trump also capitalises on alienation from expert-ocracy, which itself has aspects of zombie leadership. There’s zombies everywhere! (US election 2024: “vote for the least worst zombie”?)The serious point here is a connection to the “problem” vs “predicament” distinction from John Michael Greer which Dougald drew on in At Work in the Ruins. A problem is something that has a solution (a way to fix it that returns you to a situation resembling the previously existing state of affairs); if something doesn’t have a solution, it’s not a problem, though it may well be a predicament. When you have a problem, it’s a good idea to get the best group of experts in a room to come up with a solution; but in the face of a predicament, what’s needed is a far more distributed (and democratic) approach, in which many different groups follow different strategies, without attempting to reason our way to what will work in advance. Expert-ocracy is the state of affairs in which the world is seen not only as containing problems (among other things), but as made up of problems, and therefore best served by being put into the hands of experts.From here, we come to what is apparently the emerging field of Humility Studies, brought to our attention by this post from Richard Beck, in which he quotes a paper from Pelin Kesebir, “A Quiet Ego Quiets Death Anxiety: Humility as an Existential Anxiety Buffer” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:Since 2014, the empirical research about humility has exploded. Much of this research has shown that humility functions as a regulating virtue upon which many other virtues depend.Meanwhile, our fellow traveller Peter N Limberg of Less Foolish has also been writing about humility:In the book Intellectual Humility: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Science [by Ian M. Church and Peter L. Samuelson], intellectual humility is understood as the virtuous mean between intellectual arrogance and intellectual diffidence.And about “overcoming intellectual servitude”:While stewarding The Stoa, I sensed greater potential in the attendees than in the galaxy-brains we listened to. I see so much potential being bottled up due to the pervasiveness of this servitude.The best way to dissuade intellectual arrogance … is to target the source: the narcissistic supply. Once the special-feeling dissipates or is put in its proper place, the overvaluing will also dissipate, and one can put their intelligence to proper useThis thought echoes what Vanessa Andreotti calls “getting to zero”, escaping the game of modernity in which everyone is always either up or down, “plus one” or “minus one”. (See Hospicing Modernity – or this podcast episode.)All of this sends Ed daydreaming about the professor who starts the Humility Institute, who can truly call himself the world’s leading expert on humility…Another thread around humility leads us to Elizabeth Oldfield’s forthcoming book, Fully Alive, which Dougald has been reading. The book is Elizabeth’s attempt to share the treasures of the wisdom tradition of Christianity with those who don’t necessarily share her faith. She structures it around what she admits is the seemingly unpromising framework of the “seven deadly sins”, a list originating with the Desert Fathers and Mothers of 4th and 5th century Egypt. In the version of the list she uses, the seventh sin is Pride, and she reflects on how many of the senses in which we use this word seem to her to describe something good and worthwhile – but in identifying the nature of Pride, in the sense meant by her tradition, she homes in on the kind of belief in our own self-sufficiency, in not needing others, that cuts us off from relationship with each other, with the world and (from a believer’s perspective) with God.From here, we come back around to the question of who we think we’re talking to, in these episodes. The first answer to who we’re talking to is each other – this podcast started with a conversation, and as a way of letting others listen in on a conversation we had started to have, and underlying it there’s a certain faith in conversation, in the generative potential of ongoing threads of small-scale conversation and the kind of space of conversation that is not just “another talking shop”.A while ago, the Solarpunk theorist Jay Springett joked to Dougald that the pattern of semi-regular calls they had fallen into was “catch-up culture”, an antidote to “cancel culture”.There’s a sense, too, of conversation as a practice, both in the sense of the word used by artists, but also perhaps in the sense in which Alasdair Macintyre uses the term in his account of how virtue is acquired (in After Virtue). Dougald enthuses about M. R. O’Connor’s book, Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World, as a gripping account of a journey into a “practice”, in this sense – but also because, by the end of her year of training and working as a wildland firefighter and controlled-burn fire-starter, O’Connor describes encountering fire itself as something she is in dialogue. In this sense, conversation as a practice points towards a way of inhabiting the world.So, after five series, maybe this is the heart of what we’re doing – practicing being in conversation, practicing letting our conversations be overheard, not seeking a huge audience, but trusting that the relationship we have with those of you overhearing these conversations can be consequential.In this spirit, Dougald makes an invitation to a forthcoming season of “overheard conversations” – details to be announced soon on his own Substack, Writing Home – that will take place fortnightly on Sunday evenings (European time), starting with a conversation with Caroline Ross of Uncivil Savant on Sunday 10 March. Paid subscribers to either Dougald’s Substack or that of his guest are invited to join live on Zoom, while a recording of the opening part of the conversation will be made available as a video and audio recording.Meanwhile, Ed is looking forward to hosting a writing retreat together with Jonathan Gosling and taking his other podcast, The Futurenauts, to the Hay Festival.We’ll be back with another series of The Great Humbling later in 2024. Meanwhile, thank you for listening in. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.homewardbound.org

The podcast delves into topics such as seasonal customs, teaching experiences, the significance of private gardens in the UK, the views of William Blake, and the meaning of being a founder. It also explores humble leadership and reflection on failure.

Dougald, a cultural commentator recently returned from Gothenburg, shares his experiences with the city's warmth and his adventures in the Swedish language. He makes a heartfelt plea for a rare book, Bagthorpes Battered, from a beloved literary series. The discussion dives into the tension between sustainability and community-driven decisions, referencing a provocative PhD thesis that challenges conventional thinking. They also reflect on the importance of responsible leadership, imagination, and the impact of small actions in fostering societal change.

Leah Rampy, from Earth & Soul, joins an eclectic group including Bill Drummond, David Graeber, and Chris Smaje to examine the intersection of populism and climate action. They discuss the stark contrasts between Green elites and grassroots movements. The conversation touches on nostalgic winter experiences, the absurdities of monarchy in the climate discourse, and the shift from 'cool' to 'good' in cultural production. Personal anecdotes enrich their reflections on legacy and the importance of humility in education through animal husbandry.

Sophie Howarth joins the hosts to discuss finding 'a forever project' while revisiting the works of Pam Warhurst. They explore Benjamin Zephaniah's poems, the book 'The Deluge', and the controversial actions of the KLF. The conversation delves into the impact of artists' works posthumously and the significance of embracing chaos and spontaneity.

Delving into humbling moments and connections sparked by The KLF book. From Orwell's near-death experience to Alan Moore's 'ideaspace'. Exploring Jung's haunting dream, pandemic premonitions, and the purpose of poetry to connect the separated. Touching on Berger's essay, professional solitude, and the arrival of an insightful email.

Topics include reflections on historical events like the first bomb dropped on British soil in 1915, the transformative power of words in poetry, embracing horror and wonder in nature, and the importance of meaningful communication. The hosts discuss gratitude, the value of hope in chaotic times, and the connections with the land during a humbling period.

Exploring themes of humility and connections to land, the podcast delves into cheese, community engagement, and dystopian novels. They navigate complex conversations on climate change and activism while discussing the concept of creating 'good ruins' in uncertain futures. Symbolism and resilience are explored through abandoned spaces and haunting undertones in science fiction stories.