Interludium (continued) - A Biosphere Project Blog
- filipvk
- Jul 23
- 6 min read
In which is told about what I've been up to during the pause in the blog, about the new stuff and goodies you can find on the website, and what will be next after a little vacation.
Dear friends,
Two months ago, I had a lot of good intentions for the pause in the blog, which I shared with you in my previous post. The pause was meant to create time and space for a few other things that had been waiting in the wings for a long time.
And I have actually been able to follow through on many of those good intentions, be it at a slightly slower pace than I had planned. For example, I have made good progress in clearing out my painting studio, and I have been working on the project's YouTube page so that I can experiment with a video blog and possibly a podcast with guests in the near future. I have done some maintenance on the website and am still reviewing and editing a lot of older texts on the website.
One of my main goals during the pause was to create a page with links to websites of people and organizations that are relevant to the project and the information I want to help spread. It ended up being four pages, subdivided in terms of focus and content to make it a bit easier to navigate. You can find these four pages in the drop-down menu at the top of the site.
These four domains are:
There are obviously overlaps, and sometimes one of the people or organizations could also be placed in another category, which I have done in a few cases.
The distinction between 'Deep ecology and activism' and 'Systems thinking and wide-lens ecology' is sometimes subtle, for example.
Nevertheless, I wanted to make this distinction, since what we call ‘spirituality’ (a somewhat problematic term that often evokes unintended associations) is an important aspect of deep ecology, while systems thinkers often seem to be saying something similar to ‘deep ecology’ but from a more scientific angle, without necessarily attaching a spiritual dimension to it, as Joanna Macy, Julia Butterfly Hill or Thomas Berry did.
In 'Science and the new paradigm', you will find many indications of how spirituality and science are increasingly converging, sometimes with very surprising results. Here you will find links to a number of scientific institutions and individuals who are paving the way for a ‘post-materialist science’. ‘Post-materialist’ means no longer assuming that only matter and the observable elementary forces are the basis of reality, or the only forces at work in the universe.
This ‘post-materialist’ science, which is endorsed by a growing number of leading scientists, is an important element in the development of proposals for a new world view or paradigm. You can find a lot of information about this in the section 'Philosphy and world view'.
The importance of our worldview in the convergence of crises we are currently facing cannot be overestimated. Donella Meadows, author of the groundbreaking ‘Limits to Growth’, put it this way:
“People who have managed to intervene in systems at the level of paradigm have hit a leverage point that totally transforms systems.
You could say paradigms are harder to change than anything else about a system, and therefore this item should be lowest on the list, not second-to-highest. But there’s nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales from eyes, a new way of seeing.”
Contributing to a new way of seeing is what I want to do, and soon I will restart the blog and musings, with lots of posts already in the pipeline.
Adopting a new way of seeing is sometimes easier said than done, and we often continue to see what we think about the world rather than what is really there to see. And that is where I feel that my current path is a logical continuation of my path as a visual artist. Sometime in the coming half year, I would like to write an essay about this continuation, in which I will try to explain further why I chose to trade painting for writing and photography, and how, in terms of content, I am actually doing pretty much the same thing as before.
But I also realize that many people are still enjoying a vacation, either near or far, and don't want to be preoccupied with a new world view or a systems theory perspective on the meta-crisis right now. And that's perfectly fine.
I had planned to pick up the thread of the blog and my musings right around now, but I will join all those who are taking a summer break and take some time off myself.
In the meantime, you can take a look at the new page with videos on the website. You will also find the link to this page in the menu at the top of the site.
Creating this page was also one of my intentions for the past break. Here you will now find all the videos that were ever embedded in a blog post or musing. They appear in chronological order of publication, with the most recent first, and each with a link to the post or musing they were part of. I have considered dividing the videos into categories, but I thought it would be nice to keep them all in one place. That way, you can scroll through them and be surprised, or make new associations. Enjoy all the fascinating people and ideas that have already been featured in the interviews, podcasts, and lectures. You can even ditch your streaming service for a while and indulge in the videos in this “library,” which will be updated with each blog post that includes a video. I also post a changing selection of these videos on the homepage in the ‘featured video’ section.
You can also listen to the new audio version of the essay 'Let Us Not Talk About the Climate Crisis Any Longer (Part Two)', read by myself. Creating this (long) audio version in both languages of the website was also one of my goals for the pause in the blog. This essay, which at 16,000 words is the longest piece of writing on this site, is divided into 12 chapters to make it easier to read in installments. You can now also listen to the whole thing and enjoy my sweet-sounding voice for an hour and fifty minutes. The essay is my ‘manifesto’, you could say, in the sense that it covers just about everything I want to spend the rest of my days working on: the ecological meta-crisis viewed through the broadest possible lens, with a focus on all aspects of our worldview that determine and often hinder our perception of and response to the crisis in our biosphere. It was good to thoroughly reread (and read aloud!) this essay after almost three years. I still stand behind it, and I am also keeping chapter 11, which probably raised the most eyebrows (‘An ecology in consciousness’) because it can seem rather ‘far out’ or ‘New Age’. However, there is nothing in that chapter that is not supported by hard data in the latest science on the nature of our consciousness, and in the coming musings I will feature some of those scientists who have rather amazing things to say about this.
In September, you can expect new posts and some news about my next steps. Over the past few months, I've been brainstorming and soul searching about my priorities for the next few years, and I'll be happy to tell you more about that after the holidays.
I wish you all a wonderful remainder of the summer, and I am looking forward to what's next in September!
All the best to you,
Filip
