Unfolding Horizons - A Biosphere Project Blog
- filipvk
- Feb 25
- 6 min read
In which is told about how my research has expanded in recent years from the more ‘traditional’ ecological themes to an ever-widening web of subjects, of how everything is connected with everything else, of the consequences that insight entails for my project and my intentions, and of how that expanding ‘web of meaning' reveals more and more layers in what we are experiencing on our planet.
“I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.”
Poul Anderson
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
Sherlock Holmes
Dear friends,
When I decided at the end of 2020 to stop my practice as a visual artist to devote myself to the ecological meta-crisis we find ourselves in, I literally and figuratively had no idea what I was getting myself into. I said as much in my ’Statement of Intention’ at the time.
I followed my intuition and my heart, and I had no idea where I would end up. You could say it was a calling of sorts, of which I did not know where it would lead me. But it was a calling which I felt I indeed had to follow.
At the time I did realize right away that a large part of my activity in the years to come would consist of research. I had long been concerned with everything related to ecology and our living planet, but I felt I lacked sufficient background to address all these converging issues. I therefore sensed that I still had to thoroughly expand my knowledge of the problems in our relationship with our planet, and that this process would take time.
And so it happened: I began to read furiously, to look up and synthesize information, to watch countless interviews and lectures online, and so on and so forth. At the same time, I built my own website and started a blog in 2021, the blog of which you are now reading a post.
Gradually, my focus and my interest began to expand, and as one piece of new information led to the next, I began to realize that the problems we face are endlessly more complex than most people realize, and that most of the solutions currently being put forward will mainly just cause more problems. But above all, I realized that our entire framework of thought is inadequate. As Albert Einstein said: no problem can be solved from within the consciousness that created that problem.
Starting with the 'classic' topics we usually associate with ecology, such as climate science, energy, biodiversity and so on, I began to explore more and more domains that I had not really had in my sights initially, although they were actually already present in my visual work as a painter. So in a sense I came home again in topics that had always interested me, be it in an unexpected way. But more about that another time.
I have now created a page on my website in which I provide a summary of the main areas on which I have focused my research in the past years.
In the top menu you will now find a scroll menu called 'Project' with four topics, the first of which is a page about my research.
There you will find a concise overview of ten domains where much of my explorations currently take place, plus as an eleventh topic about my intention to develop 'awareness exercises' and meditations, as I believe that mental information in itself is insufficient to bring us to truly embodied insight and to give us a real sense of 'agency' in this world that may seem ever more chaotic and overwhelming now.
Below, I have reproduced these ten-plus-one domains as they appear on that page.
If you click on any of the colored titles of the chapters, either in this post or on menu page on the website, you will be taken to the second page on the website with a more detailed description of each of these research domains.
It is my intention to continue sharing my findings in the blog and the musings, but the totality of information, insights and intuitions that have already come to me in this way is becoming so extensive that I intend to put it all into book form, a project I want to start this year.
Because the focus of my research has shifted somewhat since I started the project, it has also changed my intentions for the travel project, something I will report on soon.
It is a bit like a maze, or like peeling the layers of an onion: as soon as you subject any aspect of the metacrisis to closer inspection, you begin to see connections that were not evident before, and new unfolding horizons of progressive insight open up, revealing an increasingly complex network of relationships.
At the same time, the apparent complexity gradually also reveals a certain kind of simplicity: all the different paths seem to lead back to a single subject that underlies all the others. It is a bit like a detective novel that has been worked on for thousands of years, and the solution to the mystery may be much closer than we usually think. As the Zen master said: “Enlightenment is close, very close... Enlightenment is found on the tip of your nose.”
With this list as your guide, I hope you will bear with me as I engage further in these domains, and I hope that it may clarify why and how these domains are linked with each other and wit the urgent ecological and other crises we face. I really is a bit like a detective novel, and the outcome of our collective inquiry might decide what our planet will look like many decades, centuries or millennia from now. As Sherlock Holmes put it:“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
Thank you for reading, and until the next episode,
All the best,
Filip
This regards our tendency to perceive reality through our model of it, or the way we have come to see the map for more real than the landscape itself, something what philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the ‘fallacy of misplaced concreteness’.
By this I do not mean the political left, but the left brain hemisphere: it is totally focused on analysis, sees only separate parts without connection or meaning, and is very focused on self-interest. This hemisphere of the brain, described by neuropsychiatrist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist as a “little psychopath,” has hijacked our civilization, resulting in the merciless destruction of our biosphere for economic gain.
The belief system that defines our worldview: only matter and the elementary physical forces really exist, everything else is illusion or imagination. However, this particularly nihilistic worldview is by no means based on science, contrary to what we like to believe.
A whole new worldview is emerging in many branches of science, allowing a very different point of view from which to interpret or make sense of the world and ourselves. This paradigm will render scientific materialism obsolete, and pave the way for a very different relationship between us and our biosphere.
One aspect of the new paradigm that is emerging is the groundbreaking research being done on the nature of our consciousness. In the classical paradigm, consciousness is merely a byproduct or epiphenomenon of material processes in the brain; in the new picture, consciousness is seen as fundamental, predating the creation of matter.
Our nihilistic worldview has led us to “de-enchant” the world. We no longer see the universe and our planet as an astonishing miracle and cause for daily joy, but rather as a mechanism without meaning or purpose. But science as well is beginning to support a very different picture.
The structures of our current political system are not suited to initiate the necessary social change because they are too tied to the economic and other power structures that need to change so profoundly. The change will have to come from the bottom up, that is, it will have to start with us.
What almost no one is talking about is the fact that capitalism in its present form is incompatible with a livable planet. Infinite exponential growth in a finite system is impossible. But what can replace capitalism, and how can we create a form of economy that can indeed exist in harmony with our biosphere?
We can and must return to seeing ourselves as powerful actors who create our reality, rather than as obedient followers in an economic logic that is devouring our planet and ourselves alive. To do so, we must begin to see and appreciate again the fundamental miracle of our own existence.
I will also share results of my research through links to sites of organizations and people who have already done much work on this path. Many of those thinkers, seers and organizations still remain under the radar of our media and collective consciousness
It is my intention to translate the insights emerging in the new paradigm into meditations and “awareness exercises” , as I experience that mere mental knowledge of our situation is not enough. We must move beyond knowledge to an embodied and felt experience of a different relationship to our living world.
