Edges, 'Good Trouble' & The Mystery of Consciousness
Plus: a Rare Glimpse into the Future of Higher Education & Chasing Curiosity as a Career Path
๐ Ahoy there!
๐ Greetings Fellow Curious Humans // Over three hundred of you are first time readers. Welcome! Please feel free to introduce yourself to the curious community or hit reply to this email ;)
๐ฅ Duck & Weave // This edition of the newsletter is a little longer than most, because, well loads has happened! Please donโt feel any obligation to read in a linear fashion, but duck and weave your way through depending on which sections draws your fascination.
๐งโโ๏ธBetween a Rock and a Joyful Place // One of my all time favourite lines by the writer Annie Dillard is: "How we spend our days, is in the end, how we spend our lives." I know these words to be capital โTโ true, yet they are so easy to lose sight of. Going outdoor climbing has been a reminder that all we (*ahem* โIโ) really need in life to feel that bursting-at-the-seams sense of joy, is time in nature with a few fellow humans who embrace and love you for all of your kooky weirdness. That night, I fell asleep last night with a grin on my face so wide that my face felt sore.
๐ Immense Appreciation // to Buster, Alice, Lisa, Mark, Ell, Jezak, Andy, Chase, Danny, David, 'ursamajor71' & 'happyperson67' for casting a vote of confidence in my direction and generously becoming monthly paying subscribers, these gifts mean more than you can imagine.
Okay thatโs enough chit-chat from me. Sending good vibes and high fives to wherever in the world you are reading this from and wishing you a glorious and joy-filled second half of 2019.
Stay Curious Out There!
โJ
p.s. what was your favourite book growing up? Does the narrative contain have clues towards your life purpose? Add your thoughts here on Twitter.
Left: attempting to cross a raging Boulder river // Middle: The view from 10,000ft above British Colombia // Right: Hangtime!
๐ง Nudging Humans to Take their Curiosity More Seriouslyโฆ
I'm thrilled (and slightly discombobulated) that over 2,500 people have had my voice chiming in through their ear-lugs since the Curious Humans podcast launch.
Financially speaking, indie podcasts arenโt the most sensible projects... investing upwards of a hundred hours in drafting, recording and editing conversations that could have otherwise been used for finding freelance work didnโt all make much โsenseโ.
But I felt compelled by the opportunity to learn and exploreโฆ and reading all of your reviews and messages have filled me with a deep irrational exuberance and a sense that this is exactly what Iโm supposed to be doing.
Hereโs a summary of the first five episodes to date (270 minutes of total listening time in case you fancied binging on them all!)
๐งโโ๏ธ#001 // Kinaesthetic Literacy & Yoga as a Technology for Cultivating Good Humans with Karina Guthrie
"In yoga, our job is to stay open, to explore whatever comes into our sphere of awareness with a sense of curiosity and play, to allow ourselves to become fascinated by whatever comes alive for us in the moment."
โ Karina Guthrie
๐ #002 // David Whyte on Courage as a Measure of Our Heartfelt Participation with Life
"Courage is a measure of our heartfelt participation with life with another with the community a work a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or to do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences."
โ David Whyte
๐โโ๏ธ #003 // Embracing Uncertainty & Radical Curiosity with Leo Babauta
"When youโre feeling fear, instead of turning away from it or trying to escape/avoid it โฆ try turning towards it. Actually allow yourself to feel the fear. We donโt often want to feel it, but we have a greater capacity to feel fear than we give ourselves credit for."
โ Leo Babauta
๐จโ๐ #004 // A Rare Glimpse into the Future of Higher Education with Austin Louis
We talk about the courage required to step outside the curiosity-crippling traditional system into what he called the 'space between stories' and develop new worldviews. I found it inspiring to see the path that he has now found which feels more aligned with the human he aspires to become.
๐ฉโ๐ #005 // Chasing Curiosity as a Career Path with Anna Starkey
"Curiosity is the engine for both artistic and scientific enquiry about the world. It's time for a new age of curiosity to take flight - what if we could nurture a new culture of curious citizens, where everyone is enabled to ask questions, and to imagine our collective futures together."
โ Anna Starkey
๐ Help Keep the Podcast Goingโฆ
Once a podcast launches in iTunes there is an eight week window to get enough ratings to appear in the illusive 'New & Noteworthy' sectionโฆ and I launched seven weeks ago. If you haven't already, I'd really appreciate your help taking a few moments to subscribe + give the Curious Humans podcast a five star rating here or share it with curious friends (if you also send me a screenshot of your review I'll mention your name in a future episode!)
๐ฆ Courageous Curiosity: The Antidote To Fear
There's an old story from a Native American tribe where an elder sees his son is afraid of a scorpion running in the sand a few feet away.
The elder walks towards them both and uses a stick to draw a circle in the dirt around the scorpion.
The scorpion stops moving. The elder then draws a line down the middle of the circle that the scorpion was in, and the scorpion begun to get really frantic.
He repeats this once, twice and finally one more time, at which pointโฆ the scorpion stings itself to death.
Itโs an intense story, but thereโs a powerful lessonโwhen we are afraid of what we're afraid of, our world contracts. Those horizons of possibility for life narrow. Each time we feel fear and don't move towards it a line is drawn through the circle of your life.
One of the reasons I love harping on about curiosity so much, is that this sense of courageous curiosity, the habit of investigating what we are afraid of and gradually exposing ourselves to the outer edges of our fear, expands our circle.
Iโve written before about finding these edges in life, peering over them and occasionally summoning the spinal fortitude to lean into them.
Last weekend, I was given the opportunity to share my half-baked How to Human idea on the WDS stage in Portlandโฆ in front of 950 people. The thought of this filled me with excitement and terror in equal measure.
Fortunately, the masterful Marsha Shandur was assigned to help with crafting my story. We talked for over an hour (I was feeling quite lost at this point), then she said
'Okay, I'll call you back in 10 minutes'.
Which she did, and somehow found a way to craft a coherent narrative from the various disparate threads with her storytelling wizardry.
I spent most of Saturday morning nervously pacing in the park, but when the time to share my story came there was an odd sense of serenity (maybe like being in the eye of a storm), and I felt exhilarating waves of elation and exhaustion after it was over.
Q. Where do you feel like your edges in life lie? // From our intimate relationships and creative endeavours to old traumas and physical feats we all have these edges... how might you begin to take tentative steps towards leaning into yours?
๐ Three Thought-Provoking Reads
๐ต 1 // Cadence: A System for Organising Human Life
I came across this essay on a โsystem of organizing a human life that worksโ by William Van Hecke and resonated with his experimental approach to building a system for getting stuff done. He writes:
"I gradually mutated my own system from that starting point and a pantheon of other inspirations, until the day came that I realized I didnโt practice GTD anymore, but something new. Like the Ship of Theseus, replaced part by part until nothing of the original remained."
โCadenceโ refers to a โchord progression that cathartically resolves a section of music and the theme of the essay is about finding your own life rhythms, making time to check-in, asking what the story arc of your life might beโฆ setting intentions for quests whilst having compassion for your brain and an awareness that we all contain multitudes within. Itโs a long-read but well
NB. For more thoughtful approaches to productivity, pair with the excellent book โWork Cleanโ by Dan Charnas and Taylor Pearsonโs โHow to Prioritiseโ essay.
๐ 2 // Causing โGood Troubleโ with Mr. Chimero
Frank Chimero is the legendary designer whose DO Lecture talk โDo things the long hard stupid wayโ made an impression on my nearly six years ago. In this feature interview he unpacks some of the unquestioned assumptions and rules many of us carry around work in his uniquely Frankish way:
โLately, Iโve been calling my answers to that question โFrankballโ, so that I remember this is all a game. Iโm creating rules for the game so that I can have my little business support the life I want to liveโฆ Good trouble is a re-negotiation of the rules, creating a little pocket of autonomy where it is safe to ask yourself the question, "How would I have it if I could choose?"
I loved Frankโs notion of โGood Troubleโ, it reminds me of an Islamic word, โBidโahโ that loosely translates to โinnovative heresyโ and a productive questioning of dogmaโฆ which is what I feel like we need in our society right now.
And as Frank implies, in order to re-negotiate these rules authentically requires that we put down the snow globe of life for long enough to let it settle and pay attention to what appears.
๐คฏ 3 // Panpsychism, Self-hood & The Mystery of Consciousness with Annika Harris
The Astral Hustle with Cory Allen is one of my favourite brain-stretching podcasts and this conversation with Annika Harris is a true gem. They go deep into how consciousness might arise and theories as to why it even existsโฆ
I found it totally fascinating to hear how seriously she considers panpsychism (especially given that she is the partner of Sam Harris) and loved Coryโs lyrical descriptions of how humans are like a โbiological jazz bandโโin that not only do we not have one single subconscious but that itโs more like โan infinitely recursive fractal loop of harmonics that resonate to give the illusion of a single noteโ.
๐จโ๐ญ Curious Humans Jobs
Seven remote-friendly job openings for the relentlessly curious and borderline unemployable.
๐ Avaaz campaign director
๐ Best Self Marketing Director
๐ด Product Lead Design to solve sleep
๐น Videographer for Who Gives a Crap
๐คผ Senior Organisational Designer at Nobl
๐โโ๏ธ Product designer for the World Surf League
๐ธ Asia manager for the Unreasonable Institute
๐ค Et. Cetera
I double dare you not to clickity-click on all the linkity links!
๐ณ Robot bowling
๐ Work is like water
๐ค Paradoxical words
๐ฆ A bird made of birds
๐ Desires are infectious
๐ Why write daily haikus
โ Design questions library
๐ The octopus origin story
๐ถ The evolution of puppy eyes
๐ Disk defrag for your calendar
๐ฅค 8.3bn tons of plastic (illustrated)
๐ซ DIY subatomic particle detectors
๐ฅ Redesigning the worldโs tech diet
๐ฌ What are animals are thinking and feeling
๐ Revolutionary snot collecting marine drones
๐ The case for pro-environmental psychedelics
๐ Parting Thoughtโฆ
None of us, regardless of our grit or talent, achieves or becomes anything on our own. Everything we are and do is a collective effortโฆ even when it doesnโt really feel like it.