What's Trending and How We're Responding- A BQI Update
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BIG Questions Institute Bi-Weekly UpdateMarch 12, 02024, No. 167 (Read online) A BQI Update - What's Trending and How We're RespondingHey, We’ve had a full first quarter of 2024 supporting schools in the U.S., Canada, across Africa, Europe, South America, and Asia. As we continue to learn, we wanted to dedicate this newsletter to updating you on trends we are seeing, and to share some of the ways we are working with schools like yours. Two clear trends have emerged in this past year. First, we're seeing a lot more schools around the world asking important, fundamental questions about why and how they exist at this moment. It's clear to us that the confluence of the pandemic, AI, climate change, youth mental health issues, demands for social justice, societal polarization, and more have moved more communities into difficult conversations they have never had before. And that's good news. What's also emerging, however, is a deeper sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the problems that we need to face together. We are waking up to the fact that none of what we're dealing with is happening in isolation. Our present challenges are all tied to a vast systems change that is gaining speed each day. It's our urgent belief that education has a crucial role to play in how we respond to these changes. Our Focus for 2024-25Our current work with schools is driven by deep inquiry, and is focused in four distinct areas:
We are committed to supporting schools to realize an education that is more relevant, just, Either way, we can't thank you enough for your continued support of our work and for being a part of the BQI community. Onward! Will and Homa What We're ReadingA few links to fuel your inquiry: 'You are not alone': In community, young people find antidotes to climate anxiety by Heidi Schlumpf "Climate anxiety — sometimes referred to as "eco-anxiety" or "ecological distress" — goes beyond concern for the environmental peril facing the planet because of global warming. It manifests itself much like other anxieties, with intrusive thoughts, sleeplessness, a racing heart or shortness of breath, and interference with relationships, work or school. It can include a range of feelings, from helplessness and sadness, to hopelessness and despair.
Experts say that distress is a normal human response to a crisis. But for young people, climate anxiety can be compounded by social media and other stressors. While young people are resilient, their anxiety around climate issues can be subtle, and those who work with them — teachers, school counselors, campus ministers — should be educated and attuned to it, say those involved in programs to address climate anxiety. The antidotes, they say, include environmental activism, community support and spiritual sustenance.”
The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han review – how big tech altered the narrative by Stuart Jeffries "We were storytellers; we have become storysellers, he says – a phrase he likes so much he repeats it frequently in this book.
Humans degenerate, as Han has put it elsewhere, into generative organs of capital, reducing ourselves obligingly to monetisable data sets that can be controlled and exploited, making Musk one of the world’s richest men and busting us down into content providers to extend his and his coevals’ grisly business models. We deploy heart-rate data from Fitbits to tell yawnsome just-so stories about fitness journeys; we embellish the tale of what we did on our holidays with selfies and soft-porn snaps of the meal we had at that cute bar we found, according to the permissible parameters of human leisure time, in Oslo. Something has gone missing in all these stories: our individuality, our humanity, our ability to tell convincing narratives rather than perform ourselves."
The Age of Dissonance by Jonathan Rowson "We live in an age of dissonance. The complexity and pace of events have long since eclipsed the complexity of human consciousness. Yet, social, political and professional conventions oblige us to talk and act as if we know what we are doing - that’s why the news feels so obtuse. Our predicament is not so much that things don’t make sense, but that the things we use to make sense in the public sphere - principally evidence, reason and debate– have become less reliable as guides to action (hence the antidebate). As Nora Bateson once put it to me in a personal conversation: the world is so confusing that we are confused about our confusion." Learn With BQINew Two-Day Workshop!
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BIG Questions Institute Bi-Weekly Update May 8, 02024, No. 172 (Read online) Imagination as Strategy Hey, Have you thought about the role of imagination in decision-making, especially for the prickly, wicked decisions? Would you agree that a well-developed imagination is crucial to making the best decisions you can for yourself and for others? If that’s the case, how do you develop and exercise imagination, even for the most serious questions? If we don't spend time imagining the potential...
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