'There are 99 senses in the world and making sense is only one of them.'

This was shared with me by Bayo Akomolafe early last year during a podcast conversation.

He had been offered this insight by a sister, he didn’t recall exactly who.

I’ve been sitting with this and it comes up often, it’s very alive right now.

Now, I don’t know about you, but very little in the story of modern ‘progress’ makes sense to me right now.

Here’s just three things to illustrate:

Dropping unimaginable quantities of bombs everyday on one group of people in the name of keeping another group of people ‘safe.’

Fanatical unquestionable championing of growing economies, which by their very design must destroy life on Earth to grow.

Asking millions and millions of people to vote for this man or that man to sort everything out.

I cannot make sense of any of this, rationally.

However my body knows these things are unhinged from what is true in the world.

I’m reminded again of these words from Dougald Hine (also on the podcast last year) riffing on Federico Campagna’s work:

"Sometimes you are born into the ending of a world.
The story you were born into doesn't have much further to run.
The future no longer works.
This is a thing that happens.
It has happened to others before you.

What moves are worth trying, in such a time?
First, as far as you can, stop trying to make sense according to the logic of the world that is ending.”

Many of the challenges we are facing as a species are relational.

They have been informed by ways of relating to the Earth, to ourselves and to each other which have shaped dominant ways of thinking and acting that we are now beginning to understand are destroying life and dividing us.

Rationality as the dominator logic is not helping us to understand this and to navigate forwards in ways that can regenerate and sustain life.

We cannot think our way into the future alone.

We must practice expanding our ways of sensing, knowing and becoming.

New and ancient ways.