Entanglement

With more and more whales living in the Salish Sea, encounters between humans and humpbacks have increased. There have been several whale strikes this year, and a number of whales killed as a result. So I’m always looking for good news. November is the time most of the humpback whales head south to Hawaii and Mexico to give birth and breed. Today I came across this amazing story of a whale that will now get to make that journey without the 140 feet of fishing gear she was tangled up in. It’s a great example of how a bunch of good people are using technology and cross-boarder cooperation to protect these creatures and why citizens science matters as well.

Dave Snowden and Nora Bateson are both helping people to work in complexity. Last night I settled in to watch them discuss a number of quite simple and important ways to approach complex situations. Especially resonant from this talk:

• the need to change interactions, and not change people;
• approach complex situations with inquisitiveness and curiosity
• working with obliquity and the adjacent possible
• relational work and messy coherence.

I might make a slightly more expanded post on this becasue I think they offer some quite direct and accessible things to do in this discussion.

My neighbour Emily van Lithe de Jeude is a wonderful artist and observer of the world and she is deeply entangled with our shared space, the forests and shorelines of our island. Here is a reflection from her on bones and the invisible processes that generate the beauty all around us. I think Emily embodies much of what Nora talks about in the above video, meeting the world with curiosity and inquisitiveness and leaving more beauty than she found.