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When We Cease to Understand The World

July 30, 2025 By Culture, Featured 4 Comments

I just finished Benjamín Labatut’s remarkable book When We Cease To Understand The World. It’s a book that blends non-fiction and fiction, that tells the stories of scientists of the twentieth century and teh price they paid for their discoveries. It is a subtle book, neither a collection of short stories or a single novel, but it is all tied together. Remarkably, the book begins in the world of non-fiction and gets more substantially fictional until the end. The last piece in the book is the most concrete – and teh most fictional- and references all the stories that were told before in a very fine-grained way. It is a book about uncertainty, singularity, probabilities and the price of seeing the world as it is.

Benjamin Labatut on his book:

What fascinates me is not so much science per se, but the limits of science: those ideas and discoveries that we are unable to fully comprehend. Science is a theme, but the larger theme is mystery. What I believe is captivating about these stories is not just their information content, but the enigma which lies at the heart of them. They seem to point past us, towards what is incomprehensible, or marvellous, or, indeed, monstrous. What I admire most about science is that it is completely unwilling to accept the many mysteries that surround us: it is stubborn, and wonderfully so. When it comes face to face with the unknown, it whips out a particle accelerator, a telescope, a microscope, and smashes reality to bits, because it wants – Because it needs! – to know. Literature is similar, in some respects: it is born from an impossible wish, the desire to bind this world with words. In that, it is as ambitious as science. Because for us human beings, it is never enough to know god: we have to eat him. That’s what literature is for me: putting the world in your mouth.

You say that ‘the quantity of fiction grows throughout the book’ – why is that? 

Several reasons: the ideas become increasingly complex and abstract as the book moves along, so it was necessary to increase the fictional content to captivate the reader, and to make very complicated (and usually very boring) ideas come to life. Another reason is that I was not merely interested in the outward development and impact of science, but on the personal cost of these strange epiphanies, and only fiction can delve into that particular void, the inside of the human mind. There is a lot of fiction in all the texts of the book, except the first, where there are only six lines. But it is a very specific type of fiction, one that tries to approach what non-fiction cannot achieve. I use it reluctantly, not merely as an ingredient to sugar the pill, but as a chemical fix, a shot in the arm that allows the reader to crawl into the strangest areas of reality, those deranged landscapes that, even if where to bump into them head-on, in plain daylight, with both your eyes wide open, you would have a hard time believing they are real. 

I love a book that says what it needs to in 200 pages or so. More often than not a writer needs to rely on both dense narratives and rich language to do this, much as a movie maker uses image and plot, or a lyricist use the music and the words. It’s remarkable to read a book in translation that preserves this richness.

Samantha Harvey’s book Orbital was the last book I read that does something like this with imagery and a rejection of traditional narrative structure. I found both through the Booker Prizes website, which seems to be revelling in this type of literature these days.

July 30, 2025: connected through tsunamis, contentment, austerity and football

July 30, 2025 By Being, Democracy, First Nations, Travel No Comments

Anchored at Ruxton Island, peering into the Trincomali Channel across a submerged shoal.

As we cruise through these islands I am travelling with David Rozen’s 1985 Master’s thesis, Place-Names of the Islands Halkomelem Indian People. It’s a useful collection of knowledge he recorded with Elders from the Halkomelem communities in these territories and records the many dialects and names of places and some of their stories in these islands. We anchored last night at Ruxton Island, a place that doesn’t show up in Rozen’s study so I don’t know the original name for it. Ruxton is one of the islands in this archipelago that shows off the tectonic forces at play here, tracing long thin reefs and shoals along the direction of geological uplift. We anchored in a narrow bay at the north end of the island with all kinds of little reefs and shoals upon which rest seals and oystercatchers until the tide flows in and washes them away.

We are near the original village site of the Lyackson people which lies across the channel on Valdes Island. There is a great story in Indiginews about how this community has finally found land for their village.

Last night a tsunami advisory was issued for nearly the entire coast of BC except for this part of the Salish Sea, where these islands and shallow channels protect us from damaging effects of most trans-oceanic tsunami waves. Damaging tsunamis can happen here, but only from local earthquakes or landslides. Trans-oceanic waves do enter this region (the linked paper has some great examples) but not in any damaging way. Thankfully this morning I’m not hearing of damage or injuries here, and only a little in Kamchatka and Kuril Islands and Hokkaido and Hawaii where these quake took place. The advisories have all been cancelled.

One of the things I love about my adult son is that he works a job he is good at and fills the rest of his time by what he calls “doing fun stuff.” When we traveled together in England back in April, he was up for anything. Museums, visiting the places I lived as a child, meeting cousins. All these ideas were met with “sure! sounds good!” and truly not the dismissive “whatever” that one sometimes worries about. He was able to find the fun stuff even between the six football matches we went to in ten days. For him, in his life, “fun stuff” might be downhill mountain biking or skiing or going out with friends or ripping around in a small boat or getting into all manner of mischief. He is capable of enjoying himself almost anywhere. He’s nailed it. Brian Klaas would approve:

“To me, the good life has more aimless wandering, less frantic racing, more spontaneity, less scurrying. It comes with a slower pace that allows us to catch our breath, to soak up wonderful moments, to savor what we have. It gives us the space to do one of the most important things a human can do: to notice and relish the joyful, the fulfilling, or even the merely pleasant bits of life.”

Philip Meters writes a very thoughtful meditation on Chekov, happiness and misery and the need for the contented among us to be reminded that people elsewhere are struggling. As Ivan Ivanich says in “Gooseberries:”

“At the door of every contented, happy man,” Ivan says, as if appending a moral to the end of his story, “somebody should stand with a little hammer, constantly tapping, to remind him that unhappy people exist, that however unhappy he may be, sooner or later life will show him its claws, some calamity will befall him—illness, poverty, loss—and nobody will hear or see, just as he doesn’t hear or see others now. But there is nobody with a little hammer.”

Meters also quotes from Martin Luther King Jr’s Christmas Sermon for Peace about the interconnectedness of the contentment and suffering of humans and how even before we have finished our breakfast we have become dependant on the people of the world.

Here in Canada the federal Liberal austerity program will go ahead. The CCPA published a piece based on this study which shows that austerity generally increases populism because it affects folks who are already disenfranchised to begin with. It is amazing the lengths that to which neoliberal politicians will go to ensure that rich folks aren’t taxed at the expense of a broad program of social welfare and decent services that can look after literally everybody in a society.

Our TSS Rovers men’s team had a brutal end to the season, having our title snatched away with a last minute penalty. I haven’t been able to write about it yet, but in the meantime my fellow Rovers owner Will Cromack has penned a beautiful piece on Socrates and the 1982 Brazilian side that hoped to deliver both politically and in footballing terms the revolution that Corinthians began in Sao Paolo.

How Bruce Elijah taught me about facilitation

July 29, 2025 By Collaboration, Containers, Conversation, Facilitation, Featured, First Nations 4 Comments

My first facilitation teacher, Bruce Elijah.

I have told this story for decades but finally wrote it down today.

Back in 1992 I was working in Ottawa for the National Association of Friendship Centres. One of the Elders that worked closely without Board and staff was Bruce Elijah. Bruce is a wonderful Elder, brilliant leader, and teacher, raised in his traditional Oneida culture. His heart is unlimited in its goodness.

There was a day when I needed to facilitate a conversation on creating a domestic violence prevention program with a number of our member organizations from across the country and representatives of the federal government who were responsible for funding the effort. I was dreading the conversation, both because of the emotional weight of the conversation and the high stakes nature of the day. I turned to advice to Bruce. He gave me the briefest of facilitation trainings. He handed me the eagle feather that our organization used as a talking piece and he said “The Creator gave us two gifts — circle, and story.  Use them.”  And that was it.

When I arrived in the meeting room at a hotel in downtown Ottawa, it was set up with tables arranged in a hollow square, water and notepads in front of each chair and all facing one small table that I was supposed to sit at. With Bruce’s words in my ears, I did the unthinkable and had the staff reset the room with just a circle of about 24 chairs. When the participants arrived for the work, they were slightly taken aback by the room set up, but many of our members who had travelled from their communities expressed relief that the room looked different from traditional federal government consultations.

When we were ready to begin, an Elder gave us a prayer to bless our day and I introduced the day with a short speech about how we had gathered to generate ideas about a domestic violence prevention program and I knew that everyone in this room had some stories to tell about what that kind of program might mean to them and the people they served. I then invited people to share those stories and passed the feather to the person on my left.

By the time the feather got back to me, it was lunch time. Over three hours we heard stories of deep despair, of hope, of desperate need. We heard personal stories of violence and abuse, and stories of relatives and loved ones who had suffered at the hands of their intimate partners.  We had humour as well, jokes and asides and situations so absurd that they were laughable. By the time lunch rolled around it was impossible to tell who were community workers and who were federal government workers; the issue was pervasive and crossed every line.  

After lunch we repeated the process although this time I asked “we heard these powerful stories this morning. What then should we do about this?” Again the feather travelled its slow journey around the circle and this time everyone shared ideas about how such a program would look in their community, what it would enable, what kind of change it might make. 

During these conversations my only job was to capture pages and pages of notes that I later turned into a report that informed the establishment of the off-reserve portion of the Aboriginal Family Violence Initiative.  It was a powerful way to make policy and also a powerful way to create commitment between people. We watched the bones of a federal government program emerge out of an empty circle and a collection of stories. Bruce was right: this indeed was the gift of creation. 

That was some years before I stumbled on Open Space Technology and more formalized processes of large scale dialogue. But it taught me that simple constraints — a circle, a feather, a question — could result in profound outcomes.  It taught me to make space for stories of the heart and deeply personal experiences. It taught me that attending to relationality was as important as attending to outcomes. Perhaps most importantly, it taught me that there is hardly anything more powerful and profound than a group of human beings making meaning together in a life-giving context. 

July 29, 2025: place noting and place making

July 29, 2025 By First Nations, Notes No Comments

Last nights anchorage was very near the reef of Kwuwmuqs in the little protected bay near the Thetis Island ferry dock. On the evening, seals fished on the reef, splashing and smacking the water. The electric ferry which serves Thetis and Penelakut glides between the smaller outlying islands and onshore we walked to the bakery at Telegraph Harbour, picked some blackberries and walked through some community trails.

Thetis and Penelakut Islands are barely separated by a thin passage of water called St’q’in but they are more than separated by culture and history. Thetis is an island of settlers and Penelakut is the home community for the Penelakut Tribe. It’s a quiet and serene place now but it was a site of violence from Indigenous raiders in 1861 and the British Navy who shelled it in 1863, and the Catholic Church. From 1890 to 1978 the Roman Catholic Church operated a residential school there which harboured abuse and sexual assault and a high profile case in 2002 saw one of the brothers charged with some of these crimes. Gaining control over their territory, culture, and community has been a long fight for the Penelakut. The Tribe now has a land code, a longhouse, an elementary school, and services for members, and like every other tribal community in this province is engaged in the long project of healing from historical trauma and enacted its rights and title over the land and seas.

More acts of local placemaking. My friend Emily van Lidthe de Juede labels weeds on our island so you know what you’ve got living around you.

A classic Cory Doctorow piece on why and how he blogs and one with which I strongly resinate. Writing every day, annotating interesting things I’ve found, sharing them out there, and asking questions is making me a better writer and a more prolific writer. I have a book on the go and several mini books in the hopper as well. These are all flowers that were seeded by blogging.

There’s lots to think about in this podcast from The Hub about Canada’s current trade negotiations with the US. My key takeaway is that all of US trade policy at the moment is a shakedown of trading partners. And I still think the US administration believes that Canada should be the 51st state and so weakening our economy badly with a slow crawl to stagnation may be part of a long game.

July 28, 2025: quiet, prayers, and landscapes of war and peace.

July 28, 2025 By Being, Culture, First Nations, Practice, Travel No Comments

Anchored at Xwth’itsetsen. A fire burning in the Nanaimo River valley provides the accents.

I’m travelling this week, through the Gulf Islands with friends on a lovely Catalina 35 sailboat. This is a trip we do every year, not so much sailing (there isn’t usually much wind at this time of year) but rather to hunt for the little anchorages and warm swimming water of the central Salish Sea. I live amidst magnificent Islands, what I call “the Canadian Hebrides” not so much for their geography but more for the fact that every island has it’s own little culture, different from the island I live on, and these cultures are both settler cultures and deeply historical. In our travels north from Swartz Bay to here, a journey of about three hours motoring on a flood tide with a steady wind behind us, we passed through the territories of Tseycum, the Cowichan Tribes, and we are now anchored in a little bay off Xwth’itsetsen, a small island in Penelakut territory. On our way up here we passed through some incredible historic sites, including Hwtl’upnets, known in English as Maple Bay, where a massive tribal battle was fought in the early 1830s between local Coast Salish Tribes and the Lekwiltok who hail from further north. This battle ended a long standing conflict, and mostly ended the Lekwiltok raiding era. The ripples of this battle still resonate today in traditional relationships, governance conversations, and protocols between these tribes.

My friend Cal is an Anglican priest. I adore their theology, their inquisitiveness, their infatuation with music and Sufi teachings and the deep spirituality of good Christian practice, not that shit peddled by Christian Nationalists. There comes a time when a preacher writes their sermon on prayer, and Cal hits it out of the park with this one: “Perhaps prayer is not saying, “This is what I need,” but “This is what I am: yours. Please let me tell you about what is on my heart. I want to, because I love you.”

Patti Digh is reading, and at least one of the books on her list, A Grandmother Begins the Story by Michell Porter is on hold for me at the library for my next read. I am well taken with books that challenge traditional narrative structures and where a bit of magical realism is at play. I enjoy artists who use their forms and media to do things uniquely suited to their art and genre.

I’m going to go read now. One of the things I most cherish about be able to get onto the land or the sea is the spaces of true quiet one can find. This is an increasingly important issue in urban areas. Silence is disappearing, and not just because people can’t afford expensive bluetooth devices to connect to their phones (yes this is an issue). Guardians of silence in urban spaces need to be vigilant.