Return of the Benders and The Legacy of Air
PART I: Escape The Ontological Palace
On December 6th 2023, I spoke on a Post Growth Institute panel discussing the topic of Radical Philanthropy. Check out the full session here. During this particular improvisational jam, I started in with a few sassy licks on philanthropy’s serious “daddy issues” and the power of multi-modal emergence, then I modulated to a few more experimental riffs on funding field catalysts and network coordinators to focus on interstitial work for cultivating and strategically coordinating collaborative ecologies.
Embedded Video Link: Philanthropy is Ruining America
About 20 minutes deep, I mode switched and started noodling around in the negative space. By this, I mean I jumped across multiple ontologies mid conversational jazz.
But what does that even mean?
Jumping into the Invisible Pocket of a Lesser-Known Groove
Okay, so let’s define ontology as how we answer the following questions: a) what things exist, b) where we draw the boundaries of things, c) how we group things, d) the relationships between things, and e) how all these things stack into a complex, dynamic reality.
Now, let’s go one step further and say that this reality usually exists as a given – meaning, it’s regularly experienced as “just how things are” – the most mundanely obvious, nearly invisible water in which a school of very lovely, well-intentioned, extremely oblivious goldfish swim.
Ontology jumpers are the crazy flying fish pointing to the invisible water and swearing, that if you time your jumps just right, on a clear night’s sky – you can hear a gorgeous gaggle of whooper swans trumpet across the Cygnus constellation.
We’re the wacky mudskippers yapping on and on about the wiggly earthworms we encounter while digging holes on the land– repeating unbelievable stories about magical mycelial networks of fungi in far away forests– along with other, equally fantastical stories overheard, glubbing around the rumor mill near the foot of a local root system.
And guess what… It’s all true.
Okay. Try something for me real quick.
Imagine your worldview as a shapeshifting ontological palace, an entire meaning-making edifice with well-worn grooves and paths – a backdrop for the play of your life – the ground upon which all your other thoughts dance.
You know this palace well. You’re constructing it right now with every breath.
Embedded Video Link: How To Master Your Thinking To Shape Reality Your Way
Some of you may see the world through halls of marble and glass, others may see pathways of dirt and stone. Some may have mechanistic, tiny-geared moving walkways that lead to cave-like corridors of ice, while others may travel by river raft on waterways that estuary into oceans of lava.
And… Of course, the psychonauts will have wild mixtures and textures of all manner of material– melting corduroy carpets in castles made of sand that, no doubt, morph into portals of psychedelic light.
Let’s call this “palace” something like our ontological space-time – a series of interlocking processes in our consciousness that facilitate the movement of awareness – sensemaking, meaning-making, pattern creation, belief building, assumption-making, knowledge-building, worldview construction, choice-making, decision-making, action-taking, and more.
A paradigmatic center of gravity that pulls us into conclusions and pushes us into action.
But why does this matter?
Imagine that those pathways and walkways and corridors all force a certain choice-making architecture – a neg-entropic wind, where the probability space of potential outcomes is informed by, and bound to a particular paradigm of possibility. Our meaning-making structures determine what is and isn’t possible.
Our Ontologies Matter. Our Maps Matter. Our Metaphors Matter. It All Matters.
Everything is constructed through the conduit of meaning.
All this philosophical talk is fine, but how does it apply to philanthropy?
Well, talking about the legacy of air is like teaching ontological desert dwellers how to fish. There is most definitely, unquestionably a pathway to water. I have walked it. And many have before me. It’s nothing particularly special. We can totally go there together– but you’ll have to leave the desert to learn how to fish.
Anyone who tells you fish can be found in the desert is selling you a fat sack of disappointments in a giant bucket of mirages.
Nine times out of ten, people wildly underestimate what greatness requires, what it means to be in humble service, what systemic change actually demands of the soul — what it truly means to be radical.
And, I certainly don’t mean carrying out any particular radical political ideology. Though, I hold my own fairly well-informed biases and goal-directed orientations. I’m in no way indifferent to outcomes, but rather attempt to find balance inside paradox, and I wobble often — which too holds its own kind of radicality.
A trick that demands a calm, focused and steady heartbeat.
And yet, there seems to be a certain kind of rushing rot that gets the best of us. A cultural impatience matched with the urgency of the moment that’s had us spinning our wheels for decades, thinking change can be boiled down to a few levers on a powerpoint diagram or a ten bullet point TL;DR that will guide us step-by-step to the promised land.
This is Magical Thinking.
Embedded Video Link: Magical Thinking Luke Brady TEDxHarveyStreet
But, don’t get me wrong, magical thinking isn’t necessarily bad — it’s mission critical. It’s just that most of the change-makers I see would probably be better served by a little less “change making” and a little more tai chi. Sprinting to put out long-burning fires without any protective gear or training has the potential to be something of a fool’s errand.
How does one even know what type of change is worth making?
In my humble opinion, radical philanthropy demands a proper maturation process with certain initiations into the practice, a commitment to embodied service, and wise discernment. Field surveys and assessments are only as good as the capacity for organizational stillness, and the clarity of the collective senses to even evaluate any information for right action.
If you’re ready for that. Then let’s leave the scarcity of this dusty old desert, and… LET’S GET RADICAL!
Preparation: Setting and Unsetting the Mind to Bend Space Time
The path of true service will stretch you in ways you’re completely unprepared for.
You’ll give up. You’ll make excuses. You’ll find reasons and explanations not to become a bender – you’ll deny your own capacity for greatness, cling to your ego, lose your faith, stumble and fall, saturate yourself with reasons why nothing will ever change… how you’re completely powerless to the “forces that be” and how you were a fool to ever believe in a noble cause… any reason to keep you from actually building up the capacity to bend.
There are a thousand distractions great and small – wayfinding detours both necessary and superfluous. The many daughters of Mara run rampant, as some may say. But, perhaps you are of a different ilk. Perhaps you are cut from a different cloth – sewn from that single golden thread.
And, if that is in fact the case... Here's your homework.
Embedded Video: Small Is Beautiful: Impressions of Fritz Schumacher
A simple task. A radical micro-movement. Watch this video, go find a non-human aliveness, and have a chat about what you saw, what you felt, what it may have changed inside of you. Pets and plants work well for this, but please be courteous – as you would with a human – especially if they can’t run away from you.
If you’ve never talked directly to a plant or other non-human entity, that’s completely okay. There’s a first time for everything. Just have fun and play. Let go of your ontological palace for a moment, loosen up all the structures and constructs. Don’t worry, they’ll come right back when you’re done. You can’t lose all your logic and rationality by talking to trees. Believe me, I’ve tried many times.
Let yourself feel dumb and silly and weird and perfect and totally, utterly, completely fine. Perhaps you did this long ago as a child, and simply forgot. If your neighbors see you, let them think you are crazy. Concern yourself only with the moment, only with the conversation, only with your senses… And listen.
Listen with your heart. Listen with the intuition of your body. Listen for the sounds and images that float up, the memories from other places that arise within you. Listen with your nose, let old forgotten fragrances tell tales — tiny snippets of stories that return to wash over you — welcome all of the re-membrances without discrimination.
Then share whatever response you get below in the comments. I’d love to hear what they had to say about your interpretations and reflections. And, if you watch the video, but don’t engage in dialogue, please still share what you learned below and return for part two. If you’re already a bender, I would absolutely love any suggestions on how to improve upon this “talking to trees” exercise.
For the rest of you who are here to only support with attention and engagement, I’ll leave you with a few wise quotes from Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex, but it takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction [...] Well-meaning schemes to elevate the third world sprang from the brightest brains of the great industrial nations. These very, very clever people are at trial.
And, I tend to be impatient with them, which doesn't help. I accuse many of my fellow economists as rearranging, with great acumen, the deck chairs on the titanic. You see, I wish they would at least do something with their hands to get a real feel of things again. If they come and turn real life situations into mathematics, all the life is taken out of it. That, I find, a great trial.
Too many of our academics have got stuck with a concept – the Buddhists say, ‘Buddhism is a finger pointing at the moon. For goodness sake! Study the moon, not the finger!”
Embedded Video: The Finger Pointing to the Moon | Zen Story
So how long are you going to sit here? Go make friends with some trees!
[Up Next] The Return to a Wiser Order
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I love this human.