INSIGHTs

Expert analysis and commentary to help you to make sense of what’s emerging.

Technology

Web 3: A Crisis of Sensemaking

Rufus Pollock and Theo Cox

Web3 is becoming a huge phenomenon, but can be hard to make sense of. To address this sensemaking gap, Life Itself is launching a new collaborative initiative “Making Sense of Web3” with a focus on the social and economic mechanisms driving web3 and its potential impact.

Education

Bombs and Bildung: Ukraine as the Educational Centre of the World

Jonathan Rowson

The critical question today is what 21st-century Bildung looks like in a world of war, ecocide and disinformation. Democracy depends on solidarity and both depend on good collective sense-making and decision-making, which in turn depend on a free press and ultimately on a healthy education system.

Emergence

The Return of the Age of War, Or: Has the Meta Been Grounded?

Anna Katharina Schaffner

Emerge Digest March 2022. A new monthly series reflecting on what has been emerging.

War

Putin, Ukraine, and 1945: The War Never Ended

Bayo Akomolafe

The campaign for Ukraine is also an infection, an epidemiological moment, a political tentacle of a virus that exceeds the biological. A spiritual inflection.

Cosmolocalism

Where the Meta Hits the Ground

Indra Adnan

We live within structures that were imagined before they were built. No matter how grim things may look, humans are the animals that can refresh our experience, by redefining our take on reality.

Kinship

Re-Enlivening Relationship in Fractured Times

Hannah Close

To be in relationship is an affirmation of the essential porosity that keeps us alive, a process of becoming through reciprocity with the ‘other’.

Emergence

Three Theses on Liminality

Jeremy D Johnson

On Thresholds, Interregnums, and Coyolxuahqui

Climate Crisis

This is not an 'Emergency'... It's Much More Serious Than That

Rupert Read and Wolfgang Knorr

The real climate emergency is that we don’t treat the climate crisis as an emergency because we feel no emergency. Call this ‘the meta-emergency’.

Apocalypse

Apocalyptarians, Or: What the F*%k is Soolionensius???

Layman Pascal

On how to be a good apocalpytarian. The old question is: Will there be an apocalypse or not? The new question is: How do we live under the conditions of the apocalyptic mood?

Climate Change

Dark Hope and the Climate Crisis

Jonathan Rowson

Why aren't we rising up? Because the effects of climate change are distant in four dimensions: not here, not now, not me, and not clear. But here’s the dark hope: It is here. It is now. It is me. And it is clear.

Myth

Missteps as a Redemptive Path to Destiny

Kristina Dryza

We all blunder into the Grail Castle, exactly as Parzival did, before we can even hope to formulate and ask the question that may end our exile. And yet everything can be redeemed.

Emergence

Cultivating an Emerging Paradigm

Tomas Björkman and Rufus Pollock

Context, challenges and a thesis.

Politics

Move Over

Indra Adnan

Most of us are still stuck in a conception of vertical power. How can we truly find a voice for the wider population, rather than simply seeking to replace the current leaders as sources of knowledge and wisdom? And how can we avoid celebrity cults in our own network?

Climate Collapse

We are the Comet

Zhiwa Woodbury

"Don't Look Up" is a powerful counter-cultural statement that taps into something deep in our collective psyche. It shows us that we have been looking to all the wrong people and institutions to solve our problems. Will it have the power to bring about a sea-change in our death-phobic culture?

Education

The Transformative Power of Peer-to-Peer Learning Networks

Carolin Goethel

A plea for rhizomatic learning in community.

Philosophy

Playing and Creating in an Infinite Way

Peter Limberg

Like the player of life who expands the notion of game along with what it means to play, the artist of life expands the notion of art along with what it means to create. On meta-gaming vs. creating in the liminal web.

Energy

Powering the City: Energy Transition in Berlin

Tarn Rodgers Johns

Nothing is more urgent than the global energy transition. Across Europe, solar parks and off-shore wind farms are being ramped up in the drive towards carbon-neutral. At the same time, many countries are facing an "energy crisis" because of rising costs. How can we localise our energy supply, so that we all benefit from this transition?

Society

Christmas, Consumerism and Confusion

Jonathan Rowson

Christmas is the season of shallow critique. We lament the commercialisation around us as if it were a seasonal problem, but lurking inside the wrapped presents, juicy puddings and roasted birds there are deeper questions about ethical drift and the social logic of our entire economic model.

Climate Change

What if We are all We've Got?

Zhiwa Woodbury

We urgently need to move from a blame- and victimhood model towards one of shared responsibility for the climate catastrophe. What might happen if all of us became ‘climate influencers’ by acting every day as if our lives depended on minimizing our carbon footprints?

Emergence

Mapping for Emergence

Theo Cox, Rufus Pollock and Anna Katharina Schaffner

Life Itself and Emerge will join forces to map the emergent metamodern ecosystem. But what is so great about social network mapping? Why does it matter, and how can it help?