Reading · Conscious Humanity by Emily Wade

Welcome to the 123rd edition of Conscious Humanity — it’s so good to see you here!

If you’re new here, my name is Emily and I’m a writer, photographer, teacher in higher education, home gardener, single parent, and all-round creative soul. I am in the midst of figuring out how to extract myself from the capitalist-driven, digitally saturated, artificially “busy” life we’re told we must live in order to survive and “succeed.” And I’m helping you do the same.

Below are seven positive things that have entered my orbit in the last two weeks, all chosen as inspiration to slow down and unearth a more creative, nature-connected life. They’re formatted so you can scan through and dive deeper into those that resonate most with you. I offer these things not as noise, but as nourishment. May at least one thing brighten your day, inspire you to take action, or help you return to what matters most.

As I write this, the kids and I are in a darkened house with one candle burning because the power is out. Power outages happened all the time when I was a kid, but this is a huge novelty for my boys because losing power for more than a few seconds so rarely happens today. I actually love this because as soon as the power went out, the kids got off their devices, my eldest son came out of his bedroom and we’re all in the lounge room, talking. A candle, the moon, and my laptop are the only sources of light. Until my laptop battery dies, that is. It brings into stark relief the choices we have every day. Turning towards the things that sustain us and turning away from those that don’t. The moral panic that is raging around AI is mostly warranted and also, we have the power to turn it off!

Without an electricity supply, AI can’t do anything. Even when others keep supplying the electricity and servers for AI to do its thing, we have the power to choose what AI does, and what is sacred to us as human-only thoughts and actions. This theme has been a through-line in many conversations I’ve had with students, friends and family in the last few weeks. A big question for this moment in time is, what makes us human in a world driven by Artificial Intelligence? Here are a few thoughts I’ve gathered on this…

When Mindstream asked Sean Blanchfield, tech founder and CEO, how he chooses what to automate (use AI for), Sean replied that he automates the chores… the things that take time but don’t need his direct oversight, but there are some things he refuses to automate (thank goodness!)

“I still walk instead of driving when I can. I dig my own garden. I get out and stay physically connected to the world. There are things that are valuable because you do them yourself: exercise, attention, and presence. AI optimising my work doesn’t mean I want AI to optimise my life.”

And then Mindstream asked, which human skill is becoming more valuable in the AI era? He replied,

“Intentionality. As AI floods us with options, analysis, and generated output, the genuinely scarce resource becomes the ability to find a quiet space in yourself and decide what actually matters. To be deliberate. To choose. Clarity of purpose doesn’t get automated. Neither does the will to act on it.”

It gave me a glimmer of hope to hear that someone immersed in the AI industry is thinking along these lines.

I strongly believe that intentional choice requires some serious inner reflection. You can’t decide what matters unless you truly know what you love and value. Sylvie Rokab, who directed the award-winning film, Love Thy Nature asks four questions to help people start this process in her mentoring work,

“Would you consider spending a few quiet minutes each day with nature?
Could you keep asking yourself… ‘what would I love?’
What is your deepest longing... even in the midst of it all?
And could you hold these questions with kindness toward yourself?”

And that deepest longing is something I sense many people feel, but don’t necessarily acknowledge.

Many of us are also holding a huge amount of grief about the state of the world and a deep feeling that humans need to seriously change direction, even if we don’t know which direction we should go in yet. Changing direction is possible though, and this may sound trite, but it starts with each of us finding our passion and joy. Living for the things that truly matter to us, just like the people in the next few stories.

Now, to Adam Wilson, who is living his deepest passion by feeding his community. I watched Radical Neighbouring: The Farm Where Nothing is For Sale on YouTube last week, which is a short documentary by Campfire Films. The film asks the questions, What does it mean to be a human who is not a consumer? and How can communities feed themselves and each other without buying or selling food?

Adam was gifted $500,000 by a single donor to buy land and create Sand River Community Farm in upstate New York in 2021, after previously being involved with a community farming project. The film explores how regenerative small scale farming and the gift economy can work to restore the land and connections between humans in a community. Adam regularly hosts his neighbours for meals at the farm and he explains that they have rituals to inspire gratitude for the bounty of produce available to share with the local community. One of those rituals is a blessing that is spoken before everyone eats:

“For the dark soil that cradles the seed. For the rains that bring forth the green leaves.
For the stars that give form to the flowers. For all this goodness and beauty, we give thanks. Blessings on the meal!”

What a simple and beautiful way to pause and appreciate good food and good company.

Ultimately, Adam hopes this kind of radical neighbouring inspires other famers and communities. He says,

“If other people in the world with stored monies, whether it’s $100 or $100,000 or $10 million, decided to release a little bit of that to remove land from the tight and scarce grip of the market and free the land up to do its work of breaking the spell of scarcity. Feeding humans. Still, even after all the slings and arrows, the world might look a little bit different.”

And the good news is, slowly but surely, this is already happening. Organisations like Commonland bring people together to restore land using holistic, long-term practices that benefit all involved.

Another person who inspires many is Bob Brown, and I’m currently reading his latest book, Defiance. It’s a beautiful reminder of the huge impact that collective action and non-violent protest has achieved over the last 50 years. Bob Brown began his career as a General Practitioner (medical doctor) and went on to lead the Australian Greens political party for 20 years, as well as being actively involved in many peaceful protests to stop damaging engineering projects and deforestation, particularly in his home state of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Bob says, “Bold action is required to save life on Earth, but we can’t get too anxious about it, or those who prefer to plunder nature will beat us.”

Bob shares story after story of hardship and struggle (facing public dissent, being jailed for protesting, and much more), and other stories about triumph and victory against the oppressors (such as corporations, lobby groups, and governments in the pockets of corporations) - his unwavering optimism is awe inspiring. While it’s easy to feel hopeless and believe that we can’t individually make a difference to the world, Bob says,

“Pessimism won’t help. Optimism in the face of overwhelming odds may seem misguided — but the course of human history remains in our collective hands, and change is driven not by defeatism, but by intelligent, courageous, compassionate defiance of the prevailing rules. This is the key to guaranteeing the future.
Successful defiance is a front-foot thing. It is active, not passive, in taking power from those who are degrading the planet. It also requires space for good times as Emma Goldman (activist/anarchist and political campaigner, born in 1869) put it a century ago, ‘If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.’

So, let’s dance!

If you’re not sure where to start wth all this positive action, try looking just outside your window. Sarah Wilson has just launched Season 2 of her Wild podcast, to talk all things collapse-related. And no, it’s not as depressing as it sounds; it’s actually quite the opposite. In the first conversation with Samantha Sweetwater, author of True Human, Sarah explores what we can practically do as systems around us collapse. And collapse doesn’t mean the literal end of the world, it means the end of the world we were promised, and expected would always be there for us.

If the word collapse is too jarring, you could reframe it as “emergence.” In its simplest form, it’s out with the old, and in with the new (world order).

So, in the face of that, what do we do?

When Sarah asked Samantha how she stays present and sane despite “it all” and how she avoids getting lost in her phone, Samantha replied that she always tunes in to the local news, especially in the mornings. This isn’t a digital broadcast; it happens right outside her house:

“Yeah. I love attending to what I call the local news, like the birds outside, the clouds, the sunrise…” as she’s talking to people, she says, “by the way, the local news is great. My freesias just smell incredible, you know...
And I think that there’s the dimension of staying very grounded in my morning, in my daily practices.”

I think this really resonated with me because it’s something I also do everyday, and it’s nice to be reminded of the things we’re already doing when it feels like we can never do enough to extract ourselves from all that is crushing our souls.

So, what’s on your local news today?

A vibrant sunset that featured in my “local news” recently.

I had way too many good news stories to share this week, so I’m sneaking in a “three-for-one” with stories of change. Jamie Wheal recently shared his thoughts on the ‘The Power of Story to Make Us or Break Us.’ I particularly love the way he presents a timeline of three-million years of human history, condensed into one average human lifetime of 75 years. When you look at human history in that way, the fossil fuel era takes up only the last 48-hours! Jamie argues that viewing our problems in the present (“presentism”) is one of our biggest problems, but if we learn to consider broader trends over longer periods of history, change suddenly seems much more possible!

And change is already underway because a group of countries who agree on the need to phase out fossil fuels are meeting in Santa Marta Colombia for the next several days. The Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference (also known as the Coalition of the Willing) is co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands and will have representatives from approximately 60 countries. While the “big polluters” (the US, China, India and Russia) won’t be there, the shift away from fossil fuels is gathering momentum.

If you’d like to nourish and strengthen your response to world problems, I’ve just discovered this free online course, Foundations in Active Hope. The seven-week self-directed course is based on Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, and her book called Active Hope, co-authored with the course’s presenter, Chris Johnstone.

This moment is worth seizing because as Joanna once said,

“To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe – to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it – is a wonder beyond words.”

I’m going to start this online course tomorrow - who’s with me?

Conscious Humanity, No. 123

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