My fourth ‘finding’ for this module is a video of Chet Bowers at the 2015 Economics of Happiness conference, held in Portland, Oregon. Since we’ve been reading Bowers, but I don’t currently have time to read his book, Let Them Eat Data, I did a quick Youtube search a few days ago and found this mind-blowing 16-minute video:
Here are the notes I made while watching/listening (anything in quotes is directly from the video, everything else is my paraphrasing and interpretation):
- We have an anthropocentric, European, Enlightenment, abstract way of thinking…
- This way of thinking doesn’t value the cultural commons and the traditions of local, non-monetized, inter-generational, sustainable activities…
- “What we need is a more complex form of cultural intelligence” that “pays attention to the patterns that connect”
- How do various forms of knowledge (ways of knowing/epistemologies) affect our behaviour?
- It’s not either/or. Print and data are not bad. But they are limited. They don’t capture everything. We need to stop thinking that what is in print or in the form of data is objective. Print and data can’t provide or contain contextual and relational knowledge and experience.
- Language contains thought patterns. Every language and culture has specific “root metaphors” (I had to Google what root metaphors are). Our culture has a strong root metaphor about progress.
- “We need to look at the process of linguistic colonization of our present by our past.”
Wow. I highly recommend this video. He starts a little slow, but then it ends up being a PACKED 16 minutes.