Planting

 

 

I went to a talk last night about global warming and the coming end of the world by flood.  It was a Social Sculpture that focused around conversations about a conceptual ark that contained things but also hopes and dreams.  The work was well presented and had clearly engaged a group of people in conversation, they had taken more ownership over the reality of a dying planet and their potential to enact change.  I wanted to tell them about Plenty Coups and the idea that imagining a future from this present moment may not be helpful and we need collective radical hope that equips us to deal with the unknown which will surely become present itself in the next couple of millennia. 

 I will try and answer my own question.

 

If this project is successful what will it do ?

At this point it would be tempting to go to the case for support and list our projected outputs and outcome yet this is not what I was asking. 

• "If these trees survive they will live longer than any child that planted them."  I think I would of found that a difficult concept as a child yet it may be something that the tree project can help with.  On an educational level to enable young people to think about time and there place within it differently.
• Generate fertile cross-disciplinary work  where science arts and humanities work affectedly. (not a spelling mistake.
• Help to build a resource for schools and teacher training that enables a nuanced pedagogy around environmental  education.
• Ask through philosophy difficult questions of how we live in the shadow of species annihilation. 
• Stop teaching ways of thinking that will encourage separatism and or nihilism.
• Build lasting and useful sets of relations. 
  

I think these a possible outcomes to aim for, I think they are enough.