KOSMOS LIVE Podcast | Andreas Weber, On Matter and Desire
KOSMOS LIVE PODCAST SERIES Preparing for Profound Change
This podcast series, Preparing for Profound Change, explores the shifting global landscape and offers strategies for coping with what lies ahead. Economic turmoil, climate chaos, political upheaval – these may seem like forces to fear, but in fact offer us deep opportunities for transformation.
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Episode 9 – Andreas Weber, On Matter and Desire
Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, and nature writer. He holds degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies and is the author of nine non-fiction books and dozens of magazine features and is highly respected for his work in the fields of popular science and environmental sustainability. Andreas explores new understandings of life-as-meaning or ‘biopoetics’ and ‘biosemiotics’ in science and in the arts, and his work has been translated into several languages and published around the globe.
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“The profound changes that are coming are the profound changes that are happening in every process of identity, which is every life form all the time. In a very difficult and astonishing way, let’s say the profound changes or even this sadness of goodbye or this sadness of loss which is englobing us, is just a variant of the sadness of loss which happens if you are fully alive.”
“In an ecosystem, every being can only exist because it can eat others and it is eaten by others. We have the idea of fundamental interbeing as completely sharing your bodies with others, which you could see as cruelty, but you can also see it as a source of fertility. Only this makes possible that any individual and any selfhood can exist. You need both, and that’s another way of talking about the paradoxes I’m talking about in this book. That you need the totality of mutual, how would I call it, of mutual interdependency or interpenetration. You need this to be a self. You need to incorporate other to be a self.”
“We’re always striving for happiness. I mean, the pursuit of happiness, that’s the archetype of American paradigm. It’s happiness, but you don’t get there in looking for happiness and sacrificing your reality or the way you truly are or the way you really desire to connect or the way the biosphere renews itself through dying. That’s all reality and you can’t just overlay it with happiness. It doesn’t work this way around, so maybe that’s part of the teaching where we can have if we open our eyes. It’s about how to be real.”
“We can implement an ecology of love in our relationships which is not different at all from what is happening in ecosystems, only that we can be, let’s say, the actors in that practice. That’s even the core message of the whole book is that we have completely forgotten that to be in this world in a fertile and fruitful manner means to be a loving partner of others, and being a loving partner for others means to come to myself through letting the others come to themselves.”
Links for this Podcast
Websites
Books by Andreas Weber
Biopoetics: Towards an Existential Ecology
In Kosmos Journal
The Enlivenment Manifesto: Politics and Poetics in the Anthropocene
The Biology of Wonder | Finding the Human in Nature
Enlivenment: A New Bios for our Relation to the Natural World and to Ourselves
Credits
This Kosmos Live series, Preparing for Profound Change, is made possible by Immediacy, leading creators of educational media for learners of all ages everywhere. And, by Kosmos Community, dedicated supporters of the Kosmos mission – transformation in harmony with all Life.Balancing a sober understanding of the of the collective challenges we face, with heart-centered response, calls for deep awakening by individuals, communities and societies. Our guests share their personal practices, strategies, and insights to help us manage our strong emotions and step forward to play positive proactive roles during these troubling times.
What skills, competencies and capacities will be most valued in the new world? How can our own inner practices keep us free from anxiety as we prepare body, mind and spirit for profound change? See other episodes in this series here.