And I heard once again, “It is a miniscule percentage, no? Like 0.000x% of population?”
I wondered what underlies this conversion of humans infected by virus into statistical numbers. As of this moment of writing, 20 humans in my network have tested positive, of which Friend 1, Friend 2, and Friend 3 are hospitalized.
One of them messaged me a request—if I don’t make it, please write me a super eulogy.
I held myself together.
Not a number, but a human who messaged me.
Later in the evening, I read this article by Nora Bateson and Dr Maphela Ramphele. About cold and warm questions.
Cold Questions
Or how some lives are measured as insignificant, disposable.
Martin Buber came to my mind: I-It encounter. The first step to making some lives disposable is when the other is converted into an object. Human Spirit into a number. 81 cases in a population of 10000.
Some names erased. Some voices absented.
A hint of Eugenics.
As the authors write, “The metric logic removes the human breadth of experience and relationship. This cold calculation flattens the scope of the thinking.”
Warm Questions
Or People Need People.
Martin Buber again—when I encounter you as not It but as Thou, a Personification in my Mental Space with agency. In this space of relatedness, each of us has a sense of self, shaped and influenced by the other. The authors write,
“We are all capable of different things depending on who we are with and what they are finding themselves capable of. Capacity cannot be front-loaded, it is emergent. But it is possible to front-load a baseline perception of self, others and world that assumes the inherent multitude of stories and draws from them. With care and imagination the possibilities are endless.”
People need People—not for saving each other, but that we create in unique ways together.
Collaboration not as a complement or as a supplement, but that it leads to magical new possibilities of being and doing.
That the relationship itself shapes new possibilities.
You can read the full article here.
NLP, Warm Questions & Post-Pandemic World
I have warm questions for our Future, for our Post-Pandemic World. How can we as NLPers contribute to shaping a New World? How will the changing world systems and people relationships shape NLP as a field?
To this end, I envisioned and designed a futuristic program – Lightweaver NLP+MSP Practitioner to Professional Program.
It is based on the notion of a co-creative space– of people working together to chisel services for the New World, whose very act of working together opens possibilities.
Here we will work together, to widen our existing identities to include more people, to be ecologically aware, to work in tandem, together, in magic.
Would you be happy to join us? I invite you to visit this program page.
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