Lois Holzman: The Overweight Brain (2018)

A Systems Library, Vol. 16

Photo by Fröken Fokus from Pexels

These three positions reflect a humble stance in the face of complexity. They shirk the privileging of rational intellect. Instead they foreground the inevitably bewildering experience of living in a complex world, and an ethos of kindness and empathetic risk-taking that helps us to grow.

The big insight here is: changing, growing does not hinge on knowing, but on a direct, activity-based interaction with the world. Non-epistemic understanding is indistinguishable from participation in the life process.

This is a stance that is at once deeply systemic and deeply political, because it accepts and recognises what is there in each and every human being and creates a space for that potential to unfold.

This social therapeutic setting captures Holzman’s XYZ of growing: the creation of safe spaces to perform ourselves into a more fluid identity, the ‘yes, and’ of improvisational practice, and the embrace of the unknown and unknowable. Nothing keeps us from infusing our families, communities and work places with a similar spirit.

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Facilitator @ shiftN ⎹ Post-disciplinary researcher @ Newrope, ETH Zürich ⎹ How to create spaces were life is able to unfold, and is experienced as life?

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Philippe Vandenbroeck

Facilitator @ shiftN ⎹ Post-disciplinary researcher @ Newrope, ETH Zürich ⎹ How to create spaces were life is able to unfold, and is experienced as life?