What is Home in a Changing World?
What is Home in a Changing World?
I spent some time with Nora Bateson in Sweden a couple of weeks back to learn more about Warm Data and Warm Data Labs. We did a few rounds of Warm Data Labs and the question that was asked for one round was "What is Home in a changing world?" I found the discussions that grew out of this question extremely interesting and deep and they revealed the complexity of the topic of home. While I cannot really repeat these discussions here, home has popped up again for me a couple of times since.
A friend replied to my reflections on place asking for the role of 'Home' when we talk about place. (How) is place connected to home? For a while I used to say "Home is where my suitcase is" and indeed, I often said "Let's go home" when I actually meant "Let's go back to the hotel." Another friend regularly uses the German term 'Heimat' (which I'd loosely translate with 'Home' even though I think actually has a more complex meaning) when he talks about his hometown, where he grew up - even though he does not live there anymore. These are in a way two extremes - one very temporary and transient, not related to any place in particular, the other a constant in your life, the same physical place, even if you move around.
The question about what is home has also popped up again for me as we just returned back to our house in England after spending three months in Germany and Switzerland. I am originally from Switzerland and grew up there before deciding that it would be interesting to live somewhere else. I left Switzerland in 2009. Back then I thought it was rather dull and boring. I told people that I'm fed up with knowing every morning what would happen that day and where I would be in the evening. First I moved with my wife to Bangladesh for two years, quite a different place. Then we moved to the US and later to England. That was the time when I referred to home as where my suitcase is. But in recent years, there has been a growing draw from my 'place of origin' if you want - from Switzerland. When we spent some time there this past month I have to say it does feel like home in a way and I think I would love to return and live there again at some point. So I guess our sense of home can shift as we grow older.
Of course many more aspects are coming up when thinking about home – and have come up during our Warm Data Lab on the question of home. There is of course family and what role family plays in creating a home (or not). There is education and one story that came up was about being bullied at school and what support home (or family in this case) can provide. A more difficult topic was the role of the church in providing safety and something like a home – or the contrary, when people and particularly children are abused in a place their parents send them to in good faith (no pun intended here).
For me personally, there is a special tension between what I would geographically call home and where I live with my family, as those are two different physical places. The reason why we live where we live is economic, it's where my wife found a good job. What is more important? Having a good job but living in a place that you might not want to or be able to call home, or live in the place you call home and where you feel at home but having to have a job that does not fulfil you?
What is your association with home? Where is your home? Has your idea of home shifted as you have grown older? Please share your reflections by replying to this email.
The Paper Museum
Another excerpt from the German book "Mehr sein, weniger brauchen" by Thomas Bruhn and Jessica Böhme (regular readers will remember that I have written about it before). Translation below.
Welche Art des Fortschritts wir als Fortschritt bezeichnen, ist eine der wichtigsten Fragen, die wir im Zusammenhang mit Nachhaltigkeit für uns beantworten müssen.
Sie führt uns letztlich zu der noch größeren Frage, warum wir als Menschen überhaupt auf dieser Erde sind und was wir mit unserer Zeit am besten anfangen sollen. Die Schwierigkeit, diese Frage zu beantworten, liegt darin, dass wir das Ziel nicht kennen. Der Systemtheoretiker Stuart Kauffman zeigt auf, dass die Erde an sich kein feststehendes Ziel verfolgt, sondern immer im Moment handelt. Es geht also nicht darum, eine endgültige Definition festzuschreiben, sondern darum, dass wir uns der Ambiguität des Fortschritts bewusst sind und für uns selbst einen Weg finden, damit umzugehen und selbst zu identifizieren, welche Intention und welches Anliegen für unsere Entwicklung richtungsgebend sein soll.
Gesamtgesellschaftlich haben wir uns bereits eine solche Richtung gegeben. Die Vereinten Nationen haben sich mit den nachhaltigen Entwicklungszielen ein neues Mission Statement gegeben. Dieses Anliegen sollte die Maßgabe dafür sein, ob wir uns als Völkergemeinschaft zum Besseren entwickeln oder nicht. Lange Zeit ging es darum, das eigene Überleben und den Frieden zu sichern, zunächst als Einzelne, später als Gemeinschaften, Nationen oder Völker. Heute geht es nicht mehr nur darum, wie wir überleben können, sondern auch, wie wir überleben wollen.
Für uns Einzelne ist es an der Zeit, diese Herausforderung ebenfalls anzunehmen. Wir sind uns über die Situation der Welt ausreichend bewusst. Die Zeiten sind vorbei, in denen wir uns unbewusst treiben lassen konnten im gesellschaftlichen Strom einer Entwicklung, von der niemand wusste, wohin sie gehen soll. Gerade weil wir keine isolierten Individuen sind, sondern Teile eines Gesamtsystems, prägen wir das Ganze mit durch die Richtung, die wir unserem Leben und unserem Umfeld geben. Es ist wichtig, diese Frage anzunehmen, zu klären, von welchem Anliegen wir uns leiten lassen wollen, und dieses Anliegen dann auch wirklich zum bewussten Leitstern unseres Handelns zu machen. Das ist die zentrale Eigenschaft eines zukunftsfähigen Seins. Wir dürfen den mühsamen Fragen nicht ausweichen, den vorgezeichneten Weg nicht gehen und uns nicht darauf ausruhen, dass schon alles irgendwie besser wird. Wir müssen in uns hineinhorchen und erkennen, mit welcher Intention wir wachsen und uns entwickeln möchten.
Translation
What kind of progress we call progress is one of the most important questions we need to answer for ourselves in the context of sustainability.
It ultimately leads us to the even bigger question of why we as humans are on this earth in the first place and what we are best supposed to do with our time. The difficulty in answering this question is that we do not know the goal. Systems theorist Stuart Kauffman points out that the earth itself does not have a fixed goal, but is always acting in the moment. So the point is not to fix a final definition, but to be aware of the ambiguity of progress and to find a way for ourselves to deal with it and to identify for ourselves which intention and which concern should guide our development.
In terms of society as a whole, we have already given ourselves such a direction. The United Nations has given itself a new mission statement in the form of the Sustainable Development Goals. This aspiration should be the guiding principle for whether or not we, as a community of peoples, develop for the better. For a long time, it was about securing our own survival and peace, first as individuals, later as communities, nations or peoples. Today, it is no longer just a question of how we can survive, but also how we want to survive.
For us individuals, it is time to take up this challenge as well. We are sufficiently aware of the situation of the world. The times are over when we could drift unconsciously in the social stream of a development of which no one knew where it was going. Precisely because we are not isolated individuals but parts of an overall system, we help shape the whole by the direction we give our lives and our surroundings. It is important to accept this question, to clarify which concern we want to be guided by, and then to really make this concern the conscious guiding star of our actions. This is the central characteristic of a Being that is fit for the future. We must not avoid the tedious questions, we must not follow the path that has been marked out for us, and we must not rest on the assumption that everything will somehow get better. We must listen to ourselves and recognize with what intention we want to grow and develop.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
Why have I added this to my Paper Museum? I think it is a very strong passage in the book, yet I'm always a bit at odds with the need for a purpose in our lives. I have made the statement earlier that Purpose is a Red Herring. Yet at the same time I see that if we want to get out of our Auto Pilot mind and change the way we live and society lives, we need a way to say what way of being or living is better compared to now. So in that sense, the idea of a guiding star makes sense. As long as we don't fall pray to seeing the purpose as an objective to which we can build a causal pathway. Because we can't.
Reference: Bruhn, Thomas, and Jessica Böhme. 2021.Mehr sein, weniger brauchen: Was Nachhaltigkeit mit unseren Beziehungen zu tun hat. Beltz GmbH, Julius.
More for you to enjoy
By coincidence, there is an article in the German weekly 'Die Zeit' this week about the concept of 'Heimat', titled 'Verwurzelt' (access it here, in German only).
The image
The photograph was taken by me in the Val Curciusa in the Canton of Grisons in Switzerland, one of the last valleys in Switzerland that is not accessible via road. I feel at home in the mountains and hiking through this valley with my mother has been a highlight of my holidays this year.