🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole 🕳️

“This, in practical terms is, the slow, necessary, sometimes boring work to which I suspect people in our place and time are being called: to build new things out on the margins. Not to exhaust our souls engaging in a daily war for or against a ‘West’ that is already gone, but to prepare the seed bed for what might, one day long after us, become the basis of a new culture. To go looking for truth. To light particular little fires—fires fueled by the eternal things, the great and unchanging truths—and tend their sparks as best we can. To prepare the ground with love for a resurrection of the small, the real and the true.”

~ Paul Kingsnorth, Against The Machine, p. 30

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Do you know someone with children who is concerned about technology?

If so, please forward them this message!

Greetings, dear newsletter subscriber,

Please forgive me for a brief hiatus! Having completed our study of Paul Kingsnorth's book, I have been working on what comes next...

Kingsnorth has done a wonderful job diagnosing the problem, the most existential issue however remains: what can we do about it?

I have been working on the blueprint for a huge (likely multi-year) project I am currently referring to as The Rewilding Humanity Project. There are many levels to the project, and many angles to engage with the questions Kingsnorth (and others) have raised.

A core conviction, which you may recall from the Gadfly Academy Manifesto, is that, "All humans were born for a similar purpose, with similar needs, and a similar sense of reality," and that, "this basic commonality has been undermined and overshadowed by cultural factors. These cultural factors have been greatly aided by technology."

The focus of The Rewilding Humanity Project is to discuss practical ways to push back against the advance of the Machine. We've considered the diagnosis enough for the time being, now we need to focus on a practical path forward.

Last summer I was discussing this project (long in the conceiving!) with a friend, and my focus at the time was to develop some kind of a course through which concerned adults could come into a deeper appreciation of the issues at hand, and ways in which to address them. My friend, a father of four daughters, encouraged me to focus initially on a different demographic: the pre-adolescent (0-13 years old).

While there are many fires to be put out, the most immediate and existential threat is to children who are being exposed to the digital world at increasingly young ages. To this end, the initial focus of The Rewilding Humanity Project will be on practical steps that parents (grandparents, aunts, uncles, any adult concerned with the future of the world...hopefully all of us!) can take to help young children navigate the (increasingly digital) world.

As the famous proverb goes: "It takes a village to raise a child." We are all responsible for the world in which we live, and for the world in which future generations will live. This is one of the many bits of wisdom that we have largely forgotten/disregarded in our world. The Rewilding Humanity Project is multi-generational, and I think you will find that the issues I address apply profoundly to everyone, regardless of age.

As always...I am very grateful for your continuing support in this effort! I hope that you will find the work I am going to be offering in the coming months and years to be encouraging and empowering.

I am not certain how often I will send out the newsletter moving forward, but I am going to aim for at least once a month, but hopefully more like once every two weeks.

Have a great weekend, and I'll see you again soon!

Warmly,

Herman