Nora Bateson on ecology, increasing possibility, warm data, and intergenerational learning (AC Ep20)

– Nora Bateson

Nora Bateson is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and educator, and President of the International Bateson Institute. She wrote, directed, and produced the documentary, An Ecology of Mind, on her father, Gregory Bateson, which won awards at the Spokane and Santa Cruz film festivals. Following her 2016 book Small Arcs of Larger Circles, her new book, Combining, will be released shortly.

Website: www.anecologyofmind.com

LinkedIn: Nora Bateson

What you will learn

• The dynamic interplay and shared learning among diverse species in a complex ecosystem (03:00)
• Rethinking human communication and relationships (05:50)
• Exploring the fluidity of identity in different social contexts (08:22)
• Understanding warm data and its role in perceiving complex systems (12:24)
• Exploring warm data through describable experiences and creative expression (17:27)
• Intergenerational learning and systemic thinking (21:27)
• Nurturing intergenerational relationships (30:12)
• Integrate intergenerational and indigenous wisdom into our common sense-making processes (32:21)

Episode Resources

Resources

International Bateson Institute

Warm Data Lab

Gregory Bateson

Book

Combining by Nora Bateson

Small Arcs of Larger Circles: Framing through other patterns by Nora Bateson

Transcript

Ross Dawson: Nora, it’s a pleasure and privilege to have you on the show.

Nora Bateson: Thanks. It’s really good to be here.

Ross: One word that has been a very common one through you and your family’s work is ecology. I think people come with this idea of ecology which only captures a fragment of the way in which you mean it. It’d be a lovely starting point for you to frame this idea of ecology, the ecology of mind or ecology of mind and nature.

Nora: Yes, thank you because this new book that I have just published called “Combining“. It is called “Combining” because of exactly what you’re saying. One of the things that happens in a world that is looking for the code, the hack, the model, is that this idea of ecology becomes somehow static, and it isn’t. The trick to thinking in ecological ways is to recognize that there is an ongoing movement, and ongoing responsiveness between all of the organisms in an ecology and that those organisms are in fact, mutually learning to be together, which means that there is the continuation of whatever it is, the species, the meadow, the forest, the oceans, and that continuation means that some of the relationships need to be in continuing patterns. But in order to do that, there must be discontinuing because of all the other change, and responsiveness that’s taking place.

Very often, one of the things that happens in the nonverbal assumption of the noun ecology is that there is this set of relationships that create a functional vitality. I would say, let’s get rid of that word functional and even be careful with vitality, that we keep it into vitalizing, that it’s’ ongoing. It’s this ongoingness that is tricky because it’s so nth order. It’s never just one organism. It’s all the organisms in a context and beyond. Our habit is to identify a tree as a tree and say that tree is treei...