FTP106, 107: Nora Bateson - The Complexities of Climate Change and Cultural Evolution

Our guest in the following two episodes is Nora Bateson, an award-winning filmmaker, writer, educator, and the President of the International Bateson Institute. Nora comes from a family lineage of complexity thinkers – her father was the systems theorist Gregory Bateson and her grandfather was the biologist William Bateson, who coined the term genetics.

Nora’s book Small Arcs of Larger Circles came out in 2016, and she is currently working on her next book about Warm Data, or the interrelational processes between and among systems.

Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology, and information technology together into a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.

In Part 1 of this interview, we discuss the complexity of understanding climate change, and why sense-making isn’t common sense.

In Part 2 we continue our discussion on sense-making, order and chaos, complex systems, and what we really need for social and cultural change.

The shape of the response must meet the shape of the trouble. - @NoraBateson Click To Tweet

In This Episode of Future Thinkers:

What are effective and ineffective ways to approach the current ecological problems
Why complex problems (i.e. climate change) require evaluation in multiple contexts
Why our capacity for complexity seems to be shrinking today
What is “warm data” and how it describes complex systems
How our social rules create our world
How cultural change can result in effective climate action
Why sense-making is much deeper than just switching between frameworks
What is schismogenesis and how its understanding can help us deal with the chaotic world
The challenges of parenthood in the modern society
Re-examining masculinity, femininity and the interdependence of biology and epistemology