What happened in my 2024?
And another year went by. Faster and faster, adjusting to the tempo of accelerated life that is the sign of the times. Full, as always, of good and bad things, of surprises and deviations from the projected path. I set out many things with my head, which I tend not to fulfill, and with my heart, which I listen to a little more. I wrote down at the beginning of the year what I wanted in my life and what I wanted to get rid of, both for myself and for the world. I wanted to be true to my commitments to myself, like writing every day. I wanted to enjoy, to laugh a lot, to give, to share, to play theatre, to read, to work only on what would bring something good to the world. I wanted to continue to learn about social change, to see the world take virtuous paths, I wanted peace, peace, and peace. And although, for many reasons, 2024 has been an ill-fated year, our small lives are always full of small satisfactions, of a scale of greys and other less sad colours that keep us going and that in the balance the more always wins.
I go through my diary and notebooks, what can I highlight?
It has been a year of learning, unlearning, and interacting with a wonderful international community of like-minded people. Thank you Linkedin for being (still) a haven of invaluable empathetic talent. I have been lucky enough to belong to the first cohorts of two exceptional projects.
I started the year with Project Tipping Point, the first openly degrowthist course, which does not believe (and therefore does not teach) in techno-optimism or the fallacy of green growth; an openly anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and therefore anti-capitalist course (see Kate Raworth’s definition of capitalism). A course that also teaches the wisdom of indigenous communities representing the importance of balance and respect for natural resources; what we can do individually; the use of alternative metrics to GDP; real examples of alternative ways of living that produce much greater wellbeing and many other topics. From this course we manage to keep alive a small community of like-minded people with whom we can talk about everything that concerns us. We chat by videoconference almost every week and once a month we meet in our Book Club. We have read Vandana Shiva, Irene Solà, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Jenny Odell, Jason Hickel, Sohei Saito, Tim Jackson, Thich Nhat Hanh and we already have a new book to continue in January.
I finished the year with Inez Aponte’s Beautiful Economies Learning Lab, a course that makes you aware of the influence of the hegemonic economic narrative on your life through different prisms and explores how we can begin to tell a new story, both with our words and our actions. It works from Manfred Max-Neef’s Human Scale Development matrix of needs and satisfiers. Human needs are not hierarchical. They are simultaneous, complementary, or compensating. They are deficiencies but also potencies. Meditation, poetry, stories, interaction, tools… The learning lab that passes through your body is a pure delight.
I was lucky enough to organise and enjoy a new Theatrical Growth retreat with Nuri Zubiri ‘How to create healthy relationships’ which was a gathering of brave women. A mature, honest, very intense, and very intimate at the same time.
And to participate with a story in ‘Richphobia,’ a global collaborative e-book that explores a speculative future in which any kind of wealth has been eliminated and disruptive measures have been applied to recreate a new social and economic paradigm. I can’t wait to see the final result and share it!
It has been the year of the discovery of The Madrid Players with the participation in the play Gimme Five, five great comedies that filled the theatre in its four performances. What a pleasure to play theatre again, with the added challenge of doing it in English. And to start learning how to write creative stories at the Fuentetaja school. Or to listen to and write the story of Josefina, a 92 year old lady who still has a cheerful laugh and is very satisfied with the life she has been given.
And of course of Moka, our puppy with a strong personality who came into our lives on the 1st of September when she was 4 months old, thanks to Aída Cerón, the first brilliant content creator of Plázida when it was a coworking space. Moka runs like a gazelle and jumps like a kangaroo. She cheeps (literally), is hyper-social, and brave (she dares with all dogs of any size). Her favourite time of the day is 7am when she literally drags us out of bed to go and meet her adored doggy gang and masters with doggy sweets. She enjoys her moment of total freedom to the full. In only four months he has changed our lives. At home she lives with Piña, who, at the age of 15, tolerates her and follows the philosophy of non-violence.
A lot of other readings have opened my mind and made me enjoy myself. To name but a few, ‘La civilización de la memoria de pez’ by Bruno Patino, a small treatise on the market of attention; ‘Bad habit’ by Alana S. Portero, a wonderfully written novel, tender and hard at the same time; ‘Tinta invisible’ by Javier Peña, about loss, writing and the transformative power of stories; ‘The friend’ and ‘What are you going through’ by Sigrid Nunez, about friendship, ageing, suicide, the death of someone dear to us; the play about the drama of our times, ‘All Birds’ by Wadji Mouawad; ‘The Ministry of the Future’ by Kim Stanley Robinson, disheartening and hopeful at the same time or the ‘Diary of a summer grandmother’ by Rosa Regás which at one point projects an ‘I would like a world…. ‘so beautiful that you understand why she was always young.
Sadly it has also been the year of the sudden death of Javier, one of my best friends. A hospital bacteria took him in 5 days. We found out about his life and death struggle because he sent us a whatsapp from the ICU. Generating data until literally the end. What a pity and how strange it all is now.
As for the world, it has been a year with a deficit of the usual nice words such as tenderness, love, solidarity, peace, commitment, truth, hope, trust. There is something very human and at the same time quite stupid in how we cannot contemplate our own destruction and look for any excuse to look elsewhere. Things are pretty ugly. Everywhere you look the polycrisis becomes entrenched, it becomes permacrisis and metacrisis. I don’t know where I read that we live in a world of soulless abundance. Of instant gratification, where everything is easy. We don’t have to make an effort or think. We secretly long for the opposite, to be limited in our choices. Less clothes. Fewer emails. Fewer books but more re-reading. Less documentation. Less planning. Less stuff but more time to enjoy. Everything needs to be revisited, rethought, reinvented, redesigned. It is a huge task.
Let’s start with words.
‘Words hold our world together. They are the ones that order chaos, that shape memory. They create fear, they abate it. They penetrate souls and light fires there. That is why talking must always be about bringing light’.
Pedro Olalla, Words of the Aegean
Words that have helped me this year to sort out the chaos, my meta-consciousness, to pay attention to what I pay attention to. Like agnotology, which is the science where the dark arts of denial and disinformation are studied, researched and taught. Such as solastalgia which is the cultism of ‘eco-anxiety’, this specific anguish, mental or existential stress caused by environmental degradation. For me in particular I feel solastalgia when I see the proliferation of SUVs so big, so excessive and aggressive, like tanks, the fast fashion shops always packed, the compulsive shopping on Black Friday, the supermarkets full of plastics and unnecessary waste, the macro underground projects that have sacrificed so many trees in Madrid without taking into account the protests of the neighbours… Like technosphere, an artificial and parasitic branch of the much-abused biosphere. Today technology and its materials have colonised all biological zones of the planet and virtually shape all human activity. It possesses its own metabolism, constantly appropriating resources like an army and provoking a competitive struggle between countries and corporations to ‘not be left behind’ (multipolar traps). Its demand for fresh water alone is equivalent to a Mediterranean Sea every year. The triumph of the technosphere leads to technopoly, the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology, which is making the billionaires – some call them the bullyonnaires – immeasurably richer. It is the so-called Lauderdale paradox, the integrity of the planet’s biosphere, the greatest public wealth of all has been sacrificed in the name of private wealth. And also the khakistocracy, the government of the worst that helps us, at least, to put a name to elections results that we find incomprehensible. Today’s khakistocracy has a lot to do with the manosphere, the network of sites that promote toxic masculinity, hostility to women and strong opposition to feminism, politically associated with the far right and alternative right that we see resurging in many countries. And also with mysology, the disregard for reasoning and the dark triad (Machiavellianism, sociopathy and narcissism).
Among the words that have shed light for me is exnovation, the necessary counterweight to innovation, the methodical dismantling of the unnecessary that degrowth proposes. Let’s hope it happens and that we do so with our heads on our shoulders. Or the radical hope that, while recognising that the chances may be slim and the odds are ‘against’ you, you act because you are driven by the values and vision that inspire you. As the historian Howard Zinn wrote, we should aspire to a collective credo of ‘as if’: to always act as if change is possible so as not to live with the regret of not having tried. From Plázida we yearn to slow down the pace of life by seeking a substantial and sustainable relationship with the complexity of the world. An act of resistance against utilitarianism. A healthier environment for our minds, free from noise, free from articles we don’t want, free from the tyranny of the algorithm. A place where you can control your content and bring the spirit of analogue back. We know that everything on the web is potentially fake and that it sucks a lot of time out of our lives. We need the least complex solutions, the ones that consume the least resources, the ones that have the least negative impact. We need more deinfluencers: content creators who work to defuse compulsive behaviour. We need to defuse the techno-feudalism in the words of Yanis Varoufakis that creates huge free labour: serfs in the cloud.
We need to reverse the insatiable process of commodifying as many lives as possible at the expense of human values. A consumption that feeds the system but neither nourishes our souls nor relieves our anxiety. There is so much unmanaged pain. We need to re-humanise how we work, how we socialise, how we eat, how we learn, how we have fun, how we exercise. We need to reactivate the noosphere, the collective consciousness of humanity, our inner moral compass. Our karmic footprint that produces good thoughts, words and actions for the world. We need a new definition of progress that prioritises survival. It is not having more things you can physically touch. Progress is more time, better health, more education, a healthier biosphere. An ecology of care. Interacting, supporting and depending on each other. Let’s not fall into the collector’s fallacy: we don’t need more resources to solve our problems, we just need to do more with the knowledge we already have.
This year I also asked myself a long list of questions that perhaps together we could answer. For example,
What is wrong with us, why don’t we react, why are we indifferent to pain, why this apathy?,
Why work hard for a system that will eventually exterminate humanity?
Why can’t we do less?
When will the economy become synonymous with ecology?
Why (with what is going on…) is the exponential development of unsustainable technologies allowed today?
What are we becoming when everything has to be frictionless, convenient, fast, efficient?
What if we agree once and for all to create a desirable future that leaves no one behind and make it a reality?
…
And I also collected many quotes that spoke volumes with very few words.
I leave you with this one from the philosopher Josep María Esquirol about our future in the world. May it inspire you for next year – Happy 2025!
‘’Walk slowly without ignoring the obstacles, the difficulties and the struggles that in no way can or should be avoided. Walk paying attention to the margins, to the colour of the earth and the shape of the trees but, above all, to the requests of fellow travellers’.