The Future Is Relational

Conversations between two friends, ages 35 and 95 + BIRTHDAY WEEK

Aug 29, 2024

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I am really proud of our new Death, Sex & Money episode this week. In it, climate activist Jess Serrante talks with her friend Joanna Macy, a systems theorist and Buddhist scholar whom you may know from this classic episode of On Being.

Jess and Joanna created a podcast series called We Are the Great Turning. In it, they unpack Joanna’s work, particularly her frameworks for thinking about the climate crisis and what it calls on us to do and feel.

This week on Death, Sex & Money, I talk with Jess about having this conversation with a collaborator sixty years older than herself, one who has since retired from public life at 95.

There are many ideas and moments in this tape that have struck me. The image that has stuck with me most, though, is how Joanna describes the risks of a stance of continual resistance. That, in approaching political and social transformation through a stance of only fighting and blocking, there is a hazard of getting locked in a permanent and intransigent battle.

Joanna Macy: We can see this so clearly now where our country is going almost berserk with what it's doing to people and the natural world and the balance of life through our insistence on dominance.
Jess Serrante: Yeah, when you put it that way, I can start to see it more clearly what you've been saying, that to fight is to assert dominance and you can see it in play in American politics right now. That is, it is a battle for superiority that has us like two bucks with locked horns….
Joanna Macy: With an enemy, you must destroy that enemy. And that entangles us in a mutual grip. That's when the antlers get jammed together.

Not long after I heard this exchange between Joanna and Jess, I walked past this mounted trophy of two bull elk in a hunting supply store in Cody, Wyoming. A hunter came upon these two already entangled, the framed article says, making it easy for the hunter to take them both down.

I stared at it. I felt sad. I felt awe. I understood how Joanna’s warning fits with how I see the word.

I think that’s also why the sticker I mentioned in this week’s episode spoke so powerfully to me, that says The Future Is Relational.

I came upon it at a listening party at Jess’ home when she was first releasing We Are the Great Turning. An artist named Autumn Leiker was there, and she threw a stack of The Future Is Relational stickers she’d made on a coffee table to share. I hadn’t been a sticker-on-the-back-of-my-phone person up to that point, but look at me now:

I love its call to envision a future where relationships are at the core, an alternate paradigm to zero-sum competitions driven by dominance and fear of scarcity. Instead, a relational future is one where more people are called in, more people are heard, more people are curious, and more people are served by a common vision. And yes, sometimes that means giving an inch—or more—outside your own particular worldview and acknowledging what you miss or don’t understand. Relationships require tradeoffs — and they also enable broader, bigger possibilities…and more varied kinds of fun!

Autumn sells her cool stickers here, and you can listen to the whole series Jess with Joanna made here.

BIRTHDAY WEEK!

Virgo season is upon us, which means for me, it’s birthday season!

It’s been a great few days. To start, I got to spend wonderful time with some amazing people I met through Death, Sex & Money: Micah Loewinger, who recently officially became co-host of WNYC’s On the Media AND my favorite witch, Rebecca Auman. If you’re a regular listener, you might remember Micah and I co-reported an episode together about Tasha Adams, ex-wife of Oathkeepers’ founder Stewart Rhodes; Rebecca talked me through intuition and scaring away ex-girlfriends like you’re a big bear.

On top of that, on the homefront, we dug into our chest freezer and made a short ribs feast with Magruder Ranch’s finest and have also gotten some time along the Bay after school one day this week.

1. Micah Loewinger and Anna! 2. Micah and Poppy the rat! 3. Short ribs, baby! 4. Swinging on the edge of the Bay, wasting time. 5. Anna and Rebecca Auman! 6. Some pulled cards.

In other words, the blues I wrote about last week, the ones partially associated with my upcoming aging event, have shifted a bit.

September can be like that: a time of mourning the sexy, youthful energy of summer alongside gratitude for all that you’ve set yourself up to harvest.

Other recommendations

The podcast 99% Invisible has a wonderful new series about climate change and design called Not Built For This.

Reporter Emmett FitzGerald immediately pulled me in with his reporting on the devastating floods in Vermont last summer and how the people of Montpelier have responded, including Emmett’s parents—who happen to cuss like sailors.

I also loved reading Reggie Ugwu’s article in the NY Times about the art of the chat podcast. I appreciated that the piece took the magic in a chat show seriously — a good chat podcast takes thoughtful production and hosts who trust each other and their producers! — and I also love that it namechecked one of my current favorite comedy shows, the Handsome podcast, along with one of my very best buds and trusted creative advisors, Steven Valentino, who developed The New Yorker’s Critics At Large podcast.

Finally, if the songs “Sin Wagon,” “Cowboy Take Me Away,” or "Ready to Run” make you want to immediately get in a car, roll down all the windows, and take yourself and your scream-singing tender heart on a road trip, you will appreciate this week’s edition of the great country music newsletter “Don’t Rock the Inbox.”