If Semafor's founders can raise $25 million, why can't the Collective Trauma Summit 2022 be the launchpad for the world's first trauma-integrating news media?
Deep thank you, Mark, for taking us into and creating a "Resonant World". I have just encountered a project-network which may be conducive to this work:
Thank you for helping me remember that journalism has always, also, been a source of nourishment --- one that now needs a 'signal boost', needs to be more 'findable' and 'choose-able' rather than drowned out by fear-peddling and discouragement journalism.
Danie, just catching up with this comment! I missed it at the time! Appreciate the link, in fact am due to meet somebody from this network next week. Exciting.
Hi Matthew, I really love that vision. I too really love the idea of the wisdom keepers. It makes me think of the role of elders in indigenous tribes. It feels like we so need our elders at the moment and having them in a news outlet would be amazing. In some first nation tribes the people used to always go to the grandmothers for their wisdom with any big decision and it reminds me of that. Thank you, Piers
Piers, just catching up with your comment, believe it or not! Am re-reading this to prepare for a talk on this topic this evening. So glad to hear your resonance with these ideas, and thanks again for our podcast, which I found very powerful.
Matthew, your vision for an entirely new media ecosystem, "from the bottom up," is bold and timely. In stating this, you are at the beginning of cracking the unconscious structures of corporate media we've co-created and continue to support. For me, it takes a few moments for me to stretch my imagination to allow for the possibility that the old I've been accustomed to can step aside and make way for the new. Your vision outlines a way for the container to form and be held (rightfully so, by wisdom elders), and for a multi-dimensional continuum of relational intelligence to infuse every aspect of the process. I hope a grant-awarding organization is fortunate enough to discover your project and fund you for $50 million. Your dedication to integrating journalistic integrity with a revolutionary understanding of public health, including trauma's impact on each of us, feels prescient. As the phenomenologists teach us, the subject cannot be separated from the object. As journalists, we won't lose our capacity for critical thinking by becoming aware of our own biases, preconceived notions, and conditions -- and by sharing them with transparency, as you suggest. I can imagine so many creative ways these perspectives can be shared while diligent, on-the-ground reporting continues with the rigor it deserves.....I'm ready to work with you as a quantum journalist.
Lori, wow, just catching up with this comment -- which I missed at the time (maybe we were on retreat?!). I so appreciate your support and insight -- very helpful as I prepare to speak on this theme this evening!
I sincerely applaud these ideas you have proposed. During the Covid times I was concerned by the creation of fear by the news media I experienced. No longer do I have trust in the objectivity and conscious examination of the stories behind the story in the media. I also have many questions about the ownership of the media and the role Big Pharma plays in the lives and work of journalists.
Interesting ideas. I definitely feel that the current news media is one of the biggest purveyors of the collective trauma, and needs to go... fear mongering and click bait seem to be what the whole edifice is based on. Your perspective as someone who has both experienced this from the inside and educated in collective trauma is valuable, and maybe unique.
Gary, I completely missed the comments on this post at the time, only just catching up as I am giving a talk on this topic tonight! I really appreciate your comment, and appreciate your support for Resonant World. Thank you.
Love the notion of Wisdom keepers in organisational structures. In my recent foray into the job market I was struck by how almost every company was finding a large salaried position for a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion implementer. Even many companies and public-facing orgs you wouldn't think needed one. This is the expression of the ethics or the religion of corporate culture today. Given this is already the case I could just as well see companies expanding this for other things. If I had my compass set purely on what would get me a job I'd go straight into becoming a diversity, equity & inclusion expert. But in concordance with who I am, I wonder if this existing space might be subverted and expanded to include things like 'ontological diversity', 'decolonising consciousness' (more in the Bayo Akoumalafe strain). My point is not to so much to bash on Corp diversity but to point out most orgs are already pursuing a pseudo-religious goals and will find plentiful resources for it. Why no then Wisdom and Healing? In part because of the far greater demands in places on them and the ways that it conflicts with prevailing culture where Diversity measures are an easy patch. The BBC doesn't need to change its value system or culture to become diverse, it simply has to recruit diverse looking people into its existing Modus Operandi.
How would your proposal differ from a 'trauma-informed' newsroom that stems from a 'classic' positivist epistemological stand?
Could you describe a specific (hypothetic) example of quantum journalism work? How would an article/report read like?
Your proposal points to a much needed radical epistemological shift I've myself struggled with for decades in anthropology and sociology.
In fact, it's not detachment ('separation') from 'the object ' that ensures 'reliable' and 'absolute' grasping of 'Truth' (vs BS, smoke-screens, etc. Etc) by denying (and obliterating) personal stands, blindspots, and selfish interests, but integrity and transparency in fuller acknowledged awareness of our interconnectedness and blinds spots that approaches reality aprehension as an ever-unfolding process to be honestly and humbly discovered and rediscovered.
(Purposeful) denial leads to obliteration and obliteration mostly leads to proliferation -of BS in different shapes and forms, mainly.
Deep thank you, Mark, for taking us into and creating a "Resonant World". I have just encountered a project-network which may be conducive to this work:
https://www.solutionsjournalism.org/
Thank you for helping me remember that journalism has always, also, been a source of nourishment --- one that now needs a 'signal boost', needs to be more 'findable' and 'choose-able' rather than drowned out by fear-peddling and discouragement journalism.
Danie, just catching up with this comment! I missed it at the time! Appreciate the link, in fact am due to meet somebody from this network next week. Exciting.
Hi Matthew, I really love that vision. I too really love the idea of the wisdom keepers. It makes me think of the role of elders in indigenous tribes. It feels like we so need our elders at the moment and having them in a news outlet would be amazing. In some first nation tribes the people used to always go to the grandmothers for their wisdom with any big decision and it reminds me of that. Thank you, Piers
Piers, just catching up with your comment, believe it or not! Am re-reading this to prepare for a talk on this topic this evening. So glad to hear your resonance with these ideas, and thanks again for our podcast, which I found very powerful.
Matthew, your vision for an entirely new media ecosystem, "from the bottom up," is bold and timely. In stating this, you are at the beginning of cracking the unconscious structures of corporate media we've co-created and continue to support. For me, it takes a few moments for me to stretch my imagination to allow for the possibility that the old I've been accustomed to can step aside and make way for the new. Your vision outlines a way for the container to form and be held (rightfully so, by wisdom elders), and for a multi-dimensional continuum of relational intelligence to infuse every aspect of the process. I hope a grant-awarding organization is fortunate enough to discover your project and fund you for $50 million. Your dedication to integrating journalistic integrity with a revolutionary understanding of public health, including trauma's impact on each of us, feels prescient. As the phenomenologists teach us, the subject cannot be separated from the object. As journalists, we won't lose our capacity for critical thinking by becoming aware of our own biases, preconceived notions, and conditions -- and by sharing them with transparency, as you suggest. I can imagine so many creative ways these perspectives can be shared while diligent, on-the-ground reporting continues with the rigor it deserves.....I'm ready to work with you as a quantum journalist.
Lori, wow, just catching up with this comment -- which I missed at the time (maybe we were on retreat?!). I so appreciate your support and insight -- very helpful as I prepare to speak on this theme this evening!
I sincerely applaud these ideas you have proposed. During the Covid times I was concerned by the creation of fear by the news media I experienced. No longer do I have trust in the objectivity and conscious examination of the stories behind the story in the media. I also have many questions about the ownership of the media and the role Big Pharma plays in the lives and work of journalists.
thank you Dawn, really appreciate your comment, which I've only just read!
Interesting ideas. I definitely feel that the current news media is one of the biggest purveyors of the collective trauma, and needs to go... fear mongering and click bait seem to be what the whole edifice is based on. Your perspective as someone who has both experienced this from the inside and educated in collective trauma is valuable, and maybe unique.
Gary, I completely missed the comments on this post at the time, only just catching up as I am giving a talk on this topic tonight! I really appreciate your comment, and appreciate your support for Resonant World. Thank you.
“No political movement can be healthy unless it has its own press to inform it, educate it and orient it.”
—In These Times founder James Weinstein (1926–2005)
Radical stuff Matthew.
Love the notion of Wisdom keepers in organisational structures. In my recent foray into the job market I was struck by how almost every company was finding a large salaried position for a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion implementer. Even many companies and public-facing orgs you wouldn't think needed one. This is the expression of the ethics or the religion of corporate culture today. Given this is already the case I could just as well see companies expanding this for other things. If I had my compass set purely on what would get me a job I'd go straight into becoming a diversity, equity & inclusion expert. But in concordance with who I am, I wonder if this existing space might be subverted and expanded to include things like 'ontological diversity', 'decolonising consciousness' (more in the Bayo Akoumalafe strain). My point is not to so much to bash on Corp diversity but to point out most orgs are already pursuing a pseudo-religious goals and will find plentiful resources for it. Why no then Wisdom and Healing? In part because of the far greater demands in places on them and the ways that it conflicts with prevailing culture where Diversity measures are an easy patch. The BBC doesn't need to change its value system or culture to become diverse, it simply has to recruit diverse looking people into its existing Modus Operandi.
Great to read about the vision – more power to it!
Wow.
How would your proposal differ from a 'trauma-informed' newsroom that stems from a 'classic' positivist epistemological stand?
Could you describe a specific (hypothetic) example of quantum journalism work? How would an article/report read like?
Your proposal points to a much needed radical epistemological shift I've myself struggled with for decades in anthropology and sociology.
In fact, it's not detachment ('separation') from 'the object ' that ensures 'reliable' and 'absolute' grasping of 'Truth' (vs BS, smoke-screens, etc. Etc) by denying (and obliterating) personal stands, blindspots, and selfish interests, but integrity and transparency in fuller acknowledged awareness of our interconnectedness and blinds spots that approaches reality aprehension as an ever-unfolding process to be honestly and humbly discovered and rediscovered.
(Purposeful) denial leads to obliteration and obliteration mostly leads to proliferation -of BS in different shapes and forms, mainly.