Reflections by CERN Aotearoa NZ
Abstract
"She [Mama Maria] had held back a mirror and it was the first time I could see myself as cute and pathetic. And it was the most liberating thing I had ever felt."
In 'Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism' (2021), Vanessa Machado de Oliveira challenges our ingrained ways of thinking and acting, so that we might be better prepared for a world that is going to be dramatically different from the one that has to-date contained human life. Machado de Oliveira offers a series of tools that provide languages, frameworks and strategies to help scaffold different ways of thinking about and relating to others, and she introduces a range of settings in which we might practice social activism that is oriented towards changing our habits of living. Over a period of eight months, members of CERN Aotearoa New Zealand have been working through this book, completing the exercises and sharing their reactions and insights with each other. In this session, members of the group reflect on the elements of the book that have resonated with them most strongly and that are helping to establish a compass for their future social (and economic) activism.
Participants: Members of CERN Aotearoa New Zealand, including Bahamin Badihi, Jenny Cameron, Gradon Diprose, Lila Laird, Kiely McFarlane, Nikolai Siimes
Discussant: Stephen Healy, CERN Sydney
