Protest and be thankful
Written by Malcolm Robertson, founding partner
19 September 2020
Good morning,
Every week, we try with varying degrees of success to apply a theme to our weekend reading list. My only demand this week was that we lifted our sights from the ongoing chaos surrounding the constitution of the UK and our relationship with Europe and left those polarising matters for another day.
We managed to do that and what follows is representative I think of a period of relentless change and disruption, but a time for reflection too – whether on the ‘secret of manhood’, the welcome prominence of women in influencing change or the preservation of life itself.
We hope you enjoy these pieces and with them a restful weekend.
1. Social media’s neat solutions for messy feelings
Grayson Perry loves maps because of two straightforward reasons: they have an air of authority and they show us where to go. The 21st century pocket map we all willingly carry around as a convenient navigator in a world of uncertainty? Social media.
Read in The Guardian.
2. Why you should go friluftsliving
You might have not heard of friluftsliv but you have surely been practising it at least once. An amalgamation of the words “free”, “air” and “life”, this Norwegian concept teaches us that wintry weather is by no means an excuse to miss out on nature’s wonders. Far be it from it, the more you go friluftsliving, the more you learn how to simply appreciate where you are in space and time, Jen Rose Smith argues.
Read in National Geographic.
3. The secret of manhood
“As men, it’s not enough to love. It’s a lot, but it’s not enough. Just as important, we have to allow ourselves to be loved.”
In this piece, comedian and writer Ian Michael Black writes a poignant letter to his nineteen-year-old son cautioning against ‘male stoicism’.
Read in The Atlantic.
4. Bending the curve
The bad news is that species are going extinct at an unprecedented rate. The good news is that we can do something about it, by establishing large-scale conservation areas and changing our food systems to produce more on less land.
Read in The Conversation.
5. An imagined scenario from 2050
In this imagined vision of 2050, global companies vie for the right to push captured carbon back into the ground, turning around decades of destructive extraction and leaving the earth carbon neutral. But is this scenario as utopian as it first appears, and is the world ready for such a huge geographic and technological shift?
Read in The Economist.
6. From a different place – Solar Cycle 25
If you were in school in the late 1960s you would have been told that the Sun’s rays bring light and heat. That remains true – but the Sun’s influence is wider than that. As we enter Solar Cycle 25, what are the issues we should be thinking about?
Read in The Independent.
And finally … Women at the helm of mass protests
Amidst recent global mass protest movements such as the one currently sweeping Belarus, a new trend is gaining momentum: female protest leaders. But history shows that women bring more than just numbers to a movement, as this insightful Atlantic article argues.
Read in The Atlantic.
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