“The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation — however minute,”
Susan Sonntag
I find myself at present in between two polarities. At one end, concerns for the significant issues that face us, which are difficult to get hold of and affect, and which can seem overwhelming. At the other end, the small communities I am part of and can influence to make things happen but which can feel helpless in the face of the big issues.
Somewhere between these extremes is somewhere that can have an impact by working with others. Big enough to trigger consequential effect, small enough to have agency. I have it in my head as "the Big Small."
It feels like a paradoxical place because it is not about hankering after 'big" in the form of growth that has brought us the problems we face today. It is more about what Buckminster Fuller called 'Trim Tabs." In a 1972 interview with Playboy Magazine (those were different times), he said:
"Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what o…
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