Pollenzo Friday Forums with... Andreas Weber

The Pollenzo forums are back! These forums are created by and held by individuals – students from both the Pollenzo and external communities, professors and scholars from all backgrounds, and other stakeholders – who take on the assignment of working together with the objective of contributing to awareness on the environment, beginning with food.

On Friday February 21 Andreas Weber, a German biologist, biosemiotician, philosopher and journalist, will take part in our forums with a conference entitled: Ecosystems as Love Processes: From Biological War Ideology to Understanding Reality as Alive.

 

the Conference

Why is our economy still destroying the environment and creating inequality? The answer is that it might rest on a wrong image of life, where the strongest wins and fitness grants success. Two doctrines rule our times: Neo-Darwinism and Neoliberalism, which are deeply connected and together form one overwhelming ideology of inevitable competition and deadly strife. Biological life, however, is never about one winning, but rather an endless celebration of reciprocity.

Ecosystems are ways to organise giving that allow the whole to flourish and the individuals to take what they need. If we understand this desire for mutuality as inbuilt in the living world will we be able to imagine a culture that does not destroy life, but that mimics ecology, enacting what may be seen as a practice of love?