2025-02-21

This piece is prompted by an article from Jessica Böhme which she subtitled On writing for the internet in a complex world on Feb 10, 2025.

I'll start by answering selected quotes from her article, and continue with my synthesis below.

In times of the metacrisis, I struggle to find a writing style that feels appropriate for our times.

Saying “for our times” leaves open the question of who it is aimed at — and in these times of complexity and diversity, any style will speak only to some. My question would be, what style is appropriate to the people who stand to benefit from reading your work, or who might want to collaborate? I see your style as pretty good for that.

If indeed there isn't one style that fits all, then maybe a writing collective could help? Some would write to inform and encourage their peers, others (the natural journalists and publicists) would write for their audiences, each to their own.

About simplicity, you say:

in politics, the simpler the message, the more popular it becomes. There is no room for ambiguity.

This is surely true where politics is about majorities in bi-partisan electorates. But thinking again about the Cambridge Analytica scandal of the mid-2010s, what I recall is that voters were targeted variously according to their profiles, with different messages. Each message may have been simple, but there was no one overall simple message, as I understand. See also microtargeting.

The second phenomena I have noticed is after giving talks. Event organizers often introduce me as “an expert who talks about a new approach to sustainability which is not about pointing fingers, but offers a radical new way to how we overcome the challenges. Here comes Jessica who will talk about what relationships have to do with sustainability”.

I strongly agree on the priority of questions over answers. Questions aren't always fully open: most questions give a frame in which possible answers can be placed. However, that is already much more open than simply collapsing all the options into one answer. There is, of course, an art to placing open, honest questions. ¹⁾ I have written more about questions in the pieces on 2024-02-18 and 2025-01-12.

I struggle to offer solutions where none exist. We need to let go of the idea of solutions. […] None of these will solve the metacrisis, while at the same time, all of these are necessary to solve it.

Trying to add some nuance to this: different perspectives add to the dimensionality of the space, but don't necessarily add together in a single frame of reference, if that's what you imply with “solutions”. We definitely need multiple perspectives to address the metacrisis. Maybe the whole point of calling it a metacrisis is that it is more than a crisis within one frame of reference.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that every problem has a solution. […] But life isn’t linear. It’s messy, interconnected, and deeply complex.

When we approach the metacrisis with this mindset, we set ourselves up for disappointment.

Absolutely. And as I suggested in 2024-11-23, embrace disappointment! Use it to surface expectations, and to lead into dialogue.

As Anne Casper recently said, “The moment you try to isolate a variable and measure it in isolation, you’ve already stripped it of the conditions that made it meaningful in the first place.”

And so, when we’re offered solutions—degrowth, renewable energy, or a shift in worldview—we’re left unsatisfied. Not because these ideas lack value (they don’t), but because they can’t deliver what we’ve been promised: a way out.

They’re pieces of the puzzle, not the whole picture. Treating them as the whole picture risks oversimplifying the problem and ignoring deeper systemic issues.

I couldn't agree more!

So what do we do? How do we move forward in a world that defies easy answers? Maybe our best option is to pray.

This really deserves a whole new chapter. What is prayer, and what is happening with the praying person and the world? It is clear to me that prayer can be naive, but is not necessarily so. ²⁾ I read the next section as listing some of your prayers:

May we let go of the idea of solutions. […] may we ask, “What’s the next right step?” May we embrace uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. May we sit with the discomfort of not knowing. May we shift our focus from solutions to relationships. May we redefine what it means to live well in a world that’s falling apart. May we feel in our bones that it’s not about finding the perfect solution but about learning to live with imperfection, finding joy, meaning, and purpose in the midst of chaos, embracing the messiness of life, and finding beauty in the brokenness and potential in the cracks. May we stop looking for solutions, ask better questions, and live—really live—in the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

The prayer to ask better questions sends me straight back to Mister God's Anna, who prayed for that. ³⁾

But a prayer might not be enough.

I'm puzzled by this. For sure, just uttering a prayer and thinking that is the end of it is not enough. But to me, in the frame “Where prayer has been valid”, the question of “enough” has little meaning. One consideration is that prayer, perhaps in many traditions, can be an opening to be led into whatever action one is called to take.

[…] Critical complexity […] means letting go of the idea that we can ever fully understand or control the systems we’re part of. AND it also means that we acknowledge our need to sometimes be reductionist - breaking things into pieces, analysing, measuring, and predicting. And yes, offer solutions […] as strategic tools for understanding the complexity. While critical complexity recognizes relationality, it also appreciates that breaking them down into manageable parts can be valuable.

I love this approach! And the wisdom is to discern when analysis is valuable, and its limitations, as you follow on by saying…

This duality - between reductionism and holism - also mirrors the two halves of our brain. As Iain McGilchrist notes, the left hemisphere focuses on analysis, precision, and categorization while the right hemisphere embraces a more holistic, relational perspective, perceiving the broader interconnectedness of things. He says:

The choice we make of how we dispose our consciousness is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a moral act: it has consequences.

And I'm glad you've brought in Iain here, as that makes a great deal of sense.

So, a question I’m still grappling with is: How can we embrace this in our writing? How do we stay true to the messiness while ensuring our work is read? Is there a way to write compellingly without promising solutions? Is poetry—inherently relational, building on context, allowing meaning to arise from what we’ve made—the only way to do this?

So Jessica has laid a great foundation here for me to jump off in my own direction. I want to be in relationship with this writing (as I have read it) and this thinking (as I have reflected on it, and it relates to mine).

As a prologue, I recall that Socrates wasn't too keen on writing.⁴⁾ Written words can't explain themselves; they can't answer back; they can't explain a misunderstood phrase — that needs dialogue.

The word “weaving” is coming up a lot just now. We can aspire to weaving together writing from different perspectives, and work in pointers to help readers find the perspective that they can relate to most helpfully, not just our own. It's not about ensuring that our words are read — it's about trying our best to point people towards reading what will help them best to grow, to develop, to reach their potential (also in relationship).

I feel a strong desire to participate in this fabric weaving co-creation. Here, there is an inherent multi-perspectivalism. I want to develop the practice of ontological commoning, which I see as one vital aspect of this weaving. I want to clarify how I imagine an ontological commons, so that we can together grasp the implications and the requirements of this weaving. The threads of the fabric need a certain amount of compatibility to weave together, and this is what ontological commoning is aimed at: to find this common ground of communication.

So I come back to the idea of a writing collective, weaving threads together into a strong, resilient, multicoloured cloth. This doesn't necessarily mean actually writing together in the sense of joint authorship, but to me it is to do with enriching ourselves and each other with the different perspectives that we have. As well referring to the classic sources from past writings by writers who are not part of the collective, it means close reading of, commenting on, and cross-referring to each other's work. It might mean coming together in dialogue from time to time, allowing emergence from the collective intercourse. Then, we will not need to worry that we are not individually writing for everyone, but instead having the satisfaction of being in close touch with others who are writing for different audiences. It might be in different languages; different registers; different mind-sets or worldviews; or different specialist vocabularies. And in doing this, we would be making a concrete contribution to breaking down barriers to dialogue across divides. Some will respond to poetry; some to rational argument; some to imaginative fiction; some to scientific evidence.

Let's write in our own best way for our own audience — while also being in and strengthening collective relationship.

• RegenCHOICE with words in publication, messaging, etc
• a recent short about writing styles

• publication
• ontological commoning
• dialogue