Why Kinship? Gavin Van Horn, Jeremy Lent & Charlotte Du Cann. From Kinship, Week 1.
Excerpts from Part 1 of the online inquiry: Kinship: An Exploration into Being Together with Gavin Van Horn, Jeremy Lent and Charlotte Du Cann.
In this session we began by framing our collective crises through the lens of relationship. We wanted to ask: how have our ways of relating created destruction? Where have we been separated from reality, each other, and our more-than-human kin? Why does the "crisis of relationship" matter? We focus on the loss of belonging which resides at the core of many of the crises we face. We want to understand why belonging is integral to life, the ways we relate, and how we flourish as human (and more-than human) beings. We will explore how kinship as a form of relationship and belonging is crucial during these times of unravelling.
In this session Gavin expanded on the “crisis of belonging”. Why do we feel separate from ourselves, from nature, and from the myriad beings that form our wider earthly community? Despite our separation, we humans clearly feel something is amiss. Gavin addressed why so many of us might feel dis-placed and un-rooted. He suggests that this feeling of existential “orphanhood” has everything to do with how we are taught to treat the land as scenery and other-than-human kin as objects. The journey of kinship places us on a different trajectory: engaging a vibrant, living world through practices that help us relate well and become-with our creaturely companions.
Jeremy offers a coherent foundation for an alternative worldview based on deep interconnectedness, showing how modern scientific knowledge echoes the ancient wisdom of earlier cultures. Weaving together findings from modern systems thinking, evolutionary biology, and cognitive neuroscience, with insights from Buddhism, Taoism, and Indigenous wisdom, Jeremy offers a rigorous and integrated way of understanding our place in the cosmos that can serve as a philosophical foundation for a life-affirming future. We explore why kinship is crucial, as opposed to relationship “writ large” - what is it about kinship that holds promise for our ailing civilisation?
Charlotte shares a story of kinship in which we we must “go down” to seek the answers, instead of “going up,” as is the impulse in modern Western cultures. This session focuses on the four tasks of Psyche which revolve around cultivating kinship with the kingdoms of insect, plant, bird, sky, and rock. We explore how myth and ancestral story shows us how to align ourselves with the forces of the planet. If we don't learn to speak with other-than-human life, we are not going to be able to transform ourselves into the kinds of people who can weather the storm and create a culture for the future.