Kinship: What does it mean to belong?

Thomas Steininger in dialogue with Hannah Close

What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to be in relationship with the ever-unfurling world we find ourselves part of? What, exactly, is community? Who do we mean when we say “we”?

Our time has fractured our relationship to self, other, and the more-than-human world. Can we revitalize our sense of aliveness as creatures of and participants in an animate earth? And how might such a renewal influence our actions towards greater flourishing?

Our modernist culture has left us somehow homeless. In some corners of the planet, a sense of relatedness to life on earth still thrives. In others, many live with an unsettling sense of alienation. But it is our relationships (to self, other, and Earth) that offer us the greatest sense of belonging. And it is belonging that offers us the meaning we thrive on as a species. This is the meaning of kinship.

Hannah Close is a curator for the transformative education platform Advaya, where she soon will also co-lead an online course on Kinship.

This week on Radio evolve, Thomas Steininger will speak with Hanna Close about what it means to belong.