About this episode
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya, and Kyah Jayden - and their mother, his wife, and "life-nectar", Ijeoma. "To learn the importance of insignificance" is the way he frames a desire to reacquaint himself with a world that is irretrievably entangled, preposterously alive, and completely partial. Bayo was born in 1983 into a Christian home, and to Yoruba parents in western Nigeria. Losing his diplomat father to a sudden heart complication, Bayo became a reclusive teenager, seeking to get to the "heart of the matter" as a response to his painful loss. He sought to apply himself to the extremes of his social conditioning, his faith, and his eventual training as a clinical psychologist - only to find that something else beyond articulation was tugging at his sleeves, wanting to be noticed. After meeting with traditional healers as part of his quest to understand trauma, mental wellbeing, and healing in new ways, his deep questions and concerns for decolonized landscapes congealed into a life devoted to exploring the nuances of a "magical" world "too promiscuous to fit neatly into our fondest notions of it." A fugitive to manicured disciplinarity in the academe, speaker, and proud diaper-changer, Bayo leads an earth-wide organization (The Emergence Network) as its Chief Curator and Director. The organization is set up for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilizational crisis - a project framed within a feminist ethos and inspired by indigenous cosmologies. He considers this a shared art - exploring the edges of the intelligible, dancing with posthumanist ideas, dabbling in the mysteries of quantum mechanics and the liberating sermon of an ecofeminism text, and talking with others about how to host a festival in Brazil - and part of his inner struggle to regain a sense of rootedness to his community. He also hosts a course (We Will Dance with Mountains) among other offerings. Bayo is visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, and has taught in universities around the world (including Sonoma State University California, Simon Frasier University Vancouver, Schumacher College Devon, Harvard University, and Covenant University Nigeria – among others). He is a consultant with UNESCO, leading efforts for the Imagining Africa’s Future (IAF) project. He speaks and teaches about his experiences around the world, and then returns to his adopted home in Chennai, India - "where the occasional whiff of cow dung dancing in the air is another invitation to explore the vitality of a world that is never still and always surprising." Bayo has authored two books, ‘We Will Tell Our Own Story!: The Lions of Africa Speak!’ and ‘These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home’, and has penned forewords for many others. Websites: bayoakomolafe.net emergencenetwork.org Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group. Summary and transcript of this interview Interview recorded April 25, 2020 YouTube Video Chapters: 00:00:00 - Introduction to Buddha at the Gas Pump 00:04:46 - The Times Are Urgent, Let Us Slow Down 00:08:42 - Slowing Down in Times of Urgency 00:12:36 - The Challenge of Thinking in Different Terms 00:16:10 - The Balance of Preciseness and Unboundedness 00:20:51 - Dancing with the Masquerade: Rediscovering Core Values 00:25:50 - The Evolution and Devolution of Ideas 00:29:05 - The complexity of the universe and the pieces of the puzzle 00:33:12 - Devolving and the Emerging Universe 00:37:16 - The All-Pervading Intelligence of God 00:41:19 - The Excess of Meaninglessness 00:44:27 - The Future as Creator 00:48:10 - The Beauty of Contrast and Difference 00:52:44 - Blind men feeling the elephant 00:56:28 - Embracing the Impermanence of Truth 01:00:57 - The Influence of Environment on Judicial Decisions 01:05:14 - The Color of a Triangle 01:09:23 - Panpsychism and Panentheism 01:13:40 - Variations of Non-Dualism and Multiple New Materialisms 01:17:15 - The Ongoingness of Materializations 01:20:59 - The Absurdity of Non-Dualism and Anticipation 01:24:29 - Futures Literacy: Noticing and Shifting Perspectives 01:28:08 - Post Activism: Slowing Down to Meet Other Bodies and Other Agencies 01:32:04 - The Recycling Ethics and Environmental Impact 01:35:24 - Imagining a More Beautiful World 01:38:58 - Aligning with the Flow of the Universe 01:43:29 - The Newtonian-Cartesian Paradigm and Harmony vs Disruption 01:48:07 - Understanding the Fundamentals of Creation and Consciousness 01:52:57 - The Story of the Trickster Tortoise 01:56:09 - The Tortoise and the Hidden Wisdom 01:59:34 - Reflections on the Current Time