This provocative piece is a proposition for vocabulary surrounding the conversations held earlier this semester at the AACTION Climate Summit. They aim to trigger conversations that concern our relationship to our bodies, roles in society, heritage and hence our built environments, in a global-aware scape.
I have been previously involved in social action for refugees and Neurodiversity and have been appalled at the amount of oblivious people working in the field.
The white saviour complex is threatening for the well-being of native localities and local economies, putting the focus on other parts of the World, instead of right her, right now. Simultaneously, does not provide students in the U.K. with a need to learn a set of skills to deal with the very particular conditions of field work which go beyond what they can experience through an academic pseudo-activist environment.
Emma Watson's recent interview at Vogue is a breeze of fresh hair (yes fresh hair) and fresh intentions. She also talks about the impostor syndrome. If you try to solve world issues instead of starting within your immediate environment you might end up with a big case of impostor syndrome, and existencial crisis and potentially depressed, and that is OK.
Take your privilege and exploit it, build a practice, invest on your hobbies, meet people who have done it, volunteer locally instead of taking someone else's lack-of-privilege and exploiting that to feed an imperialist ego.
You wanna help refugees or migrants through your architecture? then you have to become one. You can't help them otherwise, even with the best of intentions.
This was one of the main topics of the discussion held at the Panel for Intersectionality held earlier this term in the Summit for Climate Action at AACTION . I got to meet John Carter and students from the Centre for Alternative Technology. John proposes that we become humble in spirit and confident in performance, I couldn't agree more.
Intersectionality: The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, classism, ageism and ableism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.
Neurodiversity: a concept where neurological differences are to be recognized and respected as any other human variation. These differences can include those labeled with Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Dyscalculia, Autistic Spectrum, Tourette Syndrome, and others.
Candour: the quality of being open and honest; frankness.
Sex: refers to the biological differences between males and females, such as the genitalia and genetic differences.
Gender: is more difficult to define, but it can refer to the role of a male or female in society, known as a gender role, or an individual's concept of themselves, or gender identity.
Gender Fluid: One day you wake up and you feel more feminine or masculine. Commonly called "attention seekers" or that they "made up their gender" but no. Is a minority in the trans community along with gender queer and they get a lot of hate for it.
White Saviour Complex: White saviour refers to western people going in to “fix” the problems of struggling nations or people without understanding their history, needs, or the region’s current state of affairs.
Impostor Syndrome: the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.
I don't believe that Truth is dead, like Black Sabbath, I think it is only harder to find and without a body as proof … if it did happen ... it was 'manslaughter'.
We have to question everything to an extent beyond what we have had to question before and be brave enough to question each other, our educators, our institutions, our democracies and governments, our parents and ourselves.
Please find an example of the potentials of questioning from Theodore Spyropoulos of Minimaforms and David Greene of Archigram through the brilliant AALAWuN platform.