Ep 93: Ari Wallach | Leaning into relational tension to create an examined desired future

Rethinking Communication

This week’s guest lays out plainly the role our emotions play in how we communicate with each other across differences and divides.

Ari Wallach calls this consideration of our emotions as being full-spectrum human beings who can go forward, backward, and inward in our thoughts, and when examining a path forward through conflicts and how we envision our future as a society and as people, we must pay heed to the shared humanity that exists within our emotions.

Ari is a futurist, the founder and executive director of Longpath Labs, and the author of the book Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs, an antidote for short-termism. In Longpath, which is a state of mind that recognizes how our decisions today affect the lives of generations after us, Ari argues that we are at a critical juncture in our time as humans where examining our desired future as a species requires asking some uncomfortable questions, empathizing with generations past, present, and future, and leaning into relational tensions.

Ari and I discuss the nature of the time we’re living in, which Ari relates to the turbulent intertidal zone of the ocean, and how your role and my role is not to convince each other to think the same, but to explore commonalities that exist and build upon them.

Check out Ari's work at https://www.longpath.org/ and connect with Ari on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ariw.