There is no genuine possibility of hope if we cannot face all aspects of reality and of humanity: the good, the bad, the broken, and the seriously messed up.” With this profound insight, “Hospicing Modernity” emerges as a thought-provoking and hard-hitting book authored by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. Through compelling stories and metaphors, Andreotti delves into the deep influence of modernity on human thought, behavior, relationships, fears, and desires. She invites readers to provide palliative care to a dying modernity while simultaneously offering prenatal care for the emergence of a new and yet-to-be-defined future that holds the potential for greater wisdom and responsibility.
In this webinar series, Vanessa, 47, and her daughter Giovanna, 23, embark on a cross-generational conversation that sets the stage for an exploration of the decline of modernity and the monumental challenges and possibilities that lie ahead of us. Together, they candidly discuss the complexities of confronting humanity’s wrongs and our shared complicity in perpetuating harm. They emphasize the importance of facing our shadows, metaphorically and literally composting our “shit,” navigating tightropes, and moving with storms together.
Participants will have the opportunity to engage in what Vanessa terms “probiotic education” — an education that supports our collective digestion of the challenging circumstances unfolding within and around us. Rather than prescribing fixed beliefs or solutions, the webinar offers tools that strengthen our intellectual, affective, and relational capacities, equipping us to confront the complexities of multiple realities. It encourages us to learn from past and ongoing collective mistakes in order to make only new mistakes in the future, and to show up differently for the planet. Vanessa and Giovanna kindly request that participants temporarily set aside their conditioned desires for easy hope, quick solutions, clear-cut answers and simplistic visions of the future. Instead, they invite us to sit with the magnitude of the challenges we face, both within and around us, without turning away, throwing tantrums, drowning in the pain of it all or giving up.
Hospicing Modernity
With Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti and Giovanna de Oliveira Andreotti
August 5–6 & 12–13, 2023 10am–12pm PDT
A 4-part live webinar series