What matters is already here
A note from the editor's desk
However much we stare into the distance, what matters is already here:
in the bright fire in the sky of morning; in the tiny grasp of a baby’s promise;
in the eyelight of those whose presence we treasure;
in the rising murmur of countless wings of starlings rising…1
It’s been six weeks or so since submissions closed on the latest Unpsychology Magazine. For those of you who don’t know, the 2024 edition is number 10 – auspicious for some, perhaps, and definitely significant for us! The theme is Edges and it seems to have resonated with many of you!
We received over seventy submissions this time – just about manageable for a small indie publication – and we are in the midst of sifting, sorting and reading. By the end of the month (or a couple of weeks beyond) we should have some idea of the shape of things and be able to give initial feedback and let people know if and how we see their pieces fitting in this issue (see the postscript below!).
However, one of the things we noticed in our first pass over the pieces is how much we loved and engaged with all of them! That’s not to say that everything will fit, but it is to say that there’s a tone and quality around all of the work that is…well, quite lovely.
That might seem a strange way of putting it. After all, we’re dealing with hard times, and the edges we see and face in the world have real and often tragic consequences. I won’t set these out here, but we all know that this is true. We all have our own perspectives on where these edges lie, how they butt up against each and how they might be crumbling and reforming. These carry real consequences for the world and the people (human and other-than) who live upon it. These edges and intersections of world and mind are what Unpsychology has always been about…
Yet the work we have been offered is lovely. Reading the poems, essays and fiction we’ve been sent is like being given the privilege of accessing people’s most intimate stories. As a therapist, I (Steve) know what a responsibility this is, and also what a joy it can be! And the art, music and videos that weave around the words, have real textures of bright hope and beauty in them – like staring into a colourful future we all could do with conjuring right now!
These are intimate, personal pieces that, nevertheless, resonate with the collective yearning there is in the world for a kind of shift. I can sometimes almost see what New Agers mean when they talk about us being on the edge of manifesting some ‘Great Turning’! Such fantasies are wishful thinking, at best, but the hope in them is tangible. However, what these submissions to Unpsychology #10 – offered from the edges of people’s imagination and experience – suggest to me is that nothing needs to turn, nothing needs to change – not in the way of some great new ‘paradigm’ or ‘theory of everything’. What we need might already be with us.
“However much we stare into the distance, what matters is already here”.
What might need to change are the voices listened to – those given endless platforms for their tedious ‘free speech’. Social media, mainstream media, even so-called alternative media – all of these amplify the voices of those who want to be heard, for their opinions to be validated and their meaning to be made. In such a clamour, those who are heard most are the ‘shouters’ – extroverts of a particular kind – whose charisma, self-confidence and need for validation overrides the possibility of gentle, careful, respectful, relational, ecological conversation and inquiry.
In contrast, the pieces we curate in Unpsychology are these kind of creations – that is, gentle, careful, respectful, relational and ecological – or we aspire to this, at any rate!
I guess one way of thinking about it is to follow Susan Cain’s idea that the world ‘out there’ is set up for the charismatic extrovert. There is no judgement in this about extroversion or extroverts per se, just a recognition that our schools, institutions, corporations, political systems and media outlets are set up for this perpetually dominant group. And if the world is set up for a habitually privileged group that psychologically is more inclined to reach out, seek recognition, build a profile and talk a lot, then the world is going to make predictable assumptions about what is ‘normal’ and what matters, from the earliest days of childhood and schooling, through to the ‘success criteria’ set for adulthood.
But, what if a culture emerged that was predominantly quiet, creative, introverted and non-materialistic? Extroverts would not be excluded, but their louder ‘norms’ would not be… well the norm. An edgier version of the same question might be to ask what would ‘queer’ or ‘neurodiverse’ or ‘child-centred’ or ‘decolonised’ worlds look like. In all of these, the shapes, relationships, assumptions and priorities would change, not simply in direct opposition to existing norms of extroverted, straight, colonising, commercialised neurotypicality, but emerging unpredictably anew from the experiences and ecologies that are lived and created by, among others, ‘quieter’, edge-dwelling people like our writers, artists and creators.
We’ve been trying to work like this at Unpsychology – particularly over the last few years through the Warm Data and Imaginings issues, though we don't have a template, brand, ideal ‘shape’ or ‘theory of community’. We don’t assume a position. We’re not trying to ‘re-wild’, ‘retreat’, lead a revolution or do ‘sense-making’ or ‘meaning-making’. And we don’t have brand-new (or even rediscovered-ancient) wellbeing practices or integral development products to promote or sell. What we try to do is offer a simple, ordinary space for art and writing, that might sometimes turn out to be radical and edgy (but doesn’t have to be); a place for conversation; and maybe a forum for learning together – a creative ecology of introverts perhaps…
…And who knows what this might look like, and where it might lead…?
Postscript for submitting writers and artists:
For those of you with submissions pending, we (the editors) are currently working with your contributions. We should have some decisions made around the end of March, and the rest over the following few weeks. We will then work with the contributors and collaborators to compile the new issue, which we hope to launch in the summer of 2024!
And if you have ideas for guest posts on our Substack, please get in touch at submissions@unpsychology.org. We always welcome new voices and reflections.
Footnote
Lines from Coming Back to Life, a poem by Steve Thorp, in the pamphlet, The Fixing of Things, words by Steve Thorp, images by Kim Major-George. Published in 2012 by Creative Thorp (now Raw Mixture Publishing, who also publish Unpsychology Magazine). It also appeared in Dark Mountain Volume 3, Summer 2012, still available at https://dark-mountain.net/product/issue-3-pdf/