Connect what has been separated.
Inequality, climate, housing, care, energy, land and power are not isolated subjects. Their relationships matter.
About the project
A place for deeper public inquiry.
Paying Closer Attention is not an attempt to build an audience around a personality or tell people what they should think.
I am closer to the end of my life than the beginning. I am a single parent sharing the care of two teenagers 50/50 here in Aotearoa New Zealand, and I care deeply about their future—and about the generations of human and more-than-human life that will follow them.
I have been through difficult periods of trying to get my head and heart around what is happening in the world. The most reliable antidote to helplessness that I have found is to try to understand our predicament at a deeper level.
This project is an attempt to create room for that understanding: conversations that do not rush towards easy certainty, and questions that are not abandoned simply because their implications are uncomfortable.
I expect my own thinking to be challenged and changed through this process. The invitation is not to agree with me. It is to take our shared reality seriously enough to examine it together.
Read the full invitationCommitments
Stay answerable to power.
Responsibility is unequal. Attention must include who possesses the capacity to choose—and who lives with the consequences.
Remain open to revision.
This is an inquiry, not a settled doctrine. Clarity grows through listening, challenge and the willingness to change.
A note on place
Beginning from Aotearoa requires particular care.
Any inquiry into what we hold in common must honour Te Tiriti and recognise mana whenua, whakapapa and tino rangatiratanga. Shared does not mean ownerless, and Māori collective institutions and practices cannot be casually absorbed into a generic language of the commons.
This is not a qualification at the edge of the conversation. It changes how belonging, authority, stewardship and responsibility are understood from the beginning.
Contact
Continue the conversation.
Questions, challenges and thoughtful responses are welcome. This inquiry is intended to be tested and changed through engagement with others.
hello@payingcloserattention.com