Dougald Hine

Author of At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics & All the Other Emergencies (2023) and co-author of the Dark Mountain Manifesto (2009). Co-founder of Dark Mountain and a school called HOME.

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Dougald Hine

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Faith

There is so much in here, I will have to reread. But how I long for the weekly gathering space Hine talks about, where “the most truthful person in the room” goes first, not the one who thinks they have the greatest grasp on truth.

Writing Home

How to Kidnap an Audience

Dougald Hine

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Brian James

Another resonant essay from

Dougald Hine

what if we’re so well trained as consumers of culture that even the most powerful work going on in those rooms will struggle to break through, to get past our training, to go from an object of consumption to an experience that might tear us open, shake us, move us, leave us changed?

Dougald Hine

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Dougald Hine

Today’s post started out as a talk I gave to an audience of Swedish culture-makers in 2022, just as I was about to start writing At Work in the Ruins. We’re three years further into the ruins, but the thread here about the work of culture is one I’m still pulling on.

Look through the archives of archaeology and anthropology, and nowhere will you find humans who don’t have some form of dancing, singing, storytelling, making images, symbols and meaningful objects, woven through their ways of living. The work of culture is not a luxury, it’s where we find and create meaning, and meaning is what makes the difference between going on and giving up when times are hardest.

Dougald Hine