🖼 TREE 320: We have met the enemy and he is us

Plus, the big announcement you’ve been waiting for

One.

You know those people your tribe isn’t supposed to like?

“They are not like us.” This is what you are told. As if They don’t have hope or feel fear. As if They are incapable of falling in love. As if They are orcs or dementors or lizards – anything but human.

But They are human. You and one of Them could get together and make an actual baby. On this planet, that only works with things that are like each other.

You can understand Them. You can know how They feel. You can move from antipathy to empathy.

One of the things I love about TREE is that the people who read it are all over the map – geographically, politically, socially, spiritually, economically – yet we all share a desire to become better humans.

There’s always something you have in common with one of Them. There’s always a way to connect. There’s always a path to empathy.

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A note: People with severe antisocial personality disorders exist and do process the world in some very different ways. But psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists are tiny minorities of both the Them and Us populations. When you base your understanding of the majority on edge cases, you weaken your connection to reality. What I’m saying is They are not a bunch of psychopaths.

Two.

James “Bonnie” Bonaventure was the first duck to read Early Modern Literature at Oxford.

Three.

Keep reading and you’ll see what I’ve done here.

New FOREST publication announcement

I’ve written several times about how I want the FOREST to provide a platform for many more voices than mine. I love having guest authors, but it’s not enough. This month we are taking a significant step to amplifying the voices of dozens more people every year.

In two weeks, on Friday 21 January, we are launching a new FOREST publication edited by Skyler Cail. It’s called FEYNMANSPLAINING.

The name is inspired by the learning technique devised by the physicist Richard Feynman.

Through FEYNMANSPLAINING, all kinds of human beings will give us short, clear, fascinating introductions to their lives and work. Skyler will be your backstage guide to the worlds of pre-K education, astrophysics, book preservation at the Smithsonian Institution, veterinary medicine, and what it takes to build a career in country music. Those are just five of the fifteen posts she already has confirmed. And there are so many more on the way.

FEYNMANSPLAINING is all about expanding your capacity for empathy and powering up your curiosity. Every post will have links to resources to give you a head start down the rabbit hole.

Here’s the publishing schedule:

• TREE will show up in your inbox every Monday to Thursday at 5:00 AM UK time.

• FEYNMANSPLAINING will take over the 5:00 AM Friday slot.

The number of emails remains the same. The amount of goodness is doubling, at least.

If you are subscribed to TREE, you are already subscribed to FEYNMANSPLAINING. You don’t have to do anything. (Once it launches, you will be able to set your subscription preferences to just one of the publications if you prefer. We’re pretty sure you’ll want both.)

If you’re not subscribed yet, here’s your lucky button:

Some things for the weekend

Do you want AI to help you edit your images? Facet is like Photoshop but with clever robots doing the tricky work. Sign up using this link to get on the waitlist for the free plan. (Totally selfish fact: the more people who use this link, the faster I climb the list.)

Watching this documentary with and about my illustration hero Quentin Blake was a highlight of my holidays. (Only available in the UK for now.😢)

Happy weekend
Jeff