Your NameChristopher Roig-Ramos
Email Addresschristopher.roigramos@axaclimate.com
Cohort AssignmentEurope, Africa, and the Middle East with Online Intensive, Winter-Spring 2024
1. What do you see as your primary work at this stage of your life?

I am at a time when this is an open question. The elements that inform this question are my wish to :
- contribute to the emergence of a new outlook bringing humanity back into a regenerative role within the biosphere
- work with place, contributing to new relations between people and natural ecosystems
- work with collectives, contributing to new forms of organisations, cultures and relationships between people

2. What role do you see as yours to play?

This is also an open question, my varied experiences and versatility make it difficult for me to define a specific role. I enjoy both being part of a project, on the inside, as well as accompanying people in their projects, on the outside. My keen interest in researching emerging fields and making them more accessible is likely a part of the answer.

3. What goals or aims do you have in regard to the above?

Clarifying my role.

4. Where do you feel your next arenas for personal growth are?

Continuing on a path of increased mindfulness, with a heightened ability to maintain presence in challenging circumstances.

5. And for professional growth?

Finding and working with a developmental community.

6. What have you invested in to get you where you are?

A variety of experiences aimed at contributing to a better world, be it through technological, economic or social innovation / evolution. Alongside this a more personal journey working on the body-emotion-mental-energy dimensions.

7. What fields of learning and which thinkers have been important in your life?

Philosophy (notably Stoicism and Buddhist and Taoist philosophy), Psychology (Jung, Rogers, Mate, Kegan), Mindfulness (Watts, Harris, Varela), Anthropology, Sociology (Rosa), History (Harari).

8. Can you frame your philosophy or cosmology of life? What role(s) do humans play in it?

Experience or consciousness is the setting of a paradox between a timeless dimension ('vertical time') which is accessible by accepting the ungraspable nature of experience and surrendering to it and a time-bound dimension ('horizontal time') in which life's imperatives - continuation and evolution - require making sense of experience for the sake of agency. Resolving this paradox is possibly the ultimate reconciliation. Short of that, experience is a back-and-forth between both dimensions, the elegance of which can be said to be an art of life.
How consciousness relates to the objective world (the 'hard problem of consciousness') remains a mystery, and thus no definite cosmology is accessible. However at a more practical level, the seemingly miraculous life-force at work and evolving over the past 4 billion years, forces a wonder-filled respect and adherence to the continuity and evolution of life and the wish to contribute to it in this age of mass-extinction. Brining humanity back into a regenerative role for the biosphere is then a highly meaningful endeavour at the heart of a personal and collective philosophy and cosmology.

Date CreatedFebruary 21, 2024