Head Heart Hand

It was reassuring to listen to Professor Alastair McIntosh this week. We perceive the world in similar ways. In response to issues like climate change he says 'hold the vision and don't dislocate yourself from the society you are trying to effect change'. He didn't think dropping out to some far off place was the solution, instead he suggested there was a need to take up the challenge and find holistic ways to integrate head, heart and hand and to engage people around you.

There are different ways of understanding head, heart, hand. Some see it as knowledge and the reasoning of the head, such as science, technology, economics, politics; combined with courage of the heart, sometimes known as the psyche, as in psychological to mean spirit; allied to the activism of the hand. The head, heart, hand motto came from the Arts and Crafts movement; 'Head' for creativity and imagination, 'Hand' for skill and craft, 'Heart' for honesty and for love.

Alastair's presentation was about climate change, his argument being that politics, technology and economics represented by the head, cannot solve the problem we face on its own. We also need to engage the heart and the hand. By doing this we will build relationships with empathy that feel good. By tackling climate change in this way, joining politics with spirit and action we make it personal and we journey within. If we stay at the level of the head we will keep consuming and remain apathetic to the world around us and the emptiness this creates will never be removed.

This thesis echoes that of reconnecting mythos and logos. Logos represents facts, reason and science. Mythos represents the deeper structure of reality and holds this deep reality of the universe together. By reconnecting with the mystical each person can connect themselves at the soul level to all that is around them. We then understand that the harm or exploitation we do to others we are ultimately doing to ourselves. And in there lies the key to a new reality, to the building of new relationships with the other and to change.