Inhabitus: A Manifesto for The Living

How Do We Inhabit a World We Don’t Understand and a Self Which Doesn’t Exist Yet?

Artwork by Antonio Mora

Here we are again.

Standing on the precipice, blindfolded and desperate, ready to jump into the abyss.

History hurtles past us, forking into two paths.

The eternal war begins anew.

Fate flips a coin —

And it hovers above all our heads.

It is time to make the ultimate choice.

Heads or tails?

Life or death?

Utopia or apocalypse?

All the certainties of the past are torn into shreds. We need to begin from the beginning.

1) The project of civilization has one goal and one aim — to make this hostile planet into a home for humanity. Nothing else justifies the destruction of the ecosphere, the torture of generations and the sixth mass extinction in the history of Life. We call this the primary motive of Inhabitation.

2) Our social, political, economic and religious systems don’t make this world or even our own selves more hospitable for us. For the majority of humans, existence has been synonymous with suffering. All these systems use Inhabitation as an excuse, a justification, for their main goal. Capitalism justifies profit making as a way which will naturally improve the society. Ethno-nationalism promises prosperity and belonging once humanity partitions into separate groups. All religions promise eternal bliss once we live our life according to the righteous path and then die a customary death. Life itself is never made more habitable. We call this as the Great Betrayal.

3) Nature is not our ally in the quest for Inhabitation. Evolutionary studies make it clear that in the natural order, survival and reproduction are the only things which are of importance — even if it means that you lose your head in the process. Humanity has always been violent, hateful and tortured by its own instincts. The myriad disorders of the mind are proof that our own psyche is very often hostile towards us — like an alien force attacking our inner world.

4) If we want to live in a world which feels like home, we have to remake the relationship between our internal and external world, reconstructing both of them in this process. The project of Inhabitation aims to do exactly this.

5) Inhabitus is the act of cultivating a totality of habits and skills to pursue the primary motive of Inhabitation. Habits are often equated with passivity because of their automatic nature and are often seen as roadblocks to simple and effective change. But habits are simply actions repeated over time which become crystallized in our bodies. This, in itself, is not problematic at all. The main danger lies in the non-conscious ways we let most of our habits form in our life.

6) Habits are the sedimentation of everyday life into embodied history. It integrates the physical, psychological, social and even evolutionary aspects of our existence. Indeed, inherent traits and behaviours are nothing but the evolutionary habits of our species. Habits are not mere repetitions, but act as a “second-nature” in individuals. They function like rules of grammar to produce coherent but creative responses to situations.

7) Inhabitus uses habits to reconstruct the structure of relations between our internal self and our external world, producing a harmonious whole. This is in contrast to other projects which try to change just one aspect of our existence. For instance, psychotherapy often tries to change the individual to help them adapt to the world. While social movements often aim to change the world in line with human nature. Inhabitus is about Inhabitation not adaptation.

8) Inhabitus views human agency as a result of recursive freedom. What this means is that even though we are material beings, determined by a set of material laws, we still have been able to transform the fundamental level of our existence. As explained in an earlier article, if life is determined by the interaction of internal genetic factors and external environmental features, then this deterministic evolutionary structure itself has somehow granted human beings the ability to change genes and transform the planet. And hence, take control of the fundamental determinants of life. This kind of recursive loop is the basis of all kinds of human agency in general.

9) This line of thought makes us realize that we are always in-between history — determined by it and directing it at the same time. There can be no ‘blank-slate’ or ‘fresh start’ for humans since history resides in us. But neither is human agency an illusion. Inhabitus sees transformation of what already exists as the sole means of change.

10) Inhabitus looks for spaces of ambiguity in a system where no pole of any dichotomy can reign supreme. (Such as freedom v/s determinism, creativity v/s habit, nature v/s society.) Inhabitus uses this space as a window to transcend any system which hinders us from pursuing the primary motive of inhabitation. It also creates new habits, spaces, practices and meanings to achieve Inhabitation.

Skills of Inhabitation (An Incomplete List)

a) Presence

Is the habit of exercising your awareness to inhabit all situations. This concept is highly influenced by the practice of mindfulness, but it focuses more on the relationships that exist in various contexts. These relationships can be between sensations in your body and the thoughts in your head, between various conflicts and agreements in your psyche, between you and the objects around you, you and other people present in that location or you and the people who are absent around you.

Presence also accepts the view that there are certain unconscious processes in our minds which influence us and it seeks to know the signs which indicate to us that something beyond our conscious intent is motivating us (for instance during intense emotional reactions). It seeks to build a constructive relationship between the conscious and the unconscious by listening to our minds. This is done through active introspection and interpretation of unconscious signs such as anxiety or recurrent dreams and thoughts. Presence also looks for gaps, spaces of ambiguity, especially in a conversation where parties in conflict can see their relationship in a new light and seek genuine connection.

b) Intimacy

Is the feeling of connection and habitual insight in the relationships around you. Indeed, this is a more private and exclusive domain and intimacy cannot be achieved with everyone around you. However, it is about being open to the possibility and knowing that the other person has a deep and rich inner life, same as you. Our times of digital separation and surface-level interactions with other people require forging new frontiers of intimacy. This is true of online spaces especially, which have saturated our lives and changed the way we live. Yet we haven’t really figured out how to build new patterns of interactions which prevents dehumanization of the people we talk to online. Digital intimacy is an important project we collectively need to work on.

c) Authenticity

Is the habit of maintaining consonance between the patterns of your life and your inner convictions. Although, the concept of a ‘true’ self is a hypothetical term, the feeling that the way you are living your life doesn’t correspond to your inner desires is a very real phenomenon. Thus your authenticity is defined more by its limits and its failures rather than a single identity that you need to adopt.

d) Depth

Is the habit of looking at life as having a multifaceted history with a future full of possibilities. It is the awareness of the sedimentation of the mind, the world and communities. It is treating these three things as having layers rather than a single, thin surface with very little to interpret and hence, understand.

e) Transformative Practice

Is the habit of using your presence and your understanding of depth in order to look for openings in a situation where you can create harmony between you, your set of relations and the world. It also includes all the skills you need to bring about such a change. Transformative practice often results in a reconfiguration of your sense of authenticity, your set of relations and hopefully your material world.

f) Pragmatic Utopianism

Is the habit of being utopic in imagination and pragmatic in practice. It is the ability to imagine a perfect world while being aware of current realities and using this information to figure out ways to reach there. It also includes the ability to resist disillusionment in the face of failure and recognizing the dystopian results of certain utopian endeavours. This is a part of Transformative Practice.

We are a collective trying to tackle the main obstacles to inhabitation such as global climate change, the rise of artificial intelligence, the saturation of digital technology and the internet in our life, total surveillance by transnational corporations and governments, terrorism, politics of hate and authoritarianism, the crisis of forced migration and the pandemic of mental distress and trauma.