vision – Alyssa Bittner-Gibbs

Wonder at First Sight

Perhaps the strangest thing about making a home somewhere is how quickly the extraordinary becomes ordinary. The landscape fades into the commute. People become their roles. Institutions become explanations for themselves. Then someone arrives with an unfamiliar accent, an impertinent question, or delight in something you had stopped noticing—and the world briefly returns in full colour. Such encounters aren’t always comfortable. They may restore something we love; they may change what we can bear to overlook. But I have never wanted belonging purchased at the price of seeing less.

Driven to Abstraction

Philosophy finds a place at the kitchen table, alongside somebody’s strongly held views about loading the dishwasher. It should feel quite at home. Most households are already conducting ongoing research into fairness, freedom and the limits of human knowledge, particularly concerning the whereabouts of the scissors. We manage to take these questions seriously without demanding that justice present itself in a measuring jug. Why, then, do we become so suspicious of abstract thought when the household gets larger? A small defence of ideas, before somebody clears them away to make room for something useful.

Of Cows, Commitees and Kaffeklubb

You can take my coffee from my cold, dead hands. However, the committee structure is negotiable. Flourishing is not permanent happiness. It depends on time, access, trust, useful work, somewhere to belong—and institutions that do not consume more human energy than they return. With a cow in the parliamentary record and fika inexplicably under fire, I explore what it would mean to take Åland’s ambition seriously. Perhaps we could start by making a good life less work to arrange.

visionA collection of 3 posts