What is the Action?
This week we had to ask ourselves two questions about impact. These questions weren’t so easy to answer for me but it feels really good to question other’s impact on me and my impact on others.
What has made a particular impact in your life?
Cycling made a huge impact in my life. The fascination for cycling arose just about two years ago. There I learned that with pure muscle power I can achieve a lot, discover new places and meet so many people, animals and plants. I discovered my own way of meditating so to speak.
Last year I rode over 5000 km. These 5000 km are a product of many bike packing trips, as well as my work as a bike messenger. I am especially interested in locomotion on a bike in the city actually. It’s a continuous study of behavioural patterns (of cars, cyclists, pedestrians, public transport, traffic lights) as well as discovering architecture and city planning.
One thing I realised is that cities are mainly and unfortunately built for cars. Cars take up a lot of space in the city even tough most of the time it’s only one person in the car anyway. In the 50s architect Le Corbusier pushed his idea of the car as the absolute best mean of transportation for individuals especially to connect rural areas with cities. This obviously also had a big impact in the over prioritising/hyping of the car.
Next to this explorational impact cycling (in the city) also made me realise that communication, adaptation and respecting different perspectives are really crucial. Not only in locomotion but in life in general. But it also made me actively fight for better cycling conditions in Zürich as I am a part of velorution.ch and a bike activist.
What impact did I make?
One really particular example: But I had really long and intensive conversations with a friend. She is a born evangelic christian who grew up in a christian family surrounded with christian friends. Basically she has never experienced another reality except the christian one.
Me, growing up in an unbelieving catholic family I independently decided at the age of 10 to become an acolyte serving the priest during masses. But after going to school, learning about evolution, history and the oppressive catholic system I decided to quit. Since then I don’t have a relationship to a god(ess) or the church anymore (except the architecture!).
Anyway, I had conversations with my friend about the fact that none of us knows the absolute truth about life and that I find it strange to claim that one knows the absolute truth without looking at the world from another non-believer perspective. Giving her an insight into my life and my thoughts on the fact that there’s no truth, homosexuality, abortion and feminism she slowly opened up to me about her criticism of the church system. Even though she never said that I made an impact, I strongly believed that I did.
In general I think that most of the time we actually don’t know when we have an impact on someone else. Every heartbeat, every second and every move we make has an impact on someone else without us knowing.
How can we actively have an impact?
- behavioural, cognitive change
- raise awareness (critical because it’s really passive and a lot of awareness has been raised before)
- improve systems eg. finding points of intervention
- political approach
- take action
- build a tool: participatory design, app, public intervention, internet, visualisation, methods
- contribution/intention
