So much fun this month name-calling and finding our true neighborhood in supraculture. Dropping hints for your soundtrack of placelessness. Announcing the emergence of a great new voice with whom we're exploring the existential anxiety of being people like us.
Lots of things to do: besides sharing your thoughts on tipping points and tour groups, you're invited to participate in a once-in-a-lifetime creative project on 11/11/11 with people from 196 countries, in 2,000 languages. It promises to be "the greatest story ever told."
+++++ YOUR THOUGHTS
Let us know what you'd ask the expat+HAREM community.
We asked for the names you give our global nichery --
is it a subculture like nudists and skateboarders and Burning Man (which sound like the same thing, snarf!), or is this diverse life we lead a transcendent supraculture above and beyond it all?
Some replies (keep them coming): Homeless. Geoagnostic. Nomadology.
"Worldburgers is what I call people like us," offers Judith van Praag, a Dutch writer/designer in Seattle and a Dialogue2010 cultural innovator.
+++++ AT expat+HAREM
This month we discussed the tipping point of cultural assimilation and its confusions (can a soapy television show trigger a shift in your identity?). We also confided what the ancient history of a place has made us do (like fall down a Turkish mountain when the past won't meet us in a more convenient spot, or innovate new business based on heritage techniques). Being contradictory types, we continue to debate whether our travel styles -- ultraspecialized tour group, herdlike mass transport, or loner on a new landscape -- reflect larger life choices or simply what it takes to get us somewhere else on the planet.
Our Facebook page wall is a perfect place to highlight your latest identity adventure: friends and fans are invited to post your blog/site link, and tell us all what awesomeness you've been up to.
+++++ AROUND THE WORLD & AROUND THE WEB
We're not alone. In fact, here's another vote for supraculture: we're thrilled to witness a like-minded movement building online in the inaugural hybridology conference call by Amna Ahmad of The Pragmatic Hybrid. Addressing "the existential anxiety of our hybrid lives," she says we're looking for models of courage/integrity in smart/fascinating people "who do eleven things that don't seem to have anything in common." Sound familiar?
Good guide to creating an earthy soundscape: the world music reviews at Perceptive Travel, the online magazine by book authors on the move. Personally, they had us at "remixed desert blues" Tuareg-style, and "placeless internationalism".
Among the luminaries we met at TEDGlobal last month: the founder of 11ElevenProject, a day-long time capsule which aims to be the biggest creative project in human history -- bringing the world together through film, photography, art, sound and music -- to celebrate our individuality, and honor our common humanity. Plan to participate.