‘Without force or haste’ considers what it is to live attentively in the sense proposed by Simone Weil — an openness to what is present.

These notes toward an attuned life start from a conviction that ethics and a moral stance should flow from cultivating sensitivity and from refusing a sense of separateness from the things around us.

Knowledge comes not only from conceptual abstraction but also from attunement.

I find justification for this way of thinking in many places.

The photography of Minor White and Paul Strand.

The poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Oliver, and Jan Zwicky.

The philosophy of Spinoza, Whitehead, Wittgenstein, and William James.

The science of EvoDevo, Brian Goodwin, Francisco Varela, and Ilya Prigogine.

The work of makers and artists such as John Ruskin, Anni Albers, and others from different spheres of life.

These notes toward an attuned life arise as I enter old age. Everyone arrives at old age in their own way, with different capacities, responsibilities, and limits. Mine include caring for a partner with Alzheimer’s dementia, a situation that has led me to abandon a research degree in philosophy. These near-to-end-of-life experiences have profoundly changed my view on many things, for which I am thankful. Caring for a loved one with dementia is very much about developing sensitivity.

All images on this site were made by me. My photography has been a journey into attentiveness and attunement.

Tony Cearns