• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Work That Reconnects Network

Work That Reconnects Network

  • Events
  • Contact
  • FAQs
  • Register
  • Login
  • Show Search
  • E-mail
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
Donate
Hide Search
  • Connect
  • Resources
  • Become a Facilitator
  • Blog
  • Community Forum
You are here: Home / Resources / Audio Recording to the Future

Audio Recording to the Future

Work That Reconnects · Dec 1, 2017 · Leave a Comment

Resource Type: Practices (Deep Time)

(15 to 30 minutes)

In facing a particular situation or issue, the act of describing it aloud to future generations heightens appreciation of what is at stake in the long term.  The larger time frame deepens the sense of responsibility, stimulates creativity, and strengthens our resolve.

This practice is predominately used at a specific location to support a holding action against a specific threat, such as clear-cutting, toxic dumping, and hydraulic fracking. People pass a small recorder, speaking into it one at a time.  They imagine they are recording a message to be found and heard in that place by people of a coming generation or century.  Alluding to choices presently confronting them, they record personal messages to the future.  

This process originated in New Mexico at an ad hoc People’s Council about government plans to deal with radioactive waste by burying it.  Activists were concerned about leakage and eventual human intrusion at the site.  Up to that point public opposition to such plans expressed a position known as “NIMBY” (Not In My Back Yard).  Other than protecting their own communities, the public by and large didn’t consider the waste to be their responsibility.  

“Let’s imagine,” Joanna said, pulling out a small recorder, “that if we don’t manage to stop the waste from being buried here, we could at least place this cassette here for future generations to find and listen to.  What do we want to say to them?”

Passing the recorder around the Council circle, the men and women spoke into it with increasing urgency.  “My name is George.  I’m back in 1988 and trying to stop people from burying radioactive waste here.  If they do and if you hear this, listen.  Don’t dig here, don’t use the water, stay away!  This stuff is deadly and contaminates all it touches.  Take care!”  As the words poured out, the future generations became more real and those present began to feel more responsibility for the wastes their own generation had produced.  They felt a greater determination to protect the beings of the future by developing less dangerous alternatives than burial – such as monitored, retrievable storage.  This is now, among citizen activists, the preferred strategy.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Primary Sidebar

Share:

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Practices

Help us build our resource libary by adding useful WTR resources.

Submit Resource

Resource Types

  • Recent Resources
  • Audio (9)
  • Books (14)
  • Practices (76)
    • Adapted for online (1)
    • Deep Time (13)
    • Going Forth (15)
    • Gratitude (10)
    • Honoring Our Pain for the World (14)
    • Meditation (10)
    • Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes (14)
  • Videos (23)

The Work That Reconnects Network is a fiscally sponsored project of Inquiring Systems Inc., a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) nonprofit corporation. EIN 94-2524840. All donations are tax-deductible.

Footer

Recent Posts

  • Help Bring the NEW WTR Network Website to Life! May 11, 2022
  • The Work That Reconnects Network Visions for 2022-23 Apr 16, 2022
  • Call for Submissions: Deep Times, September 2022 Apr 5, 2022

Recent Comments

  • John Roach on Living the Spiral: An interview with Molly Brown
  • Margo van Greta on Living the Spiral: An interview with Molly Brown
  • Empathy and Compassion in Uncertain Times - Network of Wellbeing on Three Stories of Our Time
  • Revisiting Riverton: the Longwood Loop food resiliency project - Naijal on Three Dimensions of the Great Turning
  • Revisiting Riverton: the Longwood Loop food resiliency project - utexta on Three Dimensions of the Great Turning

Subscribe to the WTR newsletter

Receive notification when new issues of the Deep Times Journal are available as well as updates on the Work That Reconnects Network.

You can unsubscribe at any time.

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
Return to top
© 2000–2022 Work That Reconnects Network, all rights reserved