An Open Letter to Naomi Klein
By Dr. Emily Samuels Ballantyne | Dr Demeter: Open Letter for Naomi Klein
Dear Naomi: Your Work Taught Me to See, Now Let’s Feel, Act and Belong
Dear Naomi,
Your work cracked open the world for me. You taught me to see through the logos and the smoke screens. You gave voice to what so many of us felt but could not name. You helped us name the machinery of performance, extraction, and manipulation. For that, I honour you.
But now, in this time of layered crisis climate, war, displacement, spiritual disconnection, I find myself longing for something more. Not just critique, but connection. Not just resistance, but relationship. Not just strategy, but sacredness.
Many of us were raised in the thick of protest, policy briefs and paper, and press releases. But what if we have exhausted the political imagination born of trauma and transaction? What if it’s time to feel?
I write to you not to oppose, but to ask for support in the evolvution of activism. You helped us see the broken systems. Now we need to learn to feel the world whole again.
Let us remember the wisdom of Tyson Yunkaporta, who reminds us that kinship thinking and intergenerational listening are foundational to survival.
Let us listen to Joanna Macy, who teaches that grief is not a weakness of activism, but its gateway to transformation.
Let us carry forward Marg O’Neill’s call to spiritual ecology, where the regeneration of land and culture are inseparable.
Let us not forget Rudolf Steiner who spoke of imagination as a spiritual organ of perception, capable of perceiving the true being of the other.
Let us honour Helena Norberg-Hodge, who reminds us that localisation is not just an economic strategy, but a pathway to belonging, nuance, and peace between cultures.
Let us learn again from Robin Wall Kimmerer, who says that to name a plant is not to control it, but to begin a relationship.
Let us also recall Emmanuel Levinas, who reminds us that real ethics begins not in ideology, but in the felt encounter with the other. And Albert Einstein, who spoke of widening our circle of compassion as the only path out of the illusion of separateness. Even Karl Marx, in his early writings, saw that our senses had been dulled by alienation and yearned for a world where we could feel fully again.
Naomi, what would it look like to let our activism be relational, rooted, and ritualised?
What if our protests included seasonal songs and seed planting? What if our policy demands came wrapped in the prayers of elders and the stories of water? What if instead of performative purity, we chose participatory repair?
Let us move with Heart, Head, and Hands to feel, to act, and to belong.
This is an invitation as your voice matters. But the time for more seeing must be joined with more feeling.
peace, respect & love,
Emily Samuels-Ballantyne
Magical Farm, lutruwita | Tasmania
Founder, Regenera Commons
www.regeneracommons.org
https://www.nessvphotography.com/
About the Author
Dr. Emily Samuels Ballantyne is an eco-philosopher, regenerative designer and farmer, and founder of Magical Farm Tasmania and Regenera Commons. She is the author of the forthcoming series Soil & Soul offers a radical vision for sacred, place-based activism in the 21st century. Since the age of 11, Emily has been active in the global peace network Asian-Pacific Children’s Convention, serving as a Junior Ambassador, later as a Peace Ambassador in her twenties, and as a chaperone for children in her thirties. With over 20 years in grassroots activism, food system transformation, and community ecology, she writes from the thresholds between grief and renewal, culture and cosmos.
www.regeneracommons.org | www.magicalfarm.org
