Josephine Condemi
Dear reader,
What do you truly like? Hopefully, you will not have to ask a chatbot to find the answer.
We live in an era where our declared preferences are quantified and aggregated in real time, where the ability to “be liked,” in the sense of pleasing others, has become an overt currency of exchange, and thus an even stronger form of social pressure. An era in which we are constantly encouraged to state, take a stand, and express what we “like” to be satisfied with something (or someone) that perfectly matches our wish list and is delivered to us with the right packaging at last. An era obsessed with algorithms of pleasure, recipes that write and prescribe “what to do for” [insert any pleasant experience here], step by step. If I want it, I get it. Immediately, or at least by following a staged programme.
And yet. Given this obsession, how many truly satisfied people do you know? At Mangrovia, we made the choice, even in our name, to focus on slow growth, like a biological organism that thrives through exchanges of matter and energy with its surroundings, of which it is a part. An organism much like our bodies, which we are and which we have, through which flows all the pleasure we know and can experience. The word “must” is excluded: pleasure, as folk wisdom teaches, does not admit obligation. In dedicating these six months to aesthetics as a way of knowing through the senses, we could not avoid delving into one of the quintessential aesthetic experiences.
An experience that takes on a myriad of forms and, like all aspects of our body-mind system, arises from relationships with others and/or with the environment. Pleasure is made together. And, like all aspects of our body-minded system, pleasure is fragile, ephemeral, yet capable of leaving profound traces that guide us, often beyond our own awareness, always teaching us something new, about ourselves and the world.
We sincerely hope you enjoy the “other” stories this month as much as we enjoyed exploring and sharing them, with our usual care.
Thank you for being here. Have a wonderful journey!
