Come One Come All…
All you need to know about Life
and living in the 21st century.
~ The Editor’s Eye ~
“Some men improve the world only by leaving it. ” – Oscar Wilde
We have arrived at the crossroads of catastrophe and infinite progress – where the mechanics of growth have already outgrown our capacity to manage or even understand them. The ‘smart’ systems we’ve built to connect, inform, automate, and amplify are now replicating faster than we can absorb, adapt to, or comprehend. The chaos of nonsense spreads through our networks – insane ideas, violent outrage, synthetic faces, shape-shifting-truths, entire worldviews – none of which requires our consent to propagate – it immediately and virally spreads.
Did you know – 40% of all intrastate conflicts have a direct link to natural resources, which also doubles the risk of a conflict relapse in the first five years.
Existential Event – suggests a major, disruptive, and inescapable event (like pandemics, environmental crises, and/or nationalist expansion or warlike interventions and conflict.
In a world where attention is constantly pulled by politics, marketing, and algorithm-driven distraction, it becomes necessary to re-educate ourselves in the ways of life that matter, to reclaim awareness, adopting psychological tools and skills, in how we live, work, play, create, and relate, with ourselves and others.
The School exists to nurture this wisdom and awareness – through stories, helpful opinion, conversations, reflections, imagery, workshops, and shared practices – we invite exploration of mind, body, and imagination.
Our values are simple: bearing witness to humanity’s actions, being of service to our communities, and setting good example for the upcoming generations. Drawing on humanist traditions, psychology, philosophy, and creative practice, we respond to the challenges of modern life – from digital overwhelm to ecological change, from social disconnection to personal resilience.
This endeavour is a collective journey; each and every participant adds to an evolving community of insight, creativity, and care. Together we rediscover rhythm, voice, and purpose, shaping content and practices that matter – work that connects, celebrates, and resists the shallow scroll.
Some say humanity is facing societal collapse, others feel we are witnessing a renewal, perhaps it is both. Within this restless transition, the School offers a space online and offline, to gather, learn, and create what matters – promoting and presenting general knowledge, discovery, and wisdom of and for the times that be.
Here you’ll find new ideas and old, along with provocations that address the many stigmas, and curiosities, of modern life and living; The Time Traveler’s Guide to Human Behaviour, the Psychological Resilience Manual, and other helpful ideologies and philosophies that serve as teasers for the curious – invitations to think, play, and reflect on challenging perspectives, to bear witness, and to attend to issues that affect us all.
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Interpreting Inference
Inference and the Meeting of Minds What happens when a species that makes guesses for a living meets a machine that makes guesses for profit, and why we may be adding values to the wrong thing.
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Current Affairs at Teatime
Current Affairs at Teatime The Tea with Myriam François, Sizzling Current Affairs Served Weekly! ☕️ Dive into the hottest takes with award-winning journalist Dr. Myriam François! Every Friday, a fresh episode unleashes fearless, unfiltered debates on global politics, social justice,…
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Word Time
A Mini-Dictionary of Today’s Most Abused Wordage Expanded Edition: Linguistic Manipulation in Political & Media Discourse It seems we have forgotten or abused definitions and meanings of many words used in modern media, news reports, academic research, general communications and…
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Risk & Providence
No Risk No Reward On fate, luck, kismet and the strange allowance of risk each of us – and all of us – carry; and why humanity keeps spending it as though the account were infinite. 6,131 WORDS, 33 MINUTES…
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Partaking Awareness
Partaking — Anima Sobria School of Being Barcelona · Headspace Partaking in Awareness On being, having, and paying attention – to plants, machines, and what it means to be mysteriously aware · Grev & Claude · Michael Pollan has spent…
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No President?
Buying & Selling the US Presidency On dissolving the office, distributing the power, and building a governance Americans could trust, so it can’t belong to a party, creed, the ‘donors’, or any foreign interest. A COMPANION TO CITIES AS CENTRES…
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While algorithms demand our constant attention and AI promises to solve all our woes, we explore what it means to be human, when demand, acceleration and indulgence displaces natural perception, we hold and offer space for curiosity, reflection, and the connected wisdom that emerges when we stop trying to keep up.
Manifesto
The School of Being is a place for connection, support, resource and self-inquiry. A place where you can witness – human society, culture, ideas and experience – history, philosophy, literature, art, language, religion, anthropology and the rest. It’s also a place where cooperation, practice, conversation, co-creation, activism, and experience, all come together to counter, to act, and to attend to issues that affect our ways of life and living together.
The School of Being begins with the humanities. That means the disciplines that study human society, culture, ideas and experience, history, philosophy, literature, art, language, religion, anthropology and the rest. They work mainly by reading, questioning, comparing and imagining, rather than by measuring. They ask what a thing means, not only what it does.
We keep the natural sciences and the hard numbers beside them, always. They tell us what it is to be, how a decision depletes willpower, how a loneliness figure is counted, how a reserve currency’s share of the world’s holdings shifts by the quarter. We’d be foolish to argue about freedom or money or weapons without them. But the numbers can’t tell us what to make of what they find. That part is human work.
It matters now, more than it has for a long while. We hold powers our ancestors would have called divine, with instincts they’d have recognised at once. Machines can produce words, images and arguments faster than any of us can weigh them. In a time like that, the old human skills, to express, interpret and record what it means to be alive, and to be alive together, aren’t a luxury. They’re how a species keeps hold of itself.
So we read widely, listen to the old thinkers as kindred voices, take the numbers seriously, and try to say plain things plainly, in words that translate well and sit comfortably with the young and the old. We don’t point fingers. We look at structures, and at the very human fears that hold them up. And we keep asking the same modest question, what does it mean to be human, and what do we owe each other because of it?
State of Mind
Mindfull Resilience Manual
Finding the Balance – Facing the Fear
Every machine, device, or system we own comes with a manual. It tells us how to operate it, maintain it, and troubleshoot problems before they become serious.
Your body has one: the Human Body Manual. Your mind deserves one too. The Psychological Resilience Manual is that companion guide, a way to understand, care for, and strengthen the most complex system you will ever operate: your own thoughts, emotions, and social self.
Life today moves faster and louder than ever. Social media, technology, and global pressures create a constant stream of challenges. Young people grow up comparing themselves to highlight reels. Adults juggle competing demands. Invisible struggles, mental, emotional, or neurodiverse differences, often go unseen and unacknowledged.
Well Being
Human Maintenance Manual
Mindfulness, Wellness, Movement, and Connection
Every other tool or skill we use in our day-to-day comes with instructions. We refer to them to help us understand, operate, maintain, and get the best performance from what we use every day. And yet the most important and complex system we’ll ever work with – our own body, comes with no instructions.
Instead, we are left with fragments: cultural habits, family traditions, medical advice, fitness trends, miracle diets, and competing philosophies. Each claims to be “the best way.” But in truth, our bodies are not one-size-fits-all. They are living systems, intricate, resilient, and adaptable. What we need is not a single dogma, but a framework: a way to understand the basic principles of how our bodies function, and to make choices that support health, energy, and resilience across a lifetime.
Come & Go
An Invitation
Location: Sant Pol de Mar, Barcelona
Hello everyone, and welcome! We’re excited to have you join us and to come together, creating and learning stuff that matters to all of us. You might be among the ‘rookies’ of society, a person of social interest, a parent, or a grandparent, a teacher, a drop-out, or a school-goer, or just emotionally ‘challenged’ and uneasy – whatever your story or journey here you’ll find good company. We believe in the power of shared collective experiences and the joy of exploring and doing stuff together.
And below, if you already enjoy this space and content, any donation to the school is appreciated, no obligation.
Support
Crowd Funding and Patronage Links
Direct Contributions and Donations
All group activities operate and are run on a Contribute/Free model, allowing everyone to participate
Proposed Applications to Cultural and Social Funding Bodies: Fundació “la Caixa” social and cultural initiatives – Ajuntament de Barcelona (City Council cultural and social grants) – Diputació de Barcelona (provincial government) – Catalunya Cultura grants – Barcelona Activa support programmes, and local ESG-focused foundations and social enterprises – with the help of CCCB who develop projects that bring research, education and artistic practices together in dialogue, and offer support to creation in the form of residencies and work groups to activate collective reflection.
Online Media and Occasional Print / Periodicals / Events
What we offer
Here, you can explore new ideas and creative expression. Reflect on philosophical and psychological perspectives – shared through open conversation, storytelling, and lived experience, and without inappropriate judgments or comparisons.
Hands-on workshops invite you to paint, craft, and explore digital media, or simply make something with your hands. Wellness sessions reconnect body and mind through mindful movement, breathing, and traditions that restore rhythm, fulfilment, and awareness.
All of this unfolds in physical and virtual spaces, ensuring access and continuity. Beyond our own programs, we connect with cultural institutions and creative partners to extend this work into wider society, where ideas and practices find new forms and audiences.
Why it’s needed
We live in ‘challenging times’. Big changes are afoot, and what’s missing is community, confidence, respect, and trust in each other.
To be prepared for what may come, The School aims to strengthen creative community, where presence, and care, can be practiced freely, while keeping us all grounded in the essentials.
We must listen and share our varied and diverse stories of lived experiences – through far-ranging and neurodiverse perspectives, emotional insights, and intergenerational exchanges.
This can happen locally and online, linking all in a circular flow of creativity and care. What emerges is a model of cultural innovation — where community itself becomes a generator of ideas, projects, and renewal.
Have a look at our associated General Eclectic site …
How we work
New members and participants will discover that the School of Being is not a single way of working but a community in motion. Some join to share skills, others to explore new ones, or to quietly follow their own creative path. Each new approach adds something to the whole.
We see every difference and change in life as a spark for imagination and growth. You may work solo, side-by-side with a group, or on larger collaborations that draw together many perspectives and capabilities.
The School exists in both physical and virtual space, keeping the circle open and accessible wherever you are. In this way, it becomes not only a meeting point but a living practice of being, appreciating, and creating together in responsive, evolving ways.
The School is designed to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining. By creating content that matters, physical and virtual, and by teaching ethical living and thinking skills that align with emerging technologies and a disrupted society, we model how community can thrive without losing its soul or resillience.
Who’s it for
Through co-creation, creative skills, and peer learning, we provide and cultivate best practice, and a safe haven for self-expression, memory and imagination.
This is a space for people of every age and stage – young, adult, or elder – each bringing their own rhythms, challenges, and strengths. Some come searching for meaning or direction, others simply to create and connect; many carry memory, experience, and wisdom that enrich the whole.
What unites everyone here is the recognition that individuality and diversity are the roots of resilience and creativity. You can work in your own way – alone in focus, within a group, as part of the School community, or contributing outward to society at large. A simple living practice of making, learning, and sharing.
Participation flows both physically and virtually, creating continuity across place and online presence. However you take part, each contribution feeds into a living, adaptive culture that supports personal expression and collective progress.