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Combining
In 'Combining', Nora Bateson invites us into an ecology of communication where nothing stands alone, and every action sets off a chain of incalculable consequences. She challenges conventional fixes for our problems, highlighting the need to tackle issues at multiple levels, understand interdependence, and embrace ambiguity. Insisting on our collective responsibility to confront the looming threats to humanity‘ s survival, she advocates change through interconnectedness and challenges us to rethink our perspectives on relationships, community, and the very essence of being human. A blend of intellectual inquiry, essays, emotional engagement, storytelling, poetry and graphic art, 'Combining' is an invitation to nurture genuine connections and navigate a world brimming with “ Warm Data” – the interrelationships that integrate elements of every complex system. The book calls on us to shed our linear thinking and embrace “ Aphanipoiesis” – the unseen ways in which life comes together to foster vitality and propel evolution. In 'Combining', love, humor, curiosity, and vulnerability entwine amidst the trials of a world in flux. As we face the Polycrisis, Nora Bateson urges us to swerve from the traditional paths and to dismantle the illusions of fitting in. She beckons us to step into a world where learning, uncutness, and readiness converge, promising both revelation and revolution.
396 pages, Paperback
Published November 21, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 22, 2023
To read this book is the experience of a meal, a nourishing meal prepared with care and ingredients who come from the ecology of attention to life. My experience reading this book has been profoundly digested and still I sense there is more to it that will become part of my cells in an exploration of possibility.
The reading of this book has been a different experience of reading. When it came in the mail, I thought of playing with it, so each day, I open the book for what ever page wanted to be opened and invited myself to read the chapter in front of my eyes, some times it engaged me for hours, sometimes for minutes, each day I will be marking those chapters as 'read'. Sometimes the opening invitation will land on 'a marked as read chapter' and i will read it again, and then go for the one next to it, either before or after. I think I have marked all the chapters now, but I am far from have finished the book. I don't think I will never 'finish' the book. It is compelling, not addictive. Each reading brings forth different nuances and, as Nora calls it, different minutiae that feeds me, nourishes me differently. Sometimes it is a whole meal, and my learning being needs time to digest. Some are tapas, and some of them come as a glass of wine that alters the flavours of what was read side by side. They combine all sorts of taste: sweet is there, and also sour. Umami, salty, and also bitter. I wouldn't call it a companion book, that label will allocate the book in a box, and I don't think there is a box for it, because the book changes in relationship with me, and I am changing all the time. Are you asking me if I recommend this book to you? Wholeheartedly. But the question I would ask is different. Are you willing to embark yourself in a relationship? In a living relationship that will be born and then it will take you in different pathways that you may not expect, and then in the process of learning to make sense of the world differently? These questions are not to be answered but invitations to be held in both hands, like you would hold an open book.
The reading of this book has been a different experience of reading. When it came in the mail, I thought of playing with it, so each day, I open the book for what ever page wanted to be opened and invited myself to read the chapter in front of my eyes, some times it engaged me for hours, sometimes for minutes, each day I will be marking those chapters as 'read'. Sometimes the opening invitation will land on 'a marked as read chapter' and i will read it again, and then go for the one next to it, either before or after. I think I have marked all the chapters now, but I am far from have finished the book. I don't think I will never 'finish' the book. It is compelling, not addictive. Each reading brings forth different nuances and, as Nora calls it, different minutiae that feeds me, nourishes me differently. Sometimes it is a whole meal, and my learning being needs time to digest. Some are tapas, and some of them come as a glass of wine that alters the flavours of what was read side by side. They combine all sorts of taste: sweet is there, and also sour. Umami, salty, and also bitter. I wouldn't call it a companion book, that label will allocate the book in a box, and I don't think there is a box for it, because the book changes in relationship with me, and I am changing all the time. Are you asking me if I recommend this book to you? Wholeheartedly. But the question I would ask is different. Are you willing to embark yourself in a relationship? In a living relationship that will be born and then it will take you in different pathways that you may not expect, and then in the process of learning to make sense of the world differently? These questions are not to be answered but invitations to be held in both hands, like you would hold an open book.
January 7, 2024
If you have read Gregory Bateson and Karen Pryor's 1969 work with Porpoises--how these beautiful creatures went wild in their creative exploration during research, this book by Gregory's daughter Nora is another description of that freedom.
In her previous book, Small Arcs, Nora had lifted her head in this direction: "In fact, it is reasonable and responsible to ask whether life, love or culture can really be described with words. To discuss the patterns and processes of the living world we will need to open the form, open the genres of our communication." pp184
In this book, she arrives.
When I first opened the book, I was overwhelmed as if 8 billion people of earth had come to visit me. For we talk of diversity but don't have the body awareness of the aesthetics that goes with it.
Fonts of various kinds, each carefully chosen to combine with the text/art. Academic prose lying side-by-side with poetry and free art, text curving over leaves and strokes, soft come-hither pieces rolling next to rigorous theory. Multiple worlds entangling like life itself, bewildering, plucking off usual pattern pathways.
This book, to me, combined as Kali rolling on earth, laughing through words and colours. Accessible, utterly profound and has to be cuddle-tended to.
An extraordinary invitation to the dance of life.
In her previous book, Small Arcs, Nora had lifted her head in this direction: "In fact, it is reasonable and responsible to ask whether life, love or culture can really be described with words. To discuss the patterns and processes of the living world we will need to open the form, open the genres of our communication." pp184
In this book, she arrives.
When I first opened the book, I was overwhelmed as if 8 billion people of earth had come to visit me. For we talk of diversity but don't have the body awareness of the aesthetics that goes with it.
Fonts of various kinds, each carefully chosen to combine with the text/art. Academic prose lying side-by-side with poetry and free art, text curving over leaves and strokes, soft come-hither pieces rolling next to rigorous theory. Multiple worlds entangling like life itself, bewildering, plucking off usual pattern pathways.
This book, to me, combined as Kali rolling on earth, laughing through words and colours. Accessible, utterly profound and has to be cuddle-tended to.
An extraordinary invitation to the dance of life.
December 27, 2023
If there is any book that is full of life, that contains aliveness in all its shapes on every page - it’s this one!
January 1, 2025
Fabulous, energising, curious, complex. Embracing the meadows, the submerged and the visible and everything in between and around it, needs revisiting often. That book is a practice.
June 17, 2024
I don’t know how to describe this book. It is more of an experience than simply a book to read. I took it slowly, experiencing chunks and then setting it aside giving myself time to digest it before going back for more. I found it thought-provoking, challenging in exactly the right ways, and an important work for the times we are in right now. I will be returning to it since this is not a book to just finish and then set aside. Much gratitude to Nora Bateson for all of the deep thought and creative energy that went into this beautiful creation.
September 25, 2026
I often think that how I feel about a book is far more dependent on how I feel about myself and the wider environment in which I exist in rather than any words the author commits to paper. I've learnt to be comfortable with that, that my experience as a reader is never neutral. I am complicated, messy, changeable. My history, experience and moods will shape how I feel about a character. Books can make me fall in love, books can get on my nerves.
I've had the privilege of attending a Warm Data 'experience' and whilst I cannot articulate what happened, I knew instinctively at a 'feeling level' that it was one of the most valuable and rewarding experiences I have had in a long time. As a consequence Nora Bateson's books have been waiting to be read for a while. It is quite hard to describe what they are about. 'Combining', for want of a better word feels more intuitive and experienced than 'Small Arcs of Larger Circles'. In some ways that makes it less accessible, it takes a little longer to find where you want to go, but one must trust the process.
'Combining' isn't really a book to read start to finish quickly. It's a book to pick up when you're ready. It's a book to rest with, a book to reflect upon. Interspersed is art, poetry, essays and other thoughts that ask us to reflect upon 'who are we in the universe?', it asks us to think about the nature of relationship, change, difference about how we are completely in relationship to everything around us. Instead of an easy framework to bring about change, 'Combining' invites us to notice all of our complex relationships, our ways of communicating and engaging with each other and our world and to learn to notice. It can sound very 'new age' but this is more 'every age at the same time'.
I've been taking it slow reading this, but it has impacted me in quite profound ways and I have noticed things about myself. I've got frustrated about introductions to complex frameworks distilled into five minute work briefings that do not even begin to scratch the surface, and then I've told myself it's okay for work to be reductionist because if it acts as an invitation, rather than a solution that opens a door. I've noticed frustrations with familial relationships and the stories that I tell myself that I am right and the other is wrong, and how I want to fix, and I feel a wronged victim. The responsibility of desiring things to be better and the double binds I am creating, trying to remember in any communication we are all 'part of a problem'.
At times, with Bateson I feel I do not have the intellectual rigour, the intelligence to keep up with her (an essay on Aphanipoiesis - a coalescing of unseen factors towards vitality was a struggle for me). And then I rest a little, letting my eyes wander over artwork, looking for patterns, trying to see what I wonder may be there. At other times her writing is utterly profound. Her essay on consent, 'I Want You To Want Me To Want You' treads an incredibly sensitive area on the theme of consent recognising that despite cultural, generational and societal variation there is a way to explore this communication that can reduce harm and lead to better understandings of what it is to relate to each other.
I never coined the phrase, but it has stuck with me for years, but the time of the 'systems thinker' maybe over and now it we need to relate to our understanding of the world in terms of 'systems feeling'. No one will buy the method, because there isn't one but it feels a more natural way to interact with the world.
I still haven't told you what this is about have I? It's okay, it shows the difference between what I feel and what I can't quite form the words to articulate. I just know I appreciate the book.
I've had the privilege of attending a Warm Data 'experience' and whilst I cannot articulate what happened, I knew instinctively at a 'feeling level' that it was one of the most valuable and rewarding experiences I have had in a long time. As a consequence Nora Bateson's books have been waiting to be read for a while. It is quite hard to describe what they are about. 'Combining', for want of a better word feels more intuitive and experienced than 'Small Arcs of Larger Circles'. In some ways that makes it less accessible, it takes a little longer to find where you want to go, but one must trust the process.
'Combining' isn't really a book to read start to finish quickly. It's a book to pick up when you're ready. It's a book to rest with, a book to reflect upon. Interspersed is art, poetry, essays and other thoughts that ask us to reflect upon 'who are we in the universe?', it asks us to think about the nature of relationship, change, difference about how we are completely in relationship to everything around us. Instead of an easy framework to bring about change, 'Combining' invites us to notice all of our complex relationships, our ways of communicating and engaging with each other and our world and to learn to notice. It can sound very 'new age' but this is more 'every age at the same time'.
I've been taking it slow reading this, but it has impacted me in quite profound ways and I have noticed things about myself. I've got frustrated about introductions to complex frameworks distilled into five minute work briefings that do not even begin to scratch the surface, and then I've told myself it's okay for work to be reductionist because if it acts as an invitation, rather than a solution that opens a door. I've noticed frustrations with familial relationships and the stories that I tell myself that I am right and the other is wrong, and how I want to fix, and I feel a wronged victim. The responsibility of desiring things to be better and the double binds I am creating, trying to remember in any communication we are all 'part of a problem'.
At times, with Bateson I feel I do not have the intellectual rigour, the intelligence to keep up with her (an essay on Aphanipoiesis - a coalescing of unseen factors towards vitality was a struggle for me). And then I rest a little, letting my eyes wander over artwork, looking for patterns, trying to see what I wonder may be there. At other times her writing is utterly profound. Her essay on consent, 'I Want You To Want Me To Want You' treads an incredibly sensitive area on the theme of consent recognising that despite cultural, generational and societal variation there is a way to explore this communication that can reduce harm and lead to better understandings of what it is to relate to each other.
I never coined the phrase, but it has stuck with me for years, but the time of the 'systems thinker' maybe over and now it we need to relate to our understanding of the world in terms of 'systems feeling'. No one will buy the method, because there isn't one but it feels a more natural way to interact with the world.
I still haven't told you what this is about have I? It's okay, it shows the difference between what I feel and what I can't quite form the words to articulate. I just know I appreciate the book.
August 15, 2026
Vreemd, inspirerend maar een beetje te zweverig... ook na een workshop warm data snap ik nog niet helemaal of ik het nu snap (misschien begreep ik als landschapsecoloog al dat relaties tussen organismen (en hun fysieke omgeving) minstens net zo belangrijk zijn als de organismen zelf...
May 1, 2024
This book broke my heart (and brain, a little bit) in the way that a new shoot breaks open a seed. It hurt at the time, but I feel like it was for a good cause.
March 27, 2025
Absolutely gorgeous. Really love the interweaving of art, poetry, and essays.
March 8, 2026
Wonderful book. ✨
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews