Return to Earth: how my 2020 sketch became a Latourian landing map

Bettina Eiben Künzli
30. Sept.
5 Min. Lesezeit

2025-09-30

Sometimes a drawing or mind map knows before we do.

Back in 2020 I scribbled a diagram to make sense of escalating arguments around me — Local/Identity on one side, Globalisation on the other, outrage eating attention, and a vague sense that “the future” had slipped out of reach. I called the poles Actor 1, Actor 2, Actor 3, and a hoped-for Actor 4. It was messy, urgent, and (I see it now) still trapped inside the very dynamics it criticised.

Five years and many iterations later, that sketch has become a calmer, clearer “return-to-Earth” map inspired by Bruno Latour’s last book, Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime. What changed is not only the graphic — my stance changed.

What I thought then

The conflict sat between two established camps (Actor 1 / Local–Identity and Actor 2 / Globalisation).
A third force — Actor 3 — kept hijacking attention with “out-of-this-world” noise (culture-war hype, performative outrage).
My impulse was to eliminate that noise so we could finally get to Actor 4, a better future.

The flaw?

Elimination is just more fuel for the same fire. Outrage begets outrage; attention feeds what it touches.

What I understand now (thank you, Latour)

Latour invites us to quit playing the Local vs. Global ping-pong and re-orient towards the Terrestrial — the thin Critical Zone where all earthly life actually happens. Instead of “winning” an abstract debate, he asks: Where do we land? What are the attachments we must name? Which protocols help us stabilise practice here?

So my map shifted:

From “eliminate” to “de-amplify / deflate attention” — stop feeding the out-of-this-world loop.
From two fighting poles to a third attractor: Terrestrial | Critical Zone (where to land).
From abstract ideals to practical pathways: re-describe attachments and re-align practices via landing protocols.

The gap that invites the hijack

Polarisation doesn’t just make conversation harder; it creates a serviceable gap.

The larger the distance between Local/Identity (Actor 1) and Globalisation (Actor 2), the more unattached people and practices sit in the middle without a shared frame. That attention gap is exactly where the out-of-this-world actor (Actor 3) thrives: they offer identity, outrage, or spectacle to bind what the two poles no longer hold together.

In Latour’s terms: when the overlap of attachments shrinks, the anti-programme gains an easy pathway. The remedy is not to pick a side but to grow the overlap by landing in the Terrestrial — naming attachments we actually share (soil, seasons, budgets, tools, rules, neighbours) and stabilising them with landing protocols.

Rule of thumb

Hijack risk ∝ polarisation distance × attention supply ÷ shared attachments.

shrink the distance, cut the oxygen on top, expand the overlap.

The class moment that clicked (Daniel Aeschbacher)

I still remember Daniel Aeschbacher’s session in DMI product design. He mapped Trump as the third actor: not the cause, but the hijacker of a gap. When Local/Identity and Globalisation pull so far apart that they no longer share a commons — no overlap of attachments, no routines in common — the unheld middle becomes easy prey. The more we perform polarities, the more an out-of-this-world actor can step in and “carry” the unaffiliated centre with outrage, spectacle, and simple answers.

The counter-move isn’t to pick a side louder. It’s to grow the overlap and land in the Terrestrial: name what we actually share and stabilise that overlap through landing protocols. Unity isn’t a slogan; it’s a practice.

When the overlap shrinks, the hijack risk rises. When the overlap grows, the hijack has nowhere to land.

Why a heart? Energy, unity, correspondence

When I drew the new flow, something surprising appeared: a heart shape.

Two arcs peel off from the noisy top edge, curve through RETHINK (left) and MOVE (right), and return to the tip — the Terrestrial. That shape is not decoration; it is the geometry of a return:

RETHINK → re-describe attachments: name what we actually depend on — soil, seasons, budgets, tools, rules, neighbours; not slogans.
MOVE → re-align practices: shift routines so they hold in the Critical Zone — governance rituals, meeting formats, maintenance habits, mutual obligations.
Spine → orientation → landing protocols: a calm, repeated sequence to bring us back when attention drifts.

The heart is a reminder: care is a method. Energy needs a circuit. If attention keeps spiralling upward (the out-of-this-world loop), the system runs hot and brittle. If we re-route energy back through RETHINK → MOVE, it returns to the Terrestrial and can circulate — care, maintenance, small agreements. Call it correspondence if you like: as above, so below. When we tidy our descriptions (above, in language and frames), our practices (below) become more liveable; when we repair our practices, our descriptions soften, too. The loop is the method.

From ANT to Down to Earth (and why that matters)

My early sketches borrowed vocabulary from Actor-Network Theory (ANT): actors/actants, anti-programme, OPP (obligatory passage point). That language was useful to describe what was happening.

Latour’s last book nudged me from description to orientation:

Keep the ANT insight (humans and non-humans co-act),
but choose an attractor: the Terrestrial.
Treat it as a shared OPP — a passage all projects must go through to be real, not merely rhetorical.

This is a gentle but decisive pivot from “Who is right?” to “Where do we land, together, in practice?”

How to use the map (in gardens, parishes, schools, teams)

Top band: Out-of-this-world (attention sink / escape) — de-amplify. Don’t feed it oxygen.
Side poles: Local / Identity ↔ Globalisation — acknowledge, but don’t camp there.
Heart-return flow: follow the two arcs:
1. RETHINK — re-describe attachments
2. MOVE — re-align practices
Spine: orientation → landing protocols (your concrete steps).
Landing site: Terrestrial | Critical Zone (where to land) — feed attention & resources here.

Pick one live issue and walk it through the map. Write the attachments. Decide one landing protocol you can repeat next month. That’s it. Small, repeatable landings beat big, performative announcements.

What changed in me

I stopped trying to win debates and started building routines.
I swapped drama for energy hygiene: de-amplify up there, re-invest down here.
I learned that careful descriptions (RETHINK) and tiny agreements (MOVE) are not delays; they are the work.

And yes — once you start landing, the map becomes less of a poster and more of a practice log.

Figure caption

Down to Earth landing map.

Attention is de-amplified from the out-of-this-world loop and routed through a heart-shaped return to the Terrestrial | Critical Zone. Left arc: re-describe attachments (RETHINK). Right arc: re-align practices (MOVE). The central spine marks orientation → landing protocols. The only way out is down to Earth.