A shared starting point.
Environmental, educational and public-benefit work belong in the same conversation. N0 is a place to begin that conversation — and explore what can follow.
A starting point
N0 could mean the number 0, the first of all, the origin of everything, what we'd call in French "la base" (i.e., the basics).
And maybe "la base" should be to consider other humans, other species, our environment, and the way we're all interconnected.
Then to acknowledge that we do have an impact on them, and try to understand how.
We may live in areas where our over-comfort doesn't bother us much, while it is turning the lives of those who have the least impact and the least comfort into a constant adaptation just to survive, when they even have that chance. And all the beauty we, as humans, have the privilege to admire can slowly turn into vanishing, soulless views.
It could also be a massive NO to inequalities, pollution, exploitation, overconsumption, destruction, indifference, and all the things we somehow ended up accepting because they became normal enough.
It could also be a NO to the idea that our comfort should systematically come at someone else's expense.
It could also be about going back to zero, questioning what we call normal, and trying to rebuild things from a better base.
It could also mean aiming for something that doesn't exist yet.
It could be all that, but it is just a silly joke born in 2020 between 2 silly dudes who thought no, or only very few people, had had the same silly idea before, when in reality so many foreigners in Japan probably had.
But apart from its name, it means all that. Truly.
N0 doesn't actually exist. It is a fictive, hypothetical level of language proficiency that would supposedly be above N1, which is the highest proficiency level in Japanese.
It could translate into trying to achieve a lot and do our best, strive for more, try hard to change the world, in a good way, and question some of the systems currently in place.
Not because the name itself needs to mean everything.
It could mean all of that, or none of it.
Anything could mean anything.
What matters is to stand for the right, deep values, not only for how things are shown, named or presented.
How we'd like to move forward.
Listen first.
A useful idea starts with understanding the people and places it concerns.
Connect the dots.
Make room for different kinds of knowledge, skills and lived experience.
Keep learning.
Be open about what is known, what is uncertain and what the next step could be.