How to transform how I am in the world?

I first became aware of the “perverse paradox” of climate change in one of the very first lectures of my Master’s degree programme, in Paris, during the autumn of 2007. The lecturer stressed the utter unfairness of climate change: those least responsible for it, particularly in the Global South, are already (and would keep being) most immediately and heavily impacted – whereas the countries historically most to blame would be hit only later, and probably more lightly. I still remember the tension and indignation in my body, as I heard this. Full of righteous anger, I decided to try and do something to prevent or attenuate this tragedy. This led me to become involved in the field of sustainability, as a consultant working on greenhouse gas emissions assessments. A few years later, I grew disillusioned with the “sustainable development” discourse and engaged in other pursuits, in the fields of arts and translation. Although I remained intent on creating social change, I lost touch with the feeling of rage I had experienced originally.

Until March 2020, when I met Nontokozo Sabic (Nonty) during a collapse-themed retreat in Russia. I had just given a presentation on the topic of societal collapse and Deep Adaptation. She expressed deep regret that I had focused on the impacts of collapse on rich/industrialised societies, and silenced the experiences of collapse on peoples/regions/countries of the Global South, as a result of European imperialism and colonialism.

Hearing her, I felt a tight knot of defensiveness in my belly, and the urge to argue with her, and justify myself. But something in Nonty helped me not to act out these impulses. It probably had to do with how she voiced her feelings of deep pain, disillusionment and weariness when confronted – again and again – to the willful ignorance of white Europeans like me, especially in environmental movements, on questions of systemic racism and colonialism. I could perceive the depth of her grief.

So I admitted that she was right about my presentation, and acknowledged that I had lost sight of the issue of climate (in)justice that had been so motivating to me originally. I also asked her what I could do to better educate myself on these topics. We eventually agreed to work together and try to raise awareness of these systemic issues within the Deep Adaptation Forum (DAF).

A few months later, following discussions involving Sasha, Wendy, Kat, and then Nonty, Katie, and myself, the six of us launched the DAF Diversity & Decolonising circle in August 2020.

Grappling with racism and white supremacy

The first event put together by our circle, in November 2020, was a 3-day intensive anti-racism training programme, designed and presented by Nonty (with support from two other co-facilitators), and geared towards white-bodied active participants throughout the Deep Adaptation Forum. Over thirty people took part in it, including myself.

The training felt very rich and well-held, which helped me to engage in it fully. In particular, Nonty’s ability to be candid and vulnerable about the impacts of racism in her own life enabled me to allow myself to lay down my defenses and be more vulnerable in the presence of others.

Thanks to this training, I learned a lot about the interpersonal, internalised, institutional and systemic dimensions of racism, and realised the extent to which my whole being had been contaminated by this ideology. For example, I thought back on how my education had taught me to distrust or make fun of classmates of North African origins as a child, and prevented me from making friends with non-white people. I also realised how little I tend to think of the topic of racism, of my own skin colour, or other dimensions of my social privileges ordinarily – I have always had the option not to think of such issues.

As a result of the training, I set myself the three following objectives (which I jotted down in my notebook):

• “Fearlessly act to decolonise DAF;
• Fearlessly remain aware of my own patterns of racism and privilege, invite critical feedback and thank people for it – then change these patterns as much as possible;
• Work to consciously change what DA is about and make it much more about matters of race and global justice.”

After the training, we sent out a feedback form to all attendees. I analysed the results as part of my PhD research, and wrote a report based on these results. The main findings for me were:

• That the majority of training participants seem to had been successfully disturbed out of their usual ways of thinking and being, brought to acknowledge their privilege and racism, and connected emotionally with the impact of systemic racism on BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour);
• That this awakening had brought most attendees to consider various ways in which they might change their practice and/or start new initiatives in order to help dismantle racism, within or outside of DAF (although several were unsure what they could or should do);
• That feedback on the training and especially the facilitators was overwhelmingly positive, although three respondents didn’t connect with the approach that was chosen and voiced constructive criticism about the training.

This felt validating and encouraging to me. I think it also created important momentum for the work of the D&D circle.

Following this training, Heather Luna introduced workshops on white supremacy culture in DAF. This was the occasion for me to learn more deeply about these other dimensions of the white/modern worldview, which are present in everyone – including myself: for example, I became more aware of my perfectionist tendencies, my fear of open conflict, or my urge to “be right” and to consider myself exceptional.

These workshops also gave me a critical lens through which to examine related emerging phenomena, such as the rise of ecofascism – which, like white supremacy culture, is far from being only the domain of violent extremists: the seeds of such forms of “othering” may actually be present even in the most benign, “common-sense” remarks.

For example, I was alerted about a video produced by an influential DAF participant, a portion of which could be viewed as reproducing this kind of thinking. I did a critical discourse analysis of this portion of the video, and deconstructed what I saw as problematic about it. I shared this analysis with the rest of the D&D circle. After having discussed it and refined my analysis, we shared it privately with the author of the video, and invited them to a conversation. They acknowledged the passage was problematic, and edited it out from the video. They also accepted to meet with myself and two other D&D circle members to discuss the issue. We had a fruitful conversation.

I realised that without the critical awareness developed in me through the workshops and conversations taking place in the circle, I would very likely not have noticed the problematic aspects of the video. I felt better educated, and glad to have taken part in this mutual learning process.

Later on, I discovered that the author of this video decided to integrate the problematic portion that we discussed into a course they ran, in order to invite participants to critically assess it. This also felt gratifying, and I appreciated their openness to criticism.

Learning from conflict

In early 2021, conflict broke out within the D&D circle, and within the DAF core team. It was largely centered on questions of white supremacy culture, and how to express one’s awareness of it when it manifests in others, among other things. This difficult situation lasted several weeks. It was a very painful time for everyone involved, including the person who stopped being part of the circle and the core team as a result, and who is a Person of Colour.

It was a very distressing time. Although I tried to act as an informal mediator, I was painfully conscious of my own responsibility in the emergence of this state of affairs, especially as a result of my conflict-aversion and lack of confidence in my own intuition.

Eventually, I participated (with the rest of the D&D circle) in writing a blog post, in which we presented a summary of our circle’s aims, what we had done so far, our future aspirations, and in which we recognised some of our failings. I was also involved in co-authoring another text, which was shared with all DAF volunteer groups, and in which we in the Core Team gave more details about some of the mistakes we had made during the conflict situation.

Writing these texts was slow, painful, and at times even agonisingly difficult, in view of the strong emotions present in all of us. However, their publication felt liberating to me, as it enabled both the D&D Circle and the Core Team to exercise more transparency and accountability, thus interrupting some of our usual white supremacy culture patterns (e.g. defensiveness, fear of open conflict, etc.); by doing so, I also felt we were modelling some of the courageous vulnerability that Nonty encouraged us to cultivate in her anti-racism course. These texts also helped to bring the conflict to a conclusion, albeit an uneasy one.

As a result of the difficult emotions brought about in the course of this first conflict, more tensions erupted between two participants within the D&D circle, and led to one of them leaving the circle for a while. Thankfully, another member of the circle stepped up to facilitate a conflict transformation process between them, which eventually led to their reconciliation.

A few months later, our circle reflected on this episode. Thanks to the experience which my fellow members brought back to the circle, I learned about the conflict resolution process they followed; how the trust, strong relationships, and sense of purpose cultivated in the circle had been instrumental to resolving the situation; and how aspects of the conflict could be seen as manifestations of white supremacy culture at play. We recorded our conversation on the topic, and I edited the video documenting these insights, which we will soon share in the network.

Around the same time, another situation of conflict emerged during a workshop I co-presented, as a member of the D&D circle, on the topic of the silenced stories of marginalisation and racism and colonisation that are present in people’s lives – both in the Global North, and in the Global South. One participant, who self-identified as Indigenous, experienced a sense of discrimination and lack of safety in a breakout room during one of the sessions.

As workshop co-host, I invited this person to express her feelings to me and another person, and apologised for what had happened. The person expressed appreciation for our time and willingness to make reparations, and said they felt heard, although they still experienced difficult feelings. From this experience, I gained further awareness of the challenges associated with holding space for conversation around such charged topics, particularly when both white and BIPOC participants take part together in these discussions, and the need for more careful and skilled facilitation of such spaces. I plan to bring these insights to any future workshops in which I am involved.

Racism, colonialism, and climate change

Soon after its creation, we in the D&D circle started getting together in monthly “learning circles,” to share some of the latest insights and discoveries that occurred for us in our respective learning journeys around the topics of racism, decolonisation, etc. These sessions have been very precious to my own learning.

Ahead of one of these conversations, one of us shared a link to a new report published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation, titled “Racism and Climate (in)Justice” (written by Abimbola, Aikins, Makhesi-Wilkinson, and Roberts, 2021). I read the report, and strongly reconnected with the sense of outrage and indignation I had first experienced over ten years ago. I found that the report gave a very comprehensive and well-documented overview of how our climate and ecological predicament is intimately linked to the history of racism and colonialism. Although I already had some background knowledge of this, the report helped me to connect many dots and gain a deeper awareness of these connections.

I shared some of the things I had learned in the D&D circle, and voiced my wish to spread this knowledge more widely. Someone suggested I write a blog post about the report. It sounded like a good idea, so I wrote this text. On this foundation, I also wrote the script for a short online film which I hope will present this information in a more accessible format. I am currently working on this project with my partner, with some help from a volunteer who got in touch with us via the DA Facebook group.

Towards activating my own vital compass

In late October 2021, Prof Yin Paradies from Deakin University presented a workshop for DAF participants, in collaboration with the D&D circle, titled “Indigenous Perspectives on Decolonial Futures.” I attended, and was glad to see that over two dozen participants had signed up, which is quite good for DAF.

I found his presentation very rich and thought-stimulating. Some of the most impactful content (for me) was sourced from the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures collective – for example, this quote from Vanessa Machado de Oliveira’s book, Hospicing Modernity:

“Before anything different can happen, before people can sense, hear, relate, and imagine differently, there must be a clearing, a decluttering, an initiation into the unknowable; and a letting go of the desires for certainty, authority, hierarchy, and of insatiable consumption as a mode of relating to everything. We will need a genuine severance that will shatter all projections, anticipations, hopes, and expectations in order to find something we lost about ourselves, about time/space, about the depth of the shit we are in, about the medicines / poisons we carry. This is about pain, about death, about finding a compass, an antidote to separability. This is about being ready to go—to befriend death—before we are ready to return home and to live as grown-ups.”

These words were intriguing to me. I appreciated how they pointed to what goes on beyond the realm of the intellect, to an attitude of being that is existentially steeped into the awareness of the predicament – an attitude rooted in the body and in all the affective dimensions of one’s being. I read this passage as an invitation to identify the deep unconscious drives that move me in unhelpful ways, to wrestle with these desires, and start undoing their grip on how I am, think, feel and move in the world. This felt like the kind of radical change I had set out to explore and try to help bring into the world – a change that goes beyond the cognitive realm.

Previously, I had been exposed on several occasions to the work of the GTDF collective, for example when Jem Bendell published his article on the ideology of ESCAPE, with which GTDF engaged in a fruitful conversation. But I hadn’t taken the time to read the collective’s production more fully.

In January 2022, I learned from the DA Quarterly newsletter that a series of workshops was planned around the book from which the excerpt above was sourced. I decided the time had come to dive deeper into this work – and so did several other members of the D&D circle.

Reading the book ahead of the workshop, my feeling of resonance and connection with the approach which I perceived in the quote from Prof Paradies’ workshop intensified dramatically. The book gave me a feeling of integration and deepening of many ideas and insights I had previously received from these ideas and approach. What spoke to me most powerfully was a particular flavour of radicality (which is all about developing a keen awareness of our individual and collective shit, taking stock of its omnipresence, and contemplating the possibility of human extinction as a result of our species drowning in its own shit) – but with humour and humility woven deep into it, rather than combativeness.

Above all, a key takeaway message for me was no one living a “modern” lifestyle, especially not a privileged European like me, can make any claims to innocence or purity in the face of our predicament. This allowed me to finally “get” more fully what I had heard my former Core Team colleague Katie Carr say back in 2019, as I was sharing my anger with her about the crimes committed by fossil fuel companies:

“We are all responsible. None of us is innocent.”

At the time, this landed in me as a kind of relativism that I felt unfairly lumped everyone into the same basket: big oil CEOs who funded climate disinformation, and environmental activists who dedicated their lives to protecting the living world. Now, I understand the term “responsibility” differently: in this case, I think it has to do with an attitude of unconditional commitment to compost the shit that is within and around all of us who have been raised in modernity-coloniality – and limitless accountability in doing so.

Following the invitation from one of the book’s exercises, I wrote snippets from the text “Co-Sensing with Radical Tenderness” on bits of paper, and pasted them all around my living room in the hope to help them seep into my consciousness. I focused on the parts that I comprehended the least. One of these lines I copied down reads:

“Seek sense-fullness rather than meaningfulness.”

This felt intriguing, because “doing meaningful things” or “living my life meaningfully” has been one of my chief personal commandments – it might even be the attitude I feel most wedded to. It is at the root of my deciding to embark on my PhD research: I want to do something that makes me feel connected with a higher purpose (to be in service to life and other humans) – and not give primacy to things like material comfort, safety, notoriety, or egotistical forms of consumptive enjoyment. So why not pursue meaningfulness?

In the hope of getting to the bottom of this, I read another book published by the GTDF collective – Towards Scarring our Collective Soul Wound, by Cree scholar Cash Ahenakew. This passage seemed to address my question:

“Indigenous ways of being and experiencing reality, which are not based on the human versus nature separation, sense being as grounded in relationality, a form of woven entanglement that involves intellect, emotion, body, and spirit. It is important to remember that this is not a concept or a cognitive construct (knowledge) that commands our bodies to feel connected with the land. In these Indigenous ways of being, it is the land that commands the body, because the body is part of the land. Language, thoughts, songs, and dreams also come from the land. The unconscious is located in the land. My body is the land, the other-than-humans are the land, the plants are the land, the earth is the land, the wider cosmos is also the land. Although we can have useful stories about the land and be intimate with it, it is ultimately unknowable, not just unknown. We are an extension of the land and part of its different temporalities.

I argue that this form of existence relies on a different neurobiological configuration with a different neuropsychology, and possibly a different neurochemistry and different neurofunctionality than what is generally configured through processes of socialization within modern Western societies. Through this distinct configuration the relationship with the world is not mediated by meaning or self-regulation. Existing as an extension of a living land relies on other activated senses, which may or may not “make sense” in knowledge that can be expressed in words, Western expectations for concepts, or Western scientific literature. The Cartesian maxim “I think, therefore I am” becomes “I land (I.e. come from the land), therefore I land (I.e. return to the land).”….

I also wonder what psychoanalysis would look like from the perspective of land-based relational entanglement. Western psychoanalysis takes the individuated human body and psyche as the starting point of theorizations, restricting its focus to meaning and consciousness. What would be possible if instead the land was the starting point? What would be possible if the starting point was something that manifests the land in its organic form (the force that makes matter possible), something that is beyond linear time, space, and form? What if we could sensorially perceive ourselves to be connected with everything, beyond conceptualizations?

There is a useful distinction in the work of Suely Rolnik that can help to shed light on the re-activation of our sense of entangled relationality… Inspired by the Guarani cosmo-vision of Teko Porã, Rolnik distinguishes between an internal symbolic-categorical compass (that works through indexing reality in language) and a vital compass that helps us be part of and affected by the forces of the world in an unmediated way. Modern schooling and modern society in general have reinforced the symbolic-categorical compass to the point where we want to have total control of the world (by codifying it) and total control of our relationships with/in the world. In other words, we want the world to fit into our boxes in order for us to feel secure. This over-codification is a form of consumption that ends up objectifying and killing the world … From this perspective, if we can’t get the world to fit our expectations, the alternative is to (symbolically) withdraw from it. The symbolic-categorical compass that drives these desires for the totalization of knowledge and the control of relationships takes up all the space and energy and it does not leave room for the vital compass to be developed and used. If, within modernity, we derive satisfaction from certainty, coherence, control, authority, and (perceived) unrestricted autonomy, we also miss out on the vitality that is gained from encountering the world (and ourselves in it) in its plurality and indeterminacy. Modernity-coloniality makes us feel insecure when we face uncertainty and when our codifications of the world and the stability they represent are challenged.”

(p.21-24 – my emphasis)

These words reminded me of an experience I had a few months ago. On the winter solstice of 2021, I went on a hike with two of the people I love the most. The winter was so mild that only the very crest of the mountain was capped in snow. It was a beautiful day. We decided to make this a special occasion, and to consume psychedelics before we walked – it was the first time that we ever did so together.

When we reached the top of the mountain, we found it was crowned with huge wind turbines. Something happened in me. I felt hit by a powerful sensation – a shock – a visceral, inchoate flow of energy that raged through my chest and my abdomen like molten lava for the rest of the hike. Somehow, the flow spoke to me, or evoked something in me. Later that day, I wrote down in my diary the parts of this message I had received that I felt able to tentatively articulate into words (reductive as these may be):

“Remember what you already know – and trust your gut

Now is a time to make a stand

Life is also full of tragedy

There is nothing to fix

It’s time for you to come into your power – and this power is about reconnecting with your anger, and with that wild instinctive side of you.”

For the rational, sceptical guy on my “bus” (to use the GTDF metaphor), who tends to be in the driving seat, it is all too easy to rationalise these words: I don’t believe that wind turbines will “save the world” anymore – on the contrary, I think they are instrumentalised as part of a vast, harmful illusion of “energy transition” or “sustainability.” So it was only natural that I would experience disgust and anger at seeing the beautiful mountaintop disfigured by these machines. Besides, I was inviting something special to manifest itself from the moment I took the psychedelic substances – anything would do. So the turbines could have just been a pretext for something to emerge in me. And on top of that, I was also already experiencing some anger and irritation as a result of a previous encounter with a couple of rude people earlier on the path.

Nonetheless…

Other bus passengers cannot keep but wonder – could this energy have been the voice of the “vital compass” Ahenakew mentions above? Could this be the kind of “sense-fulness” that is referred to in “Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness” – a way of feeling affected by the forces of the world in an unmediated way, and letting oneself be guided by them? And if so, how may I learn to better let go of my symbolic-categorical compass, and instead of seeking meaningfulness (and indexing the world in language), learn to maintain myself open to the land of which I am an extension?

(Openly sharing these musings feels vulnerable and even dangerous, given the tendency that Westerners like me have had of instrumentalising and consuming Indigenous practices and forms of knowledge, particularly plant medicines. I am conscious that what I wrote above could very well be understood as an expression of my desire to appear “woke,” knowledgeable, virtuous, etc. But while I know this subconscious desire is part of me, I sense-think (corazono, sienti-pienso) that I am trying to write from a place of curiosity and inquiry, and not as an expression of this desire… I might be wrong though 🙂 )

It feels important to share these ramblings and new questions that emerged in me because I feel they might be pointing to a new generative path for me to start exploring; and as such, they form an integral part of my learning journey. And I suspect that some practices that are being actively developed within DAF, such as Earth Listening, or Wider Embraces, could start playing an increasingly important role in my life going forward.

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