Reflections from the World Ethic Forum 2023

Sep 13

The World Ethic Forum (WEFo) hosted the first gathering of Firekeepers in 2022. The organization as described on their website "is an emerging ecology for a worldview of interconnectedness and interbeing as a proposition to other existing pathways. It is a platform and container to inquire collectively into the question of: 'How do we come to a new responsibility and life-affirming relationship with ourselves, each other, and the natural world?' The next seven years are designed as a transdisciplinary process to deepen relationships across perceived divides, cultivate practices and build individual and shared capacities, explore potential leverage points, and enable small and larger actions."

As part of WEFo's work to co-creatively evolve it's way of being, Erin Dixon and John Bruce reflect on their recent experience participating within the gathering of Firekeepers in August 2023, and the ongoing, unfolding potential of the organization.

Those three words alone are kind of an interesting place to begin: world, ethic, forum. The notion of a forum – a space for exchange. Are we there to do something else? Does it become work? Whose work and to what end? Are the flows multi-directional? How do we show up, exchanging and listening – sharing – in multi-directional ways. It seems like the container wants to have guidelines and parameters, but also be open. Perhaps there's a tension which is natural in some ways. Why world? Is the container trying to be inclusive? I think that there are limits to collaboration. And I think that sometimes there needs to be a humbleness in terms of scope. Perhaps evoking that word ‘world’ is aspirational, a provocation. But then, in what ways is the organization being self-critical? It's not the World Economic Forum. It’s not exactly a response to that. It's rather a humble cohort of people that were assembled through a few people's rolodexes. And of course, the large question: what it might mean to really grapple with the notion of ethics? I wonder if an assumption exists that ethics are primarily about inclusivity, care and healing? The ethicist Bill Grace has said that if we wish to quickly reflect on our personal notions of ethics, we should first look at our calendars and bank accounts. Where and how do we show up, and why? What supports our ways of being? What do we invest in, how, and why?

When I answered the call to participate, I listened more internally, relationally, because I wasn't quite sure what it was fully, other than an inquiry about what it means for radically shared aliveness and an impulse that could lead us towards a renewed ethic. I didn't know, but the spirit of radically shared aliveness gave language and spoke to me about something I was following and reflecting on in my own life and ways of being, as well as within Reconciliation Canada and other organizations and spaces. As I remember or (re)knew myself, what does it mean to be, all my relations, a living relationship with the land and all beings as we're going through these types of changes? I felt called by the spirit of the land and the water.

I think there's something to be continued, to be listening into, about the essence of what calls to us around notions of place and the living creation stories of where things emerged from that can be veiled through history. Some of the organizers of the World Ethic Forum have been engaged in conversations for several years, trying to understand what was needed, how to bring forward a different type of forum and inquiry regarding what they experienced in Switzerland and across their spaces. To convene and host a space, a forum with what was needed now, in a way that embodied the essence of the inquiry? The engagement with the World Future Council and other core team became a bridge that grew to include a fire keepers circle to support the essence of the forum and core team. So now when I reflect about the spirit of the World Ethic Form in relationship to ‘radically shared aliveness’ it gives me a different view, as my friend Sita shares there's a lot that can happen when we constellate concepts together that can awaken creative power and a dreamt future that we carry together through time.

I think that's a really beautiful way to kind of sketch the contours of the potential.

I've been trying to ask myself, when I'm a witness or notice something that might need to be brought into awareness, or to be reflected on together to make sense, how are we held in the collective consciousness? For the World Ethic Forum, during the first year after our first gathering there was a lot of internal processes with the core team, trying to come into deep harmony and resonance to create an essence at the center, and a lot of beautiful energy went into that space. Through all of that work they came through it with thematic strands of shared practice across the firekeepers – the research strands.

We are now in a process of sense-making for the streams together, beginning to open conversations and open space around the participatory action research, and shaping that collectively. In this learning space we need each other to guide or to remind, reflect back. Perhaps you are grappling with this in the spirit of collective fabulation: what is the process of individual and collective reflexivity and how do we steward that in the process of the work?

There is a lot of resonance with these notions and what we're trying to do at The New School in our studio, Collective Fabulation. We can't just lay out approaches or methodologies or theories and say, “This is what it is, and this is what we're doing.” These things have to be grappled with in the spirit of collective fabulation. Constantly examined, reexamined, reimagined. There's a tension here, right? Like, how much looking inward? How much is that a part of the work? And that's kind of a rhetorical question. There's no answer for it. We're always looking inward and beginning with ourselves, and thinking about where and how the ‘I’ moves toward the collective. It's not an ‘either, or’ it's not a ‘one and done’. It's not like, “Well, yeah, I reflected for a minute now we're, we're moving outward, we're doing the work.” There's not a separation. But again, these are questions concerning our relationships, how we come together, or the approach, or the… I don't want to say mission or vision because I feel like those kinds of words are, first of all, they're somewhat corporate and they can be somewhat determined. They can collapse emergence and possibility. I'm not saying there's not value in them, but I often find myself hesitating to use them. There's something predetermined about them.

This reminds me of what we were talking about during the Transdisciplinary Design MFA Convening – the notion of privileging verbs instead of nouns. Nouns can be flat, not alive.

Yes. I'd rather say missioning and visioning because then it's open and perhaps “I don't know what it is,” right? It's not a noun. It's not “here's my mission statement,” and “here is the vision.” It's like, oh, well, we're visioning and we're missioning, together. If we're lucky, if we're lucky.

I feel energized and very called to come together around the water and the land – to come in and share across our dreams, ceremonies, experiences and knowledge, different ways of listening and in different ways to be in relationship. And that feels like it is starting in a very natural way to emerge, in what is really alive for some firekeepers and core team, which also brings forward some of the meaning and movements of the World Ethic Forum itself. We often reflect on community weaving, and living ecosystems as a potential field of care, practice and action – that it might provide for those that needed renewal ceremony, a sharing of wise practices, and capacity to inspire different movements towards collective change and transformation, new ways forward, or however we might frame that natural growth and flourishing. For me, the intention is renewing that call for a world ethics, for water and our relationship to water, and this represents, for me, Mother Earth and also beyond and into all of our relations.

I think that's really beautiful and useful. The relational frames as a way of a way of being in the work that's also being in our bodies and being of the earth. And to keep that central, because otherwise we can kind of spin off and become very disembodied and get caught up in theories and policies and debates. The working group that I participated in during the Firekeeper gathering – considering a responsible economy – unfolded within a healthy tension, vacillating, and spinning off into debates on issues and then coming back to listening to our belly knowledge, to the land, to the water. And realizing that we were treading in waters, all puns intended, that involve topics and theories and expertise that hundreds of thousands of other people held, perhaps in even more deep and meaningful ways. So, it's like, who are we to wax poetically about a responsible economy?

I think that is in the spirit of ethics, that it's part of being able to interweave the field and to bring forward work that has been done and the ongoing conversations. For me, an action of the Firekeepers is listening into the relational field, to understand how it may want to grow.

That's a really critical point you're making. When I think about the World Economic Forum or about the COP meetings, they seem to be gatherings of experts and governmental and institutional leaders. And that's not the invitation of the World Ethic Forum. The notion of weaving, and the notion of activating networks, or a network of networks, is a different kind of positionality and a different opportunity space. What might this mean for our participation as Firekeepers? What does this mean for our actions? What is at the heart of supporting and fortifying and nourishing the weaving?

I've started to feel that sense of responsibility. I am still listening, and listening to the land. But I couldn't quite sense how we might create a living container where the Firekeepers can also support how things potentially grow through the Forum and flourish from different sightlines – different pieces – without being overwhelmed.

When we talk about feedback loops, mycelium, that can nurture and that are our generative, cyclical, I feel like this is part of something that I was trying to make space for, and within my own healing, ‘listening into’ when things are needed. Like understanding a little bit more about participatory action research – to listen into it in its practice, as the World Ethic Forum is also learning around the nurturing of this type of knowledge gathering. I'm starting to feel that in order to be there I need to contribute in different ways. I was also curious about yourself, coming in at this second year phase – as strands of research are coming to form a wave, the appearance in physical. What are your thoughts around the seven research areas (listed below)? Do you feel there's anything missing, or if there could be another area? Just from your sight lines, from what you witnessed at the gathering.

Ethical Groundwork: exploring, excavating, and critically reflecting different ethical questions and possible perspectives of a world ethic — including required competencies — that enables radically shared aliveness and adapting and translating it to diverse contexts and scales.

Decolonization – Equity – Diversity – Inclusion: gesturing toward a future that transcends colonial patterns and integrates the awareness for an inclusive, equitable, and diverse society, including the sharpening of the definition of what our common understanding of these terms are and practices that embody that.

Healing – Restoration – Reconciliation: establishing (k)new, equal, and trusting relationships. It may include learning about the past and present, acknowledging and remedying harms that have taken place in the past, and taking action to build a just and equitable future for all.

Stewardship of Bioregions – Agriculture and Food: taking into account that political, cultural, and economic systems are more sustainable and just if they are organized around naturally defined areas (i.e., flora, fauna, landforms, climate, and watersheds) and working towards a world in which borders are set according to ecological and cultural “permeable boundaries”.

Youth, Children, Elders, Parents – Intergenerational Dialogue: bringing together the voices and wisdom of different generations and sitting with the big(ger) questions of our times. Leaning into regenerative attitudes and steps together while learning through passing knowledge *up and down* the different age groups.

Kinship – Relating to all Living Beings: engaging in a world filled with relationships and rooting ourselves in cosmovision where all forms of beings - including watersheds, forests, mountains, animals, air, and so many other expressions of life - are acknowledged and respected equally. Hence adapt our actions and ways of beings accordingly.

Responsible Economy – New forms of Economy: working towards new and responsible forms of economy through exploring their required structures, ingredients, and contextual implementation on a micro and macro level.

That's a great question, I would have to revisit my notes and memories and really meditate on this. There's that great question, what is missing? Or are there certain areas or topics that are held with a kind of dominance or a hyper-legibility that serves or doesn't serve? These are all good questions that I don't have quick answers to, or a quick gut reaction to. What I do have a gut reaction to though is going back to this notion of the weaving. It came up in our working group – responsible economy – from Carlos Alvarez Pereira, the Vice President of The Club of Rome. He was the one who actually delivered that line that I kind of paraphrased a few minutes ago: there are hundreds of thousands of people, much smarter than us in this working group, thinking on what a responsible economy might be. He wasn't saying this as though we should just walk away, he wasn’t questioning our value or saying, ‘we don't belong in the conversation’. He was raising the question, “What is our role in this?” For me, this is the question that the organization needs to grapple with collectively, in a more vociferous, messy, dedicated, participatory way. And again, for me, it goes back to this question of weaving.

Weaving. Like a heart. How you feel that that happens… within let's say the space of what people might call truth and reconciliation, or transformative or transitional justice – hearing the truth or, you know, where we start to be awakened by what's needed or what we can see? And then there's this yearning, or something in us. How do we participate? A yearning, gravity of wanting to contribute. I'm working with a young woman right now in the work I am involved with around life promotion and suicide prevention. She's a college student, going into her final year and she wants to contribute into the space, but she reflected that she doesn’t know how. She often expresses that she doesn't know how to make meaning of her experience, to work toward what's needed? Or “how do I bring my voice?” But she brings such a critical offering based on where she comes from. I've been trying to listen into those spaces that might provide her with an opportunity, next step that will act like guidance toward what might be beneficial for her to open up into this space. But I think there's also, and to speak into your conversation with Carlos, something there that asks, “who are we, and how do we support each other?” And how do we bring each other along through a shared inquiry, and also support the development of what's really alive for us and where we're really called – the ways in which we might nurture and build our capacities to show up.

What might ‘collective’ really mean and do?

ERIN

There was beautiful research led by Allanah Young, with Elders through the University of British Columbia Big House. The inquiry was informed through interviews about the nature or the spirit of leadership, unbundling it. Many insights referred to notions and gestures of gifts – helping each other as a community to bring forward each other's gifts and skills and purpose in order to participate in meaningful ways. How can we bring each other forward? This is similar to that concept of ‘namwayut’, or ‘we are all one’ within the essence of Reconciliation Canada, and the Elders guidance on remembering and starting with who we are as we return to the circle - dialogue. I can't be myself until you're yourself fully. We are one and we're constantly moving through each other in that way.

I think what you're naming is very critical.

I could see her face – this young woman I was working with – and the spirit of yearning. I think that when we start to become healthier, we are awakened to a critical responsibility.

I think that what you're naming – this keyword ‘yearning’ – is really vital. It has been coming up for me a lot recently, and through many different streams of conversations and work that I am doing. What I'm hearing, or at least how I'm hearing it, is reminding me of the value of an embodied and spirit-centered way of learning and knowing, through vigilant, rigorous, reflective practices that includes the ‘I’. And the need, the value, to grapple with where I can see the ‘I’ as yearning and also as moving toward the collective. What can that mean for my sense of self, my identity, my position, my role, my responsibility to myself and the collective, and where do I fear that I'm losing something? Where, and why, do I fear I'm giving something away or risking something? And how conscious can I be around those things coming up?

I was having coffee with the amazing, retired police officer, peace officer yesterday who has been a mentor for me. He spoke at the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls, 2SLGBTQQIA Commission and though I appreciate the needed focus - I would say that we have missed including men, but just to focus that he had no problem speaking into the truth of the organization, and acknowledge and take responsibility for all things in the spectrum, and it actually lifted the leadership status of this specific police force within the process, because of their capacity to reflect on the truth of the organization, speak to it, and have it witnessed. They were presented with an eagle feather for their contributions in that space. There's an impulse to bring in a person that represents this space, and then speak in a way that doesn't reflect the truth in order to end it or present a mixed narrative. And there's so much I feel you said this before, moral injury, and feels ethically, so much loss, so much potential loss of true collective transformation.

We need spaces within spaces, whether that's small circles within change movements where you can actually deeply listen and support in wayfinding. I know a lot of people use constellation work, I think that's one of the contemporary practices, and historically for us we were in circles in our different lodges, tipis, big houses. Where you have a circle where people speak fully into what they're sensing within the process, that allows us to track and wayfind, there might be fears, or questions opening up. How do we create a space in a way that there's true safety, like a shared ceremony where all of those things are invited. It can be a challenging space.

Spaces within spaces, scale – the scale of the container, where we can listen deeply and express in ways that feel held. I get nervous around this word safe. I understand that safety is a real thing. But I'm hearing Sloan Leo in my ear saying, "I don't believe in safe space." Rather, we're always trying to navigate ways to be. To be harmed less. I don't even want to say "less vulnerable" because I want to be vulnerable. I want to take risks. I don't want to be harmed. But I also know that the work is going to be destabilizing, and I might struggle and I might even suffer. I don't want to erase suffering at the expense of learning and growing and evolving. I'm not saying it's a prerequisite.

Yeah, you're right. This is something very, very important to name. Feels like the inquiry – experimenting through research – collective fabulation. Perhaps this is a frame along with the other seven themes of WEFo. Perhaps creating an eight-pointed star blanket.

Perhaps that's the container that would hold and elevate these things we've discussed... around yearning and weaving. Perhaps WEFo isn't a gathering of leaders, rather it's an action of leadership as inquiry. Radically shared aliveness as fearless fabulation.

I often question that I'm trying to take these experiments, such as collective fabulation, too far, too fast. I question that higher education is even the right place to be doing this. Maybe I'm pushing things too far. I try to be guided through my own yearning to actually be participating with people in situations, co-creating narratives and counter narratives for transformation, and not just through circulating platitudes or postures that, even if they have good intentions, don't have any teeth. I often fear that we can get way too busy working on ‘less bad’ and that this obfuscates our energy and attention toward any possible efforts for transformation.

Where are the messy edges? How do we really create space?

***

Erin Dixon, Giizhigaate, Ashati Sakahikan, belongs to the crystalline waters of Beneshi Okaninissing (Skeleton Lake) in the traditional territories of the Anishinabek Peoples in Williams Treaty territory. Bridging worlds and reweaving pathways towards what is possible and the essence of what is being called to life. She serves as the Director of Knowledge and Indigenous Leadership for Reconciliation Canada (RC) . She is faculty for Royal Rhodes University and the Banff Center for Arts and Creativity. In addition to her work with RC, she is a teacher and director on the board for Feather Carriers: Leadership for Life Promotion and within the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention, and leads the development of First Nations and Indigenous Leadership within the International Leadership Association.

John A. Bruce is a researcher, strategist, educator and filmmaker. He is Associate Professor of Design Strategies at Parsons School of Design, The New School, where he also serves as Co-Director of the Transdisciplinary Design MFA program, and the Consortium for Transdisciplinarity. His work is informed through explorations of presence, proximity, temporality, participation, exchange, identification, reciprocity, invitation, care and hospitality. He recently co-led the End of Life project (films, installations, and research) the result of 6 years spent with 5 people at various stages of dying. His recent monograph is Participatory Design and Social Transformation: Images and Narrative of Crisis and Change. He was a 2015/16 Fellow at the Graduate Institute for Design Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School.

John Bruce

Reflections from the World Ethic Forum 2023

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