Existential Democracy
An opportunity to meet and support Ukrainian civil society
An extraordinary event is happening two months from now in Kyiv, organised by The New Thinking School in Ukraine in association with Emerge, one of Perspectiva’s partnership projects. The event takes place from September 25-29 on the grounds of the stunning venue of the Saint Sophia Cathedral. It is a rare chance to enjoy the hospitality and inspiration of The Ukrainian Integral Community and more details can be found here. There are still tickets available.
The post that follows gives some context for the event.
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Hello. It’s been 884 days since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
-Victoria Derbyshire on the latest episode of BBC Ukrainecast, July 26, 2024
I’ve been listening to BBC’s Ukrainecast since February 24, 2022, when Russia began its attempted full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The podcast always starts with the number of days since that moment, as if the presenters and listeners are still caught in a spasm of disbelief that it happened - that a larger country invaded a smaller country on false pretexts for imperial ambition - and that it’s still happening: we have war in Europe again.
On the eve of the invasion, the American journalist and expert on Eastern Europe Anne Applebaum wrote the following prescient words:
I am not romantic about Zelensky, nor am I under any illusions about Ukraine, a nation of 40 million people, among them the same percentages of good and bad people, brave and cowardly people, as anywhere else. But at this moment in history, something unusual is happening there. Among those 40 million, a significant number—at all levels of society, all across the country, in every field of endeavor—aspire to create a fairer, freer, more prosperous country than any they have inhabited in the past. Among them are people willing to dedicate their lives to fighting corruption, to deepening democracy, to remain sovereign and free. Some of those people are willing to die for these ideas.
The clash that is coming will matter to all of us, in ways that we can’t yet fathom. In the centuries-long struggle between autocracy and democracy, between dictatorship and freedom, Ukraine is now the front line—and our front line too.
A few weeks later, Applebaum tweeted “Something has changed”, referring to pictures of mass gatherings throughout European cities in support of Ukraine. The Portuguese author and politician Bruno Maçães explained: “Europe as a whole has fallen in love with Ukraine and sees the country as our brother. History is made of these moments too.”
These sentiments were a response to Ukraine’s courage, not least the famous “We Are Here” video posted by Ukraine’s political leadership when many expected them to flee:
More generally there has been a sense of everyone doing what had to be done, and an ‘explosion of social trust’ that resulted in extraordinary solidarity, efficiency and efficacy across Ukrainian civil society. As months went by, people also came to understand the qualities of Ukrainian character, intellect and humour.
For those relatively new to matters relating to Ukraine, there are many hours of edification from Timothy Snyder’s lectures at Yale University, where he expounds on why Ukraine is such a fascinating and world-historical place. For now, please take just a few minutes to listen to his answer to how we will come to view Ukraine in 2062, Ukraine’s crucial but mostly hidden role in world history, and why he believes the war with Russia is what he calls ‘an axial event’. Snyder argues that one of many reasons Ukraine matters is that when democracy is waning around the world, democratic countries see and remember, through the example of Ukraine, that the heart of the democratic project is not ultimately about voting or elections, but an affirmation of values grounded in courage.
Snyder also reminds us that history is not just about East and West with Ukraine in between, as it was between Stalinism and Nazism. It’s also north and south, at the centre of Viking trading routes to the Near East. Ukraine’s famous black soil and status as a ‘bread basket’ for the world goes back to providing food for Athens when the democratic project began there. The country is truly a nexus for world history. In Synder’s words:
“When we look at the history of Ukraine, it’s often not seen because it’s so central….it has been so important to world history that we have had trouble seeing it….This is not the first time Ukraine has been important in world history. It’s just the first time that people have noticed how important it might be.”
A question that mattered when the invasion began and still needs to be asked, therefore, is this:
How can we help Ukraine?
National governments give weapons, non-governmental organisations provide humanitarian assistance, charities support refugees, and some offer financial donations. But what else can be done? Continuing to pay attention to the issue matters, but I confess that my engagement with the issue has ebbed and flowed. I played chess against Ukrainians for many years and visited Kyiv in 2019 so Ukraine has always been a real, vivid and valued place for me, and I know people directly affected. For a few months, I did what I could to keep the issue salient among my personal and professional networks, but as the months have rolled on the issue has slipped out of what John Vervaeke calls my ‘salience landscape’.
And yet there is a good case for fighting to keep it there because the issue is not going away and remains all too real for millions of Ukrainians, with consequences for all of Europe and beyond. There is no obvious end to the war in sight, and Ukrainians have to keep living in the suspended animation of what looks increasingly like a frozen conflict. In that context, if you are particularly touched and inspired by Ukraine’s plight and bravery, you might feel moved to offer the gift of your presence, to let them know they are not forgotten or abandoned. If you can support Ukraine’s efforts in a way that stands out and reflects a non-ordinary contribution, I am writing to highlight an opportunity that might, for the right people, prove to be the trip of a lifetime.
My colleague, Ivo Mensch, will soon be in Kyiv to prepare and will outline his motivation in the next post a few days from now. While parental responsibilities mean I am not going personally, and Perspectiva has no direct responsibility for the event, I know the organisers and believe in the value of what they offer. While Kyiv continues to attract foreign visitors and is considered relatively safe, it is still the capital city of a country at war. It therefore seems timely for me to say a few words about the current status of the Emerge project and why it makes sense to use it to support civil society in Ukraine in this way.
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The Emerge project was initiated in 2018 by The Ekskäret Foundation in Stockholm, the Co-Creation Loft in Berlin and Perspectiva in London. We noticed that across Northern Europe many people working in a diverse range of fields – in media, education, enterprise, technology, arts and politics – shared an emerging sensibility that went beyond these particular fields and highlighted connections between them.
The sensibility has historical, philosophical, aesthetic, cultural, political and spiritual aspects. People drawn to Emerge tend to sense that, as Ivo puts it, “collectively we are living a life that no longer exists”. The world of the Bretton Woods settlement, the UN Declaration of Human Rights and our framework of nation-states, the rule of law and purportedly reliable market mechanisms appear to be unable to adapt – at a fundamental level of design, values, coordination and mandate – to the new internet-mediated information system it has created, the ecological strain it has generated, and the levels of inequality and concentration of financial power it has permitted.
We are therefore all caught up in a gradual but quickening transition into a different kind of world that is ominous in many ways – ecological collapse and fascism loom large – but it is still fundamentally up for grabs. We should expect the unexpected, the unrecognisable, and the unfathomable, but without assuming it will all be bad, and doing what we can to ensure it isn’t. The Ukrainian network, in particular, is quick to say we should not wish away the hard-earned achievements of open societies, or take democracy for granted. Indeed they are fighting and dying for those things.
We decided to offer a socio-digital home to this broadly metamodern sensibility, which exists across disciplines and borders rather than within any single organisation. The main point of Emerge since its inception has been to help a field of inquiry and practice to find itself, know itself, and fulfil its potential. Philosophically, Emerge is inspired by the idea of emergence and the possibility of a different intentional stance towards the world; one that is grounded in receptivity, intuition and subtlety rather than ideology, reason and force. For a fuller unpacking of the intellectual foundations of Emerge, please see the series of posts: Now that you’ve found the others what are you going to do?
Emerge is a word (image and brand), a website (www.whatisemering.com), a network (by loose affiliations and on Mighty Networks), and a series of gatherings in Berlin in 2018 and 2021, Kyiv in 2019, Austin, Texas, in 2022, and several local smaller meet-ups. We have had weekly online sessions with our Ukrainian network, including a day-long fundraiser for Ukraine. Recently, Emerge has been supported as part of a consortium grant from EU/Erasmus, trying to map out the learning and leadership needs of the emerging field. And just a few days ago, a new co-living arrangement outside of Stockholm inspired and informed by Emerge was announced, called Lakeside (more on that in due course).
Everyone invested in Emerge hopes that the word Emerge attracts and invites, that the website informs and inspires, that the network supports and challenges, and that our gatherings and activities lead to discerning action. Different parts of the network are in various stages of that process, and the Ukrainian network is at a relatively advanced stage, and therefore in a good position to lead the argument.
‘Community as Service’
It has taken a while to figure out the entelechy of Emerge, but the best single description of the project is, I believe, Community as Service. This precise framing comes from Ivo and applies directly to the event created by The New Thinking School in Ukraine.
The desirable future for humanity is not one of homogenous centralisation but of localisation, differentiation and integration. This pattern is already reflected in most civil society organisations. The natural size of civil society initiatives is variable but typically quite small because they are purpose-driven, funding-contingent, and arise from personal initiative and the relationships that build up around it. You can do a lot of great creative work in a small group, but your impact at scale depends upon finding the others.
And how do you find the others? You can seek them out online, network in as many gatherings as possible, do great work that acts as an attractive force, forge project partnerships or create wonderful events that help reveal the network to itself. Emerge is informed by all of those approaches, is complimentary to them, and hopefully augments them. Emerge is essentially a network signal that says: if you are familiar with Emerge people and activity, you are likely to ‘find the others’ here.
That makes Emerge a kind of service for any small group of like-minded people trying to attract a larger like-minded crowd to their event. The association between Emerge events is a matter of family resemblance rather than direct overlap, but the network effects, the reputation of the organisers and the framing of an event can signal the appropriateness of the connection. One parallel is TEDx events in which a locally organised event is informed by a more familiar pattern widely recognised beyond the locale.
As stewards of Emerge, Perspectiva has a say in which groups can use the Emerge brand to invite people, and we take that filtering role seriously. ‘Community as Service’ might seem a strange expression, but when you’ve been in the metamodern/liminal/integral/sensemaking space for a few years, you see that it’s a critical part of the attempt to create a field that is more than the sum of its parts. Emerge exists partly because the challenge is not just to find the others, but to allow the others to find you.
In what follows, I want to share why I am glad the New Thinking School in Ukraine is such a good fit for Emerge.
Open Societies as a Precondition for a Viable Future
The connections between the Ukrainian network and Emerge were forged and deepened at the Emerge gathering in Kyiv in 2019. You can read highlights (as well as some audio recordings) of the event from Tarn Rodgers Johns and a playful summary by Andrew Sweeney The picture below is a collective sensemaking session facilitated by Elizabeth Debold and Thomas Steininger.
My reflections on Ukraine, written soon after the war broke out are in Bombs and Bildung: Ukraine as the Educational Centre of the World and include this line:
The critical question today is what 21st-century Bildung looks like in a world of ecocide and disinformation. Those who do not want an authoritarian future may need to grasp the preconditions of open societies better than they do today. Democracy depends on solidarity and both depend on good collective sense-making and decision making; which in turn depend on a free press and ultimately on a healthy education system that keeps democratic norms alive, and keeps citizens learning.
There is too much in that paragraph to unpack in this post, but one way of looking at it is this: In terms of possible futures, there are three main attractors in the complex system sense of attractive forces that a system is drawn towards. The first ‘attractor’ is societal collapse arising from ecological breakdown, economic and political failure, misinformation, bio-precarity and military overreach. The second ‘attractor’ is authoritarianism arising partly as a promise to avert or respond to collapse. The ‘Third Attractor’ can be thought of as peace, or just as an ecologically sane and technologically wise open society. The design principles of such a world might include some of the following (from Tasting the Pickle):
· A relatively balanced picture of self in society, free from the alienation of excessive individualism and the coercion of collectivism, with autonomy grounded in commons resources and ecological interdependence.
· A more refined perception of the nature of the world, in which discrete things are seen for what they have always been – evolving processes.
· A dynamic appreciation of our minds, which are not blank slates that magically become ‘rational’ but constantly evolving living systems that are embodied, encultured, extended and deep.
· An experience of ‘society’ that is not merely given, but willingly received or co-constructed through the interplay of evolving imaginative capacity.
· A perspective on the purpose of life that is less about status through material success and more about the intrinsic rewards of learning, beauty and meaning.
· An understanding of our relationship with nature that is less about extraction of resources for short-term profit and more about wise ecological stewardship (some would add, for the benefit of all beings).
· Patterns of governance that are less about power being centralised, corrupt and unaccountable and more ‘glocal’, polycentric, transparent and responsive.
· A relationship to technology in which we are not beholden to addictive gadgets and platforms but truly sovereign over our behaviour, and properly compensated for the use of our data. (And where, in Frankfurt’s terms, we ‘want what we want to want’.)
· An economy designed not to create aggregate profit for the richest, but the requisite health and education required for everyone to live meaningful lives free of coercion on an ecologically sound planet.
· A world with a rebalancing of power and resources from developed to developing worlds, and men to women, and present to future generations (including reparations where necessary).
How do we get to the third attractor?
I see the war in Ukraine and the forthcoming gathering in Kyiv through the prism of that question. Ukraine is resisting forces precipitating collapse and antithetical to open societies, and they are, in that sense, fighting for the third attractor. Of course, they also fight for their survival and survival as a nation, but also for principles we tend to take for granted when they are not directly on the line. Ukrainians don’t want their future to be defined for them through violent oppression. They want to create their society, their future, and their distinctive part of the free world.
The Germanic term Bildung roughly translates as transformative civic, aesthetic and moral education. Though it has many sources and interpretations, the practice of Bildung is connected both to the success and well-being of the Nordic countries and to the forging of democratic and European cultural norms in Ukraine. The Ukrainian integral community and New Thinking School take Bildung seriously as the underpinning for creating a viable democratic society and as an ongoing necessity at a time of war. Learning is a matter of survival.
Більдунґ: Нордичний секрет краси і свободи is a Ukrainian-language translation of (literally) Bildung: A Nordic Secret of Beauty of Freedom, and is written by Danish Philosopher Lene Rachel Andersen and Swedish social theorist and entrepreneur Tomas Bjorkman, and is the only Ukrainian language book I have at home:
This book is one of many points of contact between Bildung and Ukraine. To understand the deeper connection between Emerge and The New Thinking School, please see an online lecture by Professor Valerii Pekar called Root Causes of the War: Diverging Political Cultures in Russia and Ukraine where he uses spiral dynamics as an imperfect but still useful model to give the historical, cultural and philosophical case for why and how Ukraine diverged from Russia and what it means to them to ‘look to the west’. One of the things I have learned from Ukrainians is not to take for granted the precious gains of a free society.
Please also see the profile, prepared by Leigh Biddecome, of one of the leading lights of the Emerge Ukraine network, Kateryna Yasko, who speaks of Collective Bildung for Ukraine. The profile of Katya gives an excellent sense of efforts to keep civil society alive in Ukraine, as it contends with the meaning of the war effort and everyone’s unique contribution to it. Indeed, it’s worth considering that the very idea of civil society - universities, trade unions, churches, media, theatres, schools, museums, etc - is part of what is at stake in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and why Russia has been targeting civil society leaders - to reduce Ukrainian national identity and self-confidence. The event in September is a way to appreciate why civil society matters to protect and cultivate democratic norms and dispositions. The photo below shows a moment of Ukrainian civil society in action, with Katya speaking on a panel after a theatrical performance of Beast (a play about the war) in Kyiv in November:
Why An Emerge Gathering in Ukraine?
“Nothing becomes real until it is experienced.” - Keats.
For all the reasons mentioned above, the Kyiv pilgrimage is a chance to experience a major frontier of the future. As Keats indicates, it is through what we experience that an idea becomes real, and the trip to Kyiv is a chance to experience that sense of becoming more real.
I appreciate that visiting Ukraine in 2024 is an unusual prospect, and it’s not for everyone, but it’s a chance to get closer to living history, and a singular invitation from people Perspectiva has come to know, like, admire, and trust. If you value democracy, if you care about the practice of transformative learning, if you see your work as helping create the preconditions for a viable future for humanity, one way to express and deepen those commitments is to set out on a journey to Kyiv, where I know you will be warmly welcomed.
While the objective risk of the pilgrimage is low and safeguards are in place, choosing to travel to a country at war is undertaken at your own risk. In his post next week, Ivo will provide more practical details about the trip, including measures taken to ensure safety. In the meantime, please watch the video above which gives a better idea of the reality on the ground in Kyiv and why we believe the time for this pilgrimage is now.
For more information and tickets - visit: www.emergeukraine.com.
A detailed information sheet is available on the website. If you have any questions about the event, please contact Ivo Mensch via hello@whatisemerging.com.
„[…] that a larger country invaded a smaller country on false pretexts for imperial ambition - and that it’s still happening: we have war in Europe again.“ - isn’t that just one side of the coin? I thought perspective is about perspective.