The Pedagogy of Urgency

On the emergence of transformative education in wartime Ukraine and how to learn into the adjacent possible

“We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there ‘is’ such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.”

- Martin Luther King

Before publishing the next part of my series on Priors I wanted to share a report on the founding of a new educational institution in Ukraine.

Realist historians often argue that war is the only true driver of cultural change. I don’t think that is entirely true, but I have come to believe that urgency is the mother of both relevance and possibility, and there is no substitute for a time-sensitive existential threat that you can’t fake. This sense of urgency is why hundreds of entrepreneurs, philosophers and theologians now mingle in Ukraine in knowledge-sharing networks to discuss new ideas that promise to shape society in desired ways, true to the country’s unique unfolding destiny.

Last summer, I joined a group of about 25 young researchers in the city of Uzhhorod in Western Ukraine to explore the Metaphysics of Action, mainly through the lens of the German-American political thinker Hannah Arendt.

The city is located at the southern foothills of the Carpathian mountains, through which the shallow Uzh river slowly flows. It is a relatively safe haven compared to other cities eastward, where Russian missile and drone attacks pose a real threat to life. Air alarms do sound here occasionally, but are ignored by the city’s inhabitants as there is no real threat this close to NATO’s border. There is even sleep tourism here: people come from elsewhere in the besieged country to enjoy uninterrupted nights of shuteye or the long summer evenings, since it’s the only place in the country that has no midnight curfew.

In many other peaceful countries or schools training students for monetisable skills, an inquiry into the metaphysics of action might be considered tasty cognitive candy, but the state of urgency in Ukraine makes such learning an existential encounter with agency, institution-building, and embodied self-authorship in a young embattled democracy.

Here, neatly siloed and stratified epistemic domains with boundaries guarded by experts, look like the hallmark of well-run but intellectually dead societies. Transformative education in Ukraine is an inspiration for us all, which is why we, as we have argued before, we should take a closer look at what they are doing.

Your scribe is third from the left on the second row.

As Ukraine seeks to develop new political forms while fighting for its existence, the need for transformative education and research is clear. A country under siege cannot rely on educational institutions that served authoritarian structures from the past and were designed to uphold industrial-age stability. In that sense, Ukraine is a microcosm from which the rest of the world should learn. Though the context of war is particular here, the broader move speaks to the predicament of our planetary-scale crises.

Philosopher of education Zak Stein points out that education lies at the heart of our multifaceted predicament, both as root cause and as solution. Education cannot be merely about transmitting knowledge he says, but must cultivate human beings capable of initiating something unprecedented: to engage in collective world-building rather than merely reacting to circumstances.

For Ukraine, survival itself depends on rapid collective learning and the emergence of new social forms capable of action. The artificial boundaries between disciplines, between theory and practice, between personal and political transformation, become untenable in such a context. So the educational experiment I find myself a part of is part of a larger budding cosmolocal learning ecosystem that can hopefully generate agency and find the collective intelligence required to navigate civilisational transitions.

The question isn’t whether such transformation is possible, but whether societies will find the clarity and courage to pursue it before their crises become irreversible. For Ukraine, mustering that courage is no longer optional, but a given, and in my view an exemplary beacon of hope. Many of the lessons learned here, in the recent past and today, will soon become relevant for the rest of the world as the dynamics of slow and fast collapse will be felt across the planet going forwards, increasing the awareness of interdependence and need for cooperation of overlapping trust-networks.

The school is founded and run by the three brave and brilliant young women pictured above who seek to offer alternatives to traditional academia. In their view, Ukrainian education is stuck in an old paradigm and is not fit for the purpose of driving the kinds of social transformation that the country needs at this pivotal moment in history.

The school’s intent is therefore ambitious - founding an institution and intellectual lineage that bridges theory and practice and fully embodies the essence of transformative research in service of societal renewal. What that looks like is part of an ongoing inquiry, as it’s only the second year the school has gathered.

Most of Ukrainian society is determined to disentangle quickly and decisively from the Soviet and Russian past. However, the requisite intellectual infrastructure through which new ideas and thinkers can emerge, take hold and actively shape things in a sovereign and uniquely Ukrainian way is still largely absent.

But it is underway. During the week, some other founding members of the Centre for Transformative Research of which the summer school is a part, sketch the story of newly emerging networks that bring together a plurality of minds. This can become the rich soil out of which institutions like the school and broader civil society can germinate, grow and take root.

There is nothing as practical as good theory.

- Kurt Lewin

The researchers, most of them Phd students, have come from Sweden, Germany and Austria, but the majority are from within different parts of Ukraine. The faculty is an international mix, mostly active in academia in all of the aforementioned countries. They have deep specialities in theology and philosophy, but seem to work across the boundaries of their disciplines.

Since my background is not academic but focuses on experiential nondual research, phenomenological design, and is practice-oriented, I was asked to complement the theoretical inquiry into Arendt’s metaphysics of action with alternative ways of knowing and knowledge production. I chose to structure my three sessions through approaches from a few of Perspectiva’s familiar themes and problem spaces - those of immunity to change, generative metaphysics and new social ontologies of interbeing.

Early in the week, faculty member Barbara Schellhammer unpacked Arendt’s notion of the Vita Activa, which encompasses Work and Labor and Action. This proves particularly salient for understanding social transformation in Ukraine. For Arendt, action as praxis represents the highest form of human activity: the capacity for individuals to come together in public spaces to deliberate, debate, and initiate something genuinely new in the world. It is a means of disclosure.

This stands in stark contrast to the predictable cycles of labour (for survival) and work (fabrication of objects). In post-authoritarian societies, where previous political structures have been delegitimised or dismantled, Arendt's emphasis on action becomes crucial because it offers a framework for understanding how citizens can develop agency and move beyond merely reacting, but towards actively constructing new sociopolitical realities. The concept challenges the technocratic tendency to treat social change as a matter of administrative reform or economic restructuring, insisting instead that genuine political renewal requires the spontaneous gathering of equals who can speak freely and collaborate.

The significance of Vita Activa for post-authoritarian societies lies particularly in Arendt's understanding of plurality. She argues that action only emerges when diverse individuals come together, not despite their differences but because of them. It is precisely through encountering others who see the world differently that new possibilities can emerge, as is happening in the new networks described before. This insight proves vital for societies emerging from authoritarian rule, where the previous regime typically sought to eliminate plurality through ideological conformity or systematic exclusion.

Post-authoritarian societies face the challenge of reconstructing not merely institutions but the very capacity for citizens to engage in meaningful political discourse. Arendt's framework suggests that this requires more than constitutional reform or democratic procedures; it demands the cultivation of spaces where disclosure emerges that comes from acting together with others to engage in world-building.

From that broad theoretical groundwork, we started to move towards practice. Under the guidance of Krisha Kops we explored the phenomenological dimensions of listening and ways to apply these insights to inform political and civil action via Arendt's work on relationality and political action next to Lisbeth Lipari's concept of inter-listening. Action as a praxis isn’t something you just do as an individual, but is rather enabled by the affordances within a web of relationship and forces. Some of which can also prevent action.

The trouble is you think you have time

- attributed to The Buddha.

The Swedish theologian Michael Hjälm primed the minds and had the group contemplate the concept of Entelechia, which I see as engaged and purposive unfolding through the practice of Speaking-Being: the nonduality of that which is spoken of, the place spoken from, and the beingness of the speaker itself as the actor, the embodiment and realisation of potential enfolded in the present moment.

Building on this foundation, I aimed to tie the theory together with practice towards a lived, phenomenological unfolding of reality. In the first of three sessions we looked at the ways we, as individuals, find ourselves stuck - barred from acting toward realisation of goals and the emergence of identity disclosing itself via interaction. If speech is an action of disclosure then listening is the act of creating the possibility space in which that is possible. My intention was to offer a felt understanding of this process of revealing by entering in relationship, speech acts, and to consciously attune to Arendt’s ‘space of appearance’ as a real, intersubjective ontological realm.

Slide from my presentation on the mode of interaction and encoding of self-other boundaries

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I sought to deepen the recognition of the space of appearance with the distinction of primary disclosure as being non-symbolic, involving the embodied direct felt sense and possibility of resonance, versus that of secondary disclosure, which is conceptual, symbolic and interpretive.

Another connected distinction is sensing in real time the difference between interpersonal and intersubjective modes. The first mode generally does not allow for an in-between space to arise. People in this mode engage in verbal ping-pong and are mostly listening for confirmation rather than understanding, and try to get social needs met (do they like me, do I belong, am I safe? etc.) The mode is egocentric.

The second mode is allocentric, and allows for a ‘third space’ to emerge, in which insights can come and transformation can happen. Beliefs are held lightly and less entangled with our default identity. Practitioners were asked to ‘stay within their own atmosphere’ and maintain 60% of their awareness on themselves. The instruction is counterintuitive as an affordance for entering allocentric modes, but this stance affords connection rather than merging, which dissolves boundaries and decreases our agency.

The practice of inquiry, when done with whole-body awareness, often facilitates the shift from interpretive-symbolic mode to directly felt, non-verbal and imaginal cognition where words to describe the in-the-moment experience come more slowly and are more often poetic and co-arise with images. This form of inquiry is founded on the practice of presence and the possibility of entelechia - unfolding towards a unifying and actualisation of purpose and essence; if one manages to get out of one’s own way, by which I mean sidestepping will, strategies, attachments etc.

The working question - ‘what is good about being stuck?’ is designed to uncover deeper motivational priors that favour a modern developmental and progressive stance that tends to sit deep in the psyche, especially people identifying as change makers. The present is no good, is the prior, and the relationship to current reality is one of rejection - the opposite of compassion. The knee-jerk mode becomes power-seeking, and the energetic drive of frustration often pushes projections across the self-boundary onto others - people representing inertia and standing in the way of change and realisation of whatever utopian vision. Historically, for people as the recipients of projections as standing in the way of revolutionary fervour, life often didn’t end well.

A question like this is really a veiled exercise in compassion for self, other and present state of the system. Generally, no mind likes to entertain what is good about being stuck. Seeking change in a meshwork of driving and negating forces and constraints, it is in the nature of mind to double down on the driving forces and ignore or brute-force through negating ones.

This tendency generally does not work, as the causal structure at play is only partially perceived - rather than shifting patterns we fall into the mode of solving problems, mistakenly perceiving cause-and-effect relationships where there are none. Holding the question with presence allows people be where they are, as unfolding only happens from the very place and moment you find yourself in. As long as you’re trying to get away from where you are, you remain stuck, is the universal law of unfolding. Again, get out of your own way! Daoism has something to teach about this.

In the context of Ukraine’s current processes of transformation and separation-individuation from its belligerent neighbour and the Soviet past, it’s a relevant inquiry, as the society is fully engaged in the reflexive cycles through which social structures and cultural practices are transformed. The mistake would be to focus on surface-level events rather than finding the deeper generative mechanisms that can shift patterns and actually realise social morphogenesis via entelechia, fully disclosing the unique Ukrainian space of possibility. In the session, I briefly touched on the sociological application of the metatheory of Critical Realism and the linking up of reflexive cycles on the micro, or individual level, that of the Meso as groups and institutions, and the macro, impacting the major generative mechanisms (trans)forming societies such as education itself.

Session slide: Social Poiesis - a representation of Social Morphogenesis and World building via reflexive cycles shaping Generative Mechanisms

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The second session was somatically oriented, intended to anchor us in the knowing-mode of the primary disclosure and relied on a modified version of social presencing theatre, through which we explored connecting to the life force as driver of the opening of possibility spaces, moving from the place of stuckness we identified in the first session. Driving and negating systemic forces were represented as individual and social sculptures.

For most of the participants this somatic inquiry was largely unknown territory. Repeatedly, I had to instruct to not overthink it but to ‘just do’. Minds centered in the onto-epistemic mode of ‘How’ have a harder time to not think themselves into shape. Agility in representing story by shifting from symbolic and narrative interpretation to energetic-somatic representation is a skill. Some, versed in theatre and dramatic arts, had an easier time doing this.

Shifts here tend not to happen through contemplation, understanding or insight, but are often driven via aesthetic consciousness, or beauty and intuition of what feels right without rationalisation. The holding of a sculpture, which is a frozen position, is generally untenable. The body wants to move as the life force and personal will enter into dialogue, and the latter gives way to the former. Stuckness is not our natural state, but movement does not happen by thinking our way out.

Here too, the shift from egocentric - the individual sculpture of stuckness - to allocentric - a social, systemic representation, was intended. Different individuals become elements of a larger system, each embodying an essence, a restraining or driving force that gives the totality its shape. A social sculpture can represent a personal reality, but equally a country’s state, if we apply elements of constellations practice lineages. (Something I want to explore more of in the future.)

As the energy threshold of the life force builds in individuals as different parts of the social sculpture and vectors towards expression, it commands the system to move as a whole. The social sculpture and the felt sense rearranges itself into a new shape, revealing the entelechy of the system and the individual’s place as agents in the system. This can show us in very direct ways that we’re never outside of any system we seek to change. Pushing, strategising, and linear approaches do not work as action-logic in these kinds of complex systems.

The third session returned to inquiry practice and was designed to direct attention to the felt sense of the opening of Arendt’s space of appearance and the space of possibility, shifting social interaction patterns away from producing habitual perceptual contents and behavioral actions. Earlier, the Ukrainian theologian Alexander Filonenko laid out the conceptual case for exiting the familiar and the necessity to enter liminal spaces if true transformation is to take place. Shortcuts only get you back to the place you started from.

The liminal is the unknown territory we enter after we become unstuck. Change is often fetishised, but the first-person experience and felt sense are more likely those of discomfort and confusion when predictive processes and social scripts structuring the unknown no longer map onto reality. Generally, for people unfamiliar with the practice, free energy, expressing itself as surprise, nervousness or awkwardness, is laughed off or expressed as chatter that is not a reflection of the in-the-moment unfolding of experience. Discomfort in handling arising energy and arcs of attraction between practitioners is usually the first impediment to arriving at a deeper presence.

The metacognitive and introspective ability to simultaneously balance critical reflexivity and in-the-moment somatic awareness while being open and present with the other, is generally a multi-year practice milestone. But I am always surprised by the capacity of people who have spent considerable time together and already have developed some group coherence and mutual trust that allows people go deep. Even though virtually none of the young researchers had prior experience with the practices, feedback included mystical openings to clearer vision, to breakthrough insight into limiting patterns around topics like personal power.

Developing new ontologies of interbeing and designing affordances for the emergence of agentic social fields through which novel insights can arise are at the heart of the broader project of Perspectiva’s innovations in spiritual practice. Some of the practices of interbeing are designed to take away the emphasis on individual awakening and realisation that spiritual lineages have historically focused on since the Axial Age.

From here we move towards a mode of being that the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon called the trans-individidual, in which we are grounded in awareness of a co-constitutive selfhood which can be individuated but active participants in a web of whole-part relationships. Similarly, other thinkers and the new cognitive sciences also point to the enacted, extended and embedded nature of selfhood. Vanessa Andreotti’s concept of meta-rationality also applies.¹

“Meta-Relationality is the capacity to be in right relationship with the whole-shebang— everything, everywhere, everywhen, all at once, all of the time.”

- Vanessa Andreotti

The intention and logoic design behind transformative practices like these are integrative: finding ways to unify theory and praxis and exercise different ways of knowing beyond the mere propositional. It is also fractal - seeking resonance between individual conditioning and by drawing attention to internalised cognitive patterns, social structures and shifting these by engaging alternative sets of action protocols that guide life energy to new expressions that can only develop further into robust forms in communities of practice.

The Centre for Transformative Research now enters its third year and is, as such, in its infancy and early stages of developing its philosophical foundations and intellectual lineage. But I sense, with as much clarity as I can muster, including my limited understanding as an outsider of currents and developments in Ukraine, the entelechia of the project.

The school is nearing the time to state ontological commitments on matters of theories of change, ideas of human and non-human personhood, a fitting metaphysics and to choose one or more metatheories that can serve as scaffolding to give the insights, events and experiences happening in the school a place, and thus form a unique and coherent logos as the engine for transformation, running on the fuel of Ukrainian eros of which there is no shortage anytime soon.

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1. Quote lifted from from slide deck - https://conference2025.r3-0.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Vanessa-Andreotti-From-entitlement-to-responsibility-andreotti.pdf