 Good, so thank you everybody for joining us for a deep adaptation Q&A and this month I'm very pleased that Vanessa Andriotti, Professor Vanessa Andriotti is joining us and also she's been travelling and so we had to make sure that the timing worked and so I'm not entirely sure Vanessa where you're joining us from, could you say? I'm joining you from Pisak in Peru. Fantastic, so thank you very much. So for those of you who don't know, Vanessa is, she holds a Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change at the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in Canada and she's got extensive experience working across sectors internationally in areas of education related to global justice, community engagement, Indigenous knowledge systems and internationalisation and her research is focusing on analyses of historical and systemic patterns of reproduction of knowledge and inequalities and how these mobilise global imaginaries that limit or enable different possibilities for our coexistence and for global change. So I've been having a really interesting few days reading Vanessa's publication that Vanessa kindly gave me when we met a month ago or so, Global Citizenship Education, otherwise study programme and the other phrase here is gesturing towards decolonial futures. So the concept of decolonisation is something that we're going to cover today. It's something which I think many people don't really understand what it means or they'll think oh is that something that really sort of needs to be done now and when I say that I'm talking about people who are not sort of engaged in the field of international solidarity or activism but even people involved in environmental activism perhaps not necessarily aware of the critiques about the forms of activism and the ways that we approach topics of climate change or global inequality, inclusivity, diversity and so on. So Vanessa it's, I think it's really important particularly for this new wave of climate activism we're seeing to hear from you and get a glimpse into the vast field of decolonisation studies and so thank you for joining us today on this call. I'm the one who's in gratitude here. I think that the connection between what you're doing in the deep adaptation movement and what has been happening in terms of decolonisation and decoloniality is extremely important as you said and I'm here to try to give you a brief overview but we'll see with the questions at the end what people want to know. Yeah so I'm wondering whether to start with theory or actually to start with something that's really real because I know one of the criticisms I've heard of people who are maybe involved in environmental activism in from western middle-class lifestyles or involved in deep adaptation in particular is that it can be very much about it's quite conceptual, it's quite theoretical, it's anticipating terrible things and it's about how we feel and how we talk about this and I just want to bring other realities into our conversation immediately so I was wondering if you rather than going theoretical we could actually talk, you're there in Peru I was wondering if you could talk about the communities who you're working with who you might consider somehow breaking down or being pulled apart in part due to climate change or perhaps you see collapse as something that's something that's happened over time and being done to them as such and what we might what we might learn from when I say we I'm talking that many other people on this this call are from the the west they may not be privileged but but from most of us are from from the west okay so one of the things that I think is important to to say in the beginning is that there is a division between those who work with systemic historical violence and then those who work with unsustainability and my research collective is trying to put the two together and say we need to address them both together because if we can't learn from what has happened in terms of systemic violence we can't really understand where collapse comes from and how our the systems that provides us with comforts with securities and enjoyments how they have been built on the broken backs of other people and of the earth itself so this is this is a connection that very few groups are doing but that is very important I've just come back from a gathering looking at ideas of the what they would frame as the the house the the house of of modernity falling we in this group it's a it's a network of about 10 indigenous communities that have a framework called cinco curas which is translates loosely as five cycles of healing we actually started from the concept of justice five concepts of justice cognitive justice effective justice relational justice as a precondition for ecological and economic justice to come and the the members of the community really said justice is not a concept that reflects what's needed and partly it was because they were using a framework that where you have individualism and collectivism which are frameworks that are acceptable within modernity but for them it is metabolism we are all part of this metabolic organism that we have forgotten about because we think of ourselves as separate and the metabolism is sick and we need to and because the metabolism is sick we're sick as well and we need to heal in healing our thinking our sentience our feeling our relationships our exchanges in our cycles is a precondition for us to exist differently so one of the things they say for example is that when non-indigenous people come and ask them what their proposal is they are expecting a form of doing or a form of thinking and when they come up with the response that it is actually healing and it's a new form of existing not just doing or thinking people generally don't understand what that means and when we did we actually adapted one of the deep adaptation exercises that we did in the retreat for the community so we did the collapse exercise but translated into a language that people would understand related to okay in one station you lose access to supermarkets gas stations and banks the other station you lose access to it was a walk that they had to do you lose access to the grid the energy grid water tap water and treated sewage and as we were doing it many said well this is not collapse for us because this is our daily reality and they some people actually felt quite offended that we were talking about it as collapse because they can survive in that environment and they found ways of not just surviving but establishing community and establishing practices that are extremely valuable for us as well in those environments and the last station that we had was the mental health collapse where we start killing each other and no matter what we did to prepare is going to be raided and there's going to be a lot of violence and what they said was that if relationships are not healed and not grounded that's exactly what's going to happen so there's no point preparing if we are not healing the ways that we are feeling or our sentience in accessing what we call in a project exiled capacities and they accesses exiled capacities through ceremonies and through entheogenic practices or through dances and festivals and other kinds of rituals so if we don't have a different neuro biology to work with the metabolism from a position of visceral responsibility we will end up trying to protect what we've got and or protect our families from violence erupting from diseased relationships so I think that's an example of a framework that gestures towards deep adaptation but from a very very different onto metaphysics I would say wow so you've gone right to the heart of the matter there my I don't know if my zoom collapsed on me I had to restart so I missed out a little bit about which community you were talking about where you've been having these conversations and gaining this insight and advice we thought it's a network called Teia da Cinco Cura so most of the materials are only in Portuguese I can send it if if necessary but it's 10 indigenous communities that emerged out of a different network looking at the five justices framework but they were all already they all had an understanding that the house of modernity was going to fall and that the house of modernity was going to fall on them first because this house was built on their back for those who don't know what modernity means in your framework could you just say what what it means for you or what it means to them when they use because it's kind of like shorthand for a whole range of things oh yes yes um the shorthand of the shorthand is um that is the way they refer to it in the in the project between themselves is white people's house basically is going to collapse so the settlers house is going to collapse because it's unsustainable and it has already has always been in its in its its maintenance is predicated on continuous violence so the fact that it is um that it is falling uh the the framework we use is that this house is based on a foundation of separability there's nation states and artificial borders being imposed on one carrying wall the other carrying wall is universal reason uh one form of rationality and single story of progress development and human evolution also being imposed in the current um roof is the roof of shareholder financial capitalism which then is structurally damaged in terms of um maintaining the house because it's um it depends on exponential exponential growth and consumption um to to be maintained and uh in the house there so this house is um depends on extraction and expropriation to be built in it's exceeding the limits of the planet but at the same time we have to pay attention to the dynamics within the house there's uh um the stairs in the house of social mobility for example that is then perceived as the purpose of life and there's there are promises of a a global middle class for all which do not consider the limits of the planet so there are lots of crises right now in the house and the sewage the the way we say there that the pipes the sewage pipes are blocked and the shit is coming up so uh people in the house have already um put all the waste back into the planet people in who are not in the house are either wanting to come in or have lost mostly have lost their capacity to survive outside so this is uh a massive holistic deep challenging critique of of where so many people are are coming from the worldview so many real deep assumptions about themselves and about progress in society that perhaps people hadn't even realized and and so a lot of people are coming to a concern about climate change uh particularly in the west now where it's quite new for them uh and then so even to question capitalism is quite radical but you're growing way deeper than that to actually say that the very way we just carry about our lives and think about ourselves and and and the and the way that we will you talk about neurobiological the way that we're wired and the way that we respond to a perception of threat um all that all that there's an invitation from the critiques that you've shared but also from the wisdom from the people you're talking to there's an invitation to just a total transformation of of of how we are how we are in the world and you you even mentioned entheogenic substances um but also spiritual dance and all sorts of things so um how how does it how does it work for you when you uh you're at a western university in Canada when you're talking to people um maybe who who are a bit worried about what climate change means with local forest fires or food prices going up and then you're bringing this massive global critique and invitation to connect with and learn from indigenous peoples in Peru or and everyone in Brazil how how is that working out for you i think the timing is right to do these things i guess um uh the for example with the fires in the amazon the university was very quick to actually ask um in support somebody coming from this network who is in Acre who is suffering the effects of the fires to come to the university and talk um on the other hand there's also a lot of um interest in in psychedelic research at the moment so when Poland came to my university it was booked up um like there were no seats left in five minutes uh when they started selling the tickets and they sold the tickets so there is a kind of a momentum in the window where where talking about these things is not perceived to be uh esoteric i think and people are and i think partly it is because of a global mental health crisis too people are looking for ways of addressing the anxiety and the depression of having to deal with um imminent um end of the world as we know it all right which is not the end of the world period it's just the end of something so i've seen i've seen very strange unusual data like you gov poll that said that uh the majority of people in 24 out of 28 countries think that climate change will hurt themselves in their own lives and will trigger wars i mean this is a if this kind of research is is backed up by other opinion polls then then we are seeing a real as you say this and global global anxiety and therefore yes a mental health issue and so you find that people are asking very they're ready for deep critical questions that could go that could go in a number of ways though couldn't it Vanessa i mean it could be that people's turn away from global solidarity and curiosity about the other the so-called other and turn inward and just want to protect them and theirs how how would you how do you invite people that are feeling fear about the future as many people in deep adaptation conversation do how do you invite them into this curious and um ah this to have this appetite for actually letting go of everything that we thought we knew and welcoming a whole different way of being in the world i think um i think first of all i think one thing that you mentioned to before that has been our concern is the hijacking of this agenda by the right and the far right specifically um that then uh manipulates fear and gets people to to be polarized if this is already happening in brazil and in many other places so in this divides communities and divides families in in very cruel ways and um this is something we're we're we're keeping on the table to see but the what they say there is that like um the polarization um exacerbates the same way of being it takes it to to to its limits because people it's the unconscious of people coming up and um i think we are realizing that the courtesian person really only exists in a certain context once we are afraid of losing things its unconscious fears and insecurities that come up and the response to that from these communities is not a response of segregation and isolation they invite people in and they invite people into processes of cleansing and healing out of necessity because they know that if we allow this exacerbation uh to to uh reach a limit it will become extremely dangerous uh for all of us right so there is an urgency there but there's also there are two issues there's one issue of translation of what they are offering and what how people perceive them that is an educational issue that we're working on and there's also an issue of consumption so a lot of people want uh these things but uh are coming with a consumptive attitude that um and i'm not just talking about consumption of stuff of objects but i'm talking about the consumption of knowledge of relationships of experiences as a mode of existing in the world that we learn inside that house and um once you approach this even the entheogenics uh in that way it doesn't have the same effect uh the invitation of the community for the entheogenics for example is that you cleanse yourself so that you can be of use to the metabolism for others you don't do that to increase your creativity or functionality within the capitalist system where metabolism is used as the word for the planet earth or of the life force or something more local it is used as the planet and beyond so in depending on the context we use land so land is not just the soil land is the body land is the animals land is the trees land is the forest and land is what has been and what will be so we shifted it to metabolism because when people think about land they they still think about property or resource and metabolism is alive so the um the idea that this metabolism is bio-intelligent that we are part of it in that it can speak through us once we are decluttered from all these other things we are using to cope with the traumas that there are some of them are collective and historical some of them are individual and they have techniques and practices not knowledge systems but practices that can help us declutter so we still talk about this center this uh desire declutter and discern hmm Vanessa I'm realizing that so I'm involved in this this deep adaptation forum which didn't exist seven months ago and now it's grown we have about 10 000 people engaged in our various different platforms and the question has come up about whether we why why is it that that we are fairly um middle class western um not I mean I don't want to erase the diversity that's already in this network but still we are still quite quite western and so I was wondering what do we do about that and then there's almost like two questions of already because I'm wondering if one is if we turn our attention to the wisdoms and the deep critiques that you're that you're connected to and you're offering I do remember how there's sort of a niche in the west that's existed for ages which is middle class people who are in touch with uh uh indigenous people's wisdoms and that actually is seen therefore as taking them away from connection and solidarity and and and being real with working class communities uh in their own countries so there's almost like these these two different things to to to respond to one is getting real and getting engaged in the working classes in where you're based but also the other is this much more deeper critique about the whole of modernity that you're you're offering is there a cross cutting sort of um bit of guidance you could give is it is it because I was wondering is it that just simply that people like me need to pay more attention to all the um currently underprivileged in terms of the ability to communicate to be heard to influence all the different groups and peoples and so on all is there any advice you could give as we are going to go into a strategic review and decide what what what what we on earth should we be doing in 2020 uh it is very complex as you said and complicated because uh there are several layers of um issues and problems that we haven't been able yet to sit with so for example the issue of inclusion is one that is that is difficult because generally even with my body inside the university the idea is that you include the diverse body but business goes on as usual right so you you're there at the service of other people and generally for um white middle class learning you are instrumentalized for that learning and um if you refuse to do that there you're punished right so people usually think about racism is like I don't like white people but actually in an institution and I think it would be the same for the deep adaptation movement it's the perception that you're you're coming in through the back door you are here to serve and if you make a mistake um you don't have the benefit of the doubt you're punished straight away or if you refuse to do what you're supposed to do you're refused you're punished straight away so there's that problem there that it can't be this relationship it can't be this transaction and um people who are not used to um seeing how the dominant system is violent need need to learn how uh even the expectations or that they put on inclusion are violent on the body of those who are who are included on the other hand there is also there are also layers of the struggle of people of color and of black people and indigenous people there's a political layer where um people have to operate within the discourses that are given to them in a specific struggle that we're not up there making um and then there is another layer which is existential which is the layer that these communities are that I'm working with are working um on right so the communities I'm working on are of people who have been through the political struggle and given up basically saying this is not gonna go anywhere we need to go back to the trunk of this and it is a question of existence it's not a question of politics for them but there are other people in their communities who continue the political struggle and who will continue to um to draw the lines that need to be drawn to protect the territories to protect the people from racism to uh or genocide right to um now with Bolsonaro wanting to invade the indigenous lands to go and stay in solidarity with NGOs and lawyers to try to push back on what the government wants to do so there's lots of things that need to be done I think and lots of complexities we need to sit with but I think for for people who have not thought about these issues before we have in that booklet that to show that three denials there we have included another one so there's the denial of systemic violence we it is a denial we're using denial in terms of a sanctioned ignorance we need to do our homework in relation to that understand how we got to the place that we got now not just wanting to jump into a solution or another or a preparation for the collapse but we need to understand why we are getting to collapse right now the second one is unsustainability why is it that we denied the limits of the planet and how it is that the governments are still denying it right then the third one is the denial of entanglement the denial of the metabolism itself how on earth did we come to see ourselves a separate from this a separate from each other a separate from the other animals a separate from the earth and the fourth denial that we included is the denial of the magnitude of the problem so the idea that we need quick fixes um easy solutions or that we need to look good feel good and do good and move forward this this is all getting on the way of us really growing up and say okay we need to step up yeah that last that last point i mean i i am i'm involved in a lot of conversations with people about how do we affect change on climate at scale and yeah there is this there is this um um assumption that that we're not somehow complicit um and we're not somehow you know involved in all the all the all the bad stuff um and also a yearning to find a simple story of feeling still okay about oneself and and that means feeling that one is right and that one is a agente and there's that i mean it's it's okay to have that going on but maybe not to be unconscious that that's what's happening when we're when we're looking at what to do i just want to say that um everyone on this i i've got a few questions that people have sent to matthew uh only three um but please now then you can in the next few minutes put your questions in the chat box we'll send them to Matthew and then i will call you uh in in in a moment um Vanessa i just wanted to ask you before we move over to everyone else um the field of climate justice has been around for a while and i remember 10 years ago this emphasis was about contraction and convergence so how the west has caused the problem more than everywhere else and therefore we should cut carbon more and we should fund other countries to do so um and then now but of course deep adaptation is in a different realm which is saying well this is this is already damaging societies and it's going to get far worse um so that i was wondering how does your analysis about decolonizing the conversation the and and and and what's going on here how does that relate to the justice question and what does climate justice look like on adaptation um uh and who should decide you know is it is it basically we should be listening who should we be listening to to tell us what is fair what is just on the adaptation uh agenda i think the the journey starts with the systemic historical and ongoing violence um addressing that denial basically that foreclosure because if we don't understand uh how just how violence operates even the concept of justice becomes extremely superficial i still use justice in in the academic work because it makes more sense to talk about that in the west than talking about healing healing can very quickly become very new age and in a not in not a very good way because then it's all about um the self again and the innocence of the self which is something we're trying to to move away from that's why we talk a lot about shit so we say there's individual shit we need to compost there's collective shit we need to compost and we need to figure out how to compost individual shit so that we can show up differently to compost the um the effective cognitive and relational shit we have to compost that creates the economic and ecological problems that we're facing right so justice then starts i think from a position of wanting to show up differently from for a very very massive uh issue and having the stamina to do that now if justice is um a teleological process from A to B right so okay i'll do that and it's going to be a checklist and lots of people ask for a checklist a checklist so so that i can feel good about myself again right so that i i don't feel complicit this is actually part of the problem right so we are all in if we're all in the same metabolism we are complicit with the metabolism being sick we're all sick and therefore we need to start from a grown-up position not an infantilized position because the house actually itself infantilizes us to be able to want to stay in the playground right to feel good to look good to do good and to move forward what about instead of moving forward digging deeper and taking responsibility so that and viscerally not just for our species but for all species so that if there is a chance this can be interrupted we will do what is needed rather than what we want to do so there's one last i think analogy that we use here in pedu it was it it might look banal but it actually helps pedagogically so we were waiting to cross a very busy road here very close to here actually and there was a group of ten of us and we were waiting for the traffic to stop a little bit but this very little dog decided to to cross the street and it was really interesting to observe the the response of people in the group who already have the critique and all of that we were working together so some people just close their eyes other close their ears other close their mouth some people froze other people just had this this different reaction that they couldn't move but they had a jolt right in one person went to the middle of the road and stopped traffic and the person who did it didn't calculate whether or not she was going to get hurt or what was going to happen she just stopped traffic the dog passed and she went after the dog and didn't even realize she had done it so we will need more people who can't stop traffic even if it goes against their self interest my interest is in what kind of education and what kind of unlearning process do we need to be able to declutter to that level right so we have a question yeah we have a question coming in on that and from my colleague who you've met Katie Carr so we'll take a question from Katie and everybody else also please do know if you've got a question inside you go on be brave just put it in the chat and you might get selected because we've got about 20 odd 25 minutes I think you go good so Katie I've got two questions I don't know which one you wanted hi Vanessa I'm going to go with my second one because it was more relevant to what you were just talking about my question is how do you invite people into voluntary reconfiguration of the self or which is obliteration of the self and how do you do it in a non-violent way 10 million dollar question so how do you invite people we start with a kind of a lighter invitation to shed your ignorance arrogance actually and poop your vanity so you use humor a lot to do that but we're already working with people who are looking for whom what worked before is not working already it's this is not something you just go around and say okay everybody let's just try to dissolve the self that we've learned and find another way a more layered way of of of sensing the self we do invitations that are kind of hook invitations to see who is actually looking for that but this is not something to put down people basically that's what we've learned in the long in the long haul and making the invitation clear too has helped a lot so now we before we were kind of finding it very difficult to say like because we would put something in front of people and people would say okay that's for me to feel good for me to look good and for me to do good and for us to move forward and now we are if we've learned that that projection on the on what we're doing actually waste a lot of resources and a lot of time and a lot of energy so now we're saying look not everybody needs to do this right now we're working with the people who want to dig deeper and to relate wider if that is what's calling you then maybe what we're doing might be interesting for you we have in terms of scalability we have a question of momentum right I think there's going to be a momentum where things that used to work are not going to work anymore where more people will want this kind of thing but we need to learn now so that by the time more people can have it we can hold space for more people we kind of know better what we're doing because it's it's a little bit kind of touching things in the dark dealing with the unconscious right so we're trying to weave different kinds of practices that have been around but also put a decolonial perspective on them and a metabolic perspective on them things like for example that came up in the deep adaptation retreat family constellation or even Boiles theater of the oppressed the rainbow of desire there are many other techniques that have been around but they're still focusing on an anthropocentric and not necessarily the colonial perspective but once we can translate them into this idea of preparing for the end of the world as we know it and the dissolution of the self it can be extremely useful in what we will be doing together but you you hit the spot there it's fascinating fascinating and thank you Katie for the question and Vanessa for that that reflective answer I'm going to go to Tom now because it's also then it's connected I think because then there are institutions out there that relate to reconfiguring the self and what are they Tom and what's your question thanks Jim hi Vanessa and Tom from London England and I had I guess a question in two parts relating to religion however you want to take that word in all its breadth and tension and I guess the first part was about the indigenous communities that you're working with and I suppose I have a question about how much they are looking backwards or seeking to go backwards to a an older way of being and their sort of ancient traditions or to what extent they're reinventing those for the present and future challenges so there's that question about those communities and then I suppose as a second part a question about mainstream religious traditions I'll leave it up to you to address that but whether you think they are equipped or have resources to draw on even if it needs reinventing that might help as well or whether you see that the only hope is with the indigenous peoples who've held on to that old way of being and not been so infected I think the way the best way to respond to you is a distinction that we make in the project about modernity focusing on form and other traditions focusing on the direction of things so if you are trying to create a perfect form and that is that's gonna be permanent you're using language to index things and create things that will last if you're using language in the movement kind of way then the question really changes so there's no the backward and forward also go because people are just responding to a context and the movements of a context right so this people would say for example the internet is extremely important for the movement but the relationship we have with the forest and with the other animals and with the enchanted ones which are the spirits around that the old one the ancient one was much deeper than the one we have now so we it's a movement where we go there's the backward and forward it's complicated we go deeper probably right and we also go wider in terms of using technology differently once I had the one elder showing me a mobile and saying what do you think this is and I was like what does she want me to say should I just say that we shouldn't use mobile in the end what she wanted was say this is blood minerals this is the blood of mother earth and then she said do you throw it away and I said and I said maybe it she said no you use it you use it to stop the violence right so that's the kind of thing that happens in that in relation to the first question the second question I think in every religion there are also this the transcendence and immanence right happening everywhere so in Christianity there are different strands in umbanda which is the afro religion here there are different strands that go either towards more form or more the directionality of things I'm seeing the directionality is getting together to say look we need something else and we we can have um because they work more with mystery and unknowability not just the unknown but the unknowable that they can get together in we we were talking about that just in the gathering it's like the the sacredness of the mixture of not really paying so much attention to form but to where it's taking us and if it's taking us to to more responsibility more visceral responsibility if it's taking us towards being together to face the storm that is coming um then then they would they would connect somehow away from separability right but the form religions that say there's just one truth and it's this truth and my truth is not your truth therefore you stay over there um they exacerbate the polarization and that's partly what's happened what has happened in brazil when for example in the in the 60 70s 56 in the 70s liberation theology which is a christian strand worked really well with afro descendant religions um to take care of poor people and create community at the base once um this shifted towards representation of democracy after the dictatorship was over then um evangelical movements came in with a Protestant work ethic which is much more individualized and much more dogmatic and that then broke the communities and many people say that that's the reason why we have both sonato the far right president um being elected today does that help thank you yeah that's so much this is you're being given huge questions aren't you too to answer but thank you tom for the question um uh i uh i'm just looking at the time actually although i've i've been telling matthew my colleague that maybe we couldn't fit two more questions in well let's give it a go so christopher um you have you have two questions but i'm interested in the first one um which is uh i i love it so um over to you christopher yeah hi um as i've been uh well thanks to joanne macy and you jim uh been able to grieve about my you know upbringing and i just started wondering is it because my generation need to die off to be able to allow something new to come or and i'm someone who's had near-death experience so i know you can shift a lot but my layers of colonization from day one of being a consumer of everything everything people workshops stuff life everything in this room you know i sometimes wonder can i uncouple from all that really thank you a very good question i i i don't know how deep this is in our unconscious right so this is we're trying experiments upon experiments to see what we can do um to create that situation of the stopping of the traffic thing but i've seen people of all generations do that and like coming from this experience in the gathering and seeing how people treat the elders there i like the idea of this cardability is completely out of the question in that sense right so um and they do have a sense of who who are the wiser elders who go deep and who are the elders who have a different life and who just need care and um it was very humbling for me too because it made me realize how much more care i should be giving my parents even because it didn't really matter at a certain age what is it that you're even doing or saying you receive the respect that that that you deserve because your your life is honored and that's where i think we should be going not in any different direction uh from that i think that is a direction of the metabolism i'm wondering if part of that honoring is could we find any sort of meaning from that process of separation the kind of what we've created with modernity and civilization as we know it we'll call it now is there anything in it that was somehow necessary was somehow life the metabolism doing its thing in some way so that we can honor it and say goodbye we talk about hospicing a lot so providing palliative care to the system dying and that's where most of the lessons come because we are not but we cannot be afraid of death in that case so if you're not afraid of death we can actually look at what has happened and open the space with this death to something new but opening the space without this learning this deep learning that need in learning that needs to take place will just open the space for more of the same the same thing will come back to teach us again the lessons that we have failed to learn so providing palliative care what we say generally in the project is that it's not glamorous it is actually like sometimes cleaning vomit and diarrhea and it's not something will do somebody will do to put in their Facebook page or to be a genetic or innocent public and you sit with the person to hear the stories and sometimes the person's kicking and screaming not wanting to go and sometimes there's peace and there's calm and there's a profound reflection on what has happened so how do we create the conditions for more palliative terrors who are ready to do what's needed not what they want to do and that's what i mean that takes me back to the start when you told me about the wisdom and the suggestions coming from the indigenous communities you're working with rather than there being anger blame retribution there's sort of a desire to offer wisdom healing and so that's yeah that sense of that we are all part of the same thing and that there is an opportunity for people who have been playing a role in a within modernity at the top of the pile some of us in modernity to to learn and to find new forms of meaning as everything collapses so we talk about sense because meaning when we say mean i know meaningfulness has become a very important thing but articulate it is related then to articulated uh languaging or wording it's often when when we say meaning people think that it's something that can be apprehended basically and we've been talking about sensefulness because there are lots of ways of that the body makes sense that do not make sense in a meaningful way so you can find sensefulness in that however it is important at this point to say that in another layer there is a political movement for redress that is extremely important that pushes right the politics and pushes policies and relationships to the brink of something and that because sometimes people say okay so it's all about being being one and then those who are pushing are are wrong no those who are pushing are really important and it is really important to remember that if we're going to be one we are one with the flowers the way the sun and the moon but also with the violence and the shit that is quite necessary to remember absolutely and not too many people say that and it's quite powerful thing that comes through in your pamphlet as well and also when we've talked um we only have a few minutes to go three minutes and so final question please very quickly and a quick answer because we have to be we have to be off so it's uh um I'm told to pronounce your name Mothir uh Mothir Rathman who works with Extinction Rebellion thank you for joining us over to you hi Vanessa hi um I wrote the question into the chat so I'll just try to um it's a problem that um that I'm finding within some of the groups as well that uh in Extinction Rebellion that some are focusing so much on demand one telling the truth and the truth is getting there about getting out there about climate collapse but then the systems of power aren't changing sufficiently so that potentially big business are already moving to investing in renewables moving their pension funds to renewables which then the metals and other things are needed um in countries like Chile where there's already sort of wars coming out so what is the risk in the idea of decolonial futures in plural that we missed the opportunity actually we just continue the separation that the West will look away again and just say well we need to protect ourselves and this is one way investing in renewables and just further separation rather than a coming together thank you and uh wow what a question and you've got one minute thank you so there are many understandings of decolonization and there are some texts that can help uh disentangle that but the understanding of that I'm working from is precisely the undoing of separate the separability so the recolonization that we're talking about that you were talking about in terms of capitalism shifting in order to recolonize is part of a colonial process um that is not the kind of gesturing towards a decolonial future or decolonial futures futures it's because we don't know what it's gonna look like uh that's why we keep it open but um I can suggest a couple of texts that talk about this different understanding it's not about replacement of one knowledge by another it's about a different way of being but different people would define it very differently it's multiple layers struggle and some of these layers as I said before are really important the ones that push because they open up spaces where we can actually do the work if they were not there uh people would be too complacent right so it's it's paradoxical and contradictory but um I think the point that we're trying to make is the shifting the direction and the vitality of it towards a metabolic intelligence that can help us exist very differently it's a it's a key issue and it's I'm sorry we don't have more time to discuss it on the deep adaptation forum um there's there'll be a a thread on this because tomorrow I'm I'm publishing a a blog related to the kind of issues we're talking about and we'll be talking about extinction rebellion and climate justice and decolonization so um I'll make sure that I post that in all the different platforms we have um and so uh yeah wow what a what a fascinating hour Vanessa that went really fast thank you for joining us and thank you everyone uh for joining us this video is going to be online tonight um so it's going to be um on our youtube channel so um if you you can find that on um on just go to the Ning and there'll be a link there so um I'll also put it on my blog jembandel.com tonight so people can find it so please share it with everybody and those of you who want to support us doing all this into next year remember our crowd fund is happening um Katie you've been putting some really useful links in there can you put our crowd fund link in um that would be brilliant too so um thank you Vanessa cheers everybody and um see you next month for Charles Eisenstein um which I'm sure will be very interesting too bye bye