Thread by @Jonathan_Rowson

131 days since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I've been following the war closely for personal and professional reasons. What is happening in Ukraine matters even more than many believe, and we're hosting a fundraiser on Thursday to clarify that case:
emergeukraine.com

As an international chess player, I faced opponents from the Soviet Union in 1990 just before it collapsed. I remember the red hammer and sickle flag near the board next to my Scottish saltire. In subsequent years I competed with Ukrainian and Russian players and befriended many.

One in-joke in the chess world concerns your participation in 'the B tournament'. In those years I played the B tournament sometimes, and I've had Ukrainian and Russian girlfriends. I also learned to speak some chess Russian to listen in on the analysis of prospective opponents.

I became a Grandmaster and 3-time British Champion but began moving away from chess when becoming a dad. My fond farewell to chess is *The Moves that Matter* (Bloomsbury, 2019). I did a PhD, became an intellectual entrepreneur and after 7 years @theRSAorg I created @Perspecteeva

Perspectiva is one of the co-initiators of @whatisemerging and now has responsibility for it. In 2019 we hosted a large gathering in Kyiv, where we deepened connections with Ukraine's vibrant civil society and Bildung movement. Here's a picture of me and @IAmPippaEvans there:

I'm also touched to say that the essay I wrote on Bildung for @CUSP_uk in 2018 cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/essay…
has been translated into Ukrainian.

It might be relevant that I'm Scottish. I am sensitive to the casual dissolution of nationhood through assimilation, which happens whenever England is conflated with Britain (or the UK). The instinct to protect smaller countries from being subsumed by larger ones runs deep.

That's how I orient myself toward Ukraine. I don't see the issue primarily through a cold war lens, as 'The West v Russia'. I see Ukraine, a country as real to me as Germany, France or Spain, under brutal attack, fighting for its life. And I listen to #Ukrainecast every day.

When the war broke out, I knew I should at least create a space for people like me trying to process events, so with my colleague @JMNSCH we've been hosting an @whatisemerging online meeting about Ukraine for the last 18 weeks. c20 people typically attend, many from Ukraine.

These weekly meetings keep the issue alive for ourselves and each other, in a therapeutic and generative way. They are also inspiring, as we learn of local initiatives and networks in Ukraine and 'the explosion of social trust' that happened when the war broke out.

Yet what's so special about Ukraine?

There are almost 200 countries in the world.

And there are about 6 wars (Ukraine, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Afghanistan) and another 60 or so active conflicts underway around the world.

Does Ukraine deserve special attention?

Yes.
There are many ways to frame why.

Through a climate lens, the war reveals the moral bankruptcy of fossil fuels, the political sociology of geology that links them to authoritarianism, and it kindles new hopes for accelerating an alternative energy future.
But that's not it.

Through a food security lens, Ukraine reveals how close many countries are to famine. How many people realised that much of the world's grain comes from a single area that happens to be blessed with an abundance of great soil and arable land?
But that's not it.

Through a human rights lens, Ukraine matters because it looks like an attempted genocide. Russian forces are not merely grabbing land but trying to eliminate Ukrainian people and culture. The evidence for this is strong and growing: newlinesinstitute.org/an-independent…
But even that's not it.

The deeper reason Ukraine matters is that the war there is, as @TimothyDSnyder puts it, "an axial event". His recent discussion with Yuval Harari is highly recommended on the macrohistorical perspective on what the war in Ukraine means today.

We are in a time between worlds and the next world is up for grabs. This notion is empirically grounded and is examined in more depth here: whatisemerging.com/opinions/now-t…

Ukraine is prismatic of this sense of being in a time between worlds - it helps us to see it more clearly.

The shift in geological time from the Holocene to the Anthropocene ('Capitalocene'- Jason Moore) and the impact of the internet-enabled smartphone on our lifeworlds have fundamentally changed the world, weakening both capitalism and democracy - sometimes called our 'meta-crisis'.

The meta-crisis is not a random set of interrelated problems but the condition of being in a time between worlds. It is the background reason events like the pandemic and the war and Ukraine are happening. For more details, please see 'Tasting the Pickle': systems-souls-society.com/tasting-the-pi…

Those who see the range of converging threats think that systemic collapse is quite likely. And because systemic collapse (economic, political, ecological, social, health, war) is likely, the attraction of authoritarian control will increase, not diminish.

These futures: collapse and/or authoritarianism are not outliers, they are the default scenarios. This is why the world urgently needs 'a third attractor' - a vision and method that indicates how 9 billion or so people might succeed in not destroying themselves and their home.

We do not have such a vision yet. Not really. There are some candidates, but getting their will depend on our relationship to knowledge and power and our capacity to create. This is why open societies are a pre-condition for creating a viable future for humanity.

*This* is why Ukraine really is fighting for all open societies and should be supported as such. This is why Synder calls it 'an axial event', because the outcome could well tip the balance either way - towards viable open societies, or towards creeping authoritarianism.

There's more to say, but we'll be discussing all this and more at our fundraiser on Thursday. Please do join us and donate whatever you can! emergeukraine.com