How to move without a clear destination in an unknown landscape?

The premise of "the search for a compass with which to navigate uncertainty" that underpins this space is my experience of a kind of joyful disillusionment with the co-ordinates I was given to traverse reality with. Discontentment with the way my world had been framed – and with the limitations that the language I had acquired to describe reality imposed on me – prompted a search for a different way of thinking and speaking.

This search is a kind of stumbling through my own assumptions and limitations as I explore what that means. I continue to find that my intentions or plans to write about specific topics are disrupted as I begin: what I think is relevant or 'next' in advance of sitting down to write quickly falls into the background as the words start to form. To see what is going on in these wandering wonderings perhaps it is helpful to keep in mind the image of a journeyer who leaves the known world behind and sends home reflections on the trials and tribulations of a pilgrimage to a yet unknown destination.

This journey is metaphorical (which should not be taken to mean abstract) and the roles, imagery and plots I explore are intended to open up new spaces so that it becomes possible to embody other ways of moving in the world. This can perhaps appear a little removed from 'real life' concerns, come across as navel gazing, or just seem plain irrelevant.

To understand the significance this journey has for me I'd like to clarify its purpose.

It began when I stopped trying to find solutions to the world's problems. In short, I cannot believe that the future which was birthed during the industrial revolution and grew ever darker during the 20th century is going to go away. As far as I can see the world is not going to be 'saved' – the consequences of our collective actions are far to complex and severe for any such talk to make sense anymore. The very idea of 'saving the world' seems like a naive form of denial at best and a refusal to face actualities at worst.

The best articulation of the sentiment I am trying to express was written by Dougald a while back:

"'Changing the world' has become an anachronism: the world is changing so fast, the best we can do is to become a little more observant, more agile, better able to move with it or to spot the places where a subtle shift may set something on a less-worse course than it was on."

I don't mean to say that it is outside our reach solve many of the problems that surround us. But I think the 'solutions' we are chasing are not dealing with the roots of the problems we're trying to address. From this point of view, we first have to deal with our own way of seeing, our psychology, conditioning and cultural dispositions before we can act in a way that is different from the behaviour that caused the problems we are facing. To use an oft cited metaphor: we first need to decolonise our hearts and minds before we can set things on a less-worse course.

This journey is the only kind of activity which seems meaningful to me after having exhausted my urge to fix what has been broken beyond repair. This is where I am at and this is where I am going. I know from experience that it is a position which can be hard to accept for other people because it can throw back a lot of deeply held assumptions, opinions and anxieties. But I'm going nonetheless and I'm not going to defend the journey. I'm not going to be smug about it either. Or try to convince anyone that they should do the same. "I" am not there to argue anything. In setting off I have already committed myself to a different kind of conversation. One that is forming within a community of journeying folk.

I am interested in what Derek Rasmussen calls 'a pedagogy for the oppressor' which begins from his observation that "if our way of life is causing most of the problems that the rest of the world has to deal with, the best thing we can do is deal with our own way of life". It is as simple and far reaching as that. The objective is to embody a way of thinking that stops reproducing all the various levels of separation that underpins our culture.

The beginning is a rejection of the manifestations of this separation. I know where I am not going: deeper into a life dictated by an artificial need to maintain a high consumption lifestyle that pollutes our world, minds and social relations. Staying here is no longer an option. This gives me a starting point but it is not enough to simply reject deadening consumerist/neoliberal/colonial/civilised/modern/Western/capitalist/racist views of the world. We cannot find our way only by being against the world. We also need to embrace something.

Perhaps a better way of talking about this is to avoid the language of rejection/approval altogether. A friend of mine describes it as a 'shifting of allegiance' from the world of dead things towards life itself. That resonates with me. My allegiance is to life: the field of relations which constitutes my own existence. This enables me to see what kind of actions and thoughts are helpful to my voyage and which are not.

If the focus is the kind of relations I sustain with the world it is easy for me to get a feel for what nurtures life (and thus my own existence) and what denigrates it. Rather than striving to find a set of 'first principles' or absolute laws which tells me what is right and wrong, this view allows me to intuit my way through the world. Because I have always been relating to the world it is not difficult to know what feels good or right – it is easier, at least, than trying to calculate some overall impact of my actions. There are grey areas of course. And sometimes I can't just trust my intuitions or feelings unquestioningly. I have blind spots. Parts of me have been numbed. But the focus on relationship as a compass for my journey provides me with a workable heuristic which is much less likely to lead me astray than any insistence on clear cut rules of engagement.

Some elements of a viable compass have already been discovered. I have honed my attention and found an attitude which allows me to avoid identifying too hard with my opinions. I have embraced a radical openness and surrendered to the uncertainty and incompleteness of the journey. I have a practice of dialogue that nurtures my undertaking. I have found a source of belonging in my beliefs – not as an imposition on the world but as a positioning within a fellowship and a much vaster community. I can navigate on my journey without distrusting my words: aware of their limits, clear about my intentions, claiming nothing.

This is my vow: that my words be an expression of true relationship.

This returns to me a strength which I felt faded when I gave up on solutions: instead of channeling energy towards an expected resolution in the future it gives me power to nurture what is already here so that it may support others in a future I might never know.

It connects me to other struggles which are part of the same struggle: defining a life in the middle of unfathomable violence.

It brings a moment of clarity which I am unable to forget.

It speaks with a voice much older than my own.

Through the mind of Subcomandante Marcos in the early days of war in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast:

"What matters is our eldest elders who received the word and silence as a gift in order to know themselves and to touch the heart of the other. Speaking and listening is how true men and women learn to walk. It is the word that gives form to that walk that goes on inside us. It is the word that is the bridge to cross to the other side. Silence is what Power offers our pain in order to make us small. When we are silenced, we remain very much alone. Speaking, we heal the pain. Speaking, we accompany one another. Power uses the word to impose his empire of silence. We use the word to renew ourselves. Power uses silence to hide his crimes. We use silence to listen to one another, to touch one another, to know one another."

To speak so that the world can be renewed.

To be silent so that the otherness of the world can be heard.