Making Sense of The Week That Was: The Conflict Edition
News Wrap Edition #43 of Volume 1 | 12th November 2021
Editor: Esmee Wilcox, with Doyle Buehler
Conflict — Tensions, Transitions and Violence.
In the week of the 1,000 Day Eadar Grey Sway Guild virtual conference, all the events put together a whole host of people from across continents, over 80 nations, across disciplines, across cultural experiences, I’ve been thinking about conflict as both natural and opportunistic as well as a human tragedy. As we talked about the emergent future, the future that is in tension with where we are now, conflict becomes a natural part of this transition. This is discontinuity.
But, the uncertainty of the consequences of our actions on a global scale, and the mistrust of power and wealth where it is a zero-sum game, all remind us of the reasons still to act, to make sense together in places like the Grey Swan Guild.
The guild is not a place where conflict of ideas and cultures is suppressed. We are working hard to create a safe, trusted place for dissent to be honoured as part of seeking to understand. We seek the diversity of thought and in the broadest sense the diversity of the biosphere.
The human tragedy of conflict is writ large in this week’s wrap. It’s a chance for us to notice what is occurring around us, whether or not it’s the obvious or more well hidden from view in our communities.
The future of conflict? Let’s consider attacks close to home. The rise of environmental shocks alongside health and economic ones.
There’s a thread running through many of this week’s articles. The long-running disputes. We think we’ve won a battle, but hey, it’s the war, with all the fog, change and creative destruction it brings.
We’d love to hear your thoughts about conflict in all its facets. Conflict as natural tension and hope of a more fit-for-purpose future. Conflict as the supreme experience of what’s wrong with our world.
Perhaps you joined us for one of the 1,000 Day Radar events this week, and want a space to connect and talk a bit more.
Why not join us on Clubhouse this Sunday the 14th November 2021 at 8am PST | 11am EST | 4pm GMT| 5pm SAST to make sense of it all, have your say and engage with your favourite Grey Swan Guild Wrap Editors: Doyle Buehler, Sylvia Gallusser, Sean Moffitt, Agustín Borrazás, Rob Tyrie, Ben Thurman, Antonia Nicols Esmee Wilcox, Louise Mowbray, Geeta Dhir, Gina Clifford, Su McVey with Clubhouse Captains Howard Fields, Scott Phares and Lindsay Fraser.
Although it’s natural to look for security, to define yourself as either an optimist or not, I hope you can go with the ‘forces in tension this week’. As we look for stories of emergent futures with hope, the struggles of activists and others, let’s also notice where the violent conflict exists and consider our sensemaking role in that.
For the week that is conflict in all its facets…..Let’s Wrap.
The Great 😇
1. Stop the violence
25 November sees the annual International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, with 16 days of global activism. This year’s theme is ‘Orange the World’.
This is a global campaign. With roots in the 1996 declaration and fund opening. For some inspiration on projects that have received a grant from the UN this year, see here: The UN Women Organization (UNTF).
This gives us hope. But let’s not forget why this is still on the agenda, 25 years after the UN fund opened. Terrifying reports last year that for every 3 months that lockdowns continued, 15 million (yes 15 million) women would be subject to violence.
2, Come on Silicon Valley, please lead
Taking a side-step across in activism, here’s another story of struggle and hope with a tech activist in Silicon Valley.
“abuse, gaslighting, but ultimately optimism. Tracy Chou has been a tech activist for almost a decade. Her story reveals what it’s like to fight Silicon Valley’s establishment.”
The Good 🤩
1. Co-operation, collaboration, the good side of embracing divides.
Here are some stories that point to spaces and places where we can meet.
Looking ahead to the 19 November 2021, in The Hague, the Netherlands, Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre from Ireland will be awarded the 2020 Max van der Stoel Award in recognition of its continued efforts to strengthen the genuine integration of Ireland’s society by advocating for and protecting the rights of the Traveller and Roma communities.
It’s a local story of global resonance, focussing on the inclusion of BIPOC.
https://www.osce.org/hcnm/MvdSAward2020
2. Are you lonely Tonight? Stranger curation.
And a more light-hearted but still important personal story where two strangers meeting over dinner, no romantic intent, but the joy of serendipity?
With more detail, This Atlantic article speaks to the power of speaking to strangers. Power.
“If talking with strangers is so pleasant — and so good for us — why don’t people do it more often? That’s a big question, informed by issues of race, class and gender, culture, population density, and decades of (sometimes valid) “stranger danger” messaging. But the core answer seems to be twofold: We don’t expect strangers to like us, and we don’t expect to like them either.”
And, there are a couple of books on how talking to strangers changes your mind, but the critical guide is Adam Grant’s Think Again. Get out there. The anti-tinder? Friender?
The Bad 😬
1. War war, what is it good for?…
Conflicts that are brewing, spilling over, on our radar to get worse. Not quite making the Ugly bucket, but it’s hard to delineate between the two. It’s been a week of watching the plight of refugees, piling on the Belarus border with Poland, both sides warning of false flag agitprop.
Talking to our Swan colleague Doyle about Taiwan, and the Trade War between Australia and China. Closer to my home, we’re facing a Trade War with the EU with Fishing Rights and the protection of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland being the places where this is bubbling over.
We have family connections to Northern Ireland, so we are honing in on two articles about education that illustrate the fragility of cooperation in these communities, that does not need the threat of UK and EU conflict to stress the situation even more.
2. Walls? We need more Education integration.
The statistics behind this Belfast Telegraph article on the integration of schooling. “…census figures from the Department of Education showed that only 143 of around 1,000 schools in Northern Ireland have at least 10% of pupils from a Protestant background and 10% from a Catholic background.
The statistics showed that there are no Catholic or no Protestant pupils in 287 schools, around 30% of all schools. The analysis also suggested 70% of pupils attend schools where there is less than a one in 20 chance of meeting a pupil from the other main religious tradition.”
….and from the BBC…an article covering a report from Queens University, Belfast, about the complexities in learning about ‘The Troubles’ in school.
“The potential to glorify or romanticize the past was a key concern where children were not included in discussions about the impact of the Troubles/conflict in communities and families.”
and ….
“Young people require a safe space to explore the meaning of their own culture and identity and to learn about those of others.”
The researchers also said that Northern Ireland remained a “highly segregated” society — in housing, education and other “single-identity activities”.
That meant contact with young people from the “other community” was often limited. If we never learn and are open to the other, there will be at least fragility instability and at worst, war, death and annihilation of the othered. It’s anti-human.
2. Give Peace a Chance
In Israel. the are a number of cooperating Palestinian and Israeli groups trying to find another path than violence. There are no simple solutions. In the Cynefin frame, the region seems more like a Chaotic place than just a complex one. Things certainly aren't not clear. From The Conversation.
“So far, however, the traditional approach to conflict resolution has failed to achieve peace in Israel/Palestine. But as a scholar of human rights and the politics of the Middle East, I believe it’s possible that a different approach, one that uses a human rights perspective on conflict resolution, could produce what the old approach could not.”
3. It's not a party if we don't yell and fight?
But who couldn’t fail to notice the divergence in the conversations about COP 26. The turnout of people to protest, to participate, to bring the real stories to our attention.
The Guardian highlights the brewing ‘culture war’ amongst those who participate in protest and activism, and those who don’t.
The Ugly 😱
1. Hot hot hot. How are you feeling?
So this has to be the place to look at some of the violent geopolitical hotspots. The chart in the Tapestry section below puts all of this in context, but even that’s out of date already, and only covers that which is reported.
On our weekly radar is Ethiopia, with fighting between the national government and the Tigryans in the North. Ethnic Tigryans detained in the capital and the UN reports possible war crimes on all sides.
It’s also a place to think about environmental disasters. This chart from relief web shows up some of those. https://reliefweb.int/disasters
There’s also a report out that climate is becoming the greater driver of people leaving their homes than armed conflict. Human migration in history is an existential threat to stability on all fronts. In 2019, the UN Human Right Council (UNHCR) reported over 70 million humans were forcibly displaced. This does not include humans that are incarcerated publicly or privately. So in the here and now, where many of us are thinking the future is wars over environmental resources, a report showing us how much it’s affecting communities right now.
The Grey Zone of Uncertainty 🧐
1. Water, Water everywhere…
COP 26 has got to be on our radar in uncertainty this week. Day by day the mood swings between optimism and despair. Here’s a statement from the end of week 1 from a UK academic about the transition costs of climate change.
“But it is equally true that there are the costs of the transition needed will hit certain countries and interests and individuals particularly hard. From the Gilets Jaunes in France who opposed President Macron’s efforts to raise energy prices to the confluence of electricity and natural gas crises we have seen in Europe and beyond this autumn, the road to decarbonise major economies will be bumpy. Opposition to climate action, whether in the US, in Australia, even here in the UK remains stubbornly persistent. Pledges for 2050 or even 2030, though laudable, will need to thread the needle of the challenging politics and economics of 2022, 2023 and onward. It is still far too early to know whether this time the pledges will indeed herald a genuine and profound transition even if it is one that will be far messier than the announcements from Glasgow.”
And if there weren’t enough high stakes around the future of humanity, here’s some insight on AI and armed conflict from Carnegie Europe.
Putting COP 26 and our need to take collective action, together with AI, ‘Cognitive Hacking’ is on my mind… Deep fakes anyone? We are drawn to the need for “multi-sectoral” here. Our governments and businesses are not set up for this. Our international institutions are not set up for this criminal and geopolitical powershift weapon.
This risk is heading to Grey Swan Territory. An election or state or multinational toppled by AI-driven Cognitive Hacking. This unfortunate is the future of Agitprop. Your own public will be weaponized. Thank goodness Steve Bannon has been jailed and sued out of capability. Wait. What?
“Cognitive hacking, a form of attack that seeks to manipulate people’s perceptions and behavior, takes place on a diverse set of platforms, including social media and new forms of traditional news channels. The means are increasingly diversified, as distorted and false text, images, video, and audio are weaponized to achieve the desired effects. Cognitive security is a new multisectoral field in which actors engage in what Waltzman called “a continual arms race to influence — and protect from influence — large groups of people online.”
Tapestry
The collection of images, videos and charts delivered by the zeitgeist that is the internet and the news cycle.
Map of the Week:
Word of the Week:
Forget Carbon Footprints, think Climate Shadow. “Think of your climate shadow as a dark shape stretching out behind you. Everywhere you go, it goes too.”
In the week that we’ve been listening to ‘blah, blah, blah’ (perhaps this will come into the Oxford English Dictionary next year…) a sanguine warning of how much further we need to consider our environmental impact.
https://www.mic.com/impact/forget-your-carbon-footprint-lets-talk-about-your-climate-shadow
Meme of the Week:
Ok, so we are being hopeful that the presence of scientists in our homes through our TVs (yes, showing our collective ages) is a counterweight to ‘Karen’. But in the UK this is really rumbling on and omnipresent in the ridiculously false binary science vs. politics construct. Just look up Operation Alice.
Movie of the Week:
The Most Unknown. Netflix and chill about dark matter with a multi-sector multi-disciplinary group of scientists in a relay-quest for knowledge, listening sharing, and understanding using the approach of Consilience codified by E.O Wilson, the famous ant biologist (we are sure there's a fancy term for that, but that is not consilience).
Latin of the Week:
“The new Cogito Ergo Sum, should become Sentio Ergo Sum — from “I Think Therefore I am to I Sense therefore I am “— As heard in the 1,000 Day Radar Virtual Conference of the Grey Swan Guild. Rollover Descartes!
What’s Next:
This week is edition #43 of a compendium of stories and headlines we’re tracking in the Grey Swan Guild’s Global League of Sensemakers’ Newsroom. Imagine a newsroom that went deeper, had little bias and didn’t have to get their points across in 40-second sound bytes or linkbait headlines. That’s us.
This week’s edition will be discussed thoroughly Sunday 4pm GMT/11am ET/8am PT on Cllubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/join/grey-swan-guild/VCq4WeFU/Prayqow6
You can make Submissions to The Wrap any time on The Grey Swan Guild’s LinkedIn page with the hashtag #TheWrap. Be pithy, be wry, be relaxed and make some sense of the news with us. It’s a place we hang out during the week too. Join the conversation there and share your ideas, hopes, and worries with us. We are in this together for a reason.
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This month our Feature Guild City of the month is London. If you know of any London-phile (ok so there might not be that many, let’s open it up across the UK… and make sure we get Glasgow on the list next time- Ed) passionate leaders, thinkers or change agents have them join our Guild and our London event on 24 November at 4pm (GMT).
We have opened up another Medium and Clubhouse flank to the Grey Swan. Based on the pioneering successes of our Grey Swan News Wrap effort we have created “The Futures & Sensemaking” Series with an array of articles forthcoming about the why and how of making sense of the world.
Part One: https://bit.ly/gsgsensethinkpart1
Part Two: https://bit.ly/gsgsensethinkpart2
Next week is Grey Swan News Wrap #44 — “Making Sense of the Week that Was” authored by lead editor Geeta Dhir and sub-editor Louise Mowbray Gen Z and Gen A — Architects of our future — What kind of world might they create?
Join us on Sunday 21 November at Clubhouse for #44:
https://www.clubhouse.com/join/grey-swan-guild/pH7ECtoB/xeRQnaZd
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