Navigating the Weight of the World: From Grief to Global Interconnection

The last few years have felt heavy, haven’t they? We have endured an intense cascade of events - a global pandemic, political upheavals, and a chorus of global crises that seem unrelenting. From the genocide in Gaza and Sudan to the horrific violence and exploitation in Congo, the scale of suffering, particularly inflicted upon Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples in the Global South, is staggering. Closer to home, the atmosphere can feel overwhelming - a toxic tide of anti-trans legislation and rhetoric, surging anti-immigrant sentiment, the normalization of Islamophobia, and the emboldenment of hate groups. We see the brutal machinations of ICE, and we witness the alarming rise of fascist politics next door in the U.S. Mentally and emotionally, maintaining balance while bearing witness has been a profound challenge.

Yet, turning away is not an option. To be fully human is to engage with our world - the joyous and the horrifying, the exciting and the terrifying. What happens on the other side of the planet is not a distant abstraction; it is intimately connected to our lives, our consumption, and our governments. This interconnectedness is the very heart of our ethos at Seed Room Consulting.

The Legacy of Internationalist Visionaries

We stand on the shoulders of thinkers and activists who understood this truth deeply. Malcolm X, Kwame Touré (Stokely Carmichael), Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, Toni Morrison, the Black Panthers, and Third World Feminists were all internationalists. So too were and are Palestinian, Indigenous, and Muslim liberationists like Ghassan Kanafani, Leila Khaled, Noura Erakat, Haunani-Kay Trask, Nick Estes, and Edward Said. They all recognized that liberation movements are linked across borders, that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Their guiding principle, “no one is free until we are all free,” is one we carry into our work every day.

Our practice is intentionally informed by theorists, activists, and workers from around the world. Why? Because the local is global.

The Tangible Threads of Complicity and Connection

Consider the vivid, painful examples:

• Congo: The minerals mined by Congolese laborers under enslaved-like conditions are in our phones, laptops, and cars. Our demand fuels that death and destruction.

• Gaza: The ongoing genocide is executed with the direct complicity and military support of Western governments, including the U.S., Canada, and European nations. We, as citizens of these nations, are implicated.

• Sudan: For those with ties to the United Arab Emirates, there is a connection to the genocidal forces perpetuating violence there.

Our comfort, our technology, and our foreign policies are woven into the suffering of the Global South. To ignore this is to live a lie.

The Old Order is Dead: A Startling Admission

This context made Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent speech at the World Economic Forum so striking. He stated boldly what many have long known: the old world order is gone.

He acknowledged that international law was never applied equally - that powerful nations like the U.S., Canada, and Europe often operated above it, while less powerful nations were held to a starkly different standard. For a Western leader to name this asymmetry was refreshing. (Strong critiques rightly point out that Canada itself has yet to fully live up to this sentiment - a vital conversation, but one for another time. We encourage readers to engage with the critiques linked below.) For now, his admission demands a pressing question of us all: What comes next?

This old order was built on and served the pillars of white supremacy, capitalism, heteropatriarchy, colonization, and imperialism. Its demise requires us to actively challenge these systems. But how?

It can feel abstract. Challenging capitalism isn't just for policymakers; it’s in our daily choices. Dismantling white supremacy and heteropatriarchy happens in our conversations, our workplaces, and our communities. The work is both systemic and personal.

Emergent Strategy: Changing the World by Changing Our Patterns

In our work, we are guided by the wisdom of adrienne maree brown and her framework of Emergent Strategy. brown argues that nature is our greatest teacher for creating change. It shows us how to adapt, interconnect, and build resilient systems.

One of its core elements is Fractals. A fractal is a never-ending, self-repeating pattern where the small reflects the large. As brown writes, “how we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale.”

This is the key.

We cannot simply wait for politicians to craft a new world order. We must build the patterns of that new world in our daily lives. The large-scale liberation we seek must be practiced in our small-scale interactions, organizations, and communities.

• How are we challenging white supremacy in our daily circles?

• How are we interrupting capitalist exploitation in our local economies?

• How are we dismantling heteropatriarchy in our relationships and institutions?

These small, repeated actions create the feedback loop that scales up. The fractal pattern of justice we practice today becomes the blueprint for the liberated society of tomorrow.

Our Role in the Shift

This is how we at Seed Room Consulting see our place in this tumultuous, grieving, yet hopeful moment: by committing to the small-scale, fractal work of challenging oppressive systems, informed by a global perspective and the legacy of internationalist freedom fighters.

The old world is gone. The new one is not yet born. It will be built not by a single leader’s speech, but by the multitude of us, in our communities, repeating the patterns of justice, interconnection, and liberation until they become the fabric of our world.

The weight is real, but so is our interconnected power to change the pattern. Let’s get to work.

Further Exploring: Engaging with Critique

• Mark Carney Delivers Historic Speech While Trump Calls Greenland ‘Iceland’ Multiple Times [video]

• Christie Belcourt's Facebook commentary

• Avi Lewis on Mark Carney's speech