On Radical Aliveness: With The Firekeepers & World Ethic Forum

“It’s a radical act to be fully alive. To be fully alive means to be able to look at all things and still appreciate life, feel the joy and the aliveness of love, pleasure, beauty - even pain and death. Never have we needed this more than now.”
– Lori Hanau, CEO & Founder of Global Round Table Leadership

How do we come to a new responsibility and life-affirming relationship with ourselves, each other, and the natural world? 

This past August, for the 1st time, the World Ethic Forum gathered global citizens from all backgrounds and ages who care about shared radical aliveness and leadership around this profound paradigm-shifting inquiry. Honoring elder and youth perspectives of our shared experiences creates a timelessness of wisdom and has the potential to completely transform the conventional workplace environments we have today. 

The two-day event was unlike any other leadership conference that Lori had been invited to attend. This is because there was also the idea to have 52 Firekeepers, who have committed to be stewards of this consciousness for the next seven years, gather privately for two full days before the public gathering. Lori was invited to be a Firekeeper and along with Otto Scharmer, was one of the first two people representing the United States. 

“The Firekeepers are people from many parts of the world who dedicate their lives to social transformation and developing livable futures for our children and grandchildren. In particular, they are dedicated to recognizing the rights of the Earth and all living beings.” Each person who has been invited to become a Firekeeper has demonstrated this lifelong commitment through their work and being, developing regenerative futures for generations to come through their own distinct path. 

Lori felt such resonance with the idea of the World Ethic Forum, to the commitment to radical aliveness and to the vision for seven year stewardship which gives this consciousness and community a chance to take root and flourish. Lori’s commitment to nurturing this consciousness is a guiding force in Global Round Table Leadership’s efforts to bring the Shared Leadership Framework™ into the global community, through our work in leadership development, team development, group coaching and the 2023 launch of our Shared Leadership Journey™.

To give you a sense of Lori’s inspiration and of the Forum, here are the Principles of the World Ethic Forum.

(1) The world is alive. The world is a highly diverse, profoundly creative process that brings forth and sustains living individuals. All living beings are subjects. They possess an inner experiencing and feeling of self, through which they perceive their existence as a personal reality. In this respect, other beings are no different from humans.

(2) All living beings have rights. The effort to restore all other beings to their right as subjects is a continuation and broadening of the effort for equal rights for humans marginalized on the basis of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, or ethnicity. Denying other beings their existence as subjects is a form of colonization. Only in a world in which the rights of all living subjects are safeguarded will human inequalities also be resolved.

(3) An Ideology of death underlies the ecological crisis. The current ecological crisis is due to the fact that our civilization denies non-human sentient beings their subject status. Instead, non-human organisms are regarded as things. We can therefore say that the ecological crisis is caused by an ideology of death. We want to replace this ideology with the idea of reality as all-encompassing aliveness, shared by humans and non-human beings alike.

(4) Humans must support a society of all beings. The experience of being part of a communal, shared process of being alive can change our actions and is needed to revitalize our world. Humans increase their own aliveness when they recognize and advance the subject-nature of other beings. This means granting all living subjects a place in society and expanding it into a “society of all beings.” This demands radical changes in the domains of law, science, business, education, ethics and religion.

These principles require that we radically change the relationship between humans and other living subjects. This requires that:

• We understand production and consumption of food as shared work done by all species to make the biosphere more fertile. This “work for life” increases diversity. It makes landscapes more beautiful and gives pleasure to all.

• We design economic production as part of the productivity of the biosphere, and no longer direct it against our shared aliveness.

• We design education to help people deepen their vitality in collaboration with all other beings, and to help them learn how to nourish life-giving relationships.

• We constrain economic development, abandoning the goal of increasing the gross national product, and directing the economy towards extending the commons of shared life, creativity and knowledge.

• We create a legal system that treats non-humans as full subjects.

• We make political decisions routinely in ways that enhance vitality.

• We encourage cultural imagination and scientific research to search for new ways to create the experience of being fully alive and to develop new domains of culture as the human contribution to the productivity of the cosmos.

• We nurture spirituality as our innate way to connect with the core of a creative and life-giving world.

Lori found herself surrounded by the rich wilderness of Pontresina, Switzerland, where the indigenous Swiss language has been kept alive. People gathered in peer-to-peer conversations and group coaching, to partake in rituals and culture that threaded the theme of committing to radical aliveness. “It was so powerful and moving to be in a cross-generational group,” says Lori. 

As a result, Lori experienced a deep place of authenticity and the wakefulness to the fragility of life. Every day, the view from the town was itself a reminder of this fragility; where once the town would have stayed partially snow covered all summer, now the mountains were bare and the glacial melt and retreat was visible.

“It’s a radical act to be fully alive. To be fully alive means to be able to look at all things and still appreciate life, feel the joy and the aliveness of love, pleasure, beauty - even pain and death. Never have we needed this more than now.” explains Lori. 

Within the Global Round Table Leadership community, we explore this and other guiding questions in our Shared Leadership Framework™ which we designed to transform relationships and team development. But we don’t do this alone. Throughout our Shared Leadership Journey,™ we have the opportunity to intentionally practice with leaders and other systems change groups bringing justice to humanity and the environment. 

Like we do here at Global Round Table Leadership with our Shared Leadership Framework,™ the Firekeepers seek to instill humanity and connectedness into our relationships with ourselves, others, and the natural world. There is true power in looking at the pain in the world and not being consumed by it. We must see it and not turn away from it. Through understanding our interconnectedness, we can cultivate our wisdom and compassion to show up for ourselves and each other. 

The Firekeepers continue to share their unique expressions of radically shared aliveness and work with others around the world. We are honored to contribute to creating a healthier, regenerative, and caring planet alongside them, through the World Ethic Forum, as a global network partner. 

Ready to discover radical aliveness and transform your relationships? Contact us about our leadership development training. Learn more about the World Ethic Forum here and the Firekeepers here.