Rapporteur on the Horasis Global Meeting 

I had the honour of being asked to be Rapporteur for the Horasis Global Meeting in Esipirito Santo, Brazil, after which I joined the final plenary session. This is the essence of what I said. 

Muriel Rukeyser, the poet, once said that the “universe is made of stories, not of atoms”. That always struck me. 

Stories are not just for poets but they are pathways to the future, they can galvanise resources, people and very importantly financing.

On the 24th October we kicked off the Horasis Global Meeting at the historical Anchieta Palace. I was honoured with my Co Founder of Embassy of the Future, Sujith Ravindran, to run a time travel event to 2070 and back called Bridges Through Time. We had some experts speak across tech, geopolitics and culture to give us input upon which we were to reflect. But, ultimately, it was a way to expand the mind and harness the imagination to forge new bridges through time; new stories. To think from the future instead of from the constraints or wounds of the past. I was so inspired by how the Horasis community jumped into this wholeheartedly. It is our stance that even while tackling serious issues it is important to hold space where there are songs, stories, dance, smiles and laughter. We will not catastrophize our way to building new systems and cultures. At the end of the workshop, Frank Jurgen Richter, the initiator of the Horasis meet summarised 3 takeaways: hope, beauty and love. 

Now back to stories. The more I heard the story of the Brazilian state of Espito Santo, the more I have been inspired. It is a state which has more than cleaned up its governance: the leaders I met cared about their work, about good governance, and they have a long term vision. Espirito Santo is truly a visionary State which has created its own sovereign wealth fund and is seizing on its good location with its port. As one participant told me “they have everything a growing region like Asia needs”.  Furthermore, the story of it becoming a global ESG center was endorsed by no less than one of the inventors of the concept of ESG – Paul Clements. 

The writer Margaret Wheatley suggested that in a world going mad, we need to set up islands of sanity to showcase to the world what is possible. And the Nobel-winning chemist and complexity scientist Ilya Pirgone said something very similar: “when a complex system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order.”  Espirito Santo is one of those important islands  with its inspiring work.

More broadly, I have been inspired by the stories and new “islands of coherence” emerging from the Horasis Global Community across many fields from AI to ESG and planet. Not only the great work that the esteemed participants have been doing, but I have been impressed by the way they have largely entered these conversations and dialogues as whole humans. In a fragmenting world, we have so many seeming paradoxes. Is AI good or bad? Is the future the Global North or South? US or China? Should we prioritise economic growth or planetary regeneration? Should we apply law or love? The list goes on. 

The answer to a fragmented world is not one side winning. It’s a reconciliation of seeming paradoxes. The only way to reconcile these is to enter – not shy away from  – the difficult conversations with an open mind, but also with heartfulness. Something which I think is crucial to creating positive futures. This is why we started each morning with contemplation sessions including meditation, visualisation, poetry and human connection. The perfect start for the highest form of leadership.

I know it can be challenging , if not overwhelming, to contemplate the changes and crises we are currently facing including the AI revolution, geopolitical rifts and war, economic divides and crises as well as the bigger ecological crisis. I personally think we are at a planetary turning point bigger than the Industrial Revolution 300 years ago, a once in 12,000 year moment: to borrow a word from physics, a phase transition such as from liquid to gas where all the old rules no longer apply. I see this as an end and dawn of a new civilization. The way to meet this poignant moment of history – this immense opportunity- is positively with the human imagination and vision. Together we can co-create new stories into the future. Horasis continues to be one of the most unique, auspicious and welcome places to do this.