What if we hold space for Seismic Questions together?

This is an open invitation to co-create Seismic Questions, a collaborative book project

“Changing the answer is evolution. Changing the question is revolution.”
- Jorge Wagensberg

What are Seismic Questions?

Seismic Questions hold the potential to transform you, to re-arrange your being and the way you relate to the world. They question assumptions, unravel stories of modernity, crumble worldviews, shift horizons and invite you to welcome unimaginable futures.

Holding Space for Seismic Questions

The Business-as-usual world, or to be less discomfort-avoidant, Colonial-Imperial Modernity, especially in the Global North, is obsessed with quick fixes, silver bullet solutions and immediate, preferably measurable answers.

There seems to be consensus in the impact and sustainability-as-usual space that we are in an existential crisis and have no moment to lose. As we haven’t collectively taken a moment to stop, breathe and reflect, we are simply responding with the mechanistic business-as-usual motto: “Let’s fix it fast and cheap.” Unfortunately, government institutes, universities and non-profit organisations follow this short-sighted MBA logic down a very destructive death end, likely resulting in the premature extinction of humanity and with us the extinction of many other species.

Across the world, we are already witnessing the consequences, impacting our social systems, mental health, the arts, social sciences, education and any other space created for or shaped by humans. We are slowly losing room for the liminal, complex, (un)imaginable, unquestionable, fluid, the ambiguous and especially the messy. We are organising ourselves to death in a futile attempt to arrange the world neatly according to the logic of a dominating narrative of makeability.

What if the questions we are asking hold us hostage in oppressive and destructive systems? What if the potential for deep change emerges from asking different questions? Seismic Questions. Holding the ability to nurture our societal soil. In which dormant seeds of alternative life-affirming futures wait patiently, until we as humanity realise we need to grow up and are ready to create the conditions for them to sprout and thrive.

How can we hope for life-affirming futures without questioning the beliefs, narratives and worldviews that shaped modernity? History is paved with tiredly repeated mistakes, costing millions of living beings their lives and loved ones. These mistakes were, and still are, often grounded in fanatic certainties, unchallenged beliefs and unquestioned narratives. Why make the same mistake over and over again? What if, instead of forcing the answers, we lived the questions?

The transformative potential of Seismic Questions can only be fulfilled if we hold space for them. They are not questions seeking answers; they are questions we need to live, explore, and allow to evolve. “What is enough?” “Whose voices are missing?”, “What is wealth?”, “Who wrote history?”, “How to hold space for uncertainty?”, “What if we learned how to speak whale?” is an example of a question we need to hold space for. We are gathering seismic questions through an open mapping process. You can access the evolving map here and directly add the Seismic Question you are living to it.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a young poet

Invitation To Co-Create

This is an open invitation to co-create a creative, inquiring, loving response to messy times and heaps of uncertainty (seen and unseen, recognised and carefully stifled). A book born from the need to hold space for Seismic Questions. The kind of questions defying quick fixes and solutionism. We are gathering question holders, space holders, community weavers and artists to bring Seismic Questions to life. A book filled with stories, exercises and tools to help you hold space for the seemingly unquestionable and unimaginable. To nurture and embody a constant (un)learning, crumbling and shifting of worldviews, myths and stories.

This heartfelt, slightly terrifying call to co-create and support is extended to you by us, Joy Njeri and Minou Schillings. We are writing thousands of kilometres apart, Joy in Nairobi, Kenya and Minou at Tertulia, Italy. Our digital meet-cute happened at a LinkedIn Audio event. No distance or time difference will stop us from bringing this book to life. The ideas, questions, energy, and stories are all abundant.

The idea for seismic questions was born from the admittedly quite lengthy question: “How can we hold space for questions, uncertainty and emergence without giving in to the desired certainty, measurability, and clarity so often demanded in business-as-usual spaces?”

We need to rewrite the past, the present and the future. We need radical honesty, unapologetic questions and a gigantic mirror. It’s time humans face the society we created and remember how to nurture and care for life on earth.

Bringing Seismic Questions to Life

To bring seismic questions to life, we are exploring two pathways to publication, supported by a publisher or self-published, realised through crowdsourcing the capacities needed to publish a book.

Option A: Committed publishing house

For this pathway, we are calling out to the publishing world. Do you want to bring Seismic Questions to life? Inspire and enable readers to hold space for emerging regenerative futures through questioning, (un)learning and imagination. This is not just a book, it’s an invitation, a tool, a portal to a constantly evolving constellation of (un)learners, change makers and (aspiring) regenerative stewards. We would love to hear from you!

Option B: Crowdsourced self-publishing

“I have never tried that before,
so I think I should definitely be able to do that.”
- Pippi Longstocking

Last year, we formed part of a self-published, co-created book project, and to say the least, we got hooked! One way or another, Seismic Questions will come to life. To make this pathway happen, we seek contributors and collaborators who can help us realise the capacities needed for self-publication: editing, proofreading, interior design, cover design, marketing and promotion. Do you hold one or multiple of these capacities and want to help bring Seismic Questions to life? We can’t wait to hear from you!

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