This talk was given by our founder, Marlon Souren, during an online event organised by FICSA (Federation of International Civil Servants’ Associations) on 7 March, on the occasion of the International Women's Day 2025.
Thank you so much for inviting me here today. My name is Marlon Souren, and I am the founder of the Paradiso Perduto Foundation.
I worked for the United Nations for over a decade, in many different roles, for the most part in peacekeeping. When I left the UN for medical reasons, I found myself falling into a virtual black hole. First I lost my health, then my income, a bit later my partner, and eventually my identity. I lost my place in the world, and felt catapulted into the unknown.
In response, I fought hard, I resisted with everything I had. To no avail. Eventually I realised (after much, much struggle) that I had no choice but to embrace my new reality.
When I look at the current global situation, I see a macro version of what happened to me, to my life. Everything is getting upended, derailed, burned to the ground.
I understand the shock, the urge to fight and push back. I understand it better than most. However, I believe that we will have no choice but to accept this new reality, and the dissolution of the world as we know it. Once we truly accept this, we can embrace it as an opportunity for systemic change.
The difficulty with systemic change is that it requires a deep transformation, it requires a cultural change. And most of us are blind to our own culture, our own assumptions.
We are like fish in water. Fish don’t know they are in water. If you tried to explain it, they’d say, “Water? What is water?” They’re so surrounded by it that it’s impossible to see. They can’t see it until they jump outside of it. This is a good analogy for human culture. We’re so surrounded by it that it’s impossible to see. Many things that we believe are hard facts really are just assumptions, they are human constructs, a mirror world.
An academic researcher friend of mine, dubbed this phenomenon “consensual reality”. Some of it is factual and true, but a lot of it is simply culturally determined. More importantly, quite a few hard facts are actively ignored and left out of this “consensual” version of reality.
For example, the information gathered by most experts, no matter their field of expertise, chronically leaves out women. Our existence, our lived experience, is mostly ignored.
The feminine reality is a repressed reality.
Image courtesy of Marlon Souren
One of the elephants in the global room is overpopulation. This is clearly one of the key contributing factors to the poly-crisis. And this problem cannot be effectively addressed without addressing the position of women in society, taking into account the female perspective, our interests and needs – which are different from men.
But it all goes much further than this. It is to the mirror world itself, its systems, its institutions that we must look. Not only are they incapable of providing viable solutions - stuck as they are in the old paradigm, their own reality bubble – these institutions are in fact, among the main contributors to the current crisis. It is through the financial markets, the current socio-economic systems, the laws & regulations, the carrots and the sticks, that our predicament has been created. We can’t see it until we get outside of it.
That is why I believe we cannot achieve true change until we first take a huge step back, create some distance and space, and look at our lives, our society and our organisations from a different perspective.
Dare I say it: it is time we look at it from a feminine perspective. As long as we are fully embedded inside the system, which was made by men, for men, and is still dominated by men, we cannot see it.
It is very tempting to allow ourselves to be rushed by all the noise, the brawling, the screaming and the bullying. It seems counter intuitive to pause, take a deep breath, and step back. As the crisis gets more and more urgent, we are trying to come up with answers before we have even begun to ask the right questions. We continue to argue and fight about who is right and who is wrong, but all our solutions will simply recreate the same problems.
It is also perfectly clear that no-one is able to ‘fix’ the current grave and complex situation alone. While the masculine perspective looks towards a ‘saviour’, a strongman figure that will make things right, the feminine looks in the direction of the collective. She looks for partnerships instead of dominance. She looks for relationship instead of competition. She knows that diversity means collective strength. She plays the long game.
As some of you know, my response to the challenge of today’s world is the establishment of the Paradiso Perduto Foundation.
The concept is one of true community and peer-support. It is about the creation of a safe space where people can take a step back and breathe. It is a place outside of consensual reality, based on feminine principles.
Although the to-be-built retreat centre will be small, it will have a significant impact in its trailblazing function. As each retreatant will return to society, to their ‘normal’ life, to their place of work, they will become the seeds of change.
Wadzi asked me to close with a call to action. My call is a poem, by Tom Hirons.
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You’ll have to become a forest poet
to survive in the world of mirrors.
The fascinating reflections
will borrow the strength of your soul
will leave your words hollow
unless you can fill them again
with the moss and granite /
the draped lichen in the hawthorn /
the way the light catches the ash bark
or the pale ghost-faces of the birch.
The words need to ring
with the dew-thick hazel’s catkins
or the sea of treetops as you look
out across the green hill.
One force draws you to the woods
another force to the thin world.
Where is your allegiance today?
Allow the green sea to fill you;
allow the green knife to pare away
everything that is not true.
We cannot go back
but the green knife is still sharp
and what is true in the forest
remains true in the mirror-world /
remains true, even on the clear-cut hill.
Put away the mirror-box.
Take one step today
towards the trees.
