The intention of 1st World Confessions is to liberate the idea that the United States of America represents the pinnacle of national progress and is thus a functional model to base the rest of the world’s development. Our intention is not to just to be critical but to honor that a United States that works for everyone is possible but the necessary shadow work to must be done on a collective level.

1st World Confessions invites citizens of industrialized countries to articulate the nuanced difficulty of contemporary Western life. Our goal is to make visible the concealed harms of American propaganda and the lies we tell ourselves to function in a broken system.

To achieve this, we use the aesthetic of the "confessional," providing a safe space through an online community of solidarity around truth-telling. By confessing we attempt to acknowledge the burdens we feel from the ecological and social harms caused by our everyday lives in an unsustainable and violent society. We confess because we're struggling to reconcile our own lives in this unsustainable society and out of the recognition that we need help. We need help to see these flaws, we need help to even see.  

The Invitation to Participate:

The courage to be witnessed in sharing your experience of living in the “1st World” and its burdens is key to confessing. This is an opportunity to rise to the occasion, sharing your wisdom and pain for the betterment of our world.

Share what you can, what is relevant to your lived experience--we will appreciate every moment of it. You are invited to be brave and to risk even to being a hero. Our goal is to be medicine. Ready? 🙂

Orientation: Consider communicating with these aesthetics in mind:

• Pick any topic that is near and dear to you, and imagine how you might convey it to those affected by the issue. 
• Remember: You matter, your experience matters, your perspectives matter, your voice belongs in our commons!
• Situate yourself: How can you make who you are visible?
• Don't preach, keep it vulnerable.
• Speak from your experience, not about your experience; so that you can process your struggle in real time.
• Use body language.
• Trust you unique wisdom.
• Anything you have to offer will be greatly appreciated.
• Please speak your intersections of care and insight into visibility.
• Please take a moment to compose your thoughts and center yourself before speaking.
• Keep it Concise! Aim for a 1­-3 minute share.

Goals: We will stimulate global conversations on what civilization should be like; warn countries pursuing “development” that it’s dangerous and to not sacrifice environmental and social integrity in order to reach the “top”: to not tolerate being sacrificed; sharpen our awareness of while processing the collective shadow of America: inspire a global shadow work movement, protect the world from going in the same dead end direction. Our goal is to awaken humanity to get its shit together which means we have to break the trance of business as usual. Thus our words are our medicine as we seek to heal the numbed and broken areas of our world by doing collective shadow work so that we stop the trauma. We do this by expressing our connected heartminds on camera to be shared worldwide.