As far as we know, there hasn’t been another species that had shaped the systems they live with in a such scale and pace as Homo sapiens. We are not the only species that affect the global futures, but we are the only species that have become aware of the magnitude of our effect (Värri 2018). This creates a moral, ethical and practical question: how should we deal with this knowledge? The present moment resembles “post‑normal times” (Sardar, 2010), marked by tensions between the established and the emergent, and by the hijacking of critical scrutiny to justify dis/misinformation and epistemic relativism (Latour, 2024). In a post‑truth climate, meanings detach from words, and words from material worlds, making “truth” appear a matter of opinion. 

Guidance counselling is one societal practice which helps individuals and groups navigate life, futures, and uncertainty. In Finland, all students in basic and secondary education have a legal right to qualified guidance, with professional ethics that emphasise truthfulness—acting honestly and tactfully while providing information that is up‑to‑date, reliable, diverse and conducive to critical evaluation (Suomen opinto-ohjaajat ry, 2021). These epistemic commitments are neither neutral nor fixed. This paper approaches guidance as a world‑making (wor(l)ding) practice in which performances of “truthfulness” both shape—and are shaped by—polarisation, mis/disinformation and ecological crises.

The discussion on guidance for sustainable futures often appears under “green guidance,” which situates career counselling within histories of Western science, individualism, and middle‑class norms, and challenges practitioners and policymakers to move beyond a narrow focus on individuals, Western knowledge, and over‑consuming economic growth (Plant, 2014). Recent work calls for a “relational turn” so that guidance can better respond to the needs of individuals, societies, and the planet (Toiviainen & Bilon‑Piórko, 2025). I extend these debates through relational onto‑epistemology and agential realism (Barad, 2007), treating reality as inseparable, ongoing entanglements produced through material‑discursive intra‑actions (see also Juelskjær, 2023; Murris, 2023). “Truthfulness” is not a static property but a phenomenon that does world‑making work in and through practice.

The study draws on writings from 18 Finnish guidance counsellors and dialogic conversations with 11 of them. The analytic approach is diffractive and relational: rather than coding for discrete themes within pre‑given entities, I read counsellors’ texts and dialogues through/with theoretical apparatuses to trace how human and more‑than‑human relations, truth claims, and ethical commitments are enacted. The analysis follows the phenomenon—truthfulness—as it takes shape across practices of information provision, uncertainty framing, temporal and spatial scaling, and engagements with environments, infrastructures, and technologies.

The talk offers analytical sketches of how human and more‑than‑human are detached and/or entangled within guidance counselling, and what the ethical concept of truthfulness does as part of these entanglements. Empirically, the paper surfaces how truthfulness enacts with/in Finnish guidance counselling amid ecological and epistemic crises. Conceptually, it reframes truthfulness as a relational, more‑than‑human practice rather than a property of statements. Practically, it articulates implications for guidance ethics, professional learning, and policy—expanding “green guidance” and advancing the proposed relational turn (Plant, 2014; Toiviainen & Bilon‑Piórko, 2025; Barad, 2007). In sum, I argue that truthfulness, performed as material‑discursive care, can strengthen guidance as a practice that contributes to democratic and sustainable futures in post‑normal times.

The research is based on diffractive analysis of writings of and dialogues with Finnish guidance counselors in basic and secondary education. Ways of working with this material are grounded in relational onto-epistemology (see e.g. Toiviainen & Bilon-Piórko, 2025) and especially inspired by the work of Karen Barad with agential realism (see e.g. Barad, 2007). This means that the world is not conceptualized as a collection of individual entities or objects that have internal “true essence”, clear-cut borders and spaces between them. Rather the world is seen as full of inseparable entangled phenomena that are constantly being re/created in intra-action with/in one another (Barad, 2007; see also Juelskjær, 2023; Murris, 2023). The phenomenon of truthfulness also produces the world and gets produced with/in it. As we are not detached from the world that we live in, “all forms of knowledge production are at the same time formations of reality” (Hill, 2017, p. 2). Words have material effects and at the same time the material reality shapes the words we use and the ways we use them. Everything (including “truth” and “guidance counseling”) is in a constant process of becoming in a complex dynamic with the world, time and space.

My hope is that the sketches presented here can deepen our understanding of the ethical-onto-epistemology of (green) guidance for sustainable futures and spark more dialogues, with human and non-humans alike, and inspire further research.

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