The odds of you being alive is roughly 1 in 400 trillion.
You are a miracle
As is all life on this rock called Earth hurtling through space.
It’s not a given that we’re all here.
That this planet Earth creates the conditions for life to emerge and thrive.
For us to find home here.
Life is a miraculous, emergent, unfolding, improbable, unknowable sequence of cosmic collisions, interactions and entangled relationships.
Life on Spaceship Earth is sacred.
What if the spell of modernity, its excessiveness, its logic of extraction and separation that has built this civilisation on top of this great mystery of aliveness - was actually a glitch in our evolutionary consciousness ?
Leading to a collective hallucination of sorts, of certainty, control and hubris.
An illusion of human centred dominance and separation from all that is alive.
As my friend Ella Saltmarshe reminded me recently…
In the anthropocene it is the systems not the species that are innately destructive
And these systems have been designed by humans, mostly in the imaginations of our very recent ancestors, with ways of thinking, seeing and relating to life on this Spaceship Earth that are destructive and divisive.
We can learn to see and relate to life differently, to see ourselves, each other and this more than human planet once again with awe and wonder.
To relate in ways that are caring, life-centric, life-affirming, in kinship with all life, imbued with deep wisdom instead of industrial cleverness.
To learn compatibility and harmony with the interconnected, complex, intelligent operating system called life on Spaceship Earth.
And so what if we are all being invited to step into this challenge, into service in these times of great unravelling ?
Especially those of us with more privilege, for example we in the Global North who’ve been flying business class on Spaceship Earth for too long - there is more responsibility on us to cultivate the courage and creativity to begin to change the ways we’ve been showing up.
If you’re listening to this podcast that probably includes you, as just being able to listen to podcasts puts us in the minority percentage on this Spaceship with the time and mental capacity to consider these challenges.
There is a responsibility we all have to the next generations, to our fellow human beings who are suffering right now and to our more than human family, past, present and future ancestors.
On the podcast I have hosted conversations with many humans who are taking responsibility to change the way they think, see, relate and act through their own unique gifts and networks of influence.
I’ve hosted authors, farmers, healers, designers, activists, musicians, artists but it’s been a while since I’ve had someone working deeply within the world of business and in his words ‘the dark and magical art of brands’.
My guest on this episode David Johnstone is in my view a beautiful example of a human taking responsibility and using their gifts, experience and influence to cultivate the courage and creativity to face into the uncomfortable questions we are being confronted with
To speak up to the messy contradictions of this moment
To raise awareness of the massive changes coming down the line
To experiment with weirder moves
To keep self examining not just the impacts of business as usual but to imagine and participate in business unusual, where we commit to the messy process of healing, reconnecting, reimagining and liberating.
He is founder, CEO and Executive Creative Director of global design studio, Accept and Proceed , host of the brilliant podcast ~Endless Vital Activity, convener of strange solstice gatherings We don’t know what this is yet on Hackney Marshes.
David is a humble, curious, insightful, creative human, a radical experimenter with a big heart and infections imagination.
This was a wide ranging conversation exploring his work in brand design, his journey working with global corporations, awakening to the impacts of commercial creativity, of taking responsibility for the impacts we are making through these creative human entities we call ‘brands.’
This has led to the Design for the Future mission of Accept and Proceed which he unpacks alongside an exploration of brand power, the ‘dark ages of the future’, ‘Together World’ strategy and the emergence of new relational entanglements between humans, enterprise and this living mysterious Spaceship Earth we call home.
We explore:
The nervous energy of these times
Panpsychism and Consciousness
David's journey into brand
The power and responsibility of brand
Designing for a ‘Together World’
Navigating the Three Horizons Framework
Embracing complexity and uncertainty
Understanding business and systemic cycles - death and endings
The significance of tuning into Earth’s patterns like sunrises
Imagining brand futures
LINKS
Episode 91 - David Johnston - Brand Frequencies, Together World and the Dark Ages of the Future