INTERACT
We help you interact to make the future happen
Background
“The human mind is built to think in terms of narratives, of sequences of events with an internal logic and dynamic that appear as the unified whole. In turn, much of human motivation comes from living through a story of our lives, a story that we tell to ourselves and that creates a framework for motivation”. Life could be just ‘one damn thing after another’, if it weren’t for such stories. (Akerlof and Shiller: “Animal Spirits” pg. 51)
And so, we have become the story telling animal. We imagine realities and we talk about things that don’t exist. But, “unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world.” (Harari: “Sapiens” pg. 35)
The imagined reality that currently dominates all our lives all over the world is the economic story. It is a story of mere transactions where humans have been reduced to being consumers and producers, all trying to buy at two and sell at three. The story has created economic man and woman, but in the process, it has dehumized us were “the only thing remaining for us is growth – growth which knows nothing but itself, because it has no goal to measure. The feeling of aimlessness binds it to meaninglessness and homelessness”. (Sedláček: Economics of Good and Evil)
The economic story no longer helps us live a full life, a life worth living. Thus, we have begun the process of creating a new imagined reality that exerts real force in the world. It is the story of interaction – “an occasion when two or more people or things communicate with or react to each other”. (dictionary.cambridge.org)
Before you abuse, criticize and accuse, walk a mile in my shoes. (Joe South)
What we do and how we work
Interaction happens between and amongst people. Hence, we can only encourage them to occur. We start by doing four things where we believe we can be of help:
1) We are writing a short but comprehensive book in which we argue for the new narrative, reason why interaction is the preferred one and outline how such a narrative can become dominant.
2) We give speeches and presentations based on the book.
3) We are organizing a transformative scenario project that creates the new narrative through a bottom-up process.
4) We are developing a series of workshops which we call ‘cradles of social innovation’. They use new narrative as frames for normal, everyday work. For these workshops, we convene a dozen participants around a particular theme (for example, around concepts like macro-economics, sustainable consumption, inequality, trust-building or around sectors such as gaming or healthcare provision …) where they develop the desirable blueprint-path for the concept or sector in question against the new narrative of interaction, initiate a project and take responsibility to make it happen in the emerging new real world.
Further Reading