Pruned Futures

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There are two kinds of meaning.

Type 1 meaning is most closely aligned with achievement: think progress, moving forward or discovery. It’s a one-way door that propels you toward the next milestone. Type 2 meaning is the stuff that is harder to define or quantify. It’s ritual, connection, joy, being alive with other people. Type 2 is more like a revolving door that leads to new rooms, but instead of moving forward, it brings you closer to the interior.

For a long time, we’ve organized everything around Type 1. But that branch of the future is being pruned, and a lot of the discomfort we see in culture right now is because we’re still measuring our lives by a form of meaning that’s losing its value.

In this episode of Unseen Unknown, we’re talking about all of the branches that have just been pruned off the futures tree. We’re exploring what happens to human meaning when AI starts doing all the achieving. We’re also talking about beauty and motherhood and how people are starting to question the architecture behind both with renewed interest. And we’re talking about the death of the belief that we could collaborate our way out of global crises, and what we replaced that belief with.

Sometimes futures fade, but more often, they get sliced off quickly and new growth shows up elsewhere.

The dead branches are real, but so is everything that gets to grow now that they’re gone.

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Scenius

Brian Eno came up with scenius, the idea that you can unlock the collective intelligence of a group if you bring together the right people at the right time. He was talking about artists, but we try to do it for strategic thinkers at Exposure Therapy (although we have artists here, too).

I’m holding our next info session this Thursday. Come join us and I’ll show you what it’s all about.

It’s complicated.

Hi, I’m Jasmine Bina. I’m a brand strategist and cultural futurist.
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