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Something is wrong in the world, and everyone can feel it.
Last week I gave a talk at Carnegie Mellon University called “Gazing Into The Eye of The Monster/ Machine”, about the messy, liminal space between a world we’re ready to leave behind and one we don’t yet know how to name.
The systems that once structured modern life are weakening. Underneath all of it is a two-headed presence: a monster that grows by consuming, and a machine that functions by numbing. Together they’ve created a system so distorted in its incentives that it now does the opposite of what it was designed for.
And it wants you to look away.
But the people who do look, who stare into the eye of this thing with clear eyes and let it change them without breaking them, are already building the next world inside the shell of this one. New experiments in how we live, relate, work, and organize power are emerging everywhere. Something new is being born.
And that means the easy decades are over. Optimization is over. Comfortable distance from the fire is over. The daydream version of “growth” that got us here — where aesthetic and function are shallow substitutes for progress — will not get us to the next one.
When you really gaze into the eye of the Monster/ Machine, what you see is a dying world.
And what it leaves behind is a big, raw, electric energy that we get to build with.
Brand Ontologies
I got to partner with the amazing Eugene Healey to talk about what so many people refuse to acknowledge: reality is shifting and people aren’t the same anymore.
We’ve changed in fundamental ways that will have outsized effects on our cultural systems and markets... and it’s time to rethink how you show up in the world.
We’ve just announced our first course for culture branding!
If you want a complete brand strategy toolkit that you can use for the rest of your career, come join us for our 3-week intensive starting on April 13th:
I hope to see you there,
Hi, I’m Jasmine Bina. I’m a brand strategist and cultural futurist.
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