Speaker 1: We just can't solve the challenges we face from within
Speaker 1: the story that created them, right like we We can't
Speaker 1: solve a crisis of loneliness and mental health from within
Speaker 1: a story that says we're independent isolated individuals. Can't You
Speaker 1: can't solve across of inequality from a story that says
Speaker 1: that the society is a lot of you climb the
Speaker 1: most important, like most viscerally to me. You can't solve
Speaker 1: an ecological crisis from a story that says we're separate
Speaker 1: from nature. Welcome to How does Citizen with Baritune Day,
Speaker 1: a podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a
Speaker 1: legal status. This season is all about how we practice democracy,
Speaker 1: what can we get rid of, what can we invent,
Speaker 1: and how do we change the culture of democracy itself.
Speaker 1: We're leaving the theoretical clouds and hitting the ground with
Speaker 1: inspiring examples of people and institutions that are showing us
Speaker 1: new ways to govern ourselves. If you're new to this podcast, Welcome,
Speaker 1: make sure you check out the first episode of this
Speaker 1: season with Adrian Marie Brown, the organizer, facilitator, and artist
Speaker 1: who shared ways we can deepen our citizen practice and
Speaker 1: bring it home In this episode, I'm joined by someone
Speaker 1: who has spent a lot of time thinking about stories,
Speaker 1: how they come into being, what they mean, and how
Speaker 1: they informed the way we live with each other. The
Speaker 1: first time I met John Alexander, we were both guested
Speaker 1: on a podcast called From What If to What Next
Speaker 1: with Rob Hopkins. Like me, John was also using citizen
Speaker 1: in this inclusive, participatory sense, and we just clicked. He's
Speaker 1: the author of citizens Why The Key to Fixing Everything
Speaker 1: is all of Us? And he's also the founder of
Speaker 1: the New Citizenship Project, a social innovation lab that works
Speaker 1: with organizations to shift their culture and practice by helping
Speaker 1: them think of people as citizens. First. It's one thing
Speaker 1: to catalog projects. His book does that, and so do
Speaker 1: we with this podcast, but it's a completely different thing
Speaker 1: to have a staff, facilitators, workshops, and clients who are
Speaker 1: really trying to implement things. I mean, there's no how
Speaker 1: to citizen institute, not yet. I respect that. While John
Speaker 1: is talking and writing about making citizenship a practice, he's
Speaker 1: also practicing it himself, and it's a far cry from
Speaker 1: the work he was doing before this. John Alexander is
Speaker 1: a former admin. During his time in that world, he
Speaker 1: won awards for telling the consumer story until it made
Speaker 1: him sick, actually physically sick, and he couldn't continue selling
Speaker 1: a narrative he didn't believe in, so he decided to
Speaker 1: fight for a different story. John is helping us take
Speaker 1: a narrative turn toward the citizens story, one where we're
Speaker 1: not simply independent, but interdependent. We don't just compete, we collaborate,
Speaker 1: and our leaders don't just serve, they facilitate our participation
Speaker 1: in democracy. How would we show up? What would we
Speaker 1: build together if we told ourselves we were citizens not consumers?
Speaker 1: To find out, I met up with John in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles along with our live studio audience. Be a zoom
Speaker 1: who you are here from? At the end of the
Speaker 1: episode After the break, John Alexander on why being a
Speaker 1: conscious consumer is not the same as being a citizen y'all.
Speaker 1: John Alexander is the author of Citizens Why the key
Speaker 1: to fixing Everything is all of Us. He's the co
Speaker 1: founder of the New Citizenship Project, a book and a
Speaker 1: company that works to shift the dominant story of the
Speaker 1: individual in society from consumer where two citizen. He began
Speaker 1: his career with a decade in the advertising industry, so
Speaker 1: he knows exactly what's wrong, and I'm so excited to
Speaker 1: have him on how the Citizen. Welcome John, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Let's start here. Your work
Speaker 1: is about analyzing and reimagining the narratives that inform how
Speaker 1: we live and relate to the world around us. And
Speaker 1: you identified three stories. The story of the subject, the
Speaker 1: story of the consumer, and the story of the citizen.
Speaker 1: I want to start with a focus on the first two.
Speaker 1: What is the subject story and where did it begin?
Speaker 1: The subject story begins all the way back with the
Speaker 1: first name king in Sunario in two thousand BC. And
Speaker 1: with the first king came the first wolves came, the
Speaker 1: first writing that was initially used to time to track
Speaker 1: how much people owed tax and these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: And that story started with this idea that the god
Speaker 1: given few no best and if the rest of us
Speaker 1: keep our heads down there's we're told, get what we're
Speaker 1: given and do as the God given a few tell us,
Speaker 1: then that is how the best society will result, the
Speaker 1: best benevolent dictator idea. But we all know where that
Speaker 1: usually ends up. Ultimately, this is the story that leads
Speaker 1: you into colonialism and patriarchy and all those big things,
Speaker 1: and it goes a long way back, and it was
Speaker 1: dominant for an awful long time. And when we are
Speaker 1: in times of uncertainty, in times of chaos, in times
Speaker 1: when we don't know exactly what to do, then the
Speaker 1: subject story has a powerful attraction, right because we want
Speaker 1: to find some safety, we want to find some securities
Speaker 1: and certainty. Well we might think we want someone to
Speaker 1: tell us what to do. And in those moments like
Speaker 1: the possibility, the promise of the kind of strongman leader
Speaker 1: vibe is really strong, and I think that's a big
Speaker 1: part of what we're seeing in this moment in time.
Speaker 1: So the subject story lasted an awful long time, intensified
Speaker 1: around the world. Really only became properly dominant in the
Speaker 1: kind of sixteen hundreds with the age of Discovery, and
Speaker 1: then after the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class,
Speaker 1: that the idea that there were a god given you
Speaker 1: who knew best and they would tell us what to
Speaker 1: do kind of fell in on itself, and in many
Speaker 1: ways I believe that the two World wars resulted from
Speaker 1: that breakdown of story, resulted from that kind of collapse
Speaker 1: of the systems and structures by which we organized ourselves
Speaker 1: and out of them we stepped into what was a
Speaker 1: better story, right Like from the subject story, the consumer
Speaker 1: story is a liberating shift. So the subject story and
Speaker 1: effective goes to a made up sounding king and a
Speaker 1: made up sounding place argon of Sarka had or something
Speaker 1: like that. What is this consumer story then, and so
Speaker 1: when does it emerge? The consumer story is the story
Speaker 1: that's I think still dominant in our world today. The
Speaker 1: consumer story is the story that says that, actually, the
Speaker 1: right thing to do is to pursue self interest on
Speaker 1: the basis that if everyone pursues self interest, if everyone
Speaker 1: chooses the option that suits them best from those that
Speaker 1: are offered, that will add up to the collective interest
Speaker 1: that by pursuing self interest we will create the best
Speaker 1: society that's possible as a whole. I mean the Milton
Speaker 1: Friedman famous Milton Friedman is and the social responsibilit te
Speaker 1: of businesses to maximize its profits is a perfect articulation
Speaker 1: of of consumer morality. Actually, like it's saying the right
Speaker 1: thing to do really explicitly, the right thing to do
Speaker 1: is to pursue self interest on the behalf of the corporation,
Speaker 1: on the behalf of the individual, because that is what
Speaker 1: will add up to the best society. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: not just an economic incentive. It's a patriotic incentive, right,
Speaker 1: you serve best, you support your nation best by buying stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could even say it's a kind of
Speaker 1: human incentive. The reason why I went into the advertising
Speaker 1: industry in the first place. I was nineteen at university
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do with my life
Speaker 1: when the World Trade Center came down yea, and the
Speaker 1: leaders of the free world came out and told us
Speaker 1: to go shopping right, right, And at some level I
Speaker 1: think I went into the advertising industry thinking unconsciously, conscious
Speaker 1: that I was making a contribution. Wow. The kind of
Speaker 1: key moment actually was my first boss described my job
Speaker 1: to me by saying, what you've got to remember, as
Speaker 1: the average consumer see something like three thousand commercial messages
Speaker 1: a day. This was back in two thousand three, and
Speaker 1: he said, your job is to cut through that. You've
Speaker 1: got to make yours the best. And did you feel
Speaker 1: motivated by that? Was it to do that? Yeah? And
Speaker 1: it's hugely intellectually stimulating, right, You're like, oh, there's all
Speaker 1: this stuff out there, there's so much noise and I'm
Speaker 1: going to make mind the thing. I mean, I'm look,
Speaker 1: I'm a six ft athletic white guy, Like that's what
Speaker 1: I like to do, right, It's another conquest and attention
Speaker 1: conquest a man. And then over time and probably it
Speaker 1: took me longer than it should have. In retrospect, I've
Speaker 1: started to ask what are we doing to ourselves when
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves we're consumers? Three thousands of times a day?
Speaker 1: What does that do to us? What does it do
Speaker 1: to our relationships with one another? What does it do
Speaker 1: to what we think is possible, what we think humans
Speaker 1: are capable of? Yeah, what are the sort of products
Speaker 1: and services you were advertising? All sorts of stuff, man,
Speaker 1: I mean I worked on big brands in the UK,
Speaker 1: particularly like Cadbury and Orange, like a big phone company.
Speaker 1: Was at the agency where we we produced the Cadbury Gorilla,
Speaker 1: which was like a big moment, a grilla playing the
Speaker 1: drums to Phil Collins. That was we go. My friend,
Speaker 1: I worked on Sony like we were Agency of the
Speaker 1: year a couple of years that I was there, Like,
Speaker 1: these were the big brands, This was the big stuff
Speaker 1: in the Consumers story. You point out the four was
Speaker 1: a key moment. What was it about? I mean? And
Speaker 1: it starts with the launch of the Apple Macintosh with
Speaker 1: the most famous ad in history, which is the takeoff
Speaker 1: of All Worlds eighty four, like troops training down a
Speaker 1: corridor and Big Brother's voice and then a woman in
Speaker 1: glorious technicolor runs onto the screen, smashes the screen big
Speaker 1: Brothers talking from and you get this voice over that
Speaker 1: concludes and I'm going to do a horrendous American accent
Speaker 1: in the US here it comes. On January, Apple will
Speaker 1: release Macintosh and you'll see why four won't be four
Speaker 1: this moment. But also that year you had two other
Speaker 1: of the great super brands arrived. So Nike sold the
Speaker 1: first pair of Air Jordan's Virgin Atlantic, so the virgin
Speaker 1: brand arrived on the global stage. But then the pick
Speaker 1: your thickens because you get body Shop floated on the
Speaker 1: Stock Exchange, bringing the idea you can buy stuff to
Speaker 1: save the planet. You get band Aid that year, the
Speaker 1: idea you can buy stuff to solve global poverty. You
Speaker 1: get the minor strike and the first privatization in the UK.
Speaker 1: So politics shifting in this kind of consumer direction. And
Speaker 1: my favorite actually of all of them, the l A Olympics,
Speaker 1: which were the first Olympics ever to be funded by
Speaker 1: commercial sponsorship. L A was the only city to apply
Speaker 1: to host the eight four Olympics because other cities have
Speaker 1: made such a financial loss, and they had the IOC
Speaker 1: over a barrel and the rules changed and suddenly you
Speaker 1: could buy stuff to fund global sporting culture. So that
Speaker 1: consumer story is winding its way into so many different
Speaker 1: areas of our lives. We're liberating so many of our
Speaker 1: activities allegedly through this, and you're involved in it, right
Speaker 1: and later in this timeline, you're involved in crafting these
Speaker 1: stories and selling these products, and there's an adrenaline rush,
Speaker 1: and there's excabining, there's true creativity, and it's exciting until
Speaker 1: until it is it right? So when did your excitement
Speaker 1: to get involved and serve in some way through advertising
Speaker 1: start to crack? I remember being in a meeting talking
Speaker 1: through hero products for a big retailer's Christmas advertising in May,
Speaker 1: which was a bad start, and we got to the
Speaker 1: one pound Christmas tree bary tune day here with a
Speaker 1: very quick explainer. Tunday, we're talking about pounds as in
Speaker 1: the British currency, not the way now back to John's
Speaker 1: story and we got to the one pound Christmas tree
Speaker 1: and someone at the table said, the one pound Christmas tree,
Speaker 1: you can almost smell the exploitation, and everyone laughed and
Speaker 1: it was and it was just this moment of like
Speaker 1: feeling the flame inside you turned down. Like it was
Speaker 1: really like a series of kind of investigations. I worked
Speaker 1: on her on a report on ethics and advertising. Um,
Speaker 1: I pretty much got sacked off the back of that,
Speaker 1: but really interrogating this question ultimate of what are we
Speaker 1: doing to ourselves when when we're surrounded with this story
Speaker 1: and coming to the understanding that actually I was essentially
Speaker 1: kind of preaching up what's the religion that I didn't
Speaker 1: believe in? Not championing values that I did. And I
Speaker 1: went through a like super dark period at this time,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't the most constructive individual around this period.
Speaker 1: Like I sometimes think if I started a company at
Speaker 1: this point, it would have been called the Consumer Doom Project,
Speaker 1: not the New Citizenship Project, right, Like I was staring
Speaker 1: into the chasm, which I think so many of us
Speaker 1: are trapped doing now in these darker period was this
Speaker 1: physical you were you ill? Where was the behavior that
Speaker 1: you weren't proud of like what did the manifest? But
Speaker 1: there was a day, there was well there was a week,
Speaker 1: actually week I ended up resigning where I stood on
Speaker 1: the platform Oxford Circus tube station and in my office
Speaker 1: and just watched tubes come and go and like felt
Speaker 1: this like revulsion inside me. I honestly don't remember what
Speaker 1: exactly I was. And then I was physically sick, like
Speaker 1: I threw up on the platform and it was just
Speaker 1: like this feeling of of just I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: kind of self hatred actually, like a real kind of
Speaker 1: rejection of the role I was playing and what I
Speaker 1: was doing. And I kind of had to get out
Speaker 1: at that point. It sounds like an overdose almost like
Speaker 1: you over you oded on the consumer story. Maybe you
Speaker 1: got high on your own supply, right, and some part
Speaker 1: of your body maybe new this isn't for me anymore.
Speaker 1: I can't, you know, I can't separate the kind of
Speaker 1: intellectual journey from the from the physical rights. You're asking
Speaker 1: deep enough questions and you've just got to a point
Speaker 1: where I was overwhelming. But yeah, I was a difficult
Speaker 1: guy to be around all that time. Can I talk
Speaker 1: to those people? Yeah, Well, you know that some of
Speaker 1: the best of them are are still closest friends now
Speaker 1: and some of them are still working in the ad industry.
Speaker 1: And look, I'm not trying to demonize all of those guys,
Speaker 1: Like I think the the important thing to recognize when
Speaker 1: you start to see these as stories, when you start
Speaker 1: to see it in this way, is that you're not
Speaker 1: just talking about like it's the problem is consumption, The
Speaker 1: problem is advertising, Like, it's much more about the storytelling
Speaker 1: of our society. It's the fact that what I would
Speaker 1: describe what we live in today as a consumer democracy
Speaker 1: where our only agencies to choose between a fix set
Speaker 1: of options that are offered to us, where we're actually
Speaker 1: encouraged to make that choice on the basis of our
Speaker 1: own individual self interest. Like it's infused that that story
Speaker 1: is pervaded everything. And I guess I focus on advertising
Speaker 1: because it was the part I played, and your focus
Speaker 1: on advertising it resonates with me because I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time in media and in advertising, which is inseparable.
Speaker 1: And I remember realizing at a certain point that the
Speaker 1: folks who were making the ads felt as legitimate as
Speaker 1: storytellers as the content they were sitting next to. And
Speaker 1: it's true. I mean they're selling and telling the story
Speaker 1: of who we can be through our purchases, and there's
Speaker 1: so much more money in that than just the art world.
Speaker 1: So you are I think we're at the kind of
Speaker 1: the eye of the storm for the story, because ads
Speaker 1: are little stories that try to nudgest into thinking differently.
Speaker 1: We're behaving differently, and all of them have that kind
Speaker 1: of underlying or overarching kind of meta frame that you
Speaker 1: are a consumer, you are an individual. Your agency has
Speaker 1: to choose between things in these choices. And in one
Speaker 1: meeting years ago, I remember stopping and saying, can we
Speaker 1: just call them people? Just that the links on the
Speaker 1: slides on the wall. It was just like consumers consumers
Speaker 1: and the conductingsumer wants this and the consumer wants there.
Speaker 1: And when I repeat that word, it consumes me. It
Speaker 1: makes me think of consumption, not the active eating food,
Speaker 1: but the disease and as we used to refer to it,
Speaker 1: and so we will devour ourselves by referring to ourselves
Speaker 1: in that way. And there's actually a heap of evidence
Speaker 1: that even the word is damaging. Right. So there's a
Speaker 1: couple of different studies, one one where you were involved
Speaker 1: in replicating where like, So you give two thousand people
Speaker 1: of resourced dilema scenario. You say you're one of four
Speaker 1: households depending on a single wealthyr water supply and the
Speaker 1: world is starting to run dry, so you need to
Speaker 1: use less water. Okay, So you're asked two questions, to
Speaker 1: what extent are you prepared to use less water? And
Speaker 1: to what extent you trust the other three households to
Speaker 1: use less water? Clever bit is, for half the sample,
Speaker 1: the word household is replaced with the word consumer. And
Speaker 1: for people for whom the word is consumer, to what
Speaker 1: extent you prepared to compromise, to what extent you trust
Speaker 1: the other three consumers? That's lower, significantly lower. So when
Speaker 1: we use that language, even the word and it's not
Speaker 1: again it's not just the word, it's the story. But
Speaker 1: the word carries the story. Right, when we use that
Speaker 1: word inside organizations were effectively I think of it like
Speaker 1: as the scaffolding, right, like or the or the train
Speaker 1: tracks or something like. There is no other possible we
Speaker 1: are thinking, right, that's right. We limit our imaginations, right,
Speaker 1: and we can only see a person as this subset
Speaker 1: of themselves, this function and the only path we can
Speaker 1: imagine to a better society is channeling people's self interest
Speaker 1: in the service of because we assume people are only
Speaker 1: capable of that. I've come to think of consumers and
Speaker 1: essentially as a kind of species level self hatred complex.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like we're telling ourselves we're not good
Speaker 1: enough to deal with this stuff. It's giving away some power.
Speaker 1: It's like, all I have is this right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do. I'm gonna lean into this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be the best version of this I can. But I'm
Speaker 1: not going to think of it all the other things
Speaker 1: that could be because I don't have the language for it. Language.
Speaker 1: A third story. We've talked subject, we've talked consumer, the
Speaker 1: citizens story. When does this as an alternate frame occur
Speaker 1: to you? The citizens story occur to me personally? And
Speaker 1: what does it? What does it mean? Give me a
Speaker 1: brief overview, and then tell me when it enters your mind. So,
Speaker 1: in the subject story, people are dependent, they have stuff
Speaker 1: done to them. The role of organizations and leaders us
Speaker 1: to come on them, and the role of subjects is
Speaker 1: to obey and receive. And the consumer story, people are independent,
Speaker 1: they have stuff done for them. They demand and choose,
Speaker 1: and the role of organizations and does is to serve them.
Speaker 1: In the citizens story, we're interdependent. We do stuff together
Speaker 1: with and through organizations. The role of organizations and leaders
Speaker 1: is to facilitate and hold the space for that. And
Speaker 1: what we most deeply want to do and are capable
Speaker 1: of doing is participate and create and that structure. When
Speaker 1: you start to see that and think like that, I
Speaker 1: think you start to see this story everywhere, like just
Speaker 1: beneath the surface. But to your question before, like living
Speaker 1: and working in the ad industry, I couldn't really see
Speaker 1: it because I was so in so in frame, and
Speaker 1: so when the first place I came across it was
Speaker 1: weirdly like an ideal we came up with. I'm still
Speaker 1: not sure quite how we did. And this is the
Speaker 1: idea that one that creative idea of the year old,
Speaker 1: which is an idea called my Farm, where we tried
Speaker 1: to hand over decision making on a real working farm
Speaker 1: to the public by online voting debate. This is back
Speaker 1: in nearly killed me in several animals. Maybe what's interesting
Speaker 1: about this is it is it did actually come out
Speaker 1: of trying to think of ways to build an organization,
Speaker 1: ways to sell an organization. Oddly, I was working on
Speaker 1: the National Trust, which is a big conservation organization in
Speaker 1: the UK. They own and run five odd places of
Speaker 1: historic interest and natural beauty all over the country, and
Speaker 1: we were going like, how do we how do we
Speaker 1: get people to understand and value this organization and sort
Speaker 1: of accidentally stumbled into this idea before I have this
Speaker 1: language of consumer and citizen that was like, what if
Speaker 1: we involve people in it rather than just do it
Speaker 1: for them. Let's not just sell people sustainable food, Let's
Speaker 1: involve them in sustainable food production. And the model and
Speaker 1: the approach. I mean, we've had crowdfunding, crowdsourced ideas, we've
Speaker 1: had participatory all kinds of things, but in that world
Speaker 1: like inside the consumer story, that's a very radical approach
Speaker 1: because you're seeing people as something other than purchasers. You're
Speaker 1: seeing them as producers and contributors and creators and collaborators
Speaker 1: and just competitors right in testing. Are there villains and
Speaker 1: heroes in the citizens story? I think there are, but
Speaker 1: I think they're more people who are an organizations who
Speaker 1: are co opting the the modes of the citizens story
Speaker 1: and service of something else example, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: So one of the like craziest experiences of the research
Speaker 1: for the book was I went not very deep, but
Speaker 1: deep enough into the into the q and On world.
Speaker 1: And the starting point of that journey is we need
Speaker 1: you mm hmm, come help. Yeah, we need your energy,
Speaker 1: we need your resources, we need your ideas. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's coming from that's coming from subject story world.
Speaker 1: It's coming from a desire to take charge and create
Speaker 1: tribe and tell people what to do. But it's wearing
Speaker 1: the clothes of participation. And I think that speaks a
Speaker 1: lot to the moment in time we find ourselves in. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the way I would describe it, I've already mentioned
Speaker 1: this idea of like consumer democracy, like I think, I
Speaker 1: think too many of those in the positions of parent
Speaker 1: influence in our society today can only see two stories.
Speaker 1: They can see the consumer story as the status quo,
Speaker 1: and they can see the subject story rising and they
Speaker 1: see the authoritarianism. But as a result, they see their
Speaker 1: role as being to defend the consumer story. And the
Speaker 1: danger of that is that we just can't solve the
Speaker 1: challenges we face from within the story that created them.
Speaker 1: Right like we we can't solve a crisis of loneliness
Speaker 1: and mental health from within a story that says we're independent,
Speaker 1: isolated individuals. You can't solve across of inequality from a
Speaker 1: story that says that the society is a ladder you climb.
Speaker 1: And most important, like most viscerally to me, you can't
Speaker 1: solve an ecological christ. It's from a story that says
Speaker 1: we're separate from nature right in. Our only way forward
Speaker 1: is to destroy the thing we depend on most. And
Speaker 1: so that story, the consumer story, is crumbling, like it's
Speaker 1: falling apart, and you can't. Ultimately, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to shift. And so the danger of this moment, I think,
Speaker 1: is that these these tools and approaches of the citizen
Speaker 1: world are kind of emerging, and they're so powerful and
Speaker 1: so exciting and so creative, and if we don't adopt them,
Speaker 1: then those who would actually create a subject world will
Speaker 1: coop them, will steal those clothes. When you told the
Speaker 1: story of Q and I, I think you started hinting
Speaker 1: at what some of these tools of the citizens story are.
Speaker 1: Can you be a bit more specific about it. If
Speaker 1: we don't pick these up, someone else, well, what are
Speaker 1: what are the things? What are the tools are the
Speaker 1: citizens story? Well, I mean it's the stuff you talked
Speaker 1: to her. It's like crowdsourcing, crowd funding, It's like it's
Speaker 1: like inviting people in. I mean, you've talked to Audrey Tang,
Speaker 1: I know, on this podcast and like what the Taiwanese
Speaker 1: government did in their response to COVID that fast funfair.
Speaker 1: Listen to that episode, my friends. But the tools begin
Speaker 1: with asking people a question and saying like so in
Speaker 1: the Taiwanese example, it was, we don't know how to
Speaker 1: get through this challenge of the pandemic. What we do
Speaker 1: know is that we'll get through it best if we
Speaker 1: tap into the ideas and energy and resources of everyone,
Speaker 1: Like we know we'll do it best together. That's the stop.
Speaker 1: Then the challenges, how do you create the structures and
Speaker 1: process of that enable people to contribute and make it
Speaker 1: meaningful and joyful for people to get involved. In taime On,
Speaker 1: they did some lovely stuff, like high tech stuff like
Speaker 1: challenge prizes and these sorts of things, but they also
Speaker 1: my favorite story, they created a phone line where any
Speaker 1: citizen could ring in with ideas, right like I'm working
Speaker 1: suggestion box, and then they actually listen to the messages
Speaker 1: and adopted them. And it's so this stuff is not
Speaker 1: rocket science, a lot of it, right, but but it's
Speaker 1: most fundamentally that shift in mindset, and then the shifting
Speaker 1: tools kind of follows from that. The other example I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of when I when I think about the framework
Speaker 1: that we've tried to hold too with our principles, which
Speaker 1: overlap so much participation, investing in relationships, understanding power of
Speaker 1: value in the collective. And I look at our school
Speaker 1: board meetings in the US, which have become so violent
Speaker 1: and the sight of intimidation physically, and I look at
Speaker 1: who's showing up to political rallies and it's armed people.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, they're showing up and participating. They're invested
Speaker 1: in relationships. People go to Trump rallies over and over
Speaker 1: again and know each other and build friendships. They're understanding
Speaker 1: their power. The attacks on education in our country in
Speaker 1: terms of not teaching our real history is well funded
Speaker 1: and distributed to the very edges of society. It doesn't
Speaker 1: just live inside of our belt way. It's my friends
Speaker 1: who live in the suburbs and somewhere in Texas are
Speaker 1: getting mailings at home scaring them and then telling them
Speaker 1: who to harass. So that's in a very effective model,
Speaker 1: but in service in your words, of a subject model. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's it's in cheap's clothing, right in the in
Speaker 1: the sheep is the citizens story. This is where like
Speaker 1: the process design of this stuff is so crucial, right,
Speaker 1: and particularly to those who fear that in in the
Speaker 1: U s maybe things are two polarized for this sort
Speaker 1: of approach to work. My favorite example of of really
Speaker 1: clear kind of process design and doing this really powerfully November,
Speaker 1: just before the impeachment proceedings began, Like like the US
Speaker 1: was super polarised the first impeachment. There you go, I'd like,
Speaker 1: forget about it. You're back, You're back fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: I know. But there was a there was a project
Speaker 1: called America in a room, you know about this. So
Speaker 1: they got five d and twenty six American citizens represented
Speaker 1: in the national population on all key demographics including political affiliation,
Speaker 1: thirty self identified as extremely liberal, thirty odds self identified
Speaker 1: as extremely conservative. Came together in a conference suite in
Speaker 1: Dallas for four days, split into small groups, deliberated on
Speaker 1: all sorts of all the issues of the day. Basically
Speaker 1: a whole load of like consensus emerged like lightly. There
Speaker 1: were shifts away a little bit from a high federal
Speaker 1: minimum wage because people are like engaging with the diversity
Speaker 1: of the economic conditions across America. But the critical finding
Speaker 1: the most powerful thing. So in the literature on polarization,
Speaker 1: there are two different types of polarization, right there's issue
Speaker 1: polarization where I disagree with you, barton and then there's
Speaker 1: effective polarization, which is you're evil barton By. And what
Speaker 1: they found in this process was that affective polarization went
Speaker 1: through the floor. Okay, they rehumanized each other, even to
Speaker 1: the extent where I was told that in some of
Speaker 1: the communities that people were going back to these individual participants,
Speaker 1: they saw affective polarization drop. There's a great New York
Speaker 1: Times piece on it actually, m so if you want
Speaker 1: to check it out there, And it was run by
Speaker 1: a gang called the Hellna Projects stand for the University
Speaker 1: James Fishkin was involved in it was it was in
Speaker 1: the process that's called deliberative polling, was the kind of
Speaker 1: methodology underpinning it. When I think about corporations, most governments,
Speaker 1: it seems to me there'll be a lot of risk
Speaker 1: to them in embracing a citizens story that tries to
Speaker 1: facilitate and that dominate, that tries to encourage participation. Wrangle
Speaker 1: so many different opinions heard cats. What reasons do they
Speaker 1: have to make the shift into this different story and potentially,
Speaker 1: at least in a short term view, give up some power. Well,
Speaker 1: there's two things I would say that it's. The first
Speaker 1: is just a kind of set the premise a little bit.
Speaker 1: So I think we talk a lot about people trusting
Speaker 1: government right and trying to get people to trust government
Speaker 1: more and the sort of thing, And ultimately I think
Speaker 1: that's a flawed premise. Like what we have to understand
Speaker 1: is that what we're trapped in at the moment as
Speaker 1: a vicious circle, Like we're trapped in a in a
Speaker 1: state where people because our institutions are trapped within the
Speaker 1: consumer story, they're trying to solve the problems of our
Speaker 1: time from within that story, and you can't. People are
Speaker 1: seeing that our institutions aren't up to the tasks and
Speaker 1: that's why they're losing trust in them, and then they're
Speaker 1: behaving a little angrily, and institutions again understandably see that
Speaker 1: and respond by withdrawing, by bringing power in and then
Speaker 1: people get angrier because right, and then you're in a loop.
Speaker 1: And that is the way I think we need to
Speaker 1: understand the moment in time we're in and so that
Speaker 1: the task and the only place, Like Audrey says this again,
Speaker 1: this this idea that actually it's not about people trusting
Speaker 1: government so much. That is about government trusting people. It's
Speaker 1: about institutions trusting people, which is difficult and that needs
Speaker 1: to be met people, right, and some of them the worst.
Speaker 1: But understanding that anger and frustration is comes from something.
Speaker 1: And I really want to be clear, I am like,
Speaker 1: I'm not. It's kind of easy for me to say, right,
Speaker 1: like I'm I don't want to be that guy. But
Speaker 1: there is a reason why that's happening, and we're certain
Speaker 1: way down that cycle. So a part of the answer
Speaker 1: to your question is I think we have to we
Speaker 1: have to break the cycle somehow, and that I think
Speaker 1: is the intervention point. The second part, and maybe the
Speaker 1: more kind of hopeful and joyful part, is to say
Speaker 1: it just works. If you're into things that work, try this,
Speaker 1: like there's a reason why, Like the business world is
Speaker 1: going in this direction actually, like we're seeing big corporations
Speaker 1: like ge use crowdsourcing processes. We're seeing NASA use it.
Speaker 1: We're seeing some of the fastest growing businesses in the
Speaker 1: world like that. I talked in the book about a
Speaker 1: company called brew Dog, which is started in Scotland with
Speaker 1: two guys and a dog bringing their own beer and
Speaker 1: is now it was the only company to be in
Speaker 1: the Sunday Times a hundred fastest Growing Companies eight years
Speaker 1: in a row, I think it was. And what they're
Speaker 1: doing is crowd sourcing their recipes, Like they have a
Speaker 1: thing called d i y Dog where they open source
Speaker 1: those recipes once they crowd sourced them and then sell
Speaker 1: brewing kits as well as beer and even train people
Speaker 1: to be like a Samelio but for beer like that again,
Speaker 1: like what that's doing is powering that organization because people
Speaker 1: are buying into a cause in the in the world,
Speaker 1: buying into something that can drive energy, build energy. And
Speaker 1: then look at Taiwan. It's the most successful codd response
Speaker 1: in the world. Right fast, funfair second lost death rate
Speaker 1: never went into lockdown. Do you see examples of the
Speaker 1: citizens story masquerading as a consumer story maybe for increased
Speaker 1: palatability or comprehension. I think we can make the citizens story.
Speaker 1: We can and should make the citizen story appealing and
Speaker 1: joyful and creative, right, Like, that's not a bad thing
Speaker 1: to do. I think there is a line where the
Speaker 1: consumer story maybe can co opt the citizen story. Could it?
Speaker 1: Could we end up with something like citizen washing happening,
Speaker 1: like we could write. And I think brew Dog is
Speaker 1: an interesting case in point because actually, like they've behaved
Speaker 1: pretty badly in some ways recently. What they've found is
Speaker 1: that the energy of this has grown the company so fast,
Speaker 1: and then the founders started to kind of believe their
Speaker 1: own hype. It's how I understand it, and they effectively
Speaker 1: invented equity crowdfunding. Back in two thousand nine, they sold
Speaker 1: a load of the company to their customers. They've now
Speaker 1: got something like two hundred thousand equity punks, they call them,
Speaker 1: so again, really creative, cool way of doing it. But
Speaker 1: then they sold and they said they would never sell out,
Speaker 1: and they sold a big portion of the company to
Speaker 1: VC fund. And then there's there's been accusation from within
Speaker 1: the company of them treating employees pretty badly. But what's
Speaker 1: so interesting is the group of employees who are starting
Speaker 1: to kind of fight back and hold them to account
Speaker 1: and push them are calling themselves punks with purpose, So
Speaker 1: they're sort of naming themselves from within the idea of
Speaker 1: the organization and challenging the founders from that place. And
Speaker 1: so the really interesting question in that organization is who's
Speaker 1: co opting whom right like? And once you start to
Speaker 1: authentically build a citizems story, you can't stop it right yeah,
Speaker 1: and it'll it'll find a way, may be delayed, but
Speaker 1: it may not be indefinitely deferred. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I really admire about you is that you're not
Speaker 1: just writing about these things. You're helping put them in
Speaker 1: their practice. You've got the New Citizenship Project. You do reports,
Speaker 1: but you also do like activations to take a word
Speaker 1: from the brand and advertising world, workshops, tool kits. Have
Speaker 1: you got boot camps? How do you go about helping
Speaker 1: folks embrace and implement the citizens story? Can you walk
Speaker 1: me through your design process to help folks take idea
Speaker 1: into action and the new story. So it's basically one
Speaker 1: of the tools, key tool really that we've created. The
Speaker 1: three principles of participatory organizations. You can take the boy
Speaker 1: out of advertising. You can't take the alliteration out of
Speaker 1: the boy. Right. So, so the three principles of purpose,
Speaker 1: platform and prototype. Okay, and actually just this is actually
Speaker 1: a hack on one of the key kind of mental
Speaker 1: models of the consumer story. So the first edition of
Speaker 1: a marketing textbook was written that talked about the four
Speaker 1: principles of the marketing mix, product, price, promotion, and place
Speaker 1: here you go. And that is that the textbooks that
Speaker 1: that's in is still taught in every embody course anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world. And so the problem is even organizations
Speaker 1: that are trying to think differently pulled back into that
Speaker 1: story because the boxes. So the three principles, the three
Speaker 1: piece purpose, platform, prototype is an attempt to sort of
Speaker 1: offer a different front alternative. Yeah, so we help people
Speaker 1: go Like the question for each purpose is, what are
Speaker 1: you trying to do in the world that's so big
Speaker 1: you actually need people to do it with you. You
Speaker 1: can't do it for that's already. I just want to
Speaker 1: parse you on that. What's an idea that's so big
Speaker 1: that you need other people? What's something you can ask
Speaker 1: of people. One of the things I feel is that
Speaker 1: we haven't been asked to do very much. Maybe come
Speaker 1: and vote every couple of years and at least spend
Speaker 1: some money, take on debt, and otherwise kind of keep
Speaker 1: your head down, protect yourself in your little homestead. And
Speaker 1: that's that's all. That's all we got. Our list of
Speaker 1: requests and demands and opportunities for your participation is very low.
Speaker 1: So already starting with a big enough purpose that you
Speaker 1: need other people. It's just a very dynamic shift from
Speaker 1: what most of us experience. I think, keep going and
Speaker 1: the power of a question in that space is really
Speaker 1: huge as well, Right, how can we do this? We
Speaker 1: we don't have the answers, we're not going to be
Speaker 1: able to do it for you, but we can frame
Speaker 1: the question that we can answer together purpose platform, What
Speaker 1: are the structures and processes that you create to make
Speaker 1: it meaningful and joyful for people to get involved in
Speaker 1: that like not easy and convenient, not learningful and enjoy
Speaker 1: meaningful and joyful. So again like the time one, stuff
Speaker 1: that brew Dog, stuff like that, those are examples that
Speaker 1: speak to that thing. And so we walk through with
Speaker 1: organizations helping them develop their ideas to offer those opportunities.
Speaker 1: And then the prototype one is really just how do
Speaker 1: you build the energy for this? Because you can't flip
Speaker 1: you to opien switch and become a completely different thing overnight.
Speaker 1: So how do you build the energy? Is the third?
Speaker 1: And are you generally working with young institutions, old institutions,
Speaker 1: large or small? Like all of the above, it all
Speaker 1: figures across every sector. Like the only thing you can't
Speaker 1: do this stuff with is is something that doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a purpose, right but without which nothing is something
Speaker 1: that people want to participate in. Without which, Oh you
Speaker 1: were using real English on me. I'm quite up to you.
Speaker 1: I'm like people without it is the prower with target
Speaker 1: to do a British game. Sorry, he uses the language
Speaker 1: purposefully overly posh moments there it goes m I sometimes
Speaker 1: like to think of myself as the kind of anti
Speaker 1: Boris Johnson. His name is his name is actually Alexander Johnson.
Speaker 1: I'm John Alexander with both the degrees in Ancient Greek
Speaker 1: and Latin, like I can push it with the best
Speaker 1: of them. So maybe what I'll say is because the
Speaker 1: last four and a half weeks, like I'm in l A,
Speaker 1: because I'm I'm going around the world right now, literally
Speaker 1: around the world. I've been in Athens, Singapore, Melbourne, Sydney,
Speaker 1: New Zealand. And there's a couple of things I'm learning
Speaker 1: through that and thinking about as a result. The first
Speaker 1: is this is not a new story, and spending time
Speaker 1: with first nation's philosophers, particularly in Australian New Zealand, and
Speaker 1: going like, actually, the citizens story is not like a
Speaker 1: new creation. It's deep in us UM. Guy called Tyson
Speaker 1: Young Corporter, who you need to get on this, you
Speaker 1: would love. Tyson wrote a book called sand Talk, How
Speaker 1: Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, and he basically speaks
Speaker 1: and sits in a sixty thousand year worldview just by default.
Speaker 1: And the thing he said to me was like, don't
Speaker 1: worry John. I was getting a little stressed because don't
Speaker 1: worry John. Were you like it's going to take humans
Speaker 1: a good bit longer to forget how to be human,
Speaker 1: how to be the custodian species as the way he
Speaker 1: called it. Thank you for that acknowledgment too, because I
Speaker 1: think we're both pretty young, certainly relative to the human
Speaker 1: experience where nets. But it can be very tempting to
Speaker 1: think we need something new to get us out of
Speaker 1: this new challenge. And the challenges really aren't that new.
Speaker 1: They're repackaged, they're rebranded, and many of the solutions in
Speaker 1: the pathways forward involve something we've lost or forgotten, but
Speaker 1: not entirely new, is it. There's my yoda for you
Speaker 1: after the break, more on making the shift to the
Speaker 1: citizens story. For years, a lot of us have heard
Speaker 1: this message that we should vote with our wallets become
Speaker 1: a conscious consumer. Right, that's that's a better way forward.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between conscious consumption and a full blown
Speaker 1: citizens story? How close can they get to one another? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean they all the calling the close. Um. The
Speaker 1: way I would put it is that we all what
Speaker 1: we are told to be. Um, you are what we
Speaker 1: are told to be. And that is consumers who occasionally
Speaker 1: vote and bring bring the identity construct and the mode
Speaker 1: of the consumer to bear on the act of voting.
Speaker 1: What we are becoming, I think, or rebecoming remembering into
Speaker 1: the future is citizens who sometimes consume and might bring
Speaker 1: the citizen orientation to bear on the act of consumption.
Speaker 1: Like it's not like there's consumption is over right, Like
Speaker 1: it's not. The problem is the story, not the act.
Speaker 1: The problem is consumerism, not consumption. And so that's a
Speaker 1: matter of degree, right, But then the other difference is
Speaker 1: like it's just much more fun man like that trying
Speaker 1: to be good within the consumer story is hard like
Speaker 1: and guilt inducing, right, Like to be good within the
Speaker 1: consumer story, like you have to never use a disposable cup,
Speaker 1: never flood, never even and that stuff's important. Right, Don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. I'm not saying individual behavior change doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: but atally, like our true agency is collective, right Like
Speaker 1: if if individual behavior changes one plus one plus, it's collective.
Speaker 1: Change is multiplies multipli and it's it's raised to something right, Right,
Speaker 1: we're in the exponential realm now there you go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just joyful, right, Like it's just good to
Speaker 1: do stuff together. But maybe if I could, because I'd
Speaker 1: love your view on this. Like one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about as a result of this trip is
Speaker 1: like I think increasingly I'm like, this is us, like
Speaker 1: we are citizens by nature, Like people are doing it everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's underneath the surface, but it's kind of happening. And
Speaker 1: we saw it in COVID in particular. Right, you know
Speaker 1: it's mutual A yeah, so what is it that that
Speaker 1: flips the story? So there there is work of muscle building.
Speaker 1: I love the frame, and I think, did you use
Speaker 1: this citizenship as a muscle you build or is that yeah?
Speaker 1: Maybe when we talked on the other show, I brought
Speaker 1: it up because the gym metaphor was strong in me.
Speaker 1: There you go, man, So the other up the work,
Speaker 1: I think is is what I'm increasingly think about is
Speaker 1: these like critical moments when the story can shift at
Speaker 1: a societal level. What does it look like to two
Speaker 1: more intentionally find or even create and kind of curate
Speaker 1: those moments? Like how might we spot the opportunities for that?
Speaker 1: So in Australia I ended up talking to loads of
Speaker 1: people about the new government has committed to holding a
Speaker 1: referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the Indigenous Voice
Speaker 1: to Parliament and when is that? So there was a
Speaker 1: statement what's called the Statement from the Heart, a gathering
Speaker 1: of First Nations leaders came together in Uluru in the
Speaker 1: center of Australia and produced a set of recommendations for
Speaker 1: how the voice of Indigenous people could be better heard
Speaker 1: in Australian government. And they put that forward. The then
Speaker 1: government rejected it out of hand. The new government has
Speaker 1: said we want to do this. It's a constitutional shift,
Speaker 1: so it requires referendum. So there will be some time
Speaker 1: in the next few years there will be a referendum
Speaker 1: on this at the moment. So that's a moment. So
Speaker 1: how do you design for that? Because the referendum, trust me,
Speaker 1: I'm British, can can take your country in a dark direction.
Speaker 1: I'm a Californian. We have so many referenda out here.
Speaker 1: Because the referendum in and of itself is a consumer moment, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's just pick. But how you would lead up
Speaker 1: to that, how you have conversations and deliberate there you
Speaker 1: go over that moment could really shift the outcome and
Speaker 1: the feeling you have about the outcome. Right, And then
Speaker 1: I arrived in New Zealand and I look at like
Speaker 1: the conversation about climate there is really ripening, and it's like,
Speaker 1: how might we bring into that some of these ideas
Speaker 1: but also like draw on the depth of the of
Speaker 1: the Maori wisdoms and even the process that. One of
Speaker 1: the lovely things I came across on this trip was
Speaker 1: the Maori concept of pap and a hole, which is
Speaker 1: the word for the joining space between the two holes
Speaker 1: of an ocean going canoe and when when they had
Speaker 1: a moment of uncertainty, they would gathering the space and
Speaker 1: like and and draw on the wisdom of the people
Speaker 1: who read the stars best and the people who read
Speaker 1: the currents best, and figure out what to do together
Speaker 1: in a process of storytelling and story sharing and wisdom sharing,
Speaker 1: like how might we draw them back? And then here
Speaker 1: in l A, I mean, this is the place of
Speaker 1: story right, this is the global hub. And remember what
Speaker 1: we said about the Olympics and four right, like yeah,
Speaker 1: then twenty eight Like so we could we could have
Speaker 1: a do over and do something different If if l
Speaker 1: A helped accelerate the consumer story by bringing brands to
Speaker 1: the Olympics, could it help accelerate the citizen story by
Speaker 1: bringing people to it in a different way? And how
Speaker 1: might we do that? And wouldn't it be great? Excited
Speaker 1: to get local man? So, so what are some other ways?
Speaker 1: Sadly our listeners do not all reside in l A
Speaker 1: or New Zealand, which would be really really perfect ways
Speaker 1: to help us make that mental shift into the citizens story.
Speaker 1: Somebody is hearing this now and they're fired up, They're
Speaker 1: ready to go. How do we help tell the story?
Speaker 1: How do we help join in it? From where we're
Speaker 1: at right now, what are some of the one ramps
Speaker 1: you've seen? So? I mean I have a pretty simple
Speaker 1: kind of three step thing which I've broadly stole from you.
Speaker 1: I think a right here, we come from my way
Speaker 1: of languages, so so you see what you make it
Speaker 1: this one, But it's basically like step one, find home, like,
Speaker 1: decide what the realm, whether it's your workplace, your local
Speaker 1: place like, or something bigger or something we should we
Speaker 1: You have to call it a realm though, It's just
Speaker 1: it's more powerful when you refer to it as a
Speaker 1: realm as opposed to a workplace or a neighborhood. Right, okay,
Speaker 1: so find your home, find home, find home? Step to
Speaker 1: find the others? M M, put up the bat signal,
Speaker 1: right like? Who else is? Who else wants to make
Speaker 1: this realm better? And then step three on only step
Speaker 1: three like, decide what the first thing to do is together? Right?
Speaker 1: I mean that that sequencing actually feels very important. It's
Speaker 1: not I have an idea to fix X. I need
Speaker 1: you to help me get it done, right. It's hi,
Speaker 1: I'm here, you're here too. Where are we? Now? What
Speaker 1: do we want to do? What's important to us, not
Speaker 1: just to me, and just establishing that shared reality, that
Speaker 1: shared narrative, that shared story, with the sequencing of that
Speaker 1: just it actually feels really important because I know so
Speaker 1: many people, including myself, who are like, that's wrong. I
Speaker 1: got an idea. Let's go, here's my petition, here's my
Speaker 1: sign up sheet to join me and my thing, and
Speaker 1: hopefully you'll feel like it's you're a thing too. Whereas
Speaker 1: if you develop it in community, then it has a
Speaker 1: different potency, in a different sense of co investment. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you think about because so much of the new
Speaker 1: Citizenship project work that I've seen is institutional. So let's
Speaker 1: say my realm is my neighborhood. And okay, so I've
Speaker 1: I've chosen my home. Find others am I am? I
Speaker 1: calling a meeting and I inviting people over for cupcakes?
Speaker 1: How specific is my invit tation to these others before
Speaker 1: we decide what it is we might want to affect
Speaker 1: or change. I mean, it's it really varies. It's what
Speaker 1: feels feels right to the group, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think maybe a couple of examples from my sort
Speaker 1: of story gathering that speak most powerfully to this. One
Speaker 1: of my favorites is the story of a place called
Speaker 1: Grimsby and on the northeast coast of England. That's like
Speaker 1: the place that's been most screwed over over the last
Speaker 1: fifty years or so. And what happened there was the
Speaker 1: council called a meeting and there's a couple of guys,
Speaker 1: this guy Billy, who wasn't going to go because he said, like,
Speaker 1: it will just be people complaining and the council saying
Speaker 1: they can't do anything. So what's the point of our
Speaker 1: seen that meeting? We've all seen that meeting. And a
Speaker 1: friend of his said, our moms would have gone, and
Speaker 1: guilt tripped him into it, and he went to the
Speaker 1: meeting and like got so frustrated that he stood up
Speaker 1: in the meeting and said, look, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: go clear one Street tomorrow. Anyone who wants to join me,
Speaker 1: I'd love you to join me, and then we'll just
Speaker 1: see what we do from there, because this is too
Speaker 1: much like dwelling in the pain. I think it was
Speaker 1: like I didn't get the numbers wrong, but let's say
Speaker 1: it was like fifteen people turned up. Next day they
Speaker 1: agreed to do it again two weeks later, on different streets.
Speaker 1: Thirty came fast forward four years. These guys now have
Speaker 1: a magazine called The Proud East Marshan. This is in
Speaker 1: the East Marsh in Grimsby. They have a six monthly
Speaker 1: arts festival called the Sun and Moon Arts Festival, and
Speaker 1: they've just closed pretty recently a half million pounds community
Speaker 1: share offer raising money, and that amount of money in
Speaker 1: Grimsby will buy ten houses, refit them, using good local
Speaker 1: jobs and let them out as a social landlord. Creating
Speaker 1: a sustainable revenue stream for the rest of the organization.
Speaker 1: Started with a litter pick and then another in a
Speaker 1: totally different realm. There's a thing that I believe is
Speaker 1: still live right now. Last time I checked to a
Speaker 1: group of McKinsey consultants. Yeah, man, see this is the
Speaker 1: Range East Marjians, the Mackensey. There we go a group
Speaker 1: of I think it was eleven of them, originally an
Speaker 1: open letter to the partners calling them to discuss the
Speaker 1: fossil fuel relationships kind of ignored to start with. Last
Speaker 1: time I heard McKinsey consultants had like signed up to
Speaker 1: this letter. So to your thing, like those eleven might
Speaker 1: be enough, fifteen might be enough. Like, it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean like you have to find all of the others
Speaker 1: some others. You're such a storyteller and the story gatherer,
Speaker 1: as you just called yourself. Are there certain phrases, certain
Speaker 1: narrative bullet points, certain language choices that you've seen people
Speaker 1: using consistently across these examples when they make that invitation,
Speaker 1: when they try to show up, when they try to
Speaker 1: establish the WII, that tends to be successful more than
Speaker 1: a different set of language choices. I'm literally thinking about
Speaker 1: the sign on Facebook or master done that Twitter, or
Speaker 1: on the posts you know, the power line that the
Speaker 1: powerpoll in my neighborhood. It's a great question and when
Speaker 1: I want to think about more, and but my immediate
Speaker 1: reaction is that spirit of question and that language of
Speaker 1: like of being needed briefly to kind of theory that's like,
Speaker 1: there's a really powerful concept called safe uncertainty. And the
Speaker 1: idea here so it comes from therapy, originally a guy
Speaker 1: called Barry Mace And and the idea essentially is that
Speaker 1: anyone who comes to therapy is in one of two places.
Speaker 1: They're either unsafe uncertain I don't know what to do,
Speaker 1: or unsafe certain I'm bad, and I know I am.
Speaker 1: And what they think they want is safe certainty. Tell
Speaker 1: me what to do to fix it. You can see
Speaker 1: this right, This is the subject story, the consumer story.
Speaker 1: Both play in that space. By this or do this.
Speaker 1: And what this guy says as safe uncertainty is about
Speaker 1: holding the space, standing the side rather than in front
Speaker 1: of and saying we don't know exactly what's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to pretend to you that we do.
Speaker 1: It's a billion Grimsby didn't stand up and say, if
Speaker 1: we go and pick the litter off one street, will
Speaker 1: have solved Grimsby in full years time. We'll have will
Speaker 1: have bought some house this and will be a social
Speaker 1: landlord and will be we'll be breaking it down. He said,
Speaker 1: there are some things we can do. Oh man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're blowing my mind a bit, just connecting to the
Speaker 1: consumer stories, infiltration of philanthropy and the need for returns
Speaker 1: and business plans and projections and scale and people with
Speaker 1: significant resources only funding things that can prove all these
Speaker 1: other downstream effects. Whereas they would have ignored the guy
Speaker 1: in Grimsby, Right, you don't have a plan, right, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna show me. You're gonna show me your metrics,
Speaker 1: show me. I need to just see your deck and
Speaker 1: and the intention of just gathering, which we have pre
Speaker 1: a Parker in this season as well, And so there's
Speaker 1: a there's a beautiful overlap with some of these thoughts
Speaker 1: to kind of find their way into a person who
Speaker 1: was like, all right, I think I know how I
Speaker 1: might start this. What do you think the world would
Speaker 1: look like if we made the transition to living in
Speaker 1: the citizens story? What would be practically different? What would
Speaker 1: our experience feel like? I find this question kind of
Speaker 1: hard because it's like, no, but I'm at a level
Speaker 1: where I'm like, some of it is that I don't
Speaker 1: think we exactly know. Are you practicing safe uncertainty with
Speaker 1: you right now? Working on you? But but it is
Speaker 1: like I'm kind of serious, right, Like a big part
Speaker 1: of the joy of this whole thing is the act
Speaker 1: of creating it. Yeah, I hear you on on truly
Speaker 1: on the safe uncertainty, and you're also kind of practicing
Speaker 1: what you just described, which is you're not overpromising a
Speaker 1: specific outcome when I ask you that question. I have
Speaker 1: one last question for you, and then we'll go to
Speaker 1: our live, not in studio audience. We embrace citizen as
Speaker 1: a verb here at how to Citizen. So you missed
Speaker 1: the storyteller words Smith. If you are interpreting citizen as
Speaker 1: a verb, how do you define it? What does it
Speaker 1: mean to citizen? I mean I listened to your first
Speaker 1: episodes Salary Core Eric Loue. Yeah, when I was like
Speaker 1: writing the book, and honestly, I've been like fan boying.
Speaker 1: But where I got to the way I do it
Speaker 1: is I talk about because nouns are important to me
Speaker 1: as well, because nouns become identity constructs. That's why it's
Speaker 1: important to understand the consumer, not just the act of consumption.
Speaker 1: But the way I talk about it is is I
Speaker 1: make the distinction between citizenship of status, which has become consumerized.
Speaker 1: It's become a product. Can buy it, You can buy
Speaker 1: it the Golden visa versus citizenship is practice. And that's
Speaker 1: basically you this stuff is this part right, like the
Speaker 1: citizenship has practices is citizen's verb. Yeah, John Alexander, It's
Speaker 1: been so good to see you in person here in
Speaker 1: the same room. Um, welcome belatedly to Los Angeles. And
Speaker 1: at this point I want to turn it over to
Speaker 1: our guests to see what's on their minds. Let's see
Speaker 1: what magic we might have been missing. Jens Innoviation, come
Speaker 1: on down. This is Jennine from Philadelphia. John. You were
Speaker 1: talking about your origin story more or lesson. You said
Speaker 1: something like about two thousand and three and you said
Speaker 1: how much noise it is to have to go through,
Speaker 1: you know, three thousand ads to get your ad out.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow, I remember when we thought
Speaker 1: two thousand and three was noisy. Imagine what you know?
Speaker 1: What I mean? That was really quaint, Like that was
Speaker 1: before Facebook really took over. So my question is, what
Speaker 1: do you think as a storyteller, like a professional storyteller,
Speaker 1: what do you see as the impact social media has
Speaker 1: had on the relationship between all of us civilians like
Speaker 1: public and storytelling meaning making? And I guess story choosing right,
Speaker 1: because you're talking about our ability to choose our stories
Speaker 1: and make stories and opts in and out. And I
Speaker 1: just want you to reflect on what these technologies are
Speaker 1: doing to that. The first thing I would say is
Speaker 1: to your kind of charting back through time, I think
Speaker 1: we also need to remember and what we thought the
Speaker 1: promise of these things were so a good friend of
Speaker 1: mine as woman called Amozine Khalifa, who you again should
Speaker 1: have on here, and she was one of the organizers
Speaker 1: of the Tennisian Revolution and using social media in beautiful
Speaker 1: ways when we all thought Facebook was the answer, right,
Speaker 1: And I think I do believe that social media have
Speaker 1: that potential, and like I do see everything through the
Speaker 1: lens of these stories, like and the way I would
Speaker 1: frame it is that we build our technologies from within stories.
Speaker 1: So when we build them from within a consumer story,
Speaker 1: they then speak back to us as consumers Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and sort of like they're designed for us as consumers.
Speaker 1: I think the most powerful analogy really is actually more
Speaker 1: like what was originally called the sharing economy, right, like
Speaker 1: the airbnb s and Ubers of this world, where we
Speaker 1: were like, I mean, these were these were out just
Speaker 1: forming when I was starting to really develop this language,
Speaker 1: and I was like, maybe I don't need to do
Speaker 1: this because like we're just going to share everything, And
Speaker 1: like the whole dream was that every transaction would become
Speaker 1: a relationship. But because they were built from within the
Speaker 1: consumer story, what's actually happened is that every relationship becomes
Speaker 1: a transaction. We just become consumers of each other. It's
Speaker 1: the story that I would look to and maybe to
Speaker 1: this thing about critical intervention points like Twitter right now
Speaker 1: is super fascinating, right, like, what what might happen in
Speaker 1: that space? Well, what what might master don become? Or
Speaker 1: like if in this moment we can seize on the
Speaker 1: collapse in that space and build something from within the
Speaker 1: citizens story, maybe we could have genuinely social media. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I love that. I have too many thoughts on that myself,
Speaker 1: Janine as well. They align largely with what you shared John.
Speaker 1: What social media has done to us is turned the
Speaker 1: consumer story up to eleven thousand, all right, and atomize
Speaker 1: us and chop us up and sell us off for parts.
Speaker 1: And so it's much much more violent than what we've
Speaker 1: experienced with traditional media and advertising, etcetera. So let's go
Speaker 1: to the next question we've got. Ray. I'm Ray Kennedy.
Speaker 1: I'm here in the Cotchella Valley in southern California. Had
Speaker 1: the pleasure of driving into l A last night to
Speaker 1: see John at the book tour event and just wanted
Speaker 1: to ask one of the things that that I remember
Speaker 1: reading years ago, I think two thousand five it was,
Speaker 1: is the book on the wisdom of crowds, and I
Speaker 1: was wondering if that was something that had played a
Speaker 1: role in your thinking as it evolved. Thank you, Ray.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of a way to make a
Speaker 1: longer answer than yes, you don't have to give this time.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll just say that, I mean it was off
Speaker 1: the back of the wisdom of crowds actually that the
Speaker 1: original concept of my farm developed because we were like, actually,
Speaker 1: we might get different intelligences into the space. Maybe one
Speaker 1: thing I will say on this, Actually, I think this
Speaker 1: is where the corruption of voting is a really good
Speaker 1: way to understand the corruption of voting. So voting, if
Speaker 1: it's an act of collective intelligence, can be a decent methodology, right,
Speaker 1: But to do that, we all have to be asking
Speaker 1: the same collective question. This is one of the points
Speaker 1: that Siriaki may makes in Wisdom of Crowds. Everyone has
Speaker 1: to be asking what's the option here that's in the
Speaker 1: best interest, in the best collective interest. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that's happened through the consumerization of our politics
Speaker 1: is that we're no longer all asking what's in our
Speaker 1: collective interest. Instead, we're individually asking what's in my interest? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the way we asked the question what question we ask?
Speaker 1: And and also are our bots answering the questions are
Speaker 1: they real humans? There was there was a simplicity to like,
Speaker 1: just put it up for a crowd vote and that'll
Speaker 1: solve it. And there was the process design was weak
Speaker 1: when it came to defending against actors, information warfare, artists
Speaker 1: and all of this that could corrupt such a such
Speaker 1: a process. Thank you so much. Ready for that question,
Speaker 1: Let's see, I'm going to ask this on behalf listeners.
Speaker 1: Submitted question from Jonathan asked what do you think about
Speaker 1: using behavioral economic insights to encourage citizen like behavior over
Speaker 1: consumer like behavior? Can you use the master's tools to
Speaker 1: free the enslaves? Can you use the tools of the
Speaker 1: consumer story in service of a citizens story? Look? I
Speaker 1: think using good design, using creativity, framing things carefully like
Speaker 1: is all part of this. I do worry about the
Speaker 1: phenomenon of notch M because I think the the underlying
Speaker 1: premise of that so often is do you define that briefly?
Speaker 1: Nudging is this idea that you sort of unconsciously prompts
Speaker 1: someone to behave in a certain way, so you like
Speaker 1: you get people to keep their towels in our hotel room,
Speaker 1: because you say most people do that rather than appealing
Speaker 1: to the kind of the moral argument which motivates fewer people.
Speaker 1: So you're like and like that there's nothing inherently wrong
Speaker 1: with that. The My worry, though, is there's two things.
Speaker 1: The first is that we underappreciate what's actually kind of
Speaker 1: the biggest nudge in history, which is the fact that
Speaker 1: we've got this story three thousand times a day plus
Speaker 1: I mean, to Janine's question, the latest estimates or anything
Speaker 1: up to ten thousand times a day for certain cohorts,
Speaker 1: and so that's behavior economics right there, right. The other
Speaker 1: thing is that I think what results from that, and
Speaker 1: so often these approaches come from here, is you're actually, um,
Speaker 1: some people call it sustainability by stealth, m right, okay,
Speaker 1: And it's like tricking people into doing the greener thing, essentially,
Speaker 1: because that's the only way we can possibly imagine trust them,
Speaker 1: right to just do the better thing for our collective self.
Speaker 1: And in a way it's like, because I think the
Speaker 1: towels thing is kind of interesting, right, because when you
Speaker 1: see that as a kind of grand victory, you're starting
Speaker 1: so far down the down the futureain because you're not
Speaker 1: sharing the big question that goes, how might we like,
Speaker 1: how might we make our society is sustainable? How might
Speaker 1: we make this city regenerative? Like if you hold that
Speaker 1: question this question we were talking I was talking about
Speaker 1: with Wellington City Council in New Zealand, how might Wellington
Speaker 1: become the first regenerative city in the world. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: a great question. Requires a lot of people, right, rather
Speaker 1: than like, Okay, we need to decrease the water footprint
Speaker 1: of Wellington's hotels, like let's this percentage point with this
Speaker 1: little nuge. So I don't want to be too like
Speaker 1: black and white about it, like I but there's there's
Speaker 1: no answer to an I think it is. There's I
Speaker 1: have a temptation often of you know, we're at war
Speaker 1: and the other side is deploying all of these advanced weapons,
Speaker 1: and are we gonna unilaterally disarmed? Right? So I'm already
Speaker 1: choosing the language of combat and war. But it sometimes
Speaker 1: feels like that truly, And so are we being naive
Speaker 1: in saying, well, no, we'll just we'll just tell people
Speaker 1: the truth and they'll figure it out. When they're being
Speaker 1: lied to ten thousand times a day. Is that a
Speaker 1: fair way to show up to a battle for a
Speaker 1: home planet that we could all live on, or justice
Speaker 1: and access to resources for many people who've never had
Speaker 1: it before. I don't think there's a simple answer to it.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure a war metaphor isn't gonna get us
Speaker 1: to peace sustainably. But there's also a reality check on
Speaker 1: what tools, what time, for what duration and being cleared
Speaker 1: with here's I'm spending more time on us than I intended,
Speaker 1: but I think it's just so fascinating. What rubs me
Speaker 1: mostly the wrong way is the lack of transparency when
Speaker 1: these techniques are used on and I find out later
Speaker 1: and that we can trust even more, right, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: so I'm a subject to your experiment and you couldn't
Speaker 1: just tell me why and how and still give me incentives.
Speaker 1: Incentives are fine, but the manipulation without consents or transparency,
Speaker 1: that feels like a real problem. That's really interesting. And
Speaker 1: it's like, and then what we're validating, right, and if
Speaker 1: we're becoming, if we're becoming the thing, then we're just
Speaker 1: now we're citizen washing right, all right? We have Martha
Speaker 1: Toray with our last question, and if we have time left.
Speaker 1: Some closing remarks. Hello Martha, Thank you very kindly, John Alexander,
Speaker 1: this has been most thought provoking. I think we're in
Speaker 1: a situation which is comparable to the end of the
Speaker 1: Bronze Age. We are, in many ways really at mercy
Speaker 1: of individuals, authorities, and etcetera, over which we have no power,
Speaker 1: are and with whom we have no community. And it
Speaker 1: strikes me as crucial that we developed community with the
Speaker 1: people on whom we depend thoughts. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Martha Joan. I think like I hear a lot of
Speaker 1: what you're bringing to this in the sense that we're
Speaker 1: in it now right, Like these challenges are not things
Speaker 1: that scenarial planning exercise for a distant, possibly dystopic future.
Speaker 1: There's thirty three million people displaced in Pakistan, there's bushfires
Speaker 1: and wildfires, and like it's we're in it, and the
Speaker 1: likelihood is that there are some collapses. That said, I
Speaker 1: am also like there's a lovely Bioka Malafe, amazing Nigerian
Speaker 1: philosopher says a couple of remarkable things, well, many remarkable things,
Speaker 1: but one of them is times are urgent. We must
Speaker 1: slow down. Some of this work is like, let us
Speaker 1: take the opportunity to come together, because if we rush,
Speaker 1: that is precisely what will force us into the into
Speaker 1: the arms of the subject story again. And maybe in
Speaker 1: that light, I'll put forward my my preferred historical analogy,
Speaker 1: which is the aftermath of World War Two, which was
Speaker 1: a moment of incredible institutional innovation. Like you think what
Speaker 1: was created in those years, right, the u N and
Speaker 1: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European colon steel
Speaker 1: community that became the EU, the i m F and
Speaker 1: the World Bank in the UK, the National Health Service
Speaker 1: like and all of it really from within the consumer story,
Speaker 1: all with the best intentions, but all with this frame
Speaker 1: of service and with the idea that that trade brings peace.
Speaker 1: And that's because we are consumers and so if we
Speaker 1: fulfill our kind of material needs, then we won't fight.
Speaker 1: In this moment in time that we need an institutional
Speaker 1: innovation on the same scale. But what we need is
Speaker 1: it to be the ideas and energy and resources of everyone, right,
Speaker 1: like we we need to run those processes in a
Speaker 1: way that genuinely taps into all the wids that um
Speaker 1: and probably frankly, the people who looking sound like me
Speaker 1: getting quite seriously out of the way of that and
Speaker 1: if anything, helping hold the space rather than dominating that space.
Speaker 1: And that I think is totally possible, and I think
Speaker 1: it can still be in time. That we need a
Speaker 1: new universal dectoration, we need new institutions of our scale,
Speaker 1: but we need to do it really differently. The good news,
Speaker 1: I think is that we can only do it really
Speaker 1: differently now there's no going back. John. Thank you for
Speaker 1: doing this podcast with me live in person with our
Speaker 1: virtual audience, and so appreciate everything you're up to. Thank you,
Speaker 1: my friend. It's been great to be here. There's so
Speaker 1: much that we've built in our society that is about
Speaker 1: empowering the individual to essentially live alone. We've got automated
Speaker 1: voice assistance across every device, enough delivery and service apps
Speaker 1: to never leave our homes, and so many TV shows
Speaker 1: and podcast that we can just observe conversations instead of
Speaker 1: having them. Now, for the record, this podcast is obviously
Speaker 1: part of the solution, not the problem. But you get
Speaker 1: my drift. We're supposed to be these rugged, individualistic armies
Speaker 1: of one and for what who benefits from that? Who
Speaker 1: benefits from us feeling alone and trying to satisfy that
Speaker 1: loneliness with purchases. It's those who profit from the consumer story.
Speaker 1: And listen, I don't see all advertising as evil. Some
Speaker 1: of my best friends work in advertising. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: like I think, if we were hit with thousands of
Speaker 1: messages a day telling us we are citizens, agents of
Speaker 1: our own future, members of a collective who have the
Speaker 1: power to shape our communities through collaboration, instead of messages
Speaker 1: telling us to buy ship all the time, I just
Speaker 1: think we'd live in a better world. And now it's
Speaker 1: time for some actions. We've grouped these into three categories. First,
Speaker 1: try this as an internal reflection. You can do this
Speaker 1: all by yourself. Think about the three stories, subject, consumer,
Speaker 1: and citizen. Where do those stories show up in your life?
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a subject with your parents, or a consumer
Speaker 1: in your neighborhood in what spaces, communities or realms all
Speaker 1: of the word realms? In what spaces? Are you already
Speaker 1: living the citizens story? Where else could you show up
Speaker 1: that way? Second, become more informed by reading about John's
Speaker 1: citizen work. Yes you should read his book, but a
Speaker 1: shorter way in is the BBC Future Art of Cool
Speaker 1: Citizen Future. Why we need a new Story of self
Speaker 1: and society. Also, just visit the New Citizenship Project online.
Speaker 1: They've got a number of resources to help you or
Speaker 1: your organization shift into that citizens story. We've linked to
Speaker 1: both in the show notes. Finally, here's something you can
Speaker 1: do to publicly participate. I keep thinking about John's question,
Speaker 1: what are you trying to do in the world that's
Speaker 1: so big you actually need other people to do it
Speaker 1: with you? So I want you to think of something
Speaker 1: like that. It can actually be small. It just has
Speaker 1: to be too big for you to do alone, because
Speaker 1: we're done doing things alone. Maybe it's fixing defense around
Speaker 1: your yard, organizing a fundraiser at your school, or envisioning
Speaker 1: a future for your company. Ask someone to help you
Speaker 1: do it now. I know some of us have a
Speaker 1: harder time asking for help than others, so I also
Speaker 1: want you to offer help to someone you're connected to.
Speaker 1: Just ask them, is there something you're trying to do
Speaker 1: that I can help you with. I promise you'll feel
Speaker 1: better and you'll make your community better. If you take
Speaker 1: any of these actions, please brag about it online and
Speaker 1: use the hashtag how to citizen. Also tag our Instagram
Speaker 1: how do citizen? I am always online and I really
Speaker 1: do see your messages, so send them. You can also
Speaker 1: visit our website How the Citizen dot Com, which has
Speaker 1: all of our shows, full transcripts, actions and more. Finally,
Speaker 1: see this episode show notes for resources, actions and more
Speaker 1: ways to connect. How Do Citizen with barrettune Day is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and row Home Productions.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Me, barrettun Day, Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart.
Speaker 1: Our leave producer is Ali Graham. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Donia abdel Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing producer, and
Speaker 1: John Myers is our executive editor. Our mixed engineer is
Speaker 1: Justin Burger. Our audience Engagement Fellow is Jasmine Lewis. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Joel Smith from My Heart Radio and lay
Speaker 1: La Being John is pushing the bounds of how we
Speaker 1: can practice democracy if we live in the citizens story.
Speaker 1: But even within the existing boundaries and models, we can
Speaker 1: do more. So we're going to talk about voting, Yeah, voting.
Speaker 1: How do we take this often uninspired, tedious practice and
Speaker 1: infuse it with a sense of community and culture. Fear
Speaker 1: is a powerful motivator. Anger is a powerful motivator. The
Speaker 1: problem is that it is not sustainable that people burn
Speaker 1: out and tune out, and what I'm proposing is much
Speaker 1: more sustainable. I say that joy is a renewable resource
Speaker 1: that we can continue to tap back into. That people
Speaker 1: want to come and hang out with us, they want
Speaker 1: to come and volunteer with us, they want to come
Speaker 1: and donate to our efforts because there's a nine ft
Speaker 1: person walking around and like singing show tunes, keeping voters
Speaker 1: entertained um and keeping people's spirits high. Next episode, we
Speaker 1: do just that with in Sea Row Home Productions