Brianne Johnson

Instead you’ll be doing so in the spirit of the Amish, who ask first whether a specific technology seems likely to serve their highest values, and only embrace it if it does

“aliveness is so central to meaningful human experience that there’ll always be a market for those who can cultivate it, embed it in what they create, foster it in institutions and organisations, and bring people together to experience it”

It’s a real mind fuck and it makes me feel complicit in something terrible that hurts people. It makes me feel complicit in the thing that hurt ME. It’s like I morph into an avatar for the very thing I spend my entire career and life fighting against. Like, while I’m trying to detox, I’m actively poisoning other people.

We’ve been taught to relegate creativity to marketing departments or brainstorming sessions, treating it like a mood rather than a muscle. And in the uncertain terrain of today’s economy, survival isn’t about efficiency — it’s about adaptability. Creativity is what allows cultures to bend instead of break, to reconfigure themselves when the old str... See more

Gathering well is the deeply generous act of noticing a real need in a community and creating just the right container to help meet it.

When cars became more fuel-efficient, we didn’t save on fuel – we just made cars bigger and drove more. This phenomenon is called the ‘Jevons Paradox’, named after economist William Stanley Jevons who observed in 1865 that more efficient coal use led to more consumption, not less.

“What we worry about is not death, it’s vulnerability. We worry about being that person who is in a hospital, nursing home, or residential facility and having no one to be an advocate. Or we fear being alone in our home, unable to function as well as we’d like, and with no clear idea who or how to ask for help, scared to do so in case we get railro... See more

Ritual has power. I learned that lesson early on. Growing up in the English countryside, my family wasn’t religious, but we observed folk celebrations that gave meaning to each season and structure to our days. We danced around the maypole on May Day, gathered around a St John’s Fire at Midsummer and sang in the streets at Michaelmas. These rituals... See more