When future generations dig up the relics of our civilisation, they may marvel that we could be bothered to invent electric milk frothers and automated curtains - but couldn’t figure out how to live well, in harmony with nature. That we could fly sliced fruit in plastic trays from different continents on jumbo jets, but didn’t have any practical solutions to end hunger for everyone. They may ask themselves why we bowed our heads obediently to religions of greed, preaching progress and innovation while despoiling the common pantry - when we possessed the wisdom, the facts and the moral fibre to know better.

As we hurtle towards somewhat darker prospects for our societal arrangements, the power of capital over policy, of technology over democracy, of greed over justice, appear hard to shake. Yet today’s normal can quickly become tomorrow’s absurdity. Not long ago, lobotomy was deemed an acceptable cure for women’s ‘hysteria’. One day we may yet look back on insistence that some must profit from the apocalypse with similar disbelief.

Who holds power in these strange times - and why? Please join us for a regenerative discussion on summoning our own power over our collective path.

In the Deep Thought series, Andreea offers opportunities to interrogate our ideas of what is normal and desirable in society. Deep Thought is a space for courage and authenticity, with no stone left unturned. We build trust, encourage each other and take action together.

Both capitalism and the patriarchy are systems of oppression, perpetuating inequality and injustice. Capitalism very ably appropriates marketised versions of feminism that sell women’s empowerment in the form of lipstick, that require women to quietly shoulder multiple burdens so they can “have it all”. The capitalist lexicon is so widely accepted and its mythology so ingrained in us, that  even feminist organisations talk about the gender dividend, as if our dignity was only worth pursuing when it leads to profit, productivity and growth.

Is it naive to pursue feminist goals in a system not designed for equality?

Shake off the summer cobwebs and join us for a hopeful and revitalising exploration.

A few weeks ago, I heard someone at a conference say that expecting peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians was akin to demanding peaceful coexistence between the rider and the horse. Since hearing it, I can’t unhear it. It seems to fit like a glove around so many aspects of reality.

A useful filter through which much pain and overboiling rage across society seem easier to understand.

All social orders (from the individual to the collective) are based on underlying ideas of justice. Capitalism on the idea that all can be rewarded according to merit, which we establish through competition. Multilateralism on the trust that decisions are made together by sovereign states, for the benefit of all. Marriage, among many things, on the understanding that what we sacrifice in freedom, we regain in comfort. When the balance of justice is altered, the social order becomes a breachable dam, at risk from torrents of anger and discontent, wholesale change inevitable.
The justice fiction (for it is always constructed) is the glue.

In a world where our justice myths are fading, where few own wealth and many pay rent, who is the rider and who is the horse? Whose compliance is expected, and what justice are they getting in return? Who gets to define the rules of engagement? Which among us actively signed up for dynamics of domination? Are better things possible?

A few days after an electoral exercise that brought together hundreds of millions across Europe, I find myself spluttering expletives into my coffee every time someone mentions relief. You might find me petulant. Childish. Harbouring apocalyptic fantasies. Yet what joy is there in Flanders still being a touch more bourgeois nationalist yellow than it is straightforward fascist brown? How low our ambitions when we rejoice in the “centre holding” in the European Parliament elections - by which we mean what used to constitute almost the entire political spectrum now amounting to a “blink and you’ll miss it” majority?

Like a frog in a heating pot of water, we reassure ourselves we still have a handle on things. A party balloon a few decades after the party, our political system is emptied of meaning, of promise, of hope - but hasn’t yet imploded. Another lucky escape. We can keep boiling.

What we accept as normal in 2024 would have seemed dystopian in 2019 and unimaginable in 2014. As thankful as we are for these small mercies, it’s within the reach of our collective courage and imagination to fill our public space with better things in the next five years. To do more than await our froggy fate.

In the Deep Thought series, Andreea offers opportunities to interrogate our ideas of what is normal and desirable in society. Together we walk towards the mindset shifts that are needed to protect our planet, make the world safe and ensure lives and dignity and meaning for all. Deep Thought is a space for courage and authenticity, with no stone left unturned. We build trust, encourage each other and take action together.

What happens to trust in a transactional world? What does a selfish society do for our happiness? What does meaningful work mean in an era of precarity, automation and uncertainty? What is society for? Join us for our monthly conversations.

In bygone eras of gods and kings and moral certainties, it was perhaps clearer where folk could look for salvation. Divine will was thought to be manifest in material privilege, and servitude to that needed not be questioned. How much of this worldview lies dormant in us today, as we stand on the brink of a multi-faceted apocalypse? 

The top income decile in our societies, responsible for 3 to 5 times the national average carbon emissions in any country, valiantly pursue self-interest while the world burns.. Civil society toddles along on life-support from systems of gift and patronage, beholden to crumbs fallen off the table of philanthropy. Volunteering fills in the gaps in public service provision, simultaneously symbolic of our best altruistic and communitarian instincts, and of our failure to shape our systems so that they serve our most basic human needs.

If we were to act in our collective best interest right now, what would that look like? What would matter most? How would we re-organise society so that it delivers on our greatest needs?

Come along so we can replenish our collective hope reserves­ – and move forward with humanity and purpose.

What will 2024 look like from the future? How will history books record our actions to protect Palestine, or Ukraine? What will they say about the things we did to safeguard democracy from darkness? Will we have made sure AI serves our collective interests? Will we have stopped believing it’s grown up to let our lives be defined by the narrowest of interests?

Experiencing a sense of normality right now has an element of cognitive dissonance about it, and yet most of us do. Trump, an emboldened Putin, a possible European Parliament swing to the far right, the push-back on women’s rights, climate spiralling, farmers spraying manure onto capital streets, a dystopian reality is taking shape under our paralysed gaze. And still it doesn’t seem possible that things could truly be worse. Or better.

We are experiencing a crisis of faith, a drought of the imagination. But the history books are not yet written. We’re a multitude bound by our humanity. The things that seem fixed in our lives are largely our own inventions. We can do better and might.

Come along so we can replenish our collective hope reserves.

In the Deep Thought series, Andreea offers opportunities to interrogate our ideas of what is normal and desirable in society. Together we walk towards the mindset shifts that are needed to protect our planet, make the world safe and ensure lives and dignity and meaning for all. Deep Thought is a space for courage and authenticity, with no stone left unturned. We build trust, encourage each other and take action together.

This is a two-hour workshop looking at practical ways of turning around unpromising political narratives, to revitalise democracy and help our world step back from the brink.

If you believe green politics doesn’t have to be misanthropic, and that progressive narratives don’t have to be individualistic, and that some justice and reconciliation is possible when we hold uncomfortable truths forgivingly, with love – join this two hour workshop where we put it all into practice. 

We will walk away with new ways of talking about our beliefs, connecting with each other and asking more of the right things from our decision-makers.

In the Deep Thought series, Andreea offers opportunities to interrogate our ideas of what is normal and desirable in society. Together we walk towards the mindset shifts that are needed to protect our planet, make the world safe and ensure lives and dignity and meaning for all. Deep Thought is a space for courage and authenticity, with no stone left unturned. We build trust, encourage each other and take action together.

What happens to trust in a transactional world? What does a selfish society do for our happiness? What does meaningful work mean in an era of precarity, automation and uncertainty? What is society for? Join us for our monthly conversations.

"This was going to be a discussion on masculinities. On sexual practices and gender norms shaped and re-shaped by capitalism. On new ways of navigating cultural uncertainty that don’t require pathologizing the experience of billions of humans as something toxic or unsavoury. On raising girls and boys generously and lovingly so they can be kind, happy and themselves.

As the words pop up on my screen, my fingers hitting the keys as they have frantically for days, there isn’t room to contemplate much else aside the fire and rubble of Gaza. Feeling puny and impotent, standing by, watching the nuclear meltdown of our very humanity. The despair, perdition, which one way or another, will haunt us through the decades, just as the horrors of other ages, Shoah or Nakba, are haunting us now.

In this age of rupture, old delusions are in flames. We are in between the worlds, economically, geopolitically, in terms of security, in our own lives. The more we hold on to old fictions by our fingernails, opposing ceasefires, staying put, looking the other way, insisting on more of the same, the more alone we are in discomfort, in cognitive dissonance.

This Deep Thought session is a huddle for those who need togetherness in darkness, who have a yearning for better things, for difficult truths concurrently upheld, moral revival and the triumph of humanity’s best, loving traits.

Join us."

Can we be honest about how impossible it feels to contemplate big change?

The expectation of change to help us through the crises of our complex age is as exhilarating as it is burdensome. With so much around us tearing at the seams, why is it so hard to fathom a world re-drawn from scratch, our lives re-written in entirely new realities? Why does the radically new feel unrealistic, when the present is arguably insane?

Our global economic model delivers rich spoils for some, exploitation and deprivation for many, and impending climate collapse that should have us shaking in our boots. Our democracies are creaking under the burden of our disappointment. We live noisy lives of online interaction, our every fear and yearning monetised by algorithms, for which our inner realities are nothing more than fertile soil for profit.

As humanity’s house is on fire, we get bogged down in ESG abstractions, tick-boxes, acronyms, tech distractions and policy whizzes - all designed to ensure we do the minimum we can get away with while things stay broadly as they are.

We’re yearning for big change, yet we struggle to believe it is really possible.

This session is a challenge to name the world our hearts are crying out for. To imagine change that doesn’t leave our lives untouched. Who will we be? What will matter most? What will our new reality look like?

In this session, Andreea explores the meaning and nature of work in contemporary society. After all, being “hard-working” is drilled into us in childhood. But what and who is modern work for? What kind of work do we reward? 

Good work offers us identity, belonging and the material means to live comfortably and enjoy life. Good work is in the service of society. Yet many of us work hard for lives of increasing precarity. Career progression can mean thankless striving on a personal brand marketing treadmill. We can find ourselves alone, exhausted, uninspired and poor. All the while, inequalities increase apace.

We casually objectify ourselves as “the labour market”, “human resource” and “human capital”. Although we teach our children to be kind, truthful and caring, when they enter the world of work as young adults, we encourage them to see it as a marketplace in which they themselves are for sale. We goad them to behave inauthentically, to network opportunistically. To say and do things they do not mean and do not believe have value. If they complain about their low-pay, low-joy work lives, we chide them for eating avocados.

In all of this, better things are possible. We can make sure we reward the work that benefits us all. That where work is needed, it is also a vehicle for a comfortable life. That the invented link between industriousness and wealth is questioned and our attitudes to merit reviewed accordingly. We can ensure automation serves society, that it saves us from drudgery without leaving us destitute. We can make work good, and society as it should be.

Join the conversation as we explore what "good work" really means.