Things can’t go on like this. I mean the whole thing – this global economy. It’s all up-side-down in its values and drivers. Just thinking about it threatens to make me wordless and hopeless. Eventually – because I have to get up every morning – I will start to nibble at it in my little corner of the world, do what I can, but inevitably my nibbles seem so insignificant when compared to the size of the problem. It’s such a very large and multi-faceted problem.

A shortlist I’ve been mulling over this weekend:

• Most people on the planet have given their decision-making power away to governments who do not serve them
• Capitalism (as it is) is reaching its sell-by date. The planet is running out of the basic resources to sustain a linear production-consumption system
• The gestures business and governments make to global ecological conservation and alleviation of global poverty are not helping enough
• There are too many people on the planet to allow for quality of life for most of us – our population projections tell us that we have already exceeded the planet’s capacity to sustain us all
• Primary resources (like water) have been centralised to governmental or big business distributors which lock people into relationships in which they have no power
• People in power have been corrupted by greed, people in positions of powerlessness have been corrupted by hopelessness.
• Media (the bulk of the  content of our global communications) is largely driven by consumerist messaging and sensationalist drama

Is it possible to fix a super-system that is just so sick? At times I would like to say that I wish we could all just stop and begin again. Chances are, we might get that opportunity – though not on our terms if Mother Nature is left to organise it.

With a sigh I look about me to see who’s doing something about all this. Doing seems like the best response, both practically and psychologically. Locally, Lead SA looks like a good idea: an opportunity for South Africans to roll their eyes at ineffective governance and get on with the job themselves.

Not-doing is another alternative. This means, not doing what we normally do, not defaulting to the easiest behaviours, not continuing to give energy to systems that have run their course and are no longer useful.

But I began with the title, “What would Marxists do?” If there is good one out there, let’s have a detailed critique which can lead us to some workable solution. Something that sees us clearly as the contradictory humans we are with an opportunity to turn a huge problem into something Truly Great.

…Tim came. That is, Tim Ward, author of “Savage Breast“. I am vindicated - some people can deal with, understand, and appreciate my long words (a vice which has banned me from ALL copy-writing for Avo). Just to remind you all, Tim’s book was the last thing I blogged about, over a year ago now, and our conversation grabbed his attention.

Tim was out in SA from the USA doing some training in JHB, and offered us some time to talk about his book. So, Saturday afternoon we all trooped into the Avo conference room, cake and tea in hand, and went on a journey with him through the highlights of his journey through the territory of the Goddess.

And the man lived up to the promise in the book. Tim carried us from the archaeological curiosities of his travels, through archetypes, right into his his own very personal experiences, all in ways which were moving in his vulnerability to their impact on his own ways of thinking. My lasting impression: generosity of spirit, courage.

Thank you, Tim. The conversations I have had since our workshop has demonstrated to me that Tim’s ideas have the power to reach into our psyches and shake us at our roots. Women’s faces held expressions which said, “Oh!”; men found words to express their fears and hearts. I’m making headway into another of his books, “What the Buddha Never Taught”, which serendipitously reflects my current train of thought as the “Savage Breast” did a year ago.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

So you think you had fun last night? Well WE had fun this weekend (and where were the rest of you?) blacksmithing with Paul in Hekpoort. 8 Avos & friends did our boy-thing making amazing candle-holders in the medieval environment of Paul’s personal smithy. Funny how all of the men I’ve ever invited to this event have all said, “Can I make a sword?” Thanks Jen for your always supply of fringe medical solutions which always save the day. Thanks Jules for the lekker lunch and coming all the way out there to wash dishes for us! Thanks Grant for organising it all, and for your famous coffee. My blisters are nearly healed - when can we go again?

It’s a book I’m reading by Tim Ward (you’ll find it on Google). It is subtitled, “One man’s search for the Goddess”. It flows like a conspiracy theory in that it tracks his growing discovery across the more famous historical sites of the world, and pieces together an image in explanation of why we don’t have a reputable Goddess figure in our contemporary Western culture, and how Her historical relationship with men has created this deficite.

I have only managed the first chapter so far, but already it echoes a thought expressed to me recently by a friend, a Gen Xer, married with children. He speaks of the Feminine in the context of his particular walk of faith, as that which holds the key to his personal masculinity. And he, like Tim Ward, is not speaking about getting on better with women, or learning how to be culturally sensitive to them. These men are speaking of how their gender is inextricably linked to, formed by, the counterpoint of the Feminine.
I’m walking in numinous territory here. Ward’s book is not the usual feminist (Sensitive New Age Guy) treatise to re-establish an ousted Goddess-of-legend. He seeks her image as a man and as an historian, and walks a Jungian path. He describes his suffering along the way…
The challenge to me, a die-hard-pinko-feminist: do I have the courage to say in response, “My femininity is inextricably linked to, formed by, the counterpoint of the Masculine”? (remembering that the Feminine as Goddess in all her aspects is only one aspect of me as human woman). And would it be true for me to say so? Do I as a 21st century Gen X pinko-feminist really understand what it is to be feminine? I’ll be thinking about that in the week to come (and probably for the rest of my life). What say you, Avos & Friends?

…when I said to him that things come into being as a result of a critical mass of belief in them. My favourite reference for this idea comes from Terry Pratchett’s “Small Gods”. But I’ve heard it repeated in a huge variety of contexts. For example, in the shoo-wow new-age space I’ve heard it said that if just a handfull of people focussed properly for only 5 minutes on the problem, they could turn the planet’s geophysical influenza around. And I’m almost sure that my sister’s belief in the Boogy-man as a child made noises happen from inside the cupboard. Look what happened to Tinkerbell when (someone) said they didn’t believe in fairies. (Let’s also not forget the Celestine Prophesy)

I’m back/still on the branding journey of thought. I just wondered whether if all the Coke cans & bottles in shops simultaneously disappeared this moment, the Coke brand would still exist? And since the answer is yes, in what form? And if you weren’t allowed to make reference to anything about the (out-of-bounds-to-my-children) buzz drink, could you describe what the Coke brand was? Yes.

I’m thinking, in getting to the crux of the Avo brand, let’s ask “Who are we?” over and over again until we get a satisfactory answer. My favourite Nedbank guru, Carlos, told me about a retreat he went on (or heard about?) where retreatees were asked this question every day on waking up. Tom Peters says we should, and David Goatham tries to get us to…

The Avo brand is no longer a Brand of One, neither is it a Brand of a group of people or a team. It is represented by everything that the company does (the verbs it enacts) even down to the individually labelled shelves in the kitchen. Every component of the organism that is Avocado Vision carries the DNA of the brand like every cell in the body does. Avo is all about people, but the company is also about its systems, its processes, its waste-paper baskets, its stationary non-glut etc. So, stop for a moment basking in the glow of the spectacular Personalities that make up the Avo team, and think for me (us) about the broader-deeper picture. What is the Avocado Vision Brand?

Avos, since the primary Brand-delivery mechanism for our company is its people, what would the brand be if you took them out of the equation simultaneously and at this moment? Tell me. This is not a trick question.

And the Design was within Everything, and the Design provided the Client with orgasmic Experiences. So, I read Tom Peters on Design this past week (I took it slow for maximum absorbtion) and I felt understood for the first time in a decade. AT LAST someone had articulated something that I have been doing for 30 years - and always when someone asks me what I do, I end up talking for hours. Now I’ll just hand out Tom Peters pocket version of Design.

I so get off on Branding. I always take a brand and question its relevance to middle-class South Africans, and to homeless South Africans, and when both provide satisfactory relevance index, I begin to get excited. Across the globe companies and individuals are beginning to understand that a brand is not a public representation of a company, but that it sprouts from the geist of the company - its people, its systems, its service methods and everything else it does.

Design manifests the geist by taking that whiff from just behind the nasal bridge and transforming it into product, system, packaging, management - everything that makes a business entity Be. This is what I do, to a greater or lesser degree for a variety of clients. And for Avo, I jealously guard the design elements I can grasp ownership of so that I can manifest beautifully the magnificent soul of this gestalt.