Did serendipity have a hand in landing you here? Let's prod that probability.
May I introduce myself: Max Kaizen. Creative technologist. Collector and connector of ingenuity from across the ages, cultures. and species. Why? Because our human lives are absurdly brief, and business models opportunity EVERYWHERE.
I equip bright people craving the thrill of meaningful ambition again ... to boldly venture beyond their ken.
To reply to big changes with adventurous ingenuity, and new skills. Discovering the quests & friendships they didn't realise would help them feel most alive.
Yup, MAXIMILLIAN KAIZEN.
I know. My name evokes a Teutonic colossus, right?
IRL: more pocket-sized, wizard creative technologist than battle-ready barbarian of yore.
But here we are ... lace up yer boots, let's go.
I've spent decades working on innovative or pioneering projects with the institutions that have held power and credibility, governments, universities, banks, media ... and the dazzling and defiant ones who have challenged them. With curiosity-driven quests of my own making as interludes.
NARRATIVE FORESIGHT
Because if I said time-travel to rewrite the future, would you stay?
Narrative foresight isn't predicting the future, nor the sexy futurist showmanship of sparkly new gadget and consumer trends. It's more of the preventative health reality check-ups, workouts and veggies version of futurism. Inoculating against future shocks and expensive surprises.
It requires hunting down the many hidden stories coursing under the surface of reality, to name the monsters, unflinchingly detail the fiascos. Then rewrite the scripts, and rehearse our part if one of the dystopian disaster flicks we foresaw, starts playing at a reality theatre near us.
Shortening the gap between freak-out ➔ figure-it-out takes getting our reps in. Never in isolation. It takes MANY kinds of minds, community inventory, role-play and skill-discovery to evolve through complex transitions, be they personal or planetary. Abstract dread ➔ action-packed invitations to plans + practical adventure.
It's also the realm of strategic mythmaking for those with big responsibilities. Cultural diplomacy. Placemaking. Film, food and fashion as soft power?You know it. We deal in big time, thick data, tiny actions and deep nerdery in decision-craft for this high stakes period.
Be Prepared
"Prepared for what?"
"Why, for any old thing"
- Lord Robert Baden Powell (Boy Scouts)
INTELLIGENT
LEISURE
Genius is no tame thing. Epiphany flirts from the periphery. It's often slippery, serendipitous, silly. It hates being grasped tightly, under a spotligt
Brute-force talent and deep pockets frustratingly come up short in trying to industrialise innovation. Breakthrough innovations refuse to materialise with reliable certainty upon command or calendar.
Unfurl your surface area to "luck" with intelligent leisure: fascinating friends, skill sabbaticals, writers retreats, grownup field-trips, creative tech tinkering, cultural immersions, raiding the adjacent possible. Anything but leaving it to chance alone, if we want to chart our own journey in this one lifetime.
= doing things that aren't for your resume, and where income isn't the only outcome. Surprisingly often, supercharges both.
Nothing is too boring when you can see the clues hidden in everything.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not "Eureka!"
but "That's funny..."
- Isaac Asimov
CURIOSITY-DRIVEN CAREER LIFE
We often mistake WHAT to DO next, rather than WHO to BE next.
Too many brilliant people squish themselves into a role too small for their soul: the seemingly safe/sensible choice in the hot industry, high status or the one too lucrative to turn down. Golden handcuffs vs the arena wherein they (secretly) yearn to test themselves.
Retirement knocks many high-powered leaders adrift, because their identity was tethered to a prestigious job title. Or the uncomfortable void waiting for those who've succeeded at something massive and retired early in glory. Big wins have big dips that we've rarely been prepared for.
Wealth and fame aren't protective. Winning our true character, that respectfully doesn't give a hoot for status or applause, being able to trust our compass of internal clarity. This is real freedom. A rare, embodied luxury that money can't buy.
It comes by way of choosing fun that's not easy, and guaranteed to be cringe, daring to sweat as we learn, to be rejected, honest feedback and strive for the things that ACTUALLY make us come alive. But may not know why. In the company of courageous friends who pull us out of the mud and celebrate effort and character.
Self importance obstructs learning
NATURE'S OPERATING SYSTEM
& Synthetic Intelligence
Ironically, the pinnacle of our human genius: silicon-based intelligence, may become the Rosetta Stone for decoding the ancient language of carbon-based life on our planet. Helping us work with this 3.8 billion year old operating system, written in chlorophyll and encoded in mycelium networks, collaborating with the unfathomable bounty of interoperable lifeforms around us.
We don't yet have a roadmap, but we do finally have the tools to swerve out of the doom loop. To upgrade our operating systems from those forged in the Enlightenment ➔ to the Enlivenment. Developing symbiotic intelligence with other living creatures on our lone living planet. Destruction is not inevitable.
It's a time of rewilding our imaginations to see beyond our coin-operated reality.
Yes, the odds are absurdly long, but with mad ambition we have
the chance in our lifetime of bringing LIFE roaring back. With the healthy abundance we crave.
This is a call to epic adventure, across the threshold of the known.
psst .. if you're trying to figure out what your purpose is here - this may be the clue you need ⚷
"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep.
...
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep."
- Rumi (A Great Wagon)
IT'S ALIVE!
SABBATICALS & INTERMISSIONS
for when everything's WTF
*:･ﾟ
