Happy Black Elephant Day!

Today, ten years ago, a group of us, playfully calling ourselves the Institute of Collapsonomics, went to speak to a well-known policy think-tank about the medium- to long-term consequences of the (then still unfolding) Global Financial Crisis and what might be done about it all. We came away without having convinced our hosts that a different response than “get back to business as usual asap” was urgently needed or even desirable.

On the street outside, as we walked away, the conversation was of Black Swan events and elephants in the room and so in my familiar role as Juxtaposer-in-Chief I smashed them together, unwittingly summoning the spirit of the Black Elephant. It seemed we were looking at something that everyone knew was there but no-one was talking about. Something which likely would lead to a series of other serious crises that would then be portrayed as having been previously unpredictable.

People now say things like “Brexit is a classic Black Elephant” but this does not convey the fullness of the experience of meeting the Black Elephant spirit, hearing its plea to not be ignored and climbing up on its back. In our own ways we all met the spirit that day and have been riding these magnificent beasts ever since.

I cannot tell you what the others heard, but I surmise, based on inferences drawn from their subsequent escapades, and the knowledge that the elephant is a symbol of unconditional love, that we all heard variations on “Humans need to radically change how they work and live together”.

I watched Alan Patrick dress his elephant in patchwork and ride it into boardrooms. Dougald and Vinay initially headed together on their elephants towards the Dark Mountain and while Dougald settled in its foothills, experimenting with just how to create culture that is more human, more hospitable and more honest about the horrors we face, Vinay’s elephant perhaps muttered “We still can’t feed everyone fairly!” and stormed off to take a stab at creating global equality through the technology-enabled mutualisation of accounting and contracting.

My own elephant mused that “you people don’t seem to be able to talk or work together without fighting” and so we rode across the United States and around the United Kingdom talking to people, living with people, working with people, experimenting with loosening the structures we have for talking and working together, sometimes letting go of structure altogether. Along the way I developed a way of safely using deliberate helplessness to engage with helpfulness and began to see my own practice, whether opening space or working one-to-one, as a kind of ministry of presence.

So be careful which words you mash together to express an idea in the middle of the street – they can take on life and form and experience and carry you (and your pals) off on unexpected adventures for a decade (or more!)