Brands are facing the fact that loneliness has become a part of our identities, crisis or not.

But you can’t talk about loneliness without talking about the meaning of rituals first. 

As society becomes more secularized and isolated, we struggle to find the self-defining connection that rituals once afforded us. The weekly gathering that separated work from rest, the rituals of birth and death, the seasonal rituals of growth and change - all of these have been fading from our worlds, and perhaps accelerated out of our lives with the arrival of COVID-19.

Many tech and D2C brands have rushed in to fill the gap over the past decade, but as the after-effects of crisis set in and we emerge from the collective trauma of social distancing and major economic loss, loneliness and ritual will take on new meanings.

In this week's podcast, we speak with three people whose work and research has significantly impacted our understanding of loneliness and human connection today:

• Sasha Sagan, daughter of Carl Sagan and author of the social history book For Book Small Creatures Such As We
   

• Kasley Killam, Harvard Social Scientist who has worked with the World Economic Forum and Google Life Sciences to address the loneliness epidemic on population levels
   

• Danielle Baskin, founder of the buzzy social connection app Dialup

If rituals and traditions are the glue that keeps us human, then it's important to understand how they are created and what makes them work.  

This discussion is a look into how different models of ritual frame our perceptions of things like time, change and meaning, and how loneliness can actually pivot our lives in surprising ways.

Loneliness is many things, and identity brands are starting to notice that ideas of connection and ritual are core to a modern user experience.

You can also listen on Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify and Simplecast.

Links to interesting things mentioned in this episode:

• Sasha Sagan: "For Small Creatures Such As We" (Talks at Google)
   

• How To Find Meaning In Suffering (Scientific American)
   

• Finding Connection and Resilience During The Coronavirus Pandemic (Scientific American)
   

• 'It's like a remote sleepover': my week meeting quarantined strangers (The Guardian)

All the feels.

Here's what we've been consuming.

Anna Wintour Made Condé Nast the Embodiment of Boomer Excess. Can It Change to Meet This Crisis? (New York Times): "Ms. Wintour has also been slow to adjust to changing cultural norms, playing catch-up rather than leading on everything from calling people fat to wearing fur to her friendship with Harvey Weinstein and his wife. [...] The bigger question may be what becomes of the glossy magazines in whatever new age we are entering. Condé Nast is the defining brand of American inequality; its original slogan was “class not mass.” Now it is entering a grim period of austerity."

New Heroes, Cult Objects, and Days of Glory (Sociology of Business): "We were unprepared for this crisis because our national heroes are soldiers and warriors. Our social heroes are nuclear scientists and tech inventors. Our cultural heroes are influencers and celebrities. In the past several decades, we moved from “we” to “I”: to Silicon Valley visionaries to Avengers to cult personalities of self-actualization, focused on getting, not giving. “We get one life, so why not milk the shit out of it?”, asks Gwyneth Paltrow in her GOOP Netflix trailer." 

In The Heat Of The Moment: How Intense Emotions Transform Us (Hidden Brain): "George realized that each of his emotional states were little worlds unto themselves — the runner in pain had little understanding of the carefree person going downhill, and vice versa. This gap in perception applies to more than running and the phenomenon can help us understand why we sometimes act in ways that mystify us, whether it's making an impulsive decision when we're hungry or freezing in a moment when we expected to be assertive."

The Growth Mindset Problem (Aeon): "Over the past century, a powerful idea has taken root in the educational landscape. The notion of intelligence as something innate and fixed has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is instead something malleable. Despite extraordinary claims for the efficacy of a growth mindset, however, it’s increasingly unclear whether attempts to change students’ mindsets about their abilities have any positive effect on their learning at all. And the story of the growth mindset is a cautionary tale about what happens when psychological theories are translated into the reality of the classroom, no matter how well-intentioned."

(Let's get numb.)

Quick hits of insight in socially acceptable places.

Every COVID-19 Commercial Is Exactly The Same: Microsoft Sam

In The Coronavirus Era, The Force Is Still With Jack Dorsey: Vanity Fair

How Stories Shape Our Minds: BBC Ideas
 

The Enduring Appeal of the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Processed Snack: Eater

The Anti-Amazon Alliance: Stratechery

People Constantly Underestimate How Much They Benefit From Being Kind: Inverse

Texting Customers Is No Longer Taboo When Everyone Is Stuck at Home: Wall Street Journal

How luxury transformed from opulence to populace, and what it means for brands: American Marketer

Strategy Thought Of The Day

"If everyone is thinking alike, then someone isn't thinking."

- General George Patton

Jasmine Bina
Founder & CEO
Concept Bureau, Inc.