Hello Everyone, I hope your week finds you amidst good spirits.
Today is one of my family’s favorite holidays, and it actually feels like Halloween this year, so if you celebrate, Happy Halloween!
The air has turned cold, the wind is blowing fiercely outside. This is a time of year when people start to gather around the fire and tell stories as the nights grow longer. A time for gratitude, for the original meaning of the holiday remembrance, not spectacle.
Stories Arrive, and Teach Lessons.
I shared a few stories today on the livestream, experiences I’ve had with supernatural and scary or unexplainable things.
If you are familiar with the folklore of Halloween, or Samhain, you might know that this was the time of year when the veil between worlds was at its thinnest, and that spirits could walk among us, both good and bad.
Ancestors could be invited into the home, ghosts held at bay through costume and protective fire. Jack’o’lanterns actually started as a trickster entity who fooled the devil.1
The symbolism of this folklore was on my mind as I thought about the themes I had noticed throughout the week.
Illusions of safety.
Links between individuals and their communities.
Ghosts coming back to haunt us.
What rituals we can observe to push back against harmful entities.
Amazon, GM, Paramount, UPS, Target all laid off thousands of workers this past week. Some who had worked there for years.2
Now, “opentowork” people are finding their sense of security and certainty shattered at the start of the holiday season, amidst the longest government shutdown in our history, with food and economic security being at the forefront of their minds.
The veil being pulled back, is the lie that this is new phenomena, unprecedented with AI and tariffs, is to blame.
People have always struggled with these inhibitors of agency. But from across the globe, and within our own American history, the stories we tell ourselves about what to look for and how to achieve security always focus in on a particular narrative.
The narrative that forgets about the struggles of the poor, the BIPOC, the disabled, the addicted, and LGBTQIA+ communities.
A parent working three jobs in the city, a rural worker in the country drive 60 miles round trip to pay their medical debt. Both are sacrificing in the name of survival, a sacrifice those afforded the privilege of work-life balance and economic stability aren’t always willing to pay..
A trans individual struggling to find acceptance and community. A combat veteran struggling to reintegrate into society while dealing with PTSD. Both searching for acceptance of who they are, a search people afforded the privilege of unquestionable belonging and value to a society that demonizes anything considered “other” don’t easily undertake.
How can you thrive if you are in survival and scarcity mode? If you feel alone, bereft of purpose.
How can you give gifts, have holiday feasts, and be grateful for what you have, when you don’t know where to put your thoughts and energy beyond getting by?
How do you move past betrayal by those who are charged to care for you, realizing your perspective has been “implicitly conditioned” into your worldview?
Some of the people laid off are from the previously mentioned marginalized communities, and already know how to answer these questions. But while not new to them, the layoffs are a further extraction and discarding of the effort they have put in to success according to the systemic rules we live by.
The answer to how we move forward, lies in presence. In community. In Yunkaporta’s “right relation,” to the stories we are telling ourselves right now, and the lessons being drawn from them.3
Online, and in person, I’ve seen more communities and people coming together to support each other in a bipartisan, cross-cultural effort larger than I’ve seen in years.
We’ve become so polarized and hurt by continual failures of those charged to lead and care for us that we self-isolate as any animal does, only peeking in out when we feel certain its safe.
That attitude starves you of connection, of meaning. Being present with yourself does not mean taking on these challenges alone.
The ghosts of systemic extraction are finally coming home to haunt us, it just took the veil between realities getting thin enough. Maybe it was the billions of dollars invested into AI that was able to tear a hole in the fabric.
True Empowerment is Regenerative, Not Extractive
I read a passage on the live from the introduction to the 5th Foxfire book, where the editor talks on the importance of empowerment through cultural understanding and shared ownership and leadership of resources amidst systemic challenges that prevent meaningful change. The context was for mid-1900s Appalachia, but the lesson remains applicable.
We are historically a mixed-market economy with the service sector being the largest, and our GDP revolves around consuming. Even now, with the many Americans cutting back on spending due to less purchasing power, consumption keeps us afloat as the top 20% of earners in the US account for 63% of spending.4
From Peter Atwater, written in 2020:
“Most relief efforts I’ve seen, so far, fail to appreciate the extreme “me here now” mindset that service workers are now experiencing. Cognitively and emotionally, most are now drowning. The help they need is immediate, not in, say, a few week’s time, when the recently fiscal stimulus plan is likely to reach consumers’ bank accounts. Watching global policymakers, I don’t see that same sense of urgency that I see with recipients. Nor do I see empathy. Actions are being couched in economic terms, with many programs tailored more to large corporations than to individuals. Policymakers need to appreciate that to be effective, how funding is distributed – and whether it meets the “me here now” needs of the least confident – matters.”5
How many failures of leadership have led to the same assertion being more applicable 5 years later with a K-shaped economy?6
AI investment is framed as the other life-raft to these turbulent economic times, and yet despite its potential and promise the extractive component of AI cannot be ignored. It’s foundational programming cannot be ignored, and it may be the flood instead.
It saps our water, and energy: natural resources.
It saps our earning power by replacing human jobs with automation.
It saps our creativity and critical thinking by spitting out answers we accept versus analyze.
The only model of AI I’ve found that has been engineered to counteract this in any way is
’s Justice AI, “the world’s first ethical AI built to protect people, not profit.” (I’ve been experimenting with it the past day or so, and its been invigorating to not be faced with the constant binary thinking of regular LLMs), I’d highly recommend it.These webs being spun might cause someone to as if everything is doom and gloom when faced with such entrenched toxicity?
Quite the opposite.
Remember, I’ve seen more people coming together than I have in a long time. If you read the poem I wrote in my last newsletter, you might remember the message was that collapse brings us closer together. Endless growth just keeps us separated.
We are finally being forced into “right relation” with each other once again, for our own survival.
This is perhaps our biggest opportunity in generations to share our stories and struggles with one other to find collective empowerment from them, but
reminds us there is a question we need to keep in mind:
We’ve been shamed into believing we have to consume and display that process to have worth and value. It’s “not a good Christmas” if you can only give socks or a $10 gift card. That’s performative extraction of your intrinsic self-worth as a living, human being.
If you look all around, what are the small things that everyone says means the most right now in the absence of a paycheck or feed?
Presence. Effort. Care.
We’ve heard the adage a child remembers the afternoon making memories with their parent more than the Christmas presents that were bought with time spent away from the family.
We’ve felt the impact of a boss or co-worker holding space for us in hard times.
So when the veil between realities is at its thinnest, it’s important to come together in solidarity.
So if you can’t donate to a foodbank, help organize or deliver.
If you can’t give that time, reach out to those in stress, and ask how you can support.
Barter with your neighbor, rebuild a sense of community and belonging.
Be open about your worries, and your hopes.
Be the presence you’ve always needed, the one you’ve reached for. Mainly what it takes, is empathy and seeing someone else’s humanity. Seeing your own humanity in them simultaneously, and giving it the care it is due. Let others reach back out to you.
Now is the time to challenge your assumptions, tell your story and see how your superstitions guide your judgement.
The collapse of certainty at this exact moment invites us to reconnect with the ways of relating to each other and the world as our ancestors may have done, as indigenous peoples have stewarded, and as we have always held the ability to do.
So go carve out a jack’o’lantern round a campfire with people that need encouragement.
Save your seeds for next year, and trick the devil into extracting himself out of existence.
I’ll see you next week,
Chris
Seed Catalog:
I’ve been very fortunate to find people thinking along similar lines to me recently. I’m looking to connect with people who want to work on how we understand leadership and leadership development by cultivating the individual holistically in relation to their structures and systems they inhabit.
We need to bridge theory and practice if we are going to shape a regenerative and mutually empowering future for humanity. If you have any suggestions, let me know! Here are my suggested people and readings for the week.
I got a chance to read
‘s article “The Awakening Field: From System Collapse to System Coherence,” and it was invigorating to find someone writing and thinking on the same things as myself. Definitely check their work out!
I already linked Christian’s Justice AI, but if you want to read more from the article of his I quoted, you can follow the link here:
I’ve spoken before about how the governance structure in our culture seems systemically narcissistic, and
asserted something similar.
The reason its so important to examine the stories and narratives we tell ourselves and each other comes from the very real concern that even if we come up with more regenerative and uplifting strategies for people to thrive, there will be failure in implementation. We must challenge the way leadership education and development is undertaken. I came across
this week, and subscribed after reading this:
I also found
with this truth of remembrance:
Alongside that of
:
Contour Lines is my anecdotal newsletter segment that weaves whats going on in my life with my thoughts on leadership as well as personal and organizational development. I’m currently focused on using an animistic lens to examine how leaders can become better stewards of their organizational and societal ecosystems.
If something resonates, leave a comment, or reach out to chat - I always love hearing people’s stories.
You are always welcome to book a free call to either get fresh perspective or see if we’d work well together in cultivating your capacity to lead.
I offer a variety of services, 1:1 coaching, group programs, and leadership development program consultation. When you are ready, lets talk.
Footnotes:
https://intellizence.com/insights/layoff-downsizing/major-companies-that-announced-mass-layoffs/
Yunkaporta, Tyson. Right Story, Wrong Story: How to Have Fearless Conversations In Hell. Text Publishing. Australia, 2023
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/31/business/k-shaped-economy;
https://www.bostonfed.org/publications/current-policy-perspectives/2025/why-has-consumer-spending-remained-resilient.aspx
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/18/business/us-k-shaped-economy-spending
