GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Naming and Taming our Monsters, with Serdar Paktin
In this episode we talk to Serdar Paktin, the driving force behind Pakt consultancy, as he shares his expertise in semiotics and sustainability narratives. From frightening forecasts to hopeful horizons, we look at how stories shape our collective action towards a more sustainable future.
Pakt is a cross-cultural strategic consultancy firm based in London. Serdar helps businesses, brands, and organizations create meaningful strategies and solutions across cultures. He is a Fulbright Scholar, a semiotician, and a sensemaker who applies a holistic and creative approach to understanding and influencing cultural systems.
Our conversation unveils how terms like 'tolerance,' 'diversity,' and 'inclusion' are not just words but are loaded with power dynamics, and how the overuse of sustainability jargon has spurred the emergence of sub-narratives that challenge and redefine the status quo. In our most cultural episode to date, we'll also drop in some thoughts from great minds like Ursula Le Guin and Jacques Derrida, whose 'naming our monsters' reference gives us one of our major takeaways from this discussion with Serdar.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to the Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency, istanbul, and.
Speaker 3:This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester, so this podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode we're going to talk to Serdar Paktin, founder of Pakt, a cross-cultural strategic consultancy firm based in London. Serdar also happens to be the person that is responsible for the beginning of my own story with the DNS network.
Speaker 3:So we couldn't be more grateful for Serdar. So Serdar helps businesses, brands, organizations create meaningful strategies and solutions. He is a Fulbright scholar, a semiotician which I'm particularly excited about today and a sensemaker, and so he applies all of these to cultural systems. Co-founder of loads of other ventures I won't go through all of them Damla, but experienced design studio in Istanbul. Futurea, a creative economy network in Amsterdam, london, istanbul, currently based in London. So, Serdar, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to Damla and myself.
Speaker 4:No, thank you for having me and thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 2:It's great to have you with us today, sardar, and let's start with your own journey. Why and how did you dive into this impact, business and semiotics behind it?
Speaker 4:Yeah, first of all, thank you for the lovely introduction that was really. I feel blushed and embarrassed for that. My story goes back to college days where I was studying cultural studies. So I'm not a semiotician by trade but semiotics is included in the studies that I did with cultural studies. So when I moved back to Turkey after I did my master's degree I moved into working with Changeorg and when I started working with Changeorg as a senior campaigner, my skill set using as a semi-audition and a strategist strategist, I started using it for social good and, you know, making campaigners more impactful and finding meaningful, persuasive claims for their campaigns, and that kind of clicked into place for me and that kind of continued since then. But unfortunately I'm doing this part as a side business because my major business, which is paying the rents, is based on more commercial semiotics.
Speaker 3:Right, so let's get into it then. First of all, to make it clear, everybody's got to pay the rent, haven't they? Exactly, and it's one of the things I love about our DNS network is we're all agencies for good, but we're not completely charities. We do actually have to all pay our bills at the end of the day. So I wanted to get stuck straight into the semiotics of sustainability. Um said, if you don't mind, and and how you've got all these narratives, different narratives, um, on things like the climate crisis and other big global issues, and and that pendulum sort of swings between stories of doom and terror right the way through to sort of happy Barbie land, futuristic solutions. And I wonder what do you think about all these signals that we send out on our narratives around sustainability? Where does truth sit on this scale, and are we getting it right?
Speaker 4:Unfortunately there is no truth anymore. So everybody has their angle on it and whoever has the most pressing concern is kind of shaping the narrative and that becomes the norm and that kind of spirals out of control after a while, with everything getting involved in there. So every narrative, when they first begin, is very meaningful and very impactful, but by the time it changes it becomes something of a buzzword that kind of people use to make their ends meet or to fulfill their own objectives. So I can't say there's a truth but there's a sugar coating or like a coating of truth. Whatever that needs to be done. But there is a key thing whatever that may be, a narrative is shaping our perception and our decisions and actions based on a particular topic. In this case sustainability is shaped by the master narratives, which are shaped by the biggest impact makers in the industry or the society, and then that becomes the norm after a while. For instance, doom-mongering you mentioned that's one of the key things that is pushing people into inertia in action. So if we are in a, if we're living in a society which is doomed to go extinct, and sustainability you know we can never be going to be able to achieve sustainability within the timeframe that we have, everything is going to end and there's nothing I can do, so just live the way that I am living at the moment. So some narratives shaping this and that wants people to continue the way they are and you know, business as usual, which make things good for the moment, but we don't know what's going to happen next. Which make things good for the moment, but we don't know what's going to happen next.
Speaker 4:And there is another thing that's increasingly eco-activism, or some call it eco-vandalism, and that's also shaping another narrative which is also kind of divisive within the community, because some people are pissed off with the actions of eco-activists going into the museums, damaging artwork or stopping the traffic. Some people say you know, I don't care what you stand for, just let me go on my way. Or you know, you're damaging an artwork which needs to be there and which, in that case, the artwork didn't do anything to create this problem as well. So that becomes for some people more problematic and in some cases this is causing more harm than benefit because it's alienating some of the people who could support the cause, but they are not supporting it because they don't approve of the actions of the people who are working in that environment. That's another narrative going around.
Speaker 4:So there is also new things around, new or new concepts around.
Speaker 4:So we, we in the business industry um, there's this esgs now, and esg is becoming the norm for a company's um sustainability, actions of sustainability.
Speaker 4:But that's also a kind of a trickery, moving away from the main cause and taking three key parts of business as main signifiers of the business continue their actions or shaping their actions that they could continue with least change or disruption in their business model.
Speaker 4:And another thing would be yeah, I think this is all I have for the moment and overused, non-actionable, exaggerated narratives or symbols that kind of make people also move into inertia and inaction, because then people get used to that and forget about the urgency of the situation to change immediately whatever you're doing and turn into a new way of life, and that's something really pulling the gravity out of everyone's feet and that's really hard to grasp. So we need a better way of helping people understand that this is an urgent situation. We need to change everything, but we need to change it in a way that wouldn't make us uncomfortable or insecure in our daily lives. So that's what we're probably looking into and you know, I don't know which way is the correct way, but we need to look for that way and build a new narrative around this.
Speaker 2:Don't you love it when your guest just opens up the whole conversation and paves the way to your next question and everything is answered. I do love this one, okay. So, sardar, before getting to my question, I have to ask you something. Not ask, but maybe just point out something. What you said about the business and the esgs, and the esg is becoming the main uh core for the narrative of the business.
Speaker 2:I remember that it was like, uh, maybe two years before one of our network agencies, uh, thomas thomas coaster, just published a book, uh on this, saying this is a hero trap for the businesses as well.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of a two sided blade. In one part, the business is covering its other actions with a huge narrative and just makes a little change. But on the other hand, it loses the focus from the business and begins to think itself as the savior of the humanity and the world, and this is also a shift not only in the narrative but also in the perception of things. So I just wanted to make a point on that, uh, and this is also very relevant to my question to you. So we have, as you, a lot of narratives around sustainability, wide range areas of discourse like semiotic point of view. When we look at it from the semiotic point of view, we have the protest, academic work, think tanks, corporate reporting, green advertising, blah, blah, blah, blah goes on forever. Corporate reporting, green advertising, blah, blah, blah, blah, goes on forever. So how challenging is it to understand science systems across these incredibly diverse narrative systems platforms?
Speaker 4:Well, thank you, this is an extremely complex question. I'm not going to be able to answer it fully, so I apologize in advance is trying to put their message into the main narrative and give the symbols and signs that's overly used their way of meaning, or they want to instill their meaning into that term. And the think tanks might have a different agenda trying to impose that. And all the campaign work, all the communications they built around it, would be to impose that meaning into the concept, which then will shape the whole narrative into another direction. This is like politics trying to convince people and trying to make people act in a certain way. And each of these have their own agenda objectives into it. So businesses might be trying to shape the perception of the consumers on sustainability so that they could sell their products better. The governments would be helping to shape so that they could continue their term or they could continue using the natural resources better, etc. They might have their own agenda in there. And the academy is again which camp are they coming from and what message they're trying to dispose or build the literature around it? So that's also different. We can no longer have the absolute approach in the academy, having those master narratives we had in the 20th century. Now that there's fractions, fragmented camps of ideas and the academy might try to put their own ideas into there which I don't say has an agenda their own ideas into there, which I don't say has an agenda. But every opinion or every conceptual work has an argument or an agenda behind it, either business or another way. So I would say everyone is trying to shape the master narrative and they're pushing from different angles and then the whole narrative becomes something're pushing from different angles and then the whole narrative becomes something, which it is now and we're we're again trying to change. But now we're trying to find new concepts because the concept of sustainability is already oversaturated and it already lost its meaning and turned into a marketing buzzwords. In this case I would like to open up a little parenthesis. I don't know if it's going to be another question about this, but let me go through this.
Speaker 4:The term sustainability, for me, is semiotically already problematic. Is semiotically already problematic Because sustainability refers to sustaining what it is as it is for a longer term and that semiotically is already problematic. So the way we name things or the way we build a narrative around the concept is already problematic because we're trying to sustain things is already problematic because we're trying to sustain things. I argued the same thing about the concept of tolerance in the early 2000s, because tolerance was what we call diversity and inclusion today. At that time it was the predecessor of that term and tolerance was about tolerating someone even if you don't like that.
Speaker 4:And now we're more into going into diversity and inclusion. Inclusion is again problematic because for something to be including another thing it needs to be dominant and the over-encompassing thing to be including within the master. So it's again demeaning or, you know, making, degrading the value of of the one who's included. So already all the narratives that we shaped are shaped by the power holders in the world, and then that reflects their perception or their point of view of the world, which is what needs to change at the first place to build a better narrative and semiotic world in this environment oh so, oh tamla.
Speaker 3:There's so much. I mean, how can we do this in 25 minutes? It's not said. I I've got so many questions and I I'm interested in visual sign systems as well as verbal sign systems in this space. They're really fascinating.
Speaker 3:And this comes back to what you're saying about sustainability losing its meaning, which we need to get back into. But there is one stock image photo that you see people use in ESG reports all the time, which is a pair of human cupped hands with a lovely planet inside those cupped hands, and it's like this, horrific. And you know somebody who doesn't understand anything and said right, we need an image that talks about green issues, so we'll do. The cupped hands with the planet in them, and and I just that, for me, does symbolize this kind of ubiquity of a sustainability narrative that you're talking about. Where, at what point does the ubiquity of a sustainability narrative that you're talking about? Where, at what point does the ubiquity of a sustainability discourse destroy the meaning of sustainability to the point at which it becomes unrecoverable? And do we almost have to rebuild this space that we're working in? Perhaps we're perhaps guilty of that ubiquity, perhaps we brought this upon ourselves, so do we need to really start again with our discourse on sustainability.
Speaker 4:I think we can't really restart because it's already out there. Once it's out there and once it's lost its meaning, there's no opportunity to reclaim it. As long as there is a disruptive event going on, then you reclaim the meaning of it and there are examples of it. Really hard work and you can't really plan this. It happens naturally. It happens naturally.
Speaker 4:On that note, I think there's already building new narratives around it already. For instance, circular economy is a new thing that's majorly around the business environments. Greenwashing is another thing that's going around in the communication environment. So the sustainability narrative is already building their sub-narratives underneath, depending on the industry sector or the field of action in that regard. So we could build a new narrative around that we or people. But that's again, sometimes it's difficult to plan this and it happens generally. Naturally some, you know, a discussion spurts out and then that evolves around that. I think you know careful communicators and people who work in this field could open their eyes and ears carefully about new narratives flourishing and that's done by, for instance, trend forecasting narrative research, macro trend analysis and that kind of environment. So they need to actively seek out new narratives that they could build upon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, that's so true, sardar, and I think they. I mean, you do see those new narratives, don't you? So regenerative agriculture, capitalism, built environment is quite on trend at the moment. That's a narrative that people talk about, and the other one I find really interesting that I'd love to know what you think of is looking at resilience, obviously in the face of the climate crisis, but being resilient to future shocks is a strong narrative that plays, even if you don't have a strong, passionate belief in ecological. There's a great case study how, in Texas, there was an energy efficiency program where obviously the vast majority of people weren't massively passionate about ecological issues, but they really got on board because they didn't want to be vulnerable as the narrative went to foreign oil, and so the framing of that became really powerful for them and resilience really worked in that context. So are these the sort of new narratives that you're thinking of?
Speaker 4:Yes, I could say I just lost my chain of thought, but the best thing for you know, humanity to do in this regard is to do less of anything. You know, don't you know, if people don't do anything, the world will recover itself. The best thing we could do is not do more harm. And we were interviewing Harald Friedel, who's an Austrian circular economy expert, consulting governments and institutions. He was saying in his interview we shouldn't do less harm, we should just stop doing it. It's like because what we're intending to do and all the narratives we're shaping is around minimizing, reducing and you know all that stuff like doing less of what we're doing now, which is not going to help. So all the narrative around that is like don't do it at all, don't do more harm, stop it right away. And that could be a disruptive narrative around it.
Speaker 2:Okay, steve's question was so relevant. How are we going to do this in 25 minutes? That means we have to do another program on everything, on everything. But I want to ask, with this chain of thought coming from you, and then Steve and you, there's something popping in my head. Ursula Le Guin, she says that if you name something, you give it power.
Speaker 2:Okay, so with this chain of thought, when we gave the name of the course, we have to follow through sustainability, which can't be sustained anymore. Obviously, we didn't actually give it power, but we may have crippled the path we have to walk, it seems. So this is also a question in itself, but what I was going to ask is, following Steve's thoughts, how will we create a narrative that will work, and are we sure that the power is in the narrative? So, because we have to make this change, we do know how narrative affects everything. Because we are, of course, communicators, but besides, that is this all. Because we are, of course, communicators, but besides, that is this all I mean. If you don't get the power of the streets backing you, if you don't get the politics, if you don't get other legs, how?
Speaker 4:can a narrative be effective? I think I'll try to enumerate a few things around this, since it could be relevant for many communication campaigns as well, not only shaping a narrative. First thing is the narrative shouldn't be built upon fear, suppression, inadequacy of the actors. Because if it's built on fear, fear causes the three responses like you run away, you fight or you freeze. So those three actions are not the actions that we're intending to do with sustainability. So the narrative shouldn't be built around oh, the world is going to end, and then we have nothing to do, and that's building inertia and inaction in people. So first it needs to be inspiring, encouraging people to take action, whatever that action may be. Even that not taking any action could be an action in certain cases Inspiring, encouraging and also solution-oriented that would show the people where the solution is and that people will be individually or collectively, will know internally how to take action to go towards that direction.
Speaker 4:Nobody should be telling oh, you should do this, you should use paper straws, you should use paper straws is again misguiding people into an action that's not actually good for the planet. It's just making feel good for yourself. So inspiring action and so that the action could naturally come. So not kind of force, or like direct people to take uninspiring action, like ecovandalism, or you know, harming other stuff, like harming something to make good for other thing, is not a good chain of thought. That would never create a good result at the end result at the end. So, yes, and you know moving away from conventional narratives, not falling into traps, or you know pitfalls of going into stereotyping, or you know demeaning making the action less valuable or less meaningful because that would hinder the narrative at the end. I could go on, but I think this is like a quick, short summary about how we could um shape a better narrative okay, so, so we're almost there.
Speaker 3:I, the, the when, when I knew that we were going to be discussing semiotics. I, I, I suspect. Like you, I have a whole bookshelf full of cultural studies, readers of Foucault, bakhtin, who you mentioned to me separately, and Derrida, oh be still my beating heart. So what would Derrida do with a sustainability narrative?
Speaker 4:That's a whole another conversation, but I'll try to refer to a quotation from Derrida, which would kind of summarize what we've said, which echoes also Le Guin's quote that you shared. Derrida says we cannot announce our monsters because by immediately announcing them they turn into our pets.
Speaker 3:That's it. I'm going to have to go and lie down in a darkened room, Damla.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you just killed Steve. He's out of the context now, so I'm going to give him just a moment to catch his breath and I will ask our one final question for you, and this is a question that we ask all of our friends who happen to be our podcast guests. So our network, as you know, is ironically called Do Not Smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always make you smile?
Speaker 4:now I will have to say my daughter in this regard, because she's the, you know, sunshine of my life. Now, in any time I see her face, um, that brings a smile to my face. I mean that I will have to say that.
Speaker 3:Well, Sardar, that has been an amazing conversation and I think probably we do need an episode two. It goes without saying. I also think this has made me think about question my entire being. Actually, that's what's happening right now. I need to think about sign systems and semiotics every day now for months. That's been amazing. So, thank you, Sardar. Over to you, Damla, I can't talk anymore. My head's exploded.
Speaker 2:Well, brilliant. Thank you, Sardar. Very much. So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So see you, damla.
Speaker 2:See you.
Speaker 1:Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
