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Sixty short essays on nature, culture, society and the mechanisms that keep us stuck. Five doors in.
In 1993, I stood alone in an empty venue in Cologne while Lou Reed played ‘Satellite of Love’ from beginning to end during soundcheck. Just his crew and a 26-year-old German kid who’d been hired to interview him for television. It was a disastrous interview and a pivotal moment. Things only happen if you move yourself around. And that’s why I ended up in nature conservation (for now!).
I’m Hans von Sonntag. I’m an advertising film director turned environmentalist. This newsletter uses my experiences from the world of brands, celebrities, agencies and storytelling: the cultural mechanisms, the false incentives, the manufactured guilt, the neurochemical manipulation, the corporate fog that keeps systems stuck while individuals burn out trying to fix damage they didn’t cause.
I write from Europe. I coin terms for phenomena that don’t have names yet because invisible systems maintain power by remaining unnamed.
Sixty essays is a lot to wade through. Here are five that cover the range of what this newsletter does. Pick the one that speaks to your world.
The Guilt Machine — In 2004, BP hired Ogilvy & Mather to launch the first carbon footprint calculator. Citizens have felt responsible for climate change ever since. This piece traces how corporate guilt-displacement burns out the people actually trying to fix the damage.
Carnivorous Dissonance — At European conservation conferences, up to 90% of attendees choose meat from the buffet despite the fact that animal feed production is the main driver of the natural world’s unprecedented decline. The neuroscience behind this contradiction explains more about systemic power than any policy paper.
Chill-Fascism: The Neurochemical Death of Democracy — Social media is killing democracy neurochemically. Young men become biochemically pacified through digital consumption that satisfies their reward systems without requiring real-world action. Modern authoritarians don’t need jackboots when the electorate is already tranquilised.
The Consultants Who Hijacked Europe’s Workplace Culture — Over three decades, European companies spent an estimated €8-12 billion annually on American consulting firms to dismantle the workplace cultures that made them distinctive. German manufacturers question engineering cultures built over centuries. Scandinavian firms dismantle consensus-building processes that generated the world’s highest employee satisfaction. The most expensive misunderstanding in corporate history.
I really got a lucky life — Lou Reed, his motorbike, my daughter, and the mist on a lake. The most-read piece in this newsletter’s history.
The environment reader enters through The Guilt Machine. The business reader through the consultants piece. The cultural reader through Lou Reed. Same newsletter, different doors. All lead to the same question: what are the mechanisms that keep us stuck, and what happens when we name them?