Dialogue as a Service

Nurturing the possibility of a different life

Toward a History of Needs, published in 1977, may not be the best angle of entry into the work of Ivan Illich, but having chosen this gateway, I can think of very few books that so laconically depict the cages of fractal falsehood we inhabit.

The keynote of the book is an essay called “Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies”, which, in the words of the dust jacket of the book, “extends to all the professions the critique that Illich began in Medical Nemesis”. In fact, Illich presents a “World-wide Choice” forced upon us not only by the standardization of human responses to everyday occurrences, but also by the displacement of all our gods and languages by the “megamachine”. The megamachine ceaselessly fuels our expectations while draining our competence and concern for others.

Endowed with a consciousness that originated in oral cultures, we’ve learned to numb ourselves to the pain of daily exposure to “programmed texts” that pervert the words of spoken language into the “building blocks of packaged messages”. Whether we acknowledge or deny the tragedy, we generally acquiesce to the standardization of human thought and action.

We choose this self-destructive path, but not because we wish to be destroyed. We choose slavery because our culture celebrates it as salvation. On this path, we inevitably fight savage battles for our share of the “drugs” to feed our habit (whether the habit is addiction or envy). So, we usually choose the “obvious marked exit”, and we find ourselves trapped in the megamachine. That's the predictable consequence of following the self-destructive scripts of our culture.

In our crisis-laden world, the alternative seems unthinkable, but we must stay open to the possibility that we can muster “…the courage that alone saves in a panic: the courage to stand still and look around for another way out.”

The Impossible Choice

In my work, I bet on dialogue as a way of “looking around”. The enchantments of Mammon feel irresistible, but as I wrote on the About page, I started M2 Dialogue with the mission to "find the others" who understand that culture is not their friend. Specifically, I started looking for subscribers who:

1. Understand that the widely used maps of our terra incognita are approximately as accurate as the maps of the world drawn before the Copernican revolution. 

2. Feel irrepressibly drawn to dialogue as a uniquely rewarding response to cartographic malpractice — i.e., the total effect of bad maps on our life and work.

I know that some of my subscribers would eagerly check these two boxes. However, in addition to these kindred spirits, M2D has attracted subscribers who:

1. Even after reading some of my writing, claim to have no idea what I mean or how I can help them or how they can help me.

2. Claim to have already found all the answers to the questions about the culturally constructed cage of falsehoods.

Whether you are fighting against cartographic malpractice or think that you've already won the fight, I'd love to hear your story, and I invite you to take the first step by becoming a free subscriber to Dialogue as a Service (DaaS).

Join Me In Dialogue: New Subscription Options for Dialogue as a Service (DaaS)

As I prepare to restart DaaS on 6/15, I return to Ivan Illich's description of our cages and our worldwide choice. He begins with the statement that the world had become an amalgam, and he develops the idea by highlighting re-enactments of standardized human responses worldwide and across professions. I like to think of such patterns as fractal — i.e., characterized by the ceaseless recurrence of self-similar patterns across different scales and dimensions.

Given the complex epidemiology of the challenge we confront, I redesigned my DaaS service options to create economic incentives for long-term engagements, and I prepared a few responses to frequently asked and unasked questions (FAQs and FUQs).

FAQ #1: What are the new tiers and categories of service?

I currently offer two categories of service, each with two tiers.¹

M2D - Autoethnography as a Service (AaaS?)

1. Special Offer: Yearly subscriptions ($80) received before 6/15 will receive a complimentary 60-minute DaaS session.

2. Special Offer: Founding Member subscriptions ($500 per year) received before 6/15 include access to all published content on M2D, an hourlong DaaS session, and a 90-minute DaaS session with a research-based response to the subscriber's problem statement (aka RTPS report). 

DaaS - Dialogue as a Service

1. Tier 1 subscriptions to DaaS ($100 per month or $1,000 per year) include access to all published content on DaaS², an hourlong DaaS session, and two 90-minute DaaS sessions with an RTPS report. 

2. Tier 2 subscriptions to DaaS ($2,000 per year) include access to all published content on DaaS, an hourlong DaaS session, two 90-minute DaaS sessions, and four RTPS reports with newsletters.

FAQ #2: Who should hire me and why?

I welcome subscriptions from people who:

1. Feel they’ve exhausted the potential of both ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ responses to cartographic malpractice.

2. Feel drawn to the intersection of matter and metaphor, but also understand that strange things happen in this terra incognita, including encounters with angels and demons and conversations with shadowy participants in the post-reality circus.

3. Agree to honor either the post-ideological spirit of Rumi's Garden or the rules of engagement for Dialogues with the Devil.

4. Identify as refugees from collapsing empires and toxic ideologies and seek an independent perspective to help them upgrade their Bullshit Conversion Technology.

Examples of my ‘ideal’ subscribers include:

1. Agency principals and independent practitioners in influence industries (e.g., PR, advertising, marketing, etc.) exploring ways to shift to what

   The Human Voice- The Media is the Mirror- Bob Hutchins

   calls “restorative marketing”. #restorativemarketing 

2. People seeking an independent perspective to help them find their way between the Charybdis of what Ivan Illich called the Medical Nemesis and the Scylla of delusional conspirituality.³ 

3. Business leaders who appreciate the transformative potential of Understanding Media.

These are examples of people who should hire me because I bring a distinctive post-corporate⁴ perspective to my work, informed by my 26-year career in corporate communications, a lifelong study of the psyche, and an illuminating struggle with Understanding Media.

FUQ #1: What is dialogue?

I can summarize my original response to this question while you stand on one foot: Dialogue means conversation, and Dialogue as a Service (DaaS) is synonymous with Conversation as a Service (not the chatbot version). 

Dialogue is also a way of renaming, repairing and embracing the world. In the words of Martin Buber: “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable through the embrace of one of its beings.”

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Call to Action

Email me at daas@substack.com to request a proposal. Include a brief problem statement. Once you accept my proposal, you can subscribe at daas.substack.com.

Housekeeping

I recently started creating email-only editions of M2D organized around specific themes and tailored to the needs of individual subscribers and groups with shared affinities. Sometime this year, I will probably set up dedicated newsletters through End of Theory organized around the interests and affiliations of my subscribers. In the meantime, I'm using the email-only option on M2D. Please let me know if there's a specific theme or aspect of my work that resonates with you the most so that I can share more personalized content. Again, just email me at daas@substack.com.

Addendum

1. Please note that actual proposals may differ from general service packages. My DaaS subscription options are not just another way to bill for my time, because I don't bill for my time. Rather, I charge for my attention on a risk-adjusted basis.

2. Probably three posts a week.

3. I'm happy to work with subscribers who slipped and fell into one of these abysses. However, please note I am not an adherent or licensed practitioner of any established system or method. I’m not a doctor, therapist, coach, psychoanalyst, shaman or cult deprogrammer. I'm just a man with a Substack and a consuming enthusiasm for the dialogic exploration of gaps between stories and realities.

4. Note that “post-corporate” doesn’t mean anti-corporate; rather, it means no longer blind to the character of our institutions and grounded in the post-ideological study of legal persons known as corporations.