Anthropy Reflections

Dear friends,

Many of you have already shared your thoughts on Anthropy, so I am sure that you won’t mind me doing the same. I do so in the hope that it might help continue the personal reflections on the gathering and also pose other thoughts as we face the possibilities of doing more together in 2023.

Anthropy was always designed to be about getting people together in a different mindset. The sense of warmth and optimism, the smiles and indeed tears, suggest we achieved something remarkable. The key was being able to create a cross sector group of leaders, to convene it in an unusual place and to facilitate a different type of conversation. It was based on a high level of sentiment, was motivated by goodwill and fuelled by honesty and openness. It looked to cast aside……you guessed it our egos and silos.

I wanted to free people from the constraints of conventional events in order that they could challenge themselves to find fresh ideas, possibly new partners and also help craft responses to our societal, economic and environmental issues. Building outcomes and impact from Anthropy will be because you have been inspired to unleash your creativity, find others to collaborate with and express the best of our shared human characteristics.

To accomplish this, I had an important objective which went way beyond simply just trying to get people to think differently. The most important objective which Anthropy was designed to achieve, was actually.... to get people to feel differently. ?

‘Don’t just think something – feel something’

Through what we felt, we were able to get closer to issues and ideas. It was through shared feelings that we connected to other people. In connecting with others, we recognised our shared humanity.

In many sessions it showed it didn’t matter what the speaker was talking about, it was why they were talking about it. Their emotion, their life experiences, their passion and purpose, elevated us as individual listeners and collectively as a group to feel something very special.

Anthropy is not therefore simply an ‘event’, it is a work of emotional expression. Indeed I call it a living breathing poem, as it used the intensity of words and ideas, as does poetry, to express passion and emotion, purpose and an alternative view of things. It was made surreal by the Robin sharing a stage alongside speakers in the Mediterranean. It was made insightful by younger people’s ambitions not just for themselves but for society. It was impactful when well established leaders had rich conversations with those they would never otherwise meet. It was surprising when a shared walk from a building, started with a stranger and finished with a friend. It was amusing when an exclamation of an unexpected rainforest droplet, turned into a shared laugh of being rained on inside.?

It was nothing short of a shared experience through which ran a rich vein of hope, optimism matched with realism and a belief we could be better and bigger than we often are.?

Anthropy’s ability to be such an expression was no accident and neither was my naming it to reflect the best virtues of humanity. I placed at its core, questions around quality of life, its dependency on the quality of our places and our economy, to challenge us all to consider their interdependency. Then to consider our global position was necessary, because only by clarifying what values and qualities we stand for in our domestic lives, can we truly play our very best role in the wider world to address key global challenges. ?This was about seeing the interconnectivity of issues which are often consigned to individual silos.

‘Seeing’ is one of our default expressions and many years ago I used to run a programme for King Charles entitled ‘Seeing is Believing’. ?That makes much sense of course in many ways and circumstances, but the key to Anthropy’s existence was actually the opposite – it was ‘Believing is Seeing’.

I believed there was a need to see a more positive view of the future. ?By finding other ‘believers’ it was possible to see hope in using such perception to create new solutions. ?

Anthropy epitomised ‘Believing is Seeing’ and as said earlier was based on feeling, as well as thinking and was hoping to inspire with optimism. This could not have been better summarised by the BBC’s former business editor Kamal Ahmed, co-founder and Editor in Chief of The News Movement and ‘Anthropist’, when he said; ‘I feel more positive today than I did three days ago’.

So in believing, it affords us the chance to continue to explore and in exploring, I also mean asking ourselves questions. So I would like to finish, at this end of year, when we approach our seasonal holidays and are often in reflective moods, to ask you to consider two critical questions:

How you live has a profound effect upon those around you, the country, and the world we live in. This is about choosing your best attitude and then applying your energy to express that attitude towards a collective good. That is in essence about identifying a sense of purpose and in doing so living a purposeful life. To consider how you leave this world, is to consider your legacy as an individual and what together in society, you will pass on to those who follow. ?We have been passed an extraordinary inheritance but also a huge responsibility to future generations. To consider how we leave this world, better through our purposeful actions, is about leading a life which has had meaning.

Together as Anthropists, I believe we can all embrace a life that is purposeful by being better and bigger together, and as a result be happy when we leave, having achieved meaning in our lives. To consider that even one person’s lot has been improved through our actions, or that this part of our planet we call Britain, is more beautiful and more sustainable than when we were born, or simply that our interactions with people leave them more hopeful, is to bring the best of our humanity to the fore and the best of ourselves to everything we do. ?Then one can truly say, ‘I am an Anthropist’.

I look forward to Anthropy in 2023 and until then send my warmest wishes to all who made Anthropy so special, the volunteers, the speakers, the catalysts for our ideas, our sponsors, media and content partners and all those who embrace the idea that the future vision for Britain and the next generations, is no-one’s responsibility more so than our own.?

Thank you and Merry Christmas.

John O’Brien: Anthropist Founder