EP 14. Navigating Complexity and Decolonising our Imaginaries (with Jules Yim芊文)

In this episode I hosted Jules Yim 芊文 at Light Forest HQ in Chiang Mai.

Jules is a senior consultant with the Cynefin Co (formerly Cognitive Edge),where she has spent the past 15+ years advising MNCs and SMEs around the world using bespoke complexity frameworks.

She is also the voice behind Contrapuntal Substack where she distills her interests in policy, complexity, linguistics, narrative research, anthropology, philosophy and cognitive science in bite size posts.

So its natural Jules also took on a role as consultant for Light Forest and offering her own imaginaries and the practical ways we might transition from a dark forest world to a Light forest world, holding idealism and realism at the same time.

Learning to hold multiple truths is an approach that has served Jules well, and she opens up on her own life journey growing up in Singapore, and the various inflection points she experienced influenced by the SARS 2003 and 2008 Financial crises.
Jules feels humanity is at an important inflection point today with trust in the global institutions, financial systems, and narratives of progress crumbling, occurring within the wider context of an ecological collapse. Jules pulls on these deeply “entangled” threads, and helps unravel them for us in the first half of our conversation.

An inflection point is also an opportunity for a radical shift and we spend a significant period of time going into the need for fresh imaginaries which she calls the meta layer for decolonising our imaginaries.

We learn about Seapunk, an emerging imaginary & movement based on solar punk visions and inspired by southeast Asia’s open, common seas. One that Jules is seeding along with other Light Forest friends. Jules’ Chinese diaspora background and years of curious exploration comes through our conversation, particularly on how we might navigate this inflection point, moving to a more decentralised world, allowing for new systems of exchanging value and communities to emerge.

I first met Jules at the Asia-Pacific Futures Conference in Bangkok through a mutual friend, Sam Chua, and we’ve since participated in a couple of workshops. I’m struck by Jules’ sharp intellect, and comfort holding multiple epistemologies and social groups. Our conversation was a breeze and the first at the new Light Forest HQ in Chiang Mai.

Shownotes

• “Anthro Complexity”, Breakdown of Trust, and inflection points (04:00)

• Jules’ personal inflection points during the 2003 SARS pandemic & 2008 Financial crises that led her to embrace complexity (12:15)

• The traumatic history of East Asia and its impact on modern society (19:10)

• decolonizing our imaginaries and Seapunk as a fresh imaginary for Southeast Asia (23:50)

• Global tropes about East Asian and Chinese culture that hold back our imaginaries (42:18)

• Daoism as complexity thinking (1 hour 08)

• SeaPunk Studios

• LinkedIn

• Instagram