Let’s reclaim the future
Welcome to The World We Are Becoming — an unfolding exploration of how we might reclaim the future.
This Substack accompanies a book I’m writing over the coming months. It starts with a simple idea: we’ve spent too long fighting threats and regressions, and exhausted ourselves in the process. It’s time to tell a bigger story instead, about the future that we actually want.
We are living in the shadow of crises that can feel overwhelming. Meanwhile, many of us are living in a state of perpetual anxiety, locked into systems which do not let us thrive. At the very moment when transformative action most needed, we seem to be stuck.
We need to think about this in a much more integrated way. We have to act on the grand global challenges. But it makes no sense to talk about how we can do that without also asking how we can flourish within this world.
That is why we need a new story about the world we are becoming.
Come along for the journey! We’ll be ranging from the global to the intensely personal — from world order to spirituality, and from politics to playfulness.
About me
I’m David Griffiths. Having spent twenty years working frenetically in human rights to make the world a bit less unjust, I discovered that my real contribution to the world was going to be quite different. I now find myself standing on the edges and asking a different question: what do we actually want?
These days I give myself space to stand back and be reflective. This project is emerging from the spaciousness.
Alongside the writing, I work with philanthropy, governments, and organisations through my strategy practice, Free Thought, to imagine futures and how to bring them into being. Our clients to date include Open Society Foundations, the EU, the Council of Europe, the Government of Vanuatu, and International Crisis Group.
I’m also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, where I’ve published two reports on the future of human rights. Before that, I led the Office of the Secretary General at Amnesty International, having earlier managed the organisation’s work in South Asia.
I have Welsh and Dutch heritage, grew up in East Africa, and have wandered widely. I’m normally based near London and am developing a hideaway for retreats and restoration in the French Pyrenees.
