Jonathan Spencer · Lewes, England
I write about relations, time and systems - how things exist in connection rather than alone, and what that means for a life, a home or an organisation. CEO of Zetetick Housing. Occasional Quaker. Regular ju-jitsu. Currently reading Dunne, Fisher and Han.
I write at jonnospencer.substack.com, mostly about relational theory and temporal questions. I am interested in how things exist in relation to other things rather than as isolated objects, and in what we mean when we talk about "now."
It tends to be exploratory rather than conclusive. I am suspicious of writing that pretends to certainty.
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Passages from my reading, with a line or two of response. What I am actually underlining, not what I think I ought to be reading.
"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."
Mark Fisher - Capitalist Realism
I keep testing whether this is true of the charity sector. We are very good at imagining closure and very bad at imagining a different way of funding homes.
"We must live before we can attain to either intelligence or control at all. We must sleep if we are not to find ourselves, at death, helplessly strange to the new conditions. And we must die before we can hope to advance to a broader understanding."
J.W. Dunne - An Experiment with Time
The same thought runs through Christian scripture - though you die, yet shall you live - and through Hamlet's "to sleep, perchance to dream." Dunne is the only author I know who links them and relates them to our understanding of time.
"Today's society is no longer Foucault's disciplinary world of hospitals, madhouses, prisons, barracks, and factories. It has long been replaced by another regime, namely a society of fitness studios, office towers, banks, airports, shopping malls, and genetic laboratories. Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society. Its inhabitants are no longer obedience-subjects but achievement-subjects. They are entrepreneurs of themselves."
Byung-Chul Han - The Burnout Society
Han outlines a world where we police and exploit ourselves because we have been persuaded the exploitation is for our own health and wellbeing - and we believe it. If we do not adhere, we are diagnosed: our misalignments pointed out as disease. It is never society that is diagnosed as sick, only the individual.
I am Chief Executive of Zetetick Housing, a charity that provides supported housing for adults with learning disabilities, autistic people, and those with mental health needs. We are based in Sussex and work across the South East.
I have been a CEO in the charity sector for 12 years, working with disability for 12 years and in housing for 7. I understand the difference between what looks good in a report and what actually matters in a tenant's home, a staff team, or a board meeting.
The question that drives the organisation is simple: what makes a home actually work for someone who needs support? The answer is never just the building. It is the relationship between the tenant, the accommodation, the support staff, and the systems that hold it all together.
My background is in psychology and anthropology, and I previously practised as a psychosynthesis therapist. I am influenced by Jim Collins and Edwards Deming, and I find systems theory more useful than most management literature.
I have what the textbooks call combined ADHD and ASD. I can hold several complicated threads at once and make connections quickly. The cost is noise: too many open threads, attention drifting to what is interesting rather than what is important. I work to manage that.
I am a practising Quaker and a social democrat. I have been a trade union member since my first job, and I am active in the Labour movement locally through Lewes Labour.
I teach ju-jitsu at Lewes Judo Club.
I serve as a trustee at Northease Manor School, an independent special school near Lewes for young people with special educational needs and disabilities. I am also a councillor on Ringmer Parish Council.
I have three children from past marriages: Freya, Roland and Isis. Roland runs Handyman Ro Building Services in Brighton and Sussex. Family matters to me, though I am cautious about treating it as content.
My partner is Meike, who works in financial compliance. She is an important part of my long-term planning and wellbeing.
I am an AI-first person. I use AI positively, partly because it matches the way my own brain works. If you are wondering whether AGI will destroy us all, I am more an Iain M. Banks thinker than a John Connor.
What I am doing and thinking about at the moment, in the spirit of Derek Sivers.
I am reading three thinkers who approach time and system from very different directions. Mark Fisher, for the lost futures and the difficulty of imagining anything outside the current arrangement. J.W. Dunne, for his serial theory of time and the peculiar question of whether our experience of "now" is as narrow as it appears. Byung-Chul Han, for his account of burnout, achievement and what happens to attention when everything becomes transparent and available.
They do not agree with each other, which is partly the point. I am less interested in conclusions than in the way each of them disturbs the settled picture.
I am writing at jonnospencer.substack.com, mostly about relational theory and what it means to say that something is real. My last piece was about a carved wooden thing that seemed to move, and what that tells us about objects, relations and the authorised world. I am suspicious of writing that pretends to certainty. Most of what I publish is exploratory, and some of it turns out to be wrong in useful ways.
I am leading Zetetick Housing through a period of growth while trying to keep quality from becoming a secondary consideration. The question that drives the organisation is what makes a home actually work for someone who needs support. The answer is never just the building.
Teaching ju-jitsu at Lewes Judo Club. Serving on Ringmer Parish Council. Acting as a trustee at Northease Manor School. Exploring what AI means for how I think and work. Spending time with Meike and trying to keep the number of open threads to a manageable level.
I am interested in conversations about supported housing, organisational behaviour, governance, or anything that sits at the intersection of systems and human relationships.