Back to the Future 2020-2021 (Volume II)

It’s been an odd year; here’s seven home-made conclusions that have sweated my below average intellect... best read with a cup of cocoa...

Conclusion 1: Those who rise will keep rising and those who fall will keep falling. Stay tuned as we continue turning the other cheek.

Before lockdown, a friend asked me “how much do you earn?”. As my brown cheeks turned red and I shuffled backwards to the nearest exit, I writhed at their audacity. Talking about pay is excruciating. In a vague answer to my friend’s specific question, I responded: “I don’t consider myself wealthy but I’m not poor - and I’ll probably remain financially okay, breaking the piggy bank every now and then. I suppose, you can never have enough money”. i.e. I copped out. But I did make one reasonable point: I’m not poor. And this leads me to my first annual conclusion. Many people living way below the poverty line are often victims of an inherent poverty trap. For instance, some African nations, such as Western Kenya and Nigeria, experience deep-seated ostracism from the rich world, due to typecasting, racism, gender inequality and misinformation - to name a few - despite some of the world’s greatest innovations emerging from these places. So why is it that society tolerates such social inequality and immobility, but the richer seem to get richer? I believe part of the answer is that humanity secretly enjoys high-fiving the success of the richest: “Go on Jeff and Elon, hit a trillion and take over the world... Warren Buffet - you’re my investment hero... Sheik Mansour, buy another football club...”. Another reason is a self-fulfilling prophecy: those brought up with silver spoons in their mouths, no matter how incompetent, still get the highest paying jobs in the economy. We may not want to admit it, but until the richest people in the world are held to account - by reinvesting excess profits back into reducing inequality and creating fairer opportunities - there’s little escaping the dungeons for the impoverished. Those who make it out of the poverty trap should be lauded, and are usually the ones with a social conscience to give back what they’ve earned. This brutal pandemic incites the perfect chance to redistribute the worlds’ riches for the greater good. Unfortunately, breaking these old habits takes more than good intentions; it requires most of us to stop being so darn greedy. 

Conclusion 2: Well done, Britain; let’s add ourselves to the soon-to-be sanctioned deglobalisation watchlist.

As a youngster, my Dad introduced me to the saying: “No man is an island”, a translated quote by John Donne, the 16th century poet, who forewarned us of myopic ‘island’ thinking. Britain, as an island, has chosen to honour its geographical make-up, despite hundreds of years of trying to avoid its ‘small island’ complex. Whilst the Brexit rhetoric has been painfully politicised, I still struggle to understand how the EU was a burden for Brits. My simple take: we were part of a private - yet diverse - members club, with a couple of cliques, lots of pen-pushing, but we kept our own identity, relative sovereignty and had access to the wider world. Perfect? No. Lost? So am I. However, as the ship has sailed, I’m optimistic about forging new relations and free trade agreements with exciting nations. Bring on Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the world at large, this trend of recessive deglobalisation is manifesting itself in different ways. In the US, ongoing Sino-US boxing matches and the nationalist stench left by Trump will take years to rebound from. In Russia, Putin’s infinite occupation of political office is taking ‘institutionalisation’ and ‘deadwood’ to new levels. In India, Narendra Modi’s oxymoronic nationalistic and economic rhetoric is likely to fail those most in need of his domestic support. Where will all of this leave us? Probably ignorant, bewildered and increasingly apathetic. In a non-pandemic world, business, sporting, cultural and artistic institutions - not political ones - have the gumption to break these trends and boundaries. For example, Cricket’s ‘Indian’ Premier League (IPL) was recently hosted in the Middle East with around fourteen different nationalities participating and over 450 million worldwide viewers. We need more of these boundary breakers to counteract ill-founded political patriots. 

Conclusion 3: Win-win, win-lose, draw, win some, lose some, zero-sum... Competition has become convoluted with new-age Megalomaniacs coming out on top.

Sticking with the IPL, this particular competition’s popularity was conceived from capitalising on India’s talented sportsmen, a captive audience and ideal weather conditions, underwritten by Bollywood superstars. A foolproof combination. It is now the preferred career destination for a new generation of tattoo’d international cricketers as they get auctioned like modern day gladiators. Sri Lanka, West Indies, Australia and, ambitiously, weather-problematic England are trying to emulate the IPL’s success. So we will now witness the peaks and troughs of inter-country rivalry in this battle for entertainment supremacy. Comparatively, competition in the corporate world has media attention for all the wrong reasons. Testosterone-filled technological one-upmanship and monopolistic might has spurred anti-trust and competition authorities around the world to pick on famous CEOs such as Panchali, Zuckerberg, Bezos and Cook. And what comes from persistently slapping these Tech Titan’s wrists by the regulators? Bigger lobbying teams, cartel-like digital oligopolies and stronger brand-presence. The other bi-products from this: the biggies get bigger, more biggies become more omnipresent, and the small become more dependent on the biggies. I suppose we’ve entered a time where the word ‘competition’ is meaningless, the word ‘big’ has no limits and real-world economic interactions are sidelined for outer-world space races and useless social media apps. My reflection: competition originates from the principle that common goals cannot be shared. So in striving for more power, more market share and more weather-friendly cricket pitches - we should get back to the basics of sharing the world’s real problems amongst us. That would be a common goal worth sharing in its own right that we don’t need to compete over.

Conclusion 4: Forget Millennials and Gen z. Welcome to the Lost Generation where asset ownership is a joke.

On the theme of sharing, let’s turn to the sharing economy. Do we need to own anything anymore? What if we didn’t? Would our lives be less fulfilling? Would we be more fulfilled? We Brits crave land and property: “I need an asset, so I better get on the property ladder”... “I need some equity so that I can get a second property for more equity to fund my third property”. Sound familiar? I shudder to think what the price of property will be like for my kids: I’ve got my eyes on the loft. On the flip-side, China is leading the world’s ‘you don’t need to own anything’ economy with over $500 billion worth of sharing economy investments since 2016. Clap clap clap. Personally, I think the sharing economy started with my mum. One day, when I was a pubescent kid, the school bus was AWOL so my mum chucked us into her Peugeot 505 Estate and she took the job on herself. On route, we passed our usual bus stop where other kids were waiting for the AWOL bus, so she chucked them into the car too. And she passed the next bus stop, with more kids that we didn’t know, throwing them into the boot (sorry, trunk). Capacity was full and had we been in India, putting kids on top of the car might have been acceptable, but not in suburban Nottingham, England. Eventually, 8 kids - most of whom we didn’t know - had successfully made it to school in time for morning assembly. My mother, the pioneer of the sharing economy, has taught me a valuable lesson. There are things that people have (a Peugeot 505), that can benefit people beyond their doorstep (kids we didn’t know) without monetary exchange (just goodwill). Maybe if we stopped obsessing about possessions, assets and equity, we’ll get back to being compassionate citizens looking out for the next set of stranded kids at a bus stop. Sharing is caring. Show us the way, China.

Conclusion 5: Before we all end up in the Matrix, please can we build some more bridges?

Speaking of China, a project that’s fascinated me in the last couple of years is China’s ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (BRI). For the uninitiated, this can be likened to UK’s High-Speed 2 project, only on transcontinental steroids. I also have nostalgic memories of my brother and I reading fables about Journeys on the Silk Road (that included a magic monkey, talking pig, priest and a horse-dragon), for which BRI is inspired by. The BRI’s forecast 2049 completion date and slender $1.3 trillion budget (double gulp), however, is under serious threat from the post-pandemic world. Despite obvious, and probably warranted, scepticism that this is Xi-Jing Ping’s plot for global domination, the initiative cannot be shunned for its attempts to bridge six different economic corridors and create abundant employment opportunities. Sadly, like many exciting infrastructure initiatives, BRI is caught in the shadow of an inescapable digital economy. Yawn. Matthew Syed, a former Olympic table-tennis player turned rebel journalist (go figure), wrote a provocative article this year citing that people had become lazy with knowledge acquisition and intellectual ambition, failing to produce and understand things that benefit society. He’s right. Too may digital pioneers are creating a world where we bask at turning artificial humans into humanised robots and balk at ingenious social attempts to engineer a grounded, culturally connected, interpersonal world, such as BRI. In 2049, I can’t wait to hop on the BRI in Poland and exit in Vietnam 11,622 hours later. Outstanding.

Conclusion 6: Missing 10,000 steps, taxing people to work from home, inflated transport costs... At least God’s laughing.

Like many of us in 2020, I’ve developed an antagonistic appreciation for ‘work’. As I struggle to keep my Fitbit steps on track, I empathise with those searching for purpose and sanity in their work. And as we know, pandemic or no pandemic, this trend was already on the ascendancy. Alongside emergency services, I admire those jobs and professions that have soldiered on without the comfort of central heating and ultra-fast broadband. We need to better recognise these critical contributors to society. Nonetheless, many workers regardless of industry will start experiencing a hybrid working location in the future (home and ‘site’). Research has emerged on rebalancing the economy accordingly with ‘Working from Home’ taxes, setting salaries based on proximity to offices and inflating public transport prices. Once again, my simple mind is perplexed. Society and politicians have ruthlessly torn down non-essential industries to keep us safe, but that doesn’t mean we need to prop up nonsensical industries as result. Take commuter trains as an example. I imagine that if a Higher Being was watching us navigate the morning train rush, their sympathy would be clothed in laughter: “Look at all these humans... stuck in train doors, spilling coffee on each other, ingesting each other’s germs, swearing at elders, not giving up their seats for pregnant women - they think this is what I meant by social progress?!?” (cue evil laugh). God 1, Humankind 0. This is a prime example of how we’ve baked ourselves in a way of life that’s common yet preposterous. ‘Work from Home’ taxes and support for ‘Zombie’ industries is counterintuitive and discourages people from contemplating alternative futures which could be more meaningful and relevant. Transitioning to a post-pandemic working utopia has to consider total benefits such as improved mental health, payment-for-outcomes, opportunities for re-training, caring for family members and so on. If we take a more balanced approach to this transition, God can find something else to laugh at.

Conclusion 7: Before we sit down for work in 2021, let’s remind ourselves of what’s really important... Women and Breaking Bad.

I think there are two trends that will determine whether we take society seriously in 2021. Firstly, womankind. At one point this year, completely unintentionally, 80% of my team were female and oozing with talent. I’m lucky that I wasn’t fined as per the recent Paris Mayor who appointed too many women into senior positions and was reprimanded for creating gender imbalance in her team. Oh mon Dieu, pourquoi diable?! I don’t blink at it though. I’ve had the privilege of learning from prominent family female role models throughout my life (notably, my wife, sister and mum) who are all smarter, stronger and more creative than me. So I’ve always supported the campaign for female platforms, but we should be careful not to patronise the female population in search for that equality; society just needs to step up. In the Western world, gender equality shouldn’t be hard to achieve (even though we pretend it is), but countries with poor gender inequality indices that are still at the early stages of fair educational and working opportunities are in transformational mode. They need non-interventionist support through their revolutions. The second future work trend that society will need to seriously adjust to is the purpose of work itself. As mentioned, non-critical industries are currently in the firing line, as are non-critical jobs. What does this mean for self-actualisation? Will people need to reconsider their established vocations for alternative forms of employment? Is the gig economy more attractive? Will our professional identities dissolve? I, for one, should not complain. I’ve remained productive (albeit challenged by interactive or sensitive working) but, on the contrary, I’ve never spent as much time with my kids, I’ve reunited with friends after 20 years, I picked up my dusty guitar, I listen to podcasts, I’ve cooked salmon, I watched Breaking Bad. Work, undoubtedly, is a hugely important part of my personal purpose and individuality, but it’s only a portion of self-actualisation and sanity. It’s taken a global pandemic to remind me of that. So time to reconnect with one’s wider self and work to contribute, not contribute to work. 

Right, I’m off to socially distance myself from myself, find a new recipe for my humble pie and work out how to puncture this tyre that’s holding onto my midriff.

Best to you and yours in 2021.

Paras