Cause for Hope

Charles Dickens set the scene for his novel “A Tale of Two Cities” by saying: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

He could well have been describing the dilemmas we are experiencing in these early years of the 21stcentury. For while we can find statistics pointing to increased health and longevity, fewer conflicts, falling crime rates, and the eradication of extreme poverty and disease, we can also catch glimpses of a society in crisis. 

I am not referring to climate change or environmental collapse, a new arms race, terrorism, the failure of democracy, or the menace of autonomous weapons. These are only symptoms of a deeper malaise. The crisis that troubles me is far more insidious. 

Unseen it remains unspoken. This matters because we are rapidly approaching the end of empire - an era in human history conditioned by predatory expansionism, colonisation and unjust exploitation. These seminal factors, that happen to symbolize the Western episteme, are increasingly irrelevant. Massive change is therefore imminent. It is utterly unavoidable. 

How we approach that change, and whether our species will survive the turbulence, has yet to be determined. But one thing is clear. We do not possess the narrative, nor adequate mindset, to make it through the transition. It will require a giant leap of evolutionary development. A leap, if you will, of collective consciousness. This is the crisis to which I refer.

Somewhere along the way we forgot what it means to be sentient human beings. We became trapped in an intellectual gridlock that prevents us coming up with solutions to the existential problems facing us. There are various reasons for this apparent lapse in sentient recall. Most of them seem to be linked to the way we live our lives and relate to each other. In an extractive economy, where goods are manufactured by the many for the few, life can become too easy for the rich, yet impossible for the poor. It was not always like this.

In 1945, the year of my birth, around 2 billion people inhabited Earth. Over the course of my lifetime this has grown to 7.6 billion – each individual striving for a better quality of life. This population explosion has put untold stress on systems that were never designed to cope with such large numbers. As our most life-critical systems fail, we start to blame each other for their collapse. Leadership takes fright. Dread and humiliation now become the weapons of choice in the arsenal of those whose courage and competence is limited to a relentless patching up of the present. The pressure is on. 

But blaming others for our predicament, by fabricating fear, corrodes trust. Now, the sense of despair that hangs in the ether, as hope for a better future vanishes, infects us all with its angst – from schoolchildren to the affluent. Bewildered, faced with problems we do not fully grasp, our recourse is to buy more and more stuff in the belief it will make us happy. Thus the cycle of desire and consumption continues unabated...

What remains is sustained by the most blatant lie in the human story - a belief that kneeling at the altar of materialism, in a manic quest for more money, possessions, greater status, and social approval will salvage us, tugging happiness along in its wake. Deep within ourselves we know this is unlikely. Personal experience has shown us truths we dare only whisper.

This is an emotionally charged statement. By questioning the benefits of capitalism, as it is practised, we can be accused of anarchy and societal destablisation. Let us take this line of interrogation a little deeper though...

Advertising is merely the public relations arm of an economic system that works by making us feel bad or inadequate in some way, then telling us the answer is to constantly buy more stuff. And when global brands, utilizing business models that rely on advertising, continue to insist we need their latest products in order to be beautiful, cool, smart, admired or connected, and we gradually become aware this is affecting our mental health, what should we do? 

After all, we are all party to this deceit. We sustain the delusion through our infatuation with growth, individualism and competition - the foundation of a culture with a warped sense of its own exceptionalism. A culture made sterile by its addiction to extrinsic values and goals, and its voracious appetite for new stuff. A culture incapable of shaping the future from alternative design ontologies. A culture where hope for something different is continually eroded.

Contemporary society only prescribes one cure for this malady. Growth. But growth only fuels our yearning for more material goods. It also distracts us from having our more intrinsic needs such as legitimacy, affection, connections with nature and friends, mutual respect, meaningful work, and a chance contribute to our community, fulfilled. 

The most important questions for those who seek to disrupt the status quo, therefore, concern what we can do to break free from such patterns. What new narratives and belief systems are needed to free us from the prisons we ourselves have created? What can be done to restore hope and trust? How can we dismantle the constraints of the past, in ways that are the least disruptive, so that a transition to a world that works for everyone becomes feasible? 

Optimism simply gives us licence to believe everything will be fine. That change is uncalled-for. Pessimism is not an option. It drifts soon enough into passivity. Besides, in situations that can appear so immensely overwhelming we so readily revert to type. 

If environmental breakdown is creating an uninhabitable world, if our civilisation is reaching its endgame, then so be it. The problem is too big. But we are at least being amused to death by an endless supply of new gadgets, fashions, celebrity scandals, and other hedonistic pleasures. Perhaps it is easier just to give up. To go with the flow and try and make the best of the few years we have left.

But human ingenuity is boundless. Although it has its dark side, it has been responsible for creating astounding works of art, constructing massive cities and connective infrastructure, conquering disease, and furthering our understanding of the universe. That same creativity and inventiveness allowed us to survive numerous emergencies in the past. Why should it not serve us now to address this crisis in collective consciousness? 

Certainly much can be done to overcome our current cognitive and emotional gridlock. Small steps, benign in appearance, mere nudges in fact, yet vast in their potential impact, are viable. But first we must proclaim the truth of the human condition. When it comes to identifying the most critical acupuncture points for transformative change, two issues call out for our immediate attention. Firstly a new shared narrative, a pluriversal worldview offering hope, empathy and inclusion, rather than fear, exclusion and separation, will be needed. Then a viable alternative to today’s maladaptive world-system, motivated by intrinsic values rather than extrinsic goals, will need to evolve.

Neither of these will be easy to imagine or discuss, let alone design and deploy. The task will appear even greater if we are overcome by the profound second and third order changes that will be needed at global and societal levels. But there are actions we can all take that will put us on the right path. 

Most of us work in organisations. They are the engines of society. They are also a part of the problem. Reinforcing our addiction to compliance or consumption, our enterprises are where disruption is most needed, where it can be scaled, and where energy for innovation is to be found – albeit in small pockets, often hidden away in a corner of the enterprise. Logically, this is where we should start.

So let us seek out the disruptors and have the courage to become disruptors ourselves. A few minds geared to ethical change, an amenable culture, and an appreciation for stewardship of the organisational ecosystem in alignment with society’s real needs (note my avoidance of passé notions of leadership to express this collaborative process) are often all that is required. 

Some of the best opportunities are hidden in full view - though often remain invisible to those brought up on the classic reductionist diet of business schools and consulting firms in thrall to the extractionist economic paradigm.

For example, we spend most of our waking hours at work. Recent studies suggest a large majority of us feel enraged by the pointless nature of much work. We are twice as likely to hate our work as love it. Only18 per cent of employees are actively engaged at work. An incredible 24 per cent are actively disengaged– meaning they deliberately hold the organisation back. Meanwhile the remaining 58 per cent are on autopilot. With the best will in the world they turn up to work each day, perform adequately the tasks allotted to them, and get paid - for little commitment, other than lip service when required, either to their work or to the enterprise. 

By disrupting this particular pattern it is possible to engage an entire workforce to focus on innovation. Simply by infusing work with meaning, providing a degree of autonomy, a chance to propose and implement change, along with opportunities to contribute to the greater good, productivity can skyrocket, while apathy and disengagement simply vanish.

The choice between despair and hope is a political act. By leveraging the power of disruption we can break the cycle of desire and consumption. The alternative is to submit to the clout of corporate advertising. We can take on the task of treating our pathology, for its infatuation with technological toys and other pointless stuff, or indulge it with ever increasing doses of materialism in an attempt to gloss over our innate sense of loss of what it means to be human. 

Together we can accept responsibility for shaping the next chapter of human evolution as an anticipatory store of better futures. Or, as lonely individuals, we can stay on the treadmill of envy and avarice. It is up to each one of us to decide what is best for us now, what is best for our children, and what is best for the planet.

To be honest there are signs that an axial shift is occurring within our political and economic discourse and in the actions we are prepared to take at scale. Scholars like Otto Scharmer, for example, have pointed out that contemporary activism, led mostly by women motivated by a desire to craft a world-system that works for the entire human family, is making ideologically-motivated debate obsolete. Of far more consequence are conversation around social equity, economic justice, and human wellbeing.

The ultimate test of course will be how we choose to deal with those who resist change and those who actively oppose us. How will we be able to find forgiveness for the weaker side of humanity, avoid feeling sorry for those who deny their pain, offer renewed hope for victims of circumstance who yearn nostalgically for what has already passed them by? In looking beyond current constraints we will need to find alternative paths to enable all of us, no matter our personal circumstances, to escape the gravitational pull of the past, as well as the alluring surface of the present. The challenge will be to retain hope when things get really tough.

This piece was written at the request of Larry Quick and David Platt, from Resilient Futures, and originally conceived as the Foreword for their new book on Disruption to be published later this year.