Point of Departure

Best Interests is a weekly series which attempts to understand the ideas, systems and interests which stand in the way of change, whilst imagining a future in the public interest.

We exist neither as a faceless collective nor as atomised individuals competing and circling each other in a meaningless state of social Darwinism. Instead, we form an intricate, interconnected tapestry in which meaning exists at multiple levels. Value exists at the level of the individual, but also the family, the community, all the way up to the global population. At every level we are part of a wider whole, and wherever there are shared challenges there should be common solutions, rather than a competitive environment with winners and losers.

Before I embark upon building a worldview, I should explain my point of departure - the perspectives and values which will inform and guide my inquiries.

From a young age, I have carried with me the belief that we have a shared responsibility to address common challenges, a notion deeply rooted in my Christian upbringing. The teachings of compassion, service, and community that I absorbed in church and at home played a significant role in shaping my early understanding of our duty to one another.

However, as I grew older and my perspective broadened, I began to see this responsibility through a different lens. While my Christian upbringing laid the foundation, my evolving view is that our drive to improve the world exists outside the confines of religious obligations. There is something inherently sacred about our existence on this planet, a shared humanity that transcends religious boundaries. This sense of wonder and interconnectedness inspires me to believe that we have an intrinsic responsibility to each other. Our common challenges—be they environmental, social, or economic—demand collective action not because of religious teachings, but because of our shared existence and the remarkable nature of life itself. In this way, my desire to contribute positively to the world is rooted in a profound appreciation for the miracle of life and our interconnectedness as human beings.

Growing up Christian provided me with a set of values and a perspective which is almost completely at odds to the neoliberal, individualistic conception that dominates society. My parents, for example, have always been incredibly communitarian. They have always given to charity and tithed a portion of their income to the church, which, combined with having three kids meant that on teachers salaries they had little to spare at the end of the month for much of their lives. They have consistently volunteered at local schools and community organisations and have never been motivated by money outside of its necessity to support themselves and their family. They instilled these same values in their children, to care for others before themselves, and to be an ambassador for 'something' bigger than yourself rather than a self-interested independent entity. Even if you differ on the conception of what that ‘something’ is, it represents a valuable alternative conception to the current status quo.

This is not to say that being raised under a Christian narrative was without its challenges. Any pre-packaged worldview, when exposed to it as a child who lacks the capacity for independent critical thought should inevitably lead to a period of reckoning down the line, whether it be capitalism, socialism, Christianity or Islam. You cannot escape its influence, however, and it is bound to have some impact on the perspective you bring into the world when you leave the confines of family and school.

If I had grown up in a family environment where the pursuit of money was all around me, then the values that I would have taken into the world would have inevitably been different. The mindset that I would have held might even have equipped me to be more successful in our society than I have been. My values mean that I’m not motivated by the pursuit of money either for myself or for shareholders, I’m not driven by competition, I’m not going to pathologically burn myself out in pursuit of status, power, and influence. If I were, maybe I’d be (un)happily floating on by, none the wiser. As it is, my perspective from the outset has been different, in large part due to my upbringing.

Even as I begun to challenge some of the more prescriptive, intolerant and dogmatic elements of Christian teaching, there were large swathes of it which rang true to me. I felt that the values I was instilled with in childhood – love thy neighbour, care for the marginalised, do unto others as you would have them do unto you were not adequately challenged by the prevailing dominant attitudes and incentives in society. When beginning from an alternative point of departure it is easier to view other worldviews in their context, just as it was incredibly difficult to view my own Christian upbringing in context until I was separated from it for some time.

Therefore, I had a point of comparison against which to view everything, from the tv shows I was watching, to my studies of Politics and International Relations at university, to the jobs I was applying for, to the incentives driving my friends. Coming out of university these comparisons became starker. At the micro level, I saw the pursuit of money slowly whittle away at people’s compassion, capacity for interesting thinking and conversation. You can’t even blame them when straight out of university, in the UK at least, economic survival is front and centre at all times as all safety nets slip away (unless you’ve got a rich family but that’s a whole different can of worms). At a macro level I saw the perverse incentives at play in politics, the uncosted damage created by large companies, and the chronic void of meaning looming in front of me as I considered the future. ?

I consider myself to be in the privileged position to have been exposed to an alternative conception of what society should look like from a young age, equipping me with a set of tools early on to critically examine the prevailing narratives and systems which appear to dominate neoliberal, capitalist society. I also was not raised in a radically religious environment which attempted to indoctrinate me. Indoctrination of any kind means that the decisions being made are not informed or independent but imposed from some kind of external dogma. Therefore, although not without its difficulties, as I developed my critical thinking skills, read more widely, and spent time in non-Christian environments, I was able to sow the seeds of values which were informed by my upbringing, my surroundings and my studies, but are ultimately my own. I developed perspectives that equally allowed me to see the positives and negatives of shaping your life around religious belief, as well based around neoliberal capitalistic incentive structures. Neither, in my opinion, form an appropriate bedrock around which to build a society.

Ultimately, what stayed with me from my upbringing was our fundamental duty to each other and to our planet. We exist neither as a faceless collective nor as atomised individuals competing and circling each other in a meaningless state of social Darwinism. Instead, we form an intricate, interconnected tapestry, where meaning exists at multiple levels. Value exists at the level of the individual, but also the family, the community, all the way up to the global population. At every level we are part of a wider whole, and wherever there are shared challenges there should be common solutions, rather than a competitive environment with winners and losers.

This forms my primary motivation - to identify challenges that we face in society, whether they be local, national, or global, and work to change them for the better. This is my point of departure.

The importance of living elsewhere

It was this point of departure that incentivised me to go and study for a Masters in Global Development in Copenhagen, to better understand the drivers of inequality both between and within nations. The course taught me that achieving change was complicated and multifaceted. In the Global Development program, we looked at different issues, from economic inequality, to migration, refugee flows and land rights from multiple perspectives. We analysed the anthropological, political, economic, sociological, and geographic perspectives on these challenges, and what quickly emerged was that neat solutions to complex problems do not exist. Every problem exists within wider systems, whilst also having to consider distinct cultural, social and political contexts which mean that a solution which succeeds in one place could well fail in another for purely qualitative reasons.

On top of the content of the course itself, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to immerse myself in Danish society. Perspective changes can come from many different sources if you’re open to them. A crucial one of these is exposure to other cultures. Denmark, although certainly not without its flaws (attitudes to immigration, to name one), presented a very different model for organising society than what I was exposed to in the U.K. Both in education and the world of work, an attitude of competition is replaced by one of collaboration. More emphasis is placed on work-life balance, which in the Danish case does not equate to a comparative drop in economic productivity. Corruption is low, and correspondingly trust in institutions is high(er).

As an international student, I received a free education, and when I faced a period of unemployment there was a de-stigmatised state safety net to support me. In exchange, when I was working, I paid high taxes, and in order to exist within Danish society you have to be willing to have a lot of your personal data, from your health to your bank account, deeply embedded within the states digital infrastructure. This is the nature of the social contract in Denmark. It is the product of a distinct cultural evolution and would not work in its current form in places like the U.S., who are too large and too far down the neoliberal path as it stands. Nonetheless, as a young person whose values were inherently at odds with the cut and thrust economic environment I had entered in the UK, Denmark represented valuable exposure to how things can be different.

Being immersed for a period in a small microcosm that represents something different (although not detached) from the economic and societal model that dominates much of the west, reinforced my instincts that there is more than one way of doing things. It instils in you a belief that change is possible, whilst simultaneously sheltering you from the reality of the challenges that exist outside its borders.

Coming out of my Masters, I had had the edges shaved off my na?ve conception of how change occurs. But we were still taught that with a considered understanding of the nature and mechanics of a challenge, as well as the context it exists within, it was possible to achieve structural change.

This in part shaped my first post-education career decisions. I wanted to use what I had learned and what I had been exposed to, in combination with my motivation to address societal challenges, to achieve some real change in this world.

I still, however, didn’t have a clear idea of the area I wanted this to be in. I spent some time working with an international NGO in Nairobi and Copenhagen, working across a range of issues including social entrepreneurship, innovation, and social movements. I wrote my Masters thesis on the risk of social movements in the Global South being co-opted by NGOs purporting to support them. Social movements hold the potential to suggest alternative conceptions of how to address challenges and shape societies, and I was passionate about understanding how to ensure that their full potential could be realised, and the roles that NGOs have in this. This was probably as close as I got in this period of my life to an informed theory of change on an issue.

However, the NGO I was working with ran into a budget crisis and froze all hiring. This is endemic of wider issues surrounding funding structures, the purpose of NGOs and how they hire. Essentially, it’s challenging to get a good job with a secure contract at an NGO as a young person.

Therefore, despite my motivations, I still exist firmly within the realities of the labour market.

A couple of months later my good friend and mentor reached out to me about a job opportunity at his company, who were researching how sustainable the world’s biggest companies are, building datasets, and selling them to investors so that they have the necessary information to invest sustainably.

This was an excellent opportunity to contribute towards affecting positive change within the financial industry which, as the holders of the purse strings, have the potential to fundamentally change incentive structures within the world of big business.

In this role I found myself surrounded by bright, driven individuals - ?all part of a mission-driven organisation run by excellent leadership. The role gave me the license to explore and critique the complex world of finance and the impact that large companies have on the world. It gave me the tools to look under the hood of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing, a growing movement that was claimed to represent a systemic change in how finance impacts people and planet.

What I learned in this role fundamentally challenged my preconceptions on how change happens, not just in sustainable finance, but in society as a whole.