Spiderman sucks

Well, not Spidey per se., just some of the unintended consequences of his Uncle Ben’s mantra.

Seth’s latest blog post highlights that when we understand the responsibility that comes from having power, many of us simply abdicate out of fear.

In a democracy, we each have more power to speak up and to connect than we imagine. But most people don’t publish their best work or seek to organize people who care. Most of the time, it’s far easier to avert our eyes or blame the system or the tech or the dominant power structure.

And in an age where so many of us have access to so much power (thank you internet), how many of us are walking away from the power out of fear of the responsibility?

Maybe, if we start to get together and care together, we might change some things, or at least something.

First, slow down (but don't kill the economy)

Changing anything takes time. And when we want it to happen, we want it to happen now. It’s hard to hang on in the meantime. But here’s how I think it works:

First, you have to slow down.

Then, you have to actually stop.

Next, you need to turn around.

And now, you can start moving in a new direction.

This is hard enough when you’re trying to change something yourself. It’s exponentially more difficult when you want to move a social group.

But changing society is a whole other level of difficult.

Because slowing down (and stopping) usually brings the economy into the discussion.

And here we find (one of the many) tensions.

If the status quo isn’t just or equitable, and you need to flip the systems, how do you transition in a way that is just and equitable?

Start by acknowledging you need to change (slow down).

Plan to stop.

Figure out where to head (it helps if you’ve done most of the figuring out earlier on).

And then move.

Single unit value

Here’s a question to ponder about making an impact:

If we can only make a small amount of impact with our finite amount of time, is it more valuable to create an incremental gain, or create something new?

i.e., is 100 to 101 more valuable than going from 0 to 1?

Sure, real life is much more complicated than this, but the core question remains:

Is it worth focusing effort on something which is already OK, when something else hasn’t even been looked at yet?

Personally, I’d rather shift the margin than polish the centre.

Cooking up change

I think there are three ingredients in the delicious cake that is a just world.

• Foolishness

• Wisdom

• Courage

The recipe is simple: We need these in equal measure, but add them in the correct order.

• Start with foolishness. Dare to dream of what could be, and spend time in that future.

• Add an equal measure of wisdom. Recognise your resources and context. Recognise competing future visions. And understand what it will cost to attempt to make the dream a reality.

• Drizzle with a healthy amount of courage. A good plan, well executed is better than a perfect plan, never executed. And it takes courage to acknowledge the foolishness, the cost, and to step out into action.

The secret ingredient in this all, is feedback. Serve the cake, and find out how it tastes. Share it with the world. And then make another.

Go bake a cake.

Foolishness and folly

There’s a fine line between having enough foolishness to hope for and try to bring about a better world, and wasting your energy.

Counter to the Franciscan saying is a prayer from the early 1930s, commonly known as the “Serenity Prayer”. This prayer talks about having:

…the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
And wisdom to know the difference.

Foolishness, serenity, courage, and wisdom. These are the ingredients for changing the world.

Just enough foolishness

There’s a Franciscan blessing that talks about having:

…enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

In a world able to measure more things than ever, we’re struggling to figure out how to measure the amount good in the world.

Maybe, we could focus on the margins: Instead of trying it understand if overall society is better of, there’s potentially some merit in simplifying the question and focusing on the poor. Positive change is easier to see when you’re starting with obvious lack.

It would also be interesting to explore the attitude of “whatever works for the poor, will work for everyone else, and if it doesn’t work for the poor, it doesn’t matter if it works for everyone else.”

In the mix, maybe we need is a little more foolishness to try.

A better chemical

If I remember back to my high-school science (and I probably don’t), catalysts are substances that are required to start a chemical reaction. Without the catalyst, the reaction (and subsequent atomic activity and change) won’t occur. Or at least, won’t occur quickly.

Is there an alternative catalyst for changing the status quo that isn’t a traumatic shock or hard-grinding mass education?

Perhaps.

To stick with the chemical analogy (and digging back again to my memory of high school science) there are some reactions/changes that can either be started with a catalysing chemical, or by applying heat. So what can happen, especially when you only have a small amount of catalyst, is that you start the reaction in a small area, but then the reaction generates heat and so feeds itself, with the heat driving the subsequent reaction.

If I lost you at “high school science” or “catalyst”, I’m hoping you’re still with me, because this is the guts of it.

1. Start small, start local, with people who get it.

2. Invite others along. Do the hard work of education with people who are in your area, who get your context, and who speak your language.

3. Get radical. Don’t dabble, make some heat. Hopefully, you’ll shock a couple of people.

4. Tell your story to the people who’ve been shocked, and help them to do the same.

Start small, start local, go radical.

Catalysts for change

Shifting a system based on a commonly held belief is challenging. It will usually occur in one of two ways:

• A shock to the system so significant that the flaws or disconnect between reality and our thinking is so apparent the we’re unable to go back.

• We learn about a different way.

Education is hard, because real learning requires us to enter a liminal space, a space past what we think now but before we know what we will learn. A space between the current, and the new. These types of spaces are uncomfortable, and so in a property system where the status quo approach has made many people very comfortable indeed, there’s minimal incentives to get uncomfortable.

And the other options isn’t exactly inspiring either: A shock, an event, a trauma to the property system so significant that we have no choice but to change is. not something we would ever plan.

Perhaps there is a better.

Start small and do something (and learn something)

We could spend a long time planning, thinking, dreaming and designing the perfect house, the perfect business, the perfect property system. And when we were done, it would be pretty awesome.

Then we’d have to build it.

Or we could pick something small - a tiny house, a market stall, a single property - and do it. And we’d learn something new, something that we probably wouldn’t have learnt by talking, planning, thinking, dreaming and designing.

And then we could pick something else, and do it again.

And learn again.

And do again.

Until it’s done.

And it if never gets done, at least we did something.

Inertia - a less abstract version

Yesterday I wrote a rather abstract post drawing from my days learning physics. Here’s what I really meant.

If we want to change something big (like the property industry), we might find we’re better of working to change a little bit, and gather momentum than try and simply work against the system.

The risk of working directly against something is that 1) people start pushing back and 2) if you’re successful, everything usually comes to a grinding halt for a period of time. Whereas if you simply try to maintain speed but influence direction, everything keeps ticking along and eventually everyone changed.

Working directly against something results in a slow down before you get movement in the direction you want. Working alongside something to change the direction incrementally results in immediate change and eventual transformation.

Initial Inertia

Once something is moving, it’s hard to stop. And the heavier or faster it is, the harder it is to stop.

That’s called inertia.

If all you have is a very small force, and you want to radically change the direction of something with lots of inertia, you have essentially two options:

1. Push directly against the object you want to change. It will keep heading in the same direction but will immediately begin to slow down and eventually it will stop, before starting to (very slowly) move in the opposite direction. Keep pushing, and it’ll eventually be moving in the opposite direction at the same speed it started at.

2. Push at 90 degrees to the object you want to change. It won’t slow down, but it will immediately change direction. If you keep readjusting where you are pushing (so that you’re always pushing at 90 degrees), eventually it’ll be heading in the opposite direction.

Which option you choose, depends a lot on the object you’re pushing against (i.e. will it change in size as it moves/changes direction, making it easier or harder to move) and the environment around you (i.e. if it’s rolling down a hill there’s forces pushing it along, and you might not be able to slow it to a stop at all). Here’s some questions to ask:

1. How will this object respond to me pushing it?

2. Is it important to maintain speed?

3. What else is pushing this object?

4. Can I make it smaller?

5. Can I get stronger?

6. Will changing the direction of travel increase of decrease my ability to apply force?

In the context of property development, slowing down the construction industry to a halt before starting to move in a new direction is a horrendous future to contemplate. A far preferable process is to start moving, and work on increasing the force that you can apply as the direction changes.

*apologies for this post being extremely abstract, it makes sense in my head.

Co-oper-tition for change

Here’s a curious notion worth pondering: Co-oper-tition.

Not full cooperation, but not full competition either.

It applies where you and I are compete within a market, but where our market is in competition with another.

For example, the makers selling their goods on felt.co.nz technically compete. They’re competing for the consumer dollar. However, they could also cooperate, because they’re trying to establish a marketplace which is in competition with say, Kmart. Or the Warehouse. Or any other warehouse-based consumer goods reseller.

If you and I are property developers working to put wheels on a more ethical, sustainable and just property system, we might be competing. We compete for projects opportunities, property owners, media attention and finance. But as we strive to establish a market that competes with a prejudiced, unsustainable and unjust incumbent environment, we can cooperate. Your success is my success. Your successful projects adds leverage to my claim that different is possible. Your connections can help to align finance for my project.

Because ultimately, the outcome we’re seeking is change. For the better.

*Credit to Jason for coining the term “Coopertition”. Check out more of Jason’s work and thinking here.

We've just got to get up and go to work

Work. It's how a house gets built.

Building something requires work.

Change requires effort. The kind of emotional effort that is hard to do.

Hard to start. Hard to sustain.

If it was easy, someone else would have done it already.

Change doesn't happen at a distance

It should come as no surprise to anyone that doing ethical property development requires a transfer of wealth.

The status quo inherently disadvantages those who have less. So the ability to do make an impact is limited by the amount of value that is available. If a bunch of us get together with sticks, we're not going to build a brick house. Someone with a large brick house is going to have to tear down their second (or third, or fourth) home to give us some bricks.

When there's a fixed amount of something, those with lots have to give up at least a little in order to achieve genuine equity.

It turns out, do do things differently requires all of us. Change doesn't happen at a distance.

The change-making paradox

You can't shift anything alone.

But there's always a ground zero, a person zero.

If we wanted to change the property system, it's going to take each of us to change, and all of us to move together. We'll all have our own paths, paces, and priorities, but if we all travel in the same general direction, it becomes a movement.

A tiny house movement.
A co-housing movement.
A minimalism movement.
An energy-efficiency movement.
An affordability movement.
A lifestyle movement.
A philosophical movement.

A property movement.

Do a little work today

Gardening sucks, because the work is never done.

Gardening is inspirational, because when the work is done, there's often immediate results.

Once a garden has been weeded, you can tell. Sure, they'll grow back and you'll have to do it again, but that one hour on your knees in the dirt was worthwhile. And it takes you one step further towards your ultimate goal: The vegetables, flowers, trees, or whatever it is that you've intentionally planted, whatever it is that you're really out there for.

Making a difference doesn't have to be glamourous.

Having a legacy doesn't need to be a lifetime's work.

Creating change doesn't need to make the headlines. Or the history book.

It can start, and end, with doing something small today, that makes the world just that little bit better.

If you don't like it, change it!

I'm curious about something:

How come we look to tried and true methods to solve problems with the status quo?

The solutions to the broken system are going to come from outside. From another way of seeing the world. From another way of being in the world.

Or at least, they'll be inspired from somewhere we haven't seen before.

Unhappy with housing affordability? Why not reduce your costs? Here's a few thoughts on how:

• Buy a smaller house
• Buy a house with other people
• Buy in a different neighbourhood
• Sell your car and bike to work
• Flat with people to save a bigger deposit
• Stop dining out three times per week
• Don't go shopping every week
• Cook your own food

In short: Don't assume that home ownership needs to look the way you think. The home, the ownership, and the owner can all change.

Storytelling ourself into a corner

We're all living out of a story. But we might not like it that much.

Our story might drive us to do things we're not proud of.

It might trap us in places we don't want to be.

Or our story might simply not feel like it fits quite right.

So change it. 

Borrow someone else's for a while.

Get some help with demolition and reconstruction, from someone who has the necessary skills.

Practice telling a new story.

Practice telling stories in general.

Learn about other people's stories, and find the things you like in them.

Find a friend who'll listen.

Opportunity and cost of change

Change is disruptive. Painful. Stressful. And typically unwanted.

And yet:

Change is necessary. Transformative. Freeing. And required for growth.

Moving houses is just one example of the paradoxical nature of change.

It requires so much work, physical and mental effort, planning, preparation and time.

But also an opportunity to declutter, reassess priorities, make lifestyle changes, and simplify.

Designing for impact

So you want to make a difference. You have a dream for a better future. You want to make an impact.

The next step is to try and make it happen within our sphere of control.

While positive personal, individual responses are necessary, it turns out that trying to convince others to "do what I did" isn't a particularly effective way to achieve a large-scale impact.

Attempting to control the situation based on your frame of reference isn't is not the determining factor in creating impact.

Collaboration might be.

This isn't to say that individual stories don't matter. They matter because they are all different. But listening and sharing is more important than convincing and justifying.

Collaboration, not co-opting.

Coordination and cooperation by communication, not command.

Imagine the solutions for housing we might arrive at if we wove our stories together:

• Simpler living in smaller spaces designed for neighbours, not purchasers.
• Coordinated, activated and populated public areas that are accessible to all.
• Households who know households. Neighbours who know neighbours.
• Cross-generational and cross-cultural living within a neighbourhood rather than demographic segregation.
• Shared facilities for making, fixing, growing, playing and being.
• Literal, and potentially common ownership of local commercial activities.
• Educational environments that extend outside the institution into our streets, parks, back yards, garages and kitchens.
• Urban design dominated by spaces for people, not cars.