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.
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.
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.
Start small, start local, with people who get it.
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.
Get radical. Don’t dabble, make some heat. Hopefully, you’ll shock a couple of people.
Tell your story to the people who’ve been shocked, and help them to do the same.
Start small, start local, go radical.
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.
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.
Breaking a system requires solving the right problem. And finding the right problem starts with asking the right question. And finding the right question to ask usually starts with asking a whole series of questions.
Here’s a few questions:
What would happen if mortgages were interest free?
How can we improve access to capital?
Can property be used to redistribute wealth?
What non-financial benefits could a money lender receive from providing a home loan ?
How do we design for more connection?
How do we require better design in new houses?
On the one had, you could solve a problem by acting directly. For example, buying some land, subdividing it and building affordable homes in response to the unaffordability of the general market.
Or, you could work to make it possible for someone else to do it. Build a better system. Or at least a patch for the current one.
I tend to lean towards the second option, for a few reasons:
There’s the chance for bigger impact. If the problem is such that you’re the only one (or one of a few) who can change it, you can have a bigger impact by increasing the number of people who can solve the problem than by solving it on your own, by changing the system.
You get the benefit of someone else working with you on the problem, and the more you have diverse perspective, skills, and networks involved in a problem, the more it will be refined and opened up to more people. Bigger impact, better system.
It’s harder. And I like a challenge.
For anyone curious and/or confused about why the world seems to be creaking at the edges while we’re also being told that everything is fine, you might enjoy Kate Raworth’s work.
The centrepiece is her doughnut: A starting point for an alternative framework for thinking about economics.
I really like it.
At it’s most basic, it sets out what we all know to be true, which is that the long-term viability of human life lies with a lifestyle somewhere between annihilating the planet, and devaluing human life.
Or to frame it in the positive: We need to find a way of living (and systems to support this way of life) that both acknowledges the value of all human life, and sustains all other life on the planet.
Raworth calls these the frames for our life the social foundation (from minimums social standards) and the planetary boundaries (beyond which we unacceptably degrade the planet). She says that:
Between social and planetary boundaries lies an environmentally safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive.
And the space in between, looks like a doughnut. Check it out.
Tasty.
Sometimes I think about how differently each of us can see something, and I wonder how we ever make anything happen.
And then I remember how similar every single one of us is, and I get back normal life.
The dominant view of collectively-held assets seems to be that it’s a waste of resource which would be put to better (read profitable) use by private enterprise. It’s the not-so-modern “tragedy of the commons” mindset.
What most of us don’t know is that a boss lady by the name of Elinor Ostrom disproved this theory way back in the day. She didn’t do this using complicated equations, she simply went out and looked at what actually happens with commonly held land. It turns out, when we work together well, commonly held resources have the potential to be more productive that privately managed resources.
What is particularly interesting is that Elinor’s research basically disproved a theory by observing reality, and yet the theory has persisted, potentially to the point that it is self-fulfilling: If we expect commonly-held land to be unproductive, we don’t put any effort (or investment) into making it productive.
We think that owing out own house, having a bigger house, having a more secure property, and/or living in a particular neighbourhood will make us happier. That’s the theory. But have we stopped to look around at the evidence to see whether we are better off with this approach?
As a side note, Elinor was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics, and is the only woman who ever has.
If you’ve got a gnarly problem, you probably need a group of mates to work on it in order to make an impact.
So theoretically, more mates will mean more impact.
But maybe not.
Gnarly problems definitely require a few different bodies. It’s highly unlikely that a single person is going to arrive at a solution alone. At the very least, the company helps!
But particularly gnarly problems also usually require people to work together in all sorts of different configurations. Sometimes you’ll all come together to thrash out an issue. More often, you’ll divide and conquer, prototype and test, and learn and discover in smaller groups.
Therefore, you need a group where (ideally) any combination of people can function effectively, and who are also able to bring their whole selves to the big group conversation.
Thankfully, you can hit both of these with one thing: Good relationships between every person.
Simple to say, and challenging to do, yes. And if you’ll bear with me, there’s some simple maths to help explain why.
The number of relationships (i.e. connections between two different people) present in any group can one calculated using the equation R = n x (n - 1) / 2 (Where ‘R’ is the number of relationships and ‘n’ is the number of people (English explanation below*)
What this means is that if you have three people working together, you need to have three functional relationships to have both a cohesive group, and everyone can work together in smaller groups.
If you have six people, there are 15 different relationships.
Jump up to eight people, and you nearly double the number to 28.
And in a group of 10, there’s 45 different relationships.
How about an international rugby team with 23 people on the match-day squad… 253 individual relationships required for ultimate cohesiveness!
15 relationships (with a group of 6) is a manageable size , especially if you’re spending regular, frequent time together. On the other hand, 45 separate relationships (with a group of 10) is likely to require a specific environment to pull off.
This might explain why sometimes, more isn’t better, it’s just more complicated.
*To calculate the number of relationships in a group of people, multiply the total number of people in the group by one less than that total number, and then divide that result in half. (See maths has a point, if only just to save on space).
It’s coming to the end of exam season for university and senior high school students around here. And a friend articulated the challenge of what I’m calling “The Examination Paradox”. It goes like this:
Exams are really important, and you should prepare really well for them.
And they’re not important at all.
Like many (most?) things that are true, it’s paradoxically true.
What else is really important, but also not at all important?
Owning a house?
Parking your car in a garage?
How many children you have?
What school you go to?
What job you have?
How much you earn? (this one definitely starts of entirely important, and only becomes also unimportant at a certain level)
What clothes you wear?
Where you live?
What else? And of the conflicting (but true) statements, which one dominates the way you approach that element of your life?
It would cost $39 billion USD per year to provide universal education in low- and lower-middle-income countries.
That’s less than the USA increased their defence spending in 2018. Or to look at it another way it’s 6% of the $639 billion defence budget. Or, slightly more than the total USD officially contributed to global development in 2016.
Combined with improving Family Planning, universal education would have the most significant effect on global carbon generation of any single action.
The most significant effect. More than wind farms. Or electric cars. Or even eating a more plant-based diet (which incidentally is the most significant thing an individual has control over and can change immediately).
*Please take ten minutes to browse drawdown.org. I’ve never seen such a comprehensive and well presented set of information on climate change.
Comparison is a killer.
If you set goals based on where everyone else is at (and usually aiming to be a little better than average, because you’re worth it) a few things happen:
Tomorrow, someone else will do the same thing and you’ll have become the new norm. So it never lasts.
If we all do it, we’ll just make things more expensive for everyone.
This can apply everywhere from wedding planning to your shoes, from your haircut to your kid’s school, from your holiday destination to the next book you read, from your school grades to your salary.
Instead of comparison, just set simple goals. Goals based on enough.
Thanks to Seth for the inspiration for today’s post.
A few mates and I get together recently because we’re all battling with a problem, and we figured many brains make light work, or at least good company.
We’ve called it the Good Business Collective. We realised pretty early on that we don’t know much, and are really busy. So, we’re running a self-experiment on discipline and education in the age of the internet.
You can check it out and keep in touch over at goodbusinesscollective.com
When you’re slogging away at something, and then it all comes together, it’s magical.
Until then though, you’re just slogging.
.. until it’s gone.
That’s how the saying goes anyway.
Sometimes though, you forget why you ever had it.
There’s probably a few things we wouldn’t miss if we didn’t have them anymore. Especially if we’d replaced them with connections with people.
Here’s an interesting test: When you make a grand pronouncement, or set out your values, or select a goal, try saying the opposite.
Here’s some examples:
We build high-quality homes.
The opposite would be so say “We build low-quality homes.” Now either, your statement is marketing fluff, or you’re accusing other builders of building low-quality homes. Or saying that legal compliance isn’t high quality.
We value trust, integrity, and honesty.
The opposite statement is that “we value cynicism, deceit and lying”. So do (hopefully) everyone else.
We build affordable homes.
This one’s pretty obvious: “We build unaffordable homes”. Really, what would be the point in that
Now there’s an interesting question…
The term “home base” is usually used in the context of a safe, known space. But, and I’m assuming here, it comes from the home base in baseball/softball.
I played one season of softball. So I’m no expert, but my experience is that home base can mean a variety of things, depending on where you are in the game:
For the player at-bat, it’s the starting point, where the game is most challenging and requires the most skill.
For the batting team, especially those out in the field, home base is the end point, the goal, the target where you score points. Playing is meaningless unless you cross home base.
For the pitcher, home base is both a target (to ideally get a strike) and a strategic distraction (a fake target). The goal is to use it as a reference point to cause the opposition to fail.
For the catcher, it’s kind of an irrelevant patch on the ground while pitching (just catch the ball regardless of where it is), and then one of the most important things to keep in mind during free play (where is it, and is anyone running towards it. Guarding home plate is key!).
“Home base” as it refers to our home, should align with the general usage of the term: a safe, known space. But for many people, it is more like one of the four different experiences above.
It might be the most challenging place in someone’s life, or the area where the most skill is required, because it isn’t safe for them there.
It might be the perceived goal, a target, where ownership is an aspirational thing, because someone’s been told that’s how they’ll be happy and successful.
Someone might not actually care about their home (or someone else’s) at all, because they’re using property as a means to an end, that requires someone else to lose.
Or perhaps, it’s just something someone doesn’t consciously think about, until it gets threatened, because having a home is an assumed constant in life.
Our experiences and relationships with “home base” are all different. Some are broken, and hurt us, or others.
Everyone deserves a home base that is safe and known.
Nothing counts until you put it out into the world. Ideas are good, but action matters most.
The “put wheels on it” phrase raises some interesting visual images when applied to property (a house on wheels anyone?), but the point remains the same:
If you care about energy efficiency, how have you reduced your energy consumption this year?
If you care about tiny houses and living simply, what have you done (or not done) to reduce your consumption in the last month?
If you care about connected living, how many more people do you live with?
Do something. Turn ideas into projects, into actions, into something that gets done. And remember that done doesn’t mean perfect, but it does mean available.