We must overcome the notion that we must be regular . . . it robs you of the chance to be extraordinary and leads you to the mediocre.
—Uta Hagen
2016 was a year of seismic change. It wasn’t just the deaths of many well-known celebrities that had filled Facebook streams. The online debates and media recoiled through a range of issues such as the migrant crisis, Brexit, ISIS, Russia, Kim Jong-un’s missiles, and Trump. For years neo-liberal stability had dulled the populace into a secure blanket of apathy and disengagement with political processes. This was the way things were done, and there wasn’t any way in which the ordinary folk could change things. Fastforward to today and a seismic shift has taken place. Whether it is worldwide protests, political rallies, or the swell of populism, what has been and what will be is a vibrant battle-ground of competing ideas and interests. The current instability in the world has reignited debate about how the world should be run and questions about the validity of the world order. People are searching for a new way of doing things. I’m not sure many people are necessarily looking for a new ideology, but there is a growing demand for us to separate ourselves from what had been an accepted norm in the way that humanity conducts itself on planet Earth.
Since the 2008 credit crunch, the world seemed to have entered a permanent state of gloom and depression. There is a dearth of worries consuming individuals and institutions: climate change, austerity, terrorism, and globalization. Sovereign nations are no closer to fighting off the scourge of sovereign debt, and despite evidence of greater levels of material wealth and prosperity still being present, the backlash is a result of increased levels of introspection in regard to the social failings that our current system has created. As the leaders of Western liberal democracies examine the popular uprising and increasing criticism of the systems failings, they are faced with questions about what decisions blew them off course and whether they might have actually been, whisper it, wrong.
Occasionally humanity comes to a crossroads where a new generation of thinkers and writers rise up and begin to question the way the world is organized. These thinkers are no more qualified than your average Joe to bring words of wisdom to the masses. But they are passionate and they believe enough in what they think the society is thinking to stick their heads above the parapet and stand up to be counted. As the world population exceeds the 7.5 billion mark, our voices can easily be lost in the cacophony of sound, especially in a world that has embraced mass communication, enabled by the digital age. The constraints we face are not in our ability to think, nor in our ability to communicate what we think, but rather in our ability to be heard above the noise. To call out in a way that makes society sit up and take notice. To make people care enough to convert the call to arms into action.
In writing this book, it is hoped that the ideas expressed within will seed a movement that the expression of the #changeforgood idea will catch hold and spread like a modern day pandemic. It is hoped that the ideas will reach the ears and hearts of those who are willing to take a stand, and they will join together to demand the world takes notice and makes a shift that puts people first. There is some urgency, to this mission, we cannot and must not delay, “severe resource constraints and dramatically shifting demographics means significant challenges ahead” (CIPD, 2012). We don’t have time to remain idle and pretend that these things don’t matter anymore. Ashford, writing in 2010, stated that “in approximate terms 1% of the population owns 50% of the capital wealth and 10% own 90%. That leaves the remaining 90%, who own little or no capital (half of whom have a negative net worth), with little or no time for thoughtful politics as they scramble for the 10% of wealth that is left.” Today, less than a decade later, the shift in these figures provide a sobering reality check on the rapid growth of inequality in our world. A report by Oxfam in 2016 offered these startling facts:
- 62 people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s population
- In 2015, the 1 percent owned more than the 99 percent
- The wealth of the world’s poorest population had fallen by 38 percent since 2010
(Oxfam, 2016)
If the world is going to avoid a total system failure, catastrophic levels of social unrest, and a chaotic and possibly war-ridden retreat from globalization, change must happen. The question is whether that change can be a good change and whether the change will be for good, preventing us from returning to the way things are today.