‘A Greater Understanding of Fragility’
I have a confession to make. One cold early Covid night after putting the kids to bed, I gazed into the unfolding fear filling my screens. The iffy images of army preparing for martial law, the eerie iphone footage of spontaneous choirs in quarantine and gradually I lost it, just a little bit.
A creeping crisis was taking hold elsewhere, in a very stark contrast to the UK’s ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ schoolboy bluster. And in the absence of knowing what to do, I admit that I shopped the shit out of it. I’m embarrassed to say that I became one of the dark horsemen of the shopcalypse.
I once nearly worked on Pandemic Response for Public Health England, so spent enough time with official documents to know what unprepared looked like. So on that cold confused night a few weeks ago my panic order was fuelled by a premium blend of social media speculation, my recall of our systemic inadequacy identified by PHE, and research I’ve been doing into the social collapse that climate crisis will bring, as food supply systems break. That calamity cocktail was amplified by my professional experience of our leaders who very rarely run things well, a glass or two of wine and the irrationality that having small humans sleeping upstairs unleashes on a parent, especially one who lives alone.
I’m embarrassed now and was surprised a few days later when my mega-order arrived. Had I really bought beef jerky? (Yes, because I’d read the guidance on the Homeland Security website!!) A lot of toothpaste? And a lifetime supply of Mini Cheddars? And candles? Candles?! Strategic it was not. I stashed most of it in a cupboard (Ate the Cheddars) wondered how I’d ever get my hummus-expectant kids to eat tinned mackerel, and tried to pretend I wasn’t the flawed human being I obviously am.
But I suspect we all felt something similar. I know I wasn’t alone in a sense of inner buffering looking at images of empty shelves in Sainsbury’s as we gradually realised everything we took for granted as permanence was just bumsqueakingly tight logistics overnight, every night. Our system of ‘just in time’ conjuring tricks revealed itself to be a similar premise as the Tooth Fairy, hopefully here in the morning. One day you’re browsing between quails’ eggs and Quality Street, and the next you’re begging for the last bag of flour in Brixton and there’s not a paracetamol between here and Portsmouth.
Bare supermarket shelves in Britain, on one hand, suck it up and see how it feels for billions of people everyday, but on the other hand, what the actual fuck? Then magically trillions of government pounds appeared overnight, after years of ‘essential’ austerity, and systemic inability to pay for issues more statistically life-threatening, from suicide to social inequlity.
How fascinating those first five o’clock briefings were, what a time to be alive, what a spirit of camaraderie… and then our neighbour was laid off and then our best friend was furloughed and then our colleague got hideously ill and then all our work disappeared and then we didn’t qualify for government support and then, we could only pay the mortgage until May and then our mum was on the phone trying not to cry and then, shit, then it was still only Wednesday.
And suddenly, as a reader of my last post observed; we’ve gained ‘a greater understanding of our fragility’ intrinsically as humans, but connected to the extrinsic taken-for-granted, precarious patchwork we depend on. The line between possible and impossible proved paper thin and what was once immovable, seemed malleable, the earth slipped, slightly.
I’ve called for change, created change, inspired change, and then (be careful what you wish for) here’s what change feels like, and my first honest response was panic, and then possibility.
Once I’d made sure there was still hummus in the shops, I wanted to know if I was alone in having a sense of optimism (knowing I damn well wasn’t alone in anxiety). So I asked.
My first attempt at conversation beyond the wallpaper of doom prompted such debate I made a survey to curate replies (but didn’t realise free Typeform capped at 100) so it’s a limited but insightful view I’d like to share. In essence they animate Scott Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence: “The ability to hold in mind opposed ideas and still retain the ability to function.” i.e. ‘This is awful, I’m shit scared, but I’m excited it might be a very good thing.’
Here’s how the conversation unfolds, and where I think it might take us…
What gives you hope during this crisis?
There were two key themes. First is solidarity. “People’s ingenuity, creativity and willingness to help people in need — close and afar” or just as well said: “It’s a collective experience that we’re all in together and will solve together. Forever changed, together.”
The sense of society rising becoming a virtuous circle, courage calling to courage everywhere. “People’s innate goodness, and desire to choose light and love when given the choice and move past their fight or flight urges.” Or as it was summed most simply: “Humanity”.
As well as strength from solidarity, the majority also found courage in cautious optimism. “The enormity and scale of impact… it’s not about updating plans or “evolving” stuff. This is the time for big, fuck-off systemic change that might actually work for ‘us’ all.” Right on, right on.
In all, 85 out of 100 people made this point, and though this sample was drawn from my filter bubble and entirely unrepresentative, it’s clear that when the shit goes down, if we’re gonna be ready, then we need each other. If we can hold onto this truth, maybe we’ll remember that community and connection should be the source code of recovery.
So applied optimism does have a role, and if you want a curated daily dose, sign up to Silver Linings here. If I had to summarise all 100 answers it’d be this: “People are literally fucking amazing and seemingly capable of anything. Perhaps, while the great machine of modern life is on hold, the spirit of humanity that’s inspiring and connecting us could become the gravitational centre of what comes next?”
FYI, there was no mention of leadership providing hope, neither business, political, spiritual or social. In fact, outside of a handful of honourable mentions for people’s own bosses, the role of leadership only came up in the next question, when people expressed their fears.
Could the absence of three-dimensional leadership be an invitation? When I watch the daily briefing, I see a humanity gap between science and politics, I’d like a fourth plinth offering an option of enlightenment acknowledging the existential, as well as lecturing us on the essential.
My next question was about fear. The conversation went overwhelmingly where you’d expect. Most people worry about family and friends, especially elderly parents. A strong sense of sadness and separation adds to underlying emotional anxiety. Most of us are aware that more lives are lost every day from other intractable issues that we don’t spend £2 trillion on overnight, but it’s important to acknowledge the primal and traumatising fear a lot of people are living with during what’s well described as The Great Humbling.
So far, so human. The second most widely held fear wasn’t what I was expecting, while the business and political agenda has already got its gear stick stuck in ‘getting back to business as usual.’ my small samples secondl greatest fear was, “That we just blame the people we usually blame and then go back to doing what we always did.” The risk of “Not learning, not changing behaviour” was cited again and again.
The whole world is now speaking a different language about values, what matters, and ‘the greater good’ is a phrase that three months ago felt archaic and now feels exactly right.
I published my piece on premature optimism a week into lockdown, worried about a backlash, only to find my readers ahead of me. Not just concerned we wouldn’t learn; they were specific in identifying the threat if we don’t take a lesson from this; “Vaccines being seen as the only solution, and coronavirus the only problem”, “Society and commerce missing the big turning that offers something different”, “That we go back to BAU when nature is giving us the chance to reset.”
Thirdly, in almost equal measure there was another concern: “Increased fear levels and more restraints and impositions upon freedom and choice,” sums up a more than half of the answers received. I know for some this begins to tip into conspiracy but the comments I received were considered and evidenced. This is a topic for a coming essay, but for anyone with an eye on this, I’d recommend reading a short history of how tyranny rises by Timothy Snyder.
Lastly while there was a shared WTF about England’s political leadership, several other positive examples were pinpointed, e.g; countries pledging a green recovery, and predominantly female leaders acting with empathy and decisiveness, comparing Merkel and Hancock sums it up.
So, in the absence of leaders we need, it’s time to figure out the leaders we can be. It’s time to ask what part we will play, role-modeling whatever shape we want a re-set to take, at home, at work, in ways we’ve maybe never thought we needed to step into before, maybe we do now.
One step at a time, right? Who knows what the fuck they’re doing in ‘normal’ times? But over the next few weeks, as the conversation deepens, I hope to get practical ideas, while there’s time to incubate them. Because it’s actions that matter, what remains is what counts. Over the years I’ve seen that change works best coming from a place of realistic optimism, fuelled by the energy it generates when I show people how to write their own rules. So while it’s a little early to expect clear ideas, it’s not too soon to find common patterns in our opinions, which could provide foundations for what we want to do differently.
The work I’ve done, with Alex Barker under the banner of Be More Pirate has one truly unique element: the spirit of mutiny. Professional Rule-Breaking (as we call it) is no longer wrong when cracked systems need us to take accountability. Mutiny becomes the responsible thing to do. New rules enacted as small bold actions rather than big unwieldy ideas allow us to navigate a new cours, and replot our way when we veer off track.
And when you encounter the argument that ‘normality’ will return, that optimism is naive or you feel a personal pull back to how things were, the question has to be, was ‘normal’ good enough anyway? The appetite for a reset and not a pause, isn’t borne of Covid, it’s been growing for years, so it’s worth considering what we’d like to hang on to, and what, like Elsa, we’re willing to let go.
For years I’ve been calling out business as usual and how it’s needed an engine upgrade. I’m hardly alone in that. There has been a sense, at least since 2001, oh and 2005, oh and 2009, and oh yeah 2016… that disruption is now just the water we swim in. And yet humans adapt to anything. Crises come and go. Usually, when we’re sold the promise ‘this will change everything’ it turns out to be a lie, but there are unexpected, less announced moments that do. But each time, business as usual returns all powerful. So why, and how, will this time be any different? This crisis threatens change, but the thing with real change is that it’s more of an active choice than we like to lazily believe. Will we seek to affect it, or be affected by it? To look on and look after ourselves, or step in and act in service? It’s the perennial choice of optimism vs pessimism.
There’s a vulnerability to optimism that’s often misunderstood as impractical or wide-eyed, but the exposure of remaining optimistic sometimes makes it the brave choice. The cost of taking a risk on hope is huge, when hope’s all you’ve got. Which means there can be greater good in innocently imaginaning the possible, than in sagely succumbing to the inevitable. But screw taking sides, right now we need to embrace the paradox, to surrender to fear, to face hard facts and to have steel balls of optimism.
Optimism based on positivity is like building your house on low-lying wetlands with poor flood defences (to update the parable) but optimism hardened in the fire of fear might be the rock we need. A battle-scarred but brave optimism, the Sarah Connor kind, that knows governments screw up, a return to ecocidal consumerism remains the most likely outcome, that business and tech will over promise and under deliver and those with less, will suffer more. This is optimism with grit, that knows it’s the wrong time to dodge the only part of the fight that’s not yet decided: the potential for some lasting good.
So, please help me continue the conversation. I’m not trying to draw preemptive conclusions but I do want to look for patterns in our opinions. In all the answers to my previously asked questions, one clear pattern was the appetite to do something to catalyse the moment. That gives us something to work towards. I’d like us to put together a path, piece by piece, rather than wake up and find that a bypass has been built in the name of progress on the plot of imagination where we were beginning to consider something better.
This time (now I’ve upgraded my Typeform account), I’d like to ask three questions, looking for one-line answers around what you’ve adapted to do differently that you might just want to hang on to, or potentially more importantly, what you might be willing to let it go.
Typeform link here: https://sam774431.typeform.com/to/Y5qbor
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I’m a writer, social entrepreneur and consultant, mostly working on sustainability, social innovation and what I call Professional Rule-Breaking, you can sign up to an irregular newsletter of inspiration & insubordination at www.samconniff.com and my first book is out now: www.bemorepirate.com