Why Don’t We Make The World Better? is a little book about how our brains derail progress, tactics to watch out for, and how we can be better change guides. Humanity is travelling through the pass to a better story, but our own programming gets in the way.
You can find the info and sales page here. But let me use this post to expand a bit on where it came from.
I’ve always been interested in why the approach of ‘here is an issue, and here is how we can solve it’ doesn’t work on most humans. That came from time in the environmental movement in the ’80s and ’90s, where we got frustrated about why the things that were obvious to us didn’t catch on with the public. I became extra interested after 2010, as here in the UK we got a government that clearly had pushing back necessary change as one of its core reasons for being. The changing world generated resistance.
That period also coincided with me getting into personal development, and gradually opening up new pieces of thinking, and new perspectives on social change.
From about 2012 I wrote a bunch of blog posts exploring this area, and a couple of ebooks — Crowd/Control and Planet of the Bubble People.
Now I’ve collected that content together and reworked, reordered and expanded it. The aim is to make it available in one place, give the ideas a chance to be heard, and hopefully get it to more people.
It’s still very relevant. Possibly even more so, as we’re starting to turn more after a long period of trudging through the trenches. The failure of the old story, and the hollowness of the people still trying to push it, are ever more obvious. People are asking bigger questions. But they still need a lot of help to get out of the mud.
The book is made of short sections, 1-3 pages each, covering a idea and then moving on. I’ve liked this approach since reading Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art. When you get the message, hang up the phone. It’s less demanding on the reader, allowing nibbles whenever they have spare time and concentration. (It’s easier on the writer too!)
The content is organised into five parts.
- The big picture — a quick zoomed-out look at context.
- Planet of the bubble people — how we’re driven by worldviews and other brain shenanigans.
- Interesting times — change, the world we’re in, and how people are reacting to it.
- The forest of bad signposts — tricks and tactics that get used to derail change.
- Change guides, apply within — things to know, for people who want to make things better (and look after themselves in the process).
The book is most relevant to people working in social change or human wellbeing/potential, who get frustrated about why it’s hard for society to move forward and want better ways to get through the undergrowth. If that’s you, I hope you’ll check it out.