The Upward Path

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Politics wandering in the story desert

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Footprints in desert

I’ve become more aware of story in the last few years. And it’s been ever clearer that recent UK national politics is all about story.

The Conservatives constructed a mythology and hammered it in with brutish repetition. Labour failed to build a distinctive story that people wanted to follow. The Liberal Democrats spoke about a middle ground – a space that was scarcely visible from outside.

UKIP told of the individual under siege by a hostile world. The Green Party (which is the closest fit for me) actually had a story of transformation, but made slow headway against the established counterstory of being fringe and cranky.

The traditional media pursued its own shiny stories. It decided what it wanted to tell and made it happen, bouncing between establishment and soap opera.

Now the Conservatives have been telling stories of control and betrayal. And Labour have a guy with kind of a story, but many of them are fighting to remain storyless.

We need a story that includes us as individuals and builds in our value and wellbeing. One of vision and aspiration for the country we live in. One that takes on and resolves the challenges of our time, rather than spinning them off into a corner where they make us uneasy. We want to be able to celebrate a journey where we overcame the obstacles in our way and emerged better for it.

There are people with the skills to help this happen. As the need grows, they are emerging and need our support. They understand the role of leader as guide.

I wish there were more of them in politics. But too many there are caught up in the corridors of their own little world, rather than steering by the stars of the wider one.

People need stories to make sense of their lives, to know what they’re part of, to see a good journey for themselves. That gap creates stress that manifests as fear and anger. We’ve been seeing it through the EU referendum. Maybe it’s an inevitable consequence of transitional times: that’s the big picture view. But people live in the small picture, and get hurt there.

If you have part of a better picture, don’t wait to tell it. And call for others to tell it too.

 

The holes in the Earth Summit

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Pushing the Earth uphill

It turned out the Earth Summit was more of a foothill.

This was a huge event back in 1992. We hoped it would lead to fixing everything.

Looking back I can see it was inevitable that it didn’t get that traction. It didn’t have a big enough picture. In the 1990s we simply didn’t know the right things to create widespread change.

But now our toolkit is better.

The Earth Summit

This was the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in Rio de Janeiro. At the time it was notable for bringing so many world leaders together, and also for the involvement of groups from all sectors of society in lobbying for change and running a programme of parallel activities. Campaign groups were there, of course, but so were local government, indigenous communities and many others.   [Read more…] about The holes in the Earth Summit

If you want to change the world, stop

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Do you think people are rational decision‑makers?

That is: you put facts in front of them about problems and solutions, have a reasoned debate, persuade them of a different point of view, then they change their position and their behaviour.

Head leaf graphicIf so, you have to let go of that idea.

Seriously. Do you want to make progress? That set of assumptions, conscious or unconscious, will keep you stuck for years.

It’s what we were doing in the environmental movement in the 1990s. Back then we didn’t know any different. Psychology and marketing weren’t mass-accessible in the way they are now.

Here’s the thing. Humans have the capacity to be rational decision-making creatures. But for most of us, most of the time, we’re not. We run on habits, worldviews, prejudices, emotions.

If you’re a person biased toward rational problem-solving, like I am and many of my friends in environmental groups were, this is confusing and frustrating. But no less true.

You still see it all the time. People have presented arguments to a government, company or individual and encountered what seems to be a stubborn refusal to shift. They’re treating it as a debating society, and wondering why it didn’t work.

From that frame of reference the main explanation available is that the other side has not understood – either because they’re stupid or because you haven’t explained it properly. So you try again (and again).

But if you step back you can see that what’s really going on is messy psychology at work, and plugging away in rational explainer mode will never succeed.

I’m not saying you should stop opposing bad things and presenting arguments. It’s important to have that out there where people can see it. It’s important that people doing bad things don’t get it all their own way, and that people inclined to question can see they’re not alone.

But in most cases winning a debate is not the point where friction is stopping you moving forward.

That is rooted in people’s conditioning, personal identity, tribal connections, how they’re used to things being done, what they value, how they suppress those values to fit in socially, and all that sort of stuff.

Welcome to the frontier of the 21st century.

 

Want to read more? This post became the first section of my book Planet of the Bubble People.

 

Facing the barricades kindly: the mental inflammation epidemic

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It sometimes seems like people are queueing up to reject attempts to make the world better.

Brain conflictWhen I’ve been thinking about barriers to change, worldview bubbles and all that, there seems to be one thing at the base of it all.

Our brains have a directive to keep their processing workload down. They use all sorts of tricks to protect themselves.

There’s a marketing principle I came across for the first time recently: “The confused mind says no.”

When too much thinking is required, we reject the whole thing rather than working through it. But how does the level of ‘too much’ get set, and how do different people react?

One way to look at it is inflammation that’s built up over time.

Inflammation-type processes

Do you know what a panic attack is? I experienced it a couple of times several years ago, and responded in typical fashion by getting a book and learning more about it. (Panic Attacks by Christine Ingham – recommended if you’re interested.)

A panic attack happens when something that’s not actually that serious triggers your system into a fight or flight response. Adrenaline is released, heartbeat and breathing increase, senses heighten, etc – the things your body would need to fight bears or run away from them.  [Read more…] about Facing the barricades kindly: the mental inflammation epidemic

Agents of S.T.O.R.Y.

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Stories at sea graphic

We’re living in a time when old stories of the world are breaking down.

More and more people are seeing and feeling it, as a sense of unease at the edges or a head-on reality gap collision. People are hunting for ways of making sense of the world that they can believe in.

And those of us with messages to share need to help them get there. The world we want is waiting to be made. But only if enough of us manage to make the jump.  [Read more…] about Agents of S.T.O.R.Y.

The upward path – video blog

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It’s an old metaphor. The fork in the road. The point of choice. Do we take the upward path to the world we want to see, or the downward path of fear and short-term convenience?

From personal development work helping individuals to campaigning to influence governments, if you are helping to make things better you are part of the same big picture. And you need to get better at broadcasting your messages over the noise.

 

 

I wanted to ‘nudge’ myself into doing some video work, and I thought the best place to start was with this.

‘The upward path’ started as a bit of a placeholder concept while I was working on other things. But I’ve come to realise it’s a pretty good label for the big picture that is my ‘why’ – and that it’s important to talk about in its own right as part of my own body of messages.

(I’ve also been sharing word-graphics on Twitter under #upwardpath – and Facebook with the tag used less consistently!)

There was a false start with uncooperative technology, and a surprising amount of resistance around being visible, but I think it’s turned out pretty well. Do leave feedback about the content or cinematography in the comments!