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By Geoff Mulgan, Anders Dybdal & Torben Clausen
Will you be better off five years form now? Will your children grow up to have a better life than you?
In wealthy and industrialized countries, the generations that grew up after the second world war overwhelmingly answered “yes” to these questions.
Those days are gone. A minority now have this fundamental belief in a better future, according to a survey from Pew Research Center.
The trend is most dramatic in Japan. 82 % believe their children will be worse off financially than themselves, and only 12 % believe the opposite to be true.
The situation is almost the same in France, Italy and the UK with more than 70 % choosing this pessimist position.
A new survey in Denmark shows the situation to be somewhat better. Still only 31 % believe their children will be better off financially than themselves. 25 % believe this will not be the case, while the rest are undecided.
The future, of course, will arrive all by itself. We don’t have to do anything. Unless we also want to have a say in what that future will be like.
Do we want global boiling of the oceans and lands, social conflict, massive inequality and authoritarianism, or might we be able to come up with a better idea
Systems don’t care
Ironically, or current crisis can be traced back to massive victories for freedom, wealth and prosperity in large parts of the world.
The end of the cold war shut down the great contest between ideas of the east and west. Since then, a strong dominant western ideology of liberal democracy has referred all competing ideas to the margins.
At the same time, we have developed incredibly advanced systemic configurations of organisations, coupling the private and public sector together to deliver services based on some variation of a new public management bureaucratic paradigm.
Some have been incredibly successful, e.g. the Danish education system bringing large numbers of youth through secondary and tertiary education in the decades following the second world war. Others have been struggling somewhat more, e.g. the NHS in the UK.
All have been modelled on the same basic philosophy of welfare provision, and then reformed from the 1980’s onward, even as western governments have tried to export the same template to developing countries worldwide.
For all its merits, we find it fair to say that this philosophy has exerted a strong gravitational pull on our political discussions, and somewhat confined our political imagination to a very limited spectrum. Which basically is not a problem for the systems, as they are not dependent on competing political visions to perform their functions.
But without these discussions, systems have a fascinating, and terrifying, ability to drive us towards the edge of a cliff at high speed in an entirely care-free way.
This is what is happening now with our paradigm of economic growth when faced with the reality of planetary boundaries. The systems don’t care, unless we make them care.
To do this, we need social and political imagination to envision another and better destination, and to find the will to disturb the systems and bend them towards new
trajectories.
Motivation comes from the heart
One obstacle to this new social and political imagination is that it can never arise out of nowhere. We need something to spark it.
Oftentimes, this is a creative tension between what we have, and what we want. This creates an unfortunate catch-22, when the problem is that we do not know what we want.
To break out of this catch, we need to shift to another level of experience. Instead of looking at the level of discourse, at stated visions and utopian descriptions, we need to mobilize feelings.
This is based on the belief that motivation, on a fundamental level, does not come from the mind. It comes from the heart and from the guts.
Moden cognitive science has clearly shown how this is the case. Many of our thoughts about the world, ourselves and our own experiences are merely our conscious attempts to make sense of what goes on in our emotional, intuitive, and habitual system that actually governs our daily lives.
Can we tab into deeper underlying feelings in our attempt to open up new vistas of imagination and start to see new futures we can move towards?
Hopefully, the answer is yes.
New conversations about belief
A good starting point might be exactly the recognition that we need to believe in something.
Maybe we need a new conversation about what we believe in, now that our ability to build a better world for our children is no longer convincing for many.
Can we open up a new conversation about belief, community, and the desire to build something of meaning?
In recent years, the global community has witnessed inspiring examples of innovative approaches to addressing societal challenges.
For instance, in New Zealand, groundbreaking legislation has granted legal personhood to nature, notably recognizing a specific river and a national park as legal entities.
Similarly, the establishment of a ‘happiness committee’ this year in the state of California demonstrates a proactive effort to prioritize well-being and mental health within governance structures.
India’s efforts to develop a new digital public infrastructure as an alternative to the existing platform model have had huge impact within the country, helping hundreds of millions out of poverty, and is now being spread to other countries with support from the Gates Foundation, underscoring the potential for transformative change on a global scale.
These examples showcase the power of innovative thinking and collaborative efforts in shaping a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
Another very inspiring example is citizen-driven energy communities in the European Union. By allowing citizens to come together within communities to build new energy production facilities and supplying themselves with sustainable energy, they open up a new arena for “citizens actions that contribute to the clean energy transition and advance energy efficiency within local communities”, as stated by the European Commission.
This might not be the grand solution we are looking for at a systemic level. Many existing actors in the energy system believe it to be a dead end.
Nevertheless, in Denmark more than 200 such communities have sprung up in a period of only three years. These initiatives do not come from a prepared blueprint or grand vision. They come from a simple question: Can we do something right here, where we live, to mitigate climate change, save money, strengthen our community, or just feel like we contribute and have a role to play in the grand scheme of history?
As soon as projects begin to mature, ideas about a better future start to form among people. They are driven not by think tanks or political vision statements, but by the practical work of people hoping to create.
Action drives thinking. And from these actions, new visions of the good life can form. Not in the tension between utopia and current reality, but in the tension between what we achieved yesterday, and what we might achieve today and tomorrow if we stick to it.
From these humble beginnings, perhaps we can begin to see the outline of a future we can not only believe in, but also help create.
Torben Clausen is director of development at the change agency Operate. Here he helps customers create change for themselves and for society. Since 2007, he has had a particular focus on sustainability and the green transition. In his role as development director, he is concerned with how we strengthen the forces of change in society as a whole, so that we are equipped to meet the challenges of the coming years within the major societal sectors of climate, welfare and working life.
Anders Dybdal is CEO of the change agency Operate. He has over 15 years of experience in advising foundations, organizations and the public sector on social change. He specializes in change efforts and has experience with many tools for change such as co-creation, stakeholder involvement, campaigns and public affairs. Anders writes about change theory in practice and often acts as an expert in politics and communication in the media.
Geoff Mulgan is a British social scientist, former adviser to British governments, and is, among other things, author of the book ‘Another World is Possible’. He works a lot on how to create and implement good ideas. This includes both practical actions and long-term strategies. Working with national governments, global organisations, NGOs, foundations and companies, he has pioneered a range of concepts used by governments, civil society and business, including anticipatory regulation, experimental approaches, social investment and social investment bonds, open innovation and strategies for the creative economy.
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