Broken Open in the Year of Great Disruptions
2020 may well be remembered as the Year of Great Disruptions, and we’re only half way through it.
Bushfires.
Covid.
#Icantbreathe.
Each rupture has been unique, yet connected and compounding. These are pages upon pages of history being written; watershed moments with a Before and After punctuating a world that will never be quite the same.
In Australia we alone endured the bushfires, though we felt the world’s love, fear, sadness and solidarity (including firefighters who volunteered from other countries and even tragically lost their lives).
The second rupture, covid-19, has been a truly global challenge. So far in Australia we’ve come through better than most other countries. We’re grateful for that fact; aware that in terms of loss of life at least, it could have been so much worse. Yet globally, experts warn the virus has not peaked yet. The Federal Government is winding back its support payments. We’re feeling uncertain. The overarching sense of community solidarity and collective sacrifice that steered us well so far is going to be harder to hang onto now.
The third rupture again transcends borders. The filmed murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, and the movement it’s sparked all around the world, is still raw. Its impact is still unfolding in real time. While there have been historic protests in all 50 states of the US, it’s not just the US fighting for its soul. This moment is holding up a mirror to Australia too.
New and old and tender and hard conversations are coming to the surface – from the kitchen table to the boardroom table; online, on the streets, inside our organisations and on the airwaves. It is far too early to map the ripple effects or lasting significance of protests in Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, Germany or the UK – much less in the US, though it’s encouraging to see the beginning of structural reforms.
We’ve felt it. Something is cracking.
Indifference. Timidity. Complacency. Ignorance. Disconnection.
2020 is not breaking us. It’s breaking us open.
Radical love
Where we have risen to the challenge of these ruptures so far, it’s because we’ve chosen to elevate radical love above all else.
Love for neighbours, communities and homes; love for nature and the animals we share this earth with. Love for our fellow humans’ lives and livelihoods. Love for the lives of people we will never meet, especially our elderly and vulnerable.
If work is love made visible, we’ve done a lot of work this year, when so much else has been stalled or cancelled.
If work is love made visible, we’ve done a lot of work this year, when so much else has been stalled or cancelled. We’re still at the beginnings of love made visible for our sisters and brothers who have been denied, traumatised, dispossessed and diminished generation upon generation.
We’ve got a lot still to do.
In his Anzac Day address to the nation, our Prime Minister shared a lesson he had learned from a veteran: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” It’s good advice, advice we hope he returns to often moving forward.
In this Year of Great Disruptions, we’ve gone far where we’ve done three things: worked together, listened to the experts and put people first. These three simple principles have steered us through scary and uncertain times in the first half of this year, and they can continue to guide us if we refuse to abandon them.
They offer us a simple litmus test for government, business, community and civil society leadership going forward. Are we working together? Are we listening to experts (including those with lived experience)? Are we putting people first?
In other words, does this solution come from a place of problem-solving or point-scoring? Have we, as leaders, been open, listening, collaborating in good faith towards common goals; or is the real goal to shift the blame, wedge the opposition? Have we listened deeply to the people who know the most or have lived it first hand and followed their advice; or are we choosing the comfort of ignorance, bias and prejudice? Does this policy put people and their wellbeing first (including our fundamental dependence on a healthy natural world), or is it primarily serving the wishlists of vested interests?
These moments have shown us that most people do not need to be persuaded to care. Our challenge now is not persuasion, it’s activation. It’s self-efficacy. It’s believing we can play a meaningful role in solutions, even in our learning and inevitable imperfection. It’s building on, rather than denying, our strengths. And it’s signalling to our leaders in government and business that we need them to do this too.
Our human species is wired for connection and cooperation. We are literally born to love each other. So what does it look like, knowing what we know, to operationalise this love?
A great many things are unravelling, so they can be reMADE.
Systems that privilege one group over another, and which encourage the looting of people or planet for profit, are being brought into the light. We will not do it overnight or perfectly, but we will do it. We have already seen that everything can change, and we know there is no going back. We are here to understand, dismantle and transform that which does not serve all of us.
We will go far if we work together, listen to the experts (including those with lived experience) and put people first.
We will go far if we set as our goals healthy, flourishing, robust communities – worthy of our lives, faithful to our values, respectful to all people and nature.
We will go far if we are willing to abandon the safety and predictability of our silos and our fear of getting it wrong; even that comfortable form of pain we call cynicism.
We are here to usher in a paradigm shift based on love, care and the best of what we have learned so far.
We are here to roll out the welcome mat for our children’s children.
We are here to make the vision of an Australia reMADE so ordinary, so commonsense, our grandkids will wonder why we ever had to speak it at all.
LILIAN SPENCER
Lilian Spencer is the Communications Lead for Australia reMADE. She believes that the secret to change is to ‘focus your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’
