For a while now we at Metaphorically Speaking Ltd have been talking about a monumental change taking place in the world. Of course the fact is, things change all the time but we think that a discontinuous change is looming. We don’t know what form the or forms the change will take, or what the outcome might look like but it is one of the reasons we formed the company, to help people through some very changing and challenging times. After all most of us fear change.
We think that events over the past few years are the pre-shocks to the big quake that is coming. Let’s examine some of those key events.
The 2008 and continuing financial crises. The banking system supported by Western Governments built a house of cards by creating financial instruments on which no one knew where the real debt actually lay. Western Governments were more than happy to take the tax from the profits of the banks whilst not bothering to care too much about where that money came from, hence the lack of regulation. In 2008, the house of cards collapsed with failure of Lehman Brothers Bank being the catalyst.
The reaction of Governments were to immediately bail out, or shore up banks, who did not know what or where the liabilities were or where they lay. These Governments who in normal times were happy for the markets to decide who survived or not under the capitalist system, intervened. Given the huge amount of money injected into the banks, it may have been cheaper just to compensate individuals rather than propping up failure, that said we haven’t calculated the figures.
Whilst the banks were having a fun time creating new financial instruments to make money, US and European Governments were having a good old time spending money that they didn’t have. Most of this money, at least in the case of the UK was spent on social projects - throwing money at problems, without fully thinking through what the root causes of the problem might be.
Meantime, socially people began to rely on what their government could do for them. What did the government do for them? Well it gave them rights and undeserved / unearned freedoms. The last Labour government produced more laws than any preceding government in history. A lot of these laws were about the rights of the individual, what they were entitled to, what they should be protected from, what risks should be avoided. This of course has come at a huge cost. What was forgotten in this orgy of rights was accountability and responsibility. This has led to a culture of reliance on the state and risk avoidance at all costs. It has and continues to lead to a breakdown in family life particularly that strata of society euphemistically called the underclass.
The symptoms of this are now breaking out into full view manifesting as the very recent riots. Before all blame is thrown at this corner of society, let’s also look at the other end of the scale. MP’s expenses, just because it could be done - apparently within the rules - doesn’t make it morally right.
Other examples include the big businesses, have you ever had a problem with a massive company and tried to redress it through their call centres? How does it feel? We nearly always come away feeling angry, frustrated and disappointed, disappointed in the lack of care for a customer, after all we are one or two in a million, and in the next week several hundred more will come along anyway. All they have to do is put a celebrity on an advert and our hypnotized culture will want the latest gadget.
Our leaders and we mean political, moral and business leaders have let us down over many decades. We have a culture of celebrity, instant gratification and greed. If we can’t afford it now, just borrow more or as has happened in the riots just take it anyway.
We no longer (and haven’t for a while now) educate our children properly. Education is by which means alone we can become members of regularly organised society. Family breakdown sets the scene, many children do not come from a two parent families and those that do often do not have the time given to them that they should have. Our schools have become political footballs, with endless measures, resulting in a tick box educational system. Children are taught to pass exams rather than understand the pure pleasure in learning. More money than ever before is pumped into our schools, resulting in even more children not being able to read and write, a horrible damning inditement in an age of knowledge.
As His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama says in the “Paradox of Our Age“ we have bigger houses but smaller families, more conveniences but less time, we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge but less judgement, more experts but more problems; more medicines but less healthiness. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbour. We build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever but have less communication. We have become long on quantity but short on quality. These are times of fast foods but slow digestion. Tall man but short character; steep profits but shallow relationships. It is a time when there is much in the room.”
We believe that more disruptive crises are likely to happen, perhaps being a catalyst for more wider social unrest, much of that being very ugly.
It is a gloomy view and no doubt there is more significant and profound change to come. But does it need to be doom and despair. We strongly believe where there is crisis, there is danger yes, but also opportunity.
Human beings are the most magically creative beings this planet has ever seen, everyday we solve problems that have never been solved before, every problem is different, because it is in a different time and different context. Yet we have a brain that finds solutions to these challenges.
All we need to do is think differently and we all have the skills to do this. The answers lie in us being open, to be brave and acknowledge the shadows but know that we can be much greater together in the light. After all we deal with changing situations all the time and as a species we have dealt with discontinuous change successfully in the past and can do so again. The place to start is in the education of our children, teach them how to learn and how to think, to care for each other and the environment. The rest will take care of itself.
