Hunting Monsters

When I look at the world, I see the signs of splintering all around - listen well, and you can almost hear the creak of the ship’s timber under the immense pressure of the freezing ocean.

The liberal order that has been the theatre of my life has lost much of its legitimacy. It is facilitating a genocide. It has retreated from climate action, re-centering on a fossil future. It has broken its own rules about trade, immigration, and international law.

Oligarchs tinker and laugh and play with lives. When our leaders speak, no one believes them anymore.

And the new lead actors on stage parading a profoundly different sensibility to my own.

“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters" - Antonio Gramsci’s words from within Mussolini’s fascist machine of the 1930s, echo down the decades.

This is the backdrop of our summit attempt on the Himalayan planetary challenges of climate, the biosphere, and inequality… insistently demanding visionary cooperation, even as the safety systems we established precisely for that purpose are dismantled. Even as the hourglass runs empty.

A future of photons and electrons beckons. Of eliminating plastics, and closing tax loopholes. Of holding the worst of criminals to account. A renewed preservation of the life-systems that sustain us. A more equitable world.

But the tools we have to usher them in seem built for a time that is behind us.

I would like to hear from folks how you’re thinking about this season we’re in. About your decisions, alignments, sense of risks, and of your priorities.

I have a three-part plan for monster-hunting.

Part 1: Embrace the Discomfort

The ordered world lulls us.

In Australia I marched to the regular drumbeat of regulation, rating tools, and robust institutions. A wonderful grounding in discipline and expertise, but also like climbing a ladder: each new rung coming into view, with just the straightening of a leg. Leaving the industrialized ‘North’ to explore cities,  climate, and conservation in other places has been more like climbing a rope, demanding calloused hands, balance, and core strength. It has been less secure than the Australian corporate machine, and has asked more of my creative thinking from first principles.

For instance, I see the bewilderment from my Australian friends at the capture of the ‘good side’ of politics by the fossil gas industry and the Israel lobby. Perhaps a reliance on robust institutions doesn’t always serve us that well? I think the first part of navigating this time of monsters is building the core strength and calloused hands through the discomfort of working in unfamiliar places, where you cannot assume the institutions are built for you.

The first pillar: I want to build a significant part of my personal experience in unfamiliar places, where I have some struggles, barriers, and obstacles to overcome. To live and work in a diverse range of places, and extensively in the Global South if I can. To work with the big institutions, but never fully within them, always one foot in and one foot out.

Part 2: Reinforce the Intimate

My second pillar is to invest heavily in intimacy, authenticity, and the personal connections that will make us all more resilient in a long stormy season. I believe the biggest ask of us in life is to learn to love well. That’s a lifelong task of vulnerability, friendship, giving, and accepting.

The most eye-opening outcome of a recent personal resilience plan though, was that the most critical vulnerability I have is that of the most vulnerable person that I love. We can only be resilient when we build others’ resilience. My personal theory of resilience at the intimate level is a combination global mobility, capital, property and infrastructure, community, and relationships. My growing perspective is that  to build one’s own resilience is not enough, we must build a network of resilience.

And so the second pillar: invest is deep, strong, loving relationships and build the resilience of that whole network in a very intentional way: through means, location, systems, and care.

Part 3: Eyes Up!

Don’t navel gaze.

We often think our chosen path is the most important one: climate change, human rights, non-profit work, conservation, research… the list goes on. In near perfect contradiction, we also often feel that our little corner of things is not impactful enough, not ambitious enough, not professional enough.

Both are wrong. For the mountain this high, every effort is critical. And every effort is worthy.

If you work for profit or not, if you believe in directing capital better, or in the primacy of the state. If you organize politically or if you vote twice a decade. If you think climate is more urgent than conservation. Or vice versa. You are welcome. We cannot afford to push people out of the tent.

Keep your eyes up and keep them on the destination. Our future world of photons and electrons, ecosystems, and equity.

We must have people of all stripes, with all manner of views, who can see that picture, talking to everyone, of all stripes, nationalities, and views, who can’t see it yet. Work with China. Or the US. Both. All. Work with corporates. And government. And the non-profit sector. Work with institutions. Do research. Do politics. Do design. Or finance or law. Be liberal. Be conservative. Be socialist. Or progressive.

But keep your eyes up.

That’s my third pillar. And know that as long as you’re stepping towards that future, you’re adding your bit to the greatest task humanity has ever faced.