Now less than ever

Maybe it's time to ease up on ourselves a bit

Now more than ever, we must continue to fight for justice and systemic change.

Now more than ever, our communities are in crisis, can’t you see? There is inequality and violence everywhere we look. The cracks in our system are widening, threatening to engulf all unless we act with decisive urgency. We are on the edge of an abyss.

Now more than ever, we need a new breed of leaders who can show us the way. Look at how awful our current leaders are. None of them are good enough. They’re all narcissistic sociopaths. They’re barely human. You must not be like them.

You need to be courageous but humble. You need to be decisive and inclusive. You’d better not leave anyone behind because now more than ever, we need leaders who can show us a new way, a better way. But not too much better because you also need to demonstrate authentically that you’re enough, so you don’t make everyone else feel threatened by being a bold trailblazer.

We need to put pressure on people to change, and remind everyone that the work is never done, now more than ever.

We need people to resist the pressure to change, and remind them that they are enough, now more than ever.

Anyone else just like… really tired?

This little throwaway phrase has become ubiquitous in public discourse. In speeches, on social media, in thought leadership articles from major publications.

And yeah, I get it. It sounds sexy, it sounds inspiring in that generic hand-wavey sort of way, and it’s meant to be that clarion call to action. If not now, when?!

But contained within that shiny veneer is a somewhat insidious message: “None of what we’re doing is enough.” Taken at its word, ‘now more than ever’ suggests two challenges, neither of which are particularly optimistic:

1. Whatever was done before, it was wholly insufficient because we need it ‘more than ever’; and / or

2. The demands of the issues we face are growing ‘more than ever’, far outstripping our capacity and capability to address them

The problem I have with all this isn’t just about the language and a case of replacing the words with something else; I think it’s emblematic of a broader societal challenge in which we keep ratcheting up the stakes to agitate for change.

Yes, there are major challenges in the world. Yes, there are some pressing issues that we should all be concerned about. But a ‘now more than ever’ mindset represents a notion that we must always be doing more, which can add a burden of guilt to an environment where tensions are already high, where people feel anxious and stressed.

Is it any wonder that people across the spectrum are burned out?

Adding to the cognitive bias of negativity

I attended a public forum last year to discuss community connections. The MC started with the declaration:

“Now more than ever, we face a crisis in our community. We are becoming more fractured than ever. And thus, we are gathered here today to discuss what we can do.”

Across our respective breakout tables, everyone began diagnosing what they perceived the issues to be, ranging from lack of government funding, poor leadership, media bias, etc, the usual suspects.

Frustrated by what I felt was the repetitive nature of discussions, I asked the forum:

“Is there really a crisis in our community? On what basis are we making this claim? It strikes me that the more we tell ourselves there’s a crisis, the more we’re going to see problems. However, I refuse to believe there aren’t good things already happening in our community, achieved by people who don’t want to think of themselves as leaders.”

In response to this provocation, someone on my table shared that his local pub runs a family day every weekend, open to all members of the community. It’s hands down one the most multicultural events in his neighbourhood, and he was proud of it.

Herein lies my issue with the broader ‘now more than ever’ narrative that we’re steeped in:

The more we focus on negativity, the more we reinforce our collective cognitive bias towards only seeing negativity.

Well-intentioned or not, we have created an environment of fear and inadequacy for communities and individuals alike. The more we tell ourselves that what we’re doing is not enough, the more we will think of ourselves as inadequate. The more we focus on how racist / sexist / bigoted the world is and train ourselves to detect the slightest infractions, the more we see these behaviours everywhere.

We know that people don’t thrive when placed in constantly high-stress and high-pressure environments, and yet in our quest to ‘change the world’, this is precisely the environment we have created for ourselves. Furthermore, I would also argue that this type of pressure is why we might get knee-jerk, surface-level initiatives from governments and organisations alike, because it becomes more important to be seen to be doing something quickly, rather than giving ourselves space to take stock.

And the saddest part about all of this is that we’re doing it to ourselves.

Now less than ever

I sometimes wonder if we’ve forgotten how to see good in each other.

I wonder if we’ve forgotten to remind ourselves that people are — on the whole — probably trying to do their best.

I wonder if we’ve forgotten how to practice patience, forgiveness, curiosity, and love, even in the face of adversity.

And if we as adults have forgotten how to do this, then what are we telling the next generation of children? Are we telling them that fear and danger lurk around every corner? That they need to be mindful of everything they say? Oh, they also need to be the generation to save humanity?

Or perhaps — now more than ever — we can start to ease up on ourselves a little.

• What can we stop doing to make progress?

• What if we don’t need to ‘keep up the pressure’ and instead let things take their due course?

• How might that influence the type of change we want to see in the world?

• How can we shift our cognitive biases, to take off our lens of negativity and inadequacy, and instead recognise all the good that is happening in the world?

To paraphrase Coco Chanel:

So, what does this stir up for you? Does it resonate? What is something you can do less of?

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Note from Scott: Hey readers, I normally don’t like to ask, but if you enjoyed this article (and my overall ramblings), I would really appreciate a quick ‘like’! It does help support me and the publication, and enables me to keep writing.