What do you hope for in the future?

It seems we behave the way we behave, driven by habit, conditioning, the rewards and trade-offs of modern life, sometimes just by a need to get by. We get the things we need, or believe we need, and that we can afford, to get through another day. We know there is a problem with this pattern, but there are always problems in thr world.

The problems of finite resoruces, species loss, climate crisis, all feel diconnected from our actions (even if a rational part of us knows it is all connected). Any connection that does exist, is lost in a complex machine, a composite of millions of causes and effects. I can accept that my choices are a part of this problem, and the combined effect of these across billions of people is the majority of the problem, yet it seems improbable that any alternative choice I make is going to have any benefit. It feels feeble. There is also a nagging doubt, nutured by social norms and the messaging from commerce, brands, and retail, that my act of sacrifice is an irrational choice, and makes me a fool, a loser, a chump. My small ethical act is vanity, and ineffective.

So what is my incentive to interupt my own tendancies, to make an alternative choice? Perhaps it is not a sacrifice in my mind. It is a bold act. A statement. A generous helping hand to a future me, or a distant other who might already experiencing the innevitable consequences of our previous inaction. Maybe it’s me making the future I want to see. It is stepping out of the illusions or current norms and influence and having clear eyes to make a true choice for the first (but not the last) time.

The next economy will be different, simply because the current one is finding broken assumptions and hard edges, where once there were assumed to be no limits. Governments, central banks, big global brands are saying this out loud. They are not doing this out of a generosity of spirit, but because, from their vantage point, they see this is the path to success, to survival. But there are an awful lot of us citizens and we have a considerable collective power. The choices we make can either resist, sabotage and delay these moves, or embrace and bring it on as fast as possible.

We really do have choices, and not just the illusion of choice presented by the rows of marginally varied packages of similar products in supermarkets, or scrolling down an online store. Each choice to examine what we actually need and look at ways of meeting that need, send a signal, via the numbers and algorithms, to those that extract, make, bundle, sell and influence. Trust me, they are listening.

There is a kind of innevitability that we are all goingto have to change, but also a huge innertia to come. Inertia is much easier to overcome in small bodies. Start with yours. Change something today in your world. Tell someone about it, and change soemthing else tomorrow.