The Character of Now: Both Terrifying and Thrilling

On March 4th, following a week of shock global events that started with the Trump and Zelensky Whitehouse episode and included the introduction of his Tariffs on China, Mexico and Canada, a much smaller event took place in London. Jon Alexander, author of Citizens, was in conversation with legendary artist Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse, the co-author of a recent book with Brian. The event was on a series titled “Adventures In Democracy.”

You may be wondering what the connection between the two events was? I’ll get straight to the point. Jon asked Brian to answer the question, “what is the character of now?” Brian responded by saying….

Terrifying & Thrilling

“It’s both terrifying and thrilling in the sense that the structures that we thought existed and were reliable turn out to be completely unreliable. And it turns out that nobody knows or understands the situation better than you or I do.”

He added, “we're in a situation now where the traditional layers of expertise that we thought were deeply embedded in the society turn out to be not very deeply embedded, and it turns out they are not particularly wise either. So that's the terrifying part.”

And regarding “the thrilling part” he suggested, “it means it’s ours to reinvent,” by which he meant the future we must assume. HE added, “that's where I think we are now.” As evidence he suggested,

“More and more people are thinking “we've got to think it out for ourselves. It's down to us.” And that means we’ve got to get off our asses.”

In a later response he added, “There's a great book by a Russian writer Alexei Yurchak, and the book has a beautiful title, “Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More.”” It captured the fact communism dissolved overnight. And “it's about the idea that change when it happens can happen very suddenly. Very quickly indeed. And it can be quite radical, as it was in the case of the Soviet Union.”

Big Change

Brian went on to recall a sentence in the book, in which Yurchak says revolutions happen in two phases……..

“The first phase is where everybody realizes that things have gone completely wrong – the phase we're in now, he believes. Then the second phase, and the important one, is where everybody realizes that everybody else has realized.”

It is at that point you get a big change. “When you look around and you think we're all in the same mind, we all know it, and we start to build something else. You start to build something else, or you start to destroy something old, which is of course what is happening in America now” he believes. He added….

“There is a revolution. We're in a revolution now. The trouble is we didn't recognize it because we didn't start it. We expected the revolution to come from the left but actually it came from the right.”

After the event I looked up the book by Yurchak, because I am interested in stories that might give us clues about what drives change, especially large scale change at a rapid pace.

Yurchak quotes Andrei Makarevich, a famous Russian songwriter and musician, as saying, “It had never even occurred to me that in the Soviet Union anything could ever change. Let alone that it could disappear. No one expected it. Neither children, nor adults. There was a complete impression that everything was forever.” He said he, like millions of Soviet citizens, had always felt he lived in an eternal state. “It was not until around 1986 and 1987, when reforms of perestroika (reconstruction) were already afoot, that the possibility of the socialist system not lasting forever even entered his mind.”

Yurchak notes that “many others have described a similar experience of the profound feeling of the Soviet system’s permanence and immutability, and the complete unexpectedness of its collapse. Yet, “despite the seeming abruptness of the collapse, they found themselves prepared for it. A peculiar paradox became apparent in those years: although the system’s collapse had been unimaginable before it began, it appeared unsurprising when it happened.”

He observes that “when the policies of perestroika and glasnost’ (openness, public discussion) were introduced in 1985, most people did not anticipate that any radical changes would follow. These campaigns were thought to be no different from the endless state-orchestrated campaigns before them: campaigns that came and went, while life went on as usual. However, within a year or two the realization that something unimaginable was taking place began to dawn on the Soviet people. Many speak of having experienced a sudden “break of consciousness” and “stunning shock” quickly followed by excitement and readiness to participate in the transformation.” “They had always known life in socialism was shaped through a curious paradox, that the system was always felt to be both stagnating and immutable, fragile and vigorous, bleak and full of promise,” he argued.

My Thoughts

Everybody seems to realise that things have gone completely wrong, and it certainly feels like big change is coming. And to many it is terrifying, to some it is exciting. Many are now realising that what we might have that was forever may soon be no more - the peace, prosperity, democracy and freedom we have taken for granted in many countries. We became far too complacent.

It was thought that the Global Banking Crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession it triggered, would be a wake-up call. But the crisis was not really global. And the recession it triggered was not that great. Even so, levels of dissatisfaction were rising as a result of growing inequality, the rising cost of living, the end of the American Dream, and the steep decline in social mobility - among several issues of growing concern.

Many were already suggesting “the system isn’t working.” Confidence in capitalism has been collapsing, even in America. And that started well before the pandemic. The effects of globalisation, immigration and digitisation were already making people feel far less secure in their jobs. The pandemic then exposed just how broken many of the systems that make up the system-of-systems which is Capitalism really are.

We soon heard people talking about their hopes of a “better new normal.” And their calls for “building back better.” But private and public debt mountains, raising inflation, the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine, and other issues mean governments lack the ability to meet these wishes. In most cases they also lack the capabilities.

So much of what we have taken for granted may be coming to an end. Many of our systems are on the verge of collapse, and we could see a domino effect since they are all interrelated and interdependent.

As things stand I think many people are terrified, and a minority are excited. But I think Brian is right, we cannot depend on those we expect to solve the problems to do so. It is going to be down to us to resolve the issues we face. And we do need to get of our asses.

If it is going to be down to us to find the better way, or ways, then the pain we are likely to experience can be mitigated by the coming together of the three pillars of society – state, markets (private sector) and civic society. They must learn to collaborate more effectively than they have to-date. Enlightened Leaders of Enlightened Enterprises representing all the three pillars already recognise this.

As pioneers of Enlightened Enterprise approaches the enlightened leaders will be ‘ahead of the game’ and earn great advantages. The Enlightened Enterprise Academy is about helping all enterprises and their leaders be prepared for what is rapidly unfolding given ‘the character of now’.

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