Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us

The Consumer Story has its own old men – referring back to Lawrence of Arabia’s lament – who will keep trying to solve the problems of our time with the same thinking that created them.

acknowledging the Citizen in ourselves is often easier said than done. It bucks the prevailing wisdom that would have us believe that humans are lazy, greedy, self-centred, and apathetic; that we can’t be trusted to do anything but mess things up further. It risks being judged naïve or unrealistic. And once embraced, the Citizen also mandates that

Governments and organisations that arise out of the Subject Story are paternalistic and hierarchical, with the inherently superior few at the top of the pyramid. In light of this story coming before, it is little wonder that the Consumer felt like a breath of fresh air.

building the tools that could enable nation-states to evolve rather than demanding their collapse

The spread of Christianity echoed the principles of the Subject, putting forth the ultimate Father, the almighty God in whose great hands lay the fate of all His people, the shepherd to us as flock. Under Him came another father-figure in the form of the Pope, under whom came widely distributed Fathers of local churches. A veritable Russian doll of

The contemporary Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe is among those who suggest this is the case: it is in our seeking to escape the prison, he suggests, that the prison walls gain their form.95 If all we do is react to the dominant story, we reinforce its dominance. Perhaps the strategy itself – collision-course, expose-and-attack, hit-them-where-

as all sorts of organisations and institutions find success through involving, rather than telling or selling.

The process of crossing the threshold is demanding for each and every one of us. When the cracks appear in a long-held belief, it causes anxiety and pain. As the certain world is replaced by great uncertainty, the risk is that we cling to what we know more than ever. The gravitational pull of the familiar exerts itself, no matter how dysfunctional

Prototyping, the invocation to think iteratively, to go where the energy is and just begin, has proven most impactful and liberating for governments.