System Change

“Quiet Quitting” articles allowed readers to access a convenient cause (damn lazy Gen-Zers) for a pretty existential problem (work sucks). It’s also, conveniently, a way of blaming workers for systemic ills. “Quiet Hiring” deflects from organizational norms that call for eking out as much productivity (at the lowest cost) from each employee in the

“We have a problem with scale. The planetary crisis can seem impossible to grasp. But focusing on the local can feel limited. How do we work to a scale that feels manageable? There is a way of reorganising how we think about scale: the -shed. -sheds (from Old English scead) describe the natural boundaries between waterbodies. They are not

“leverage points.” These are places within a complex system (a corporation, an economy, a living body, a city, an ecosystem) where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.

In the United Nations’ IPCC most recent climate change mitigation report, the word “lifestyle” appears 193 times. The authors write, “The acceptability of collective social change over a longer term towards less resource intensive lifestyles, however, depends on the social mandate for change. This mandate can be built through public participation,

Indeed, even if one could apply the notion of oscillation between

polarized features proffered by current political ideologies, a normative choice to affirm a paradigmatic project beyond such oscillation is more advisable. This normativity is rooted in compassion, care, cohesion, solidarity, social responsibility, universal healthcare and education,