Tag Archives: social change

In the history books

We are only half way through 2020 and already we know that this year will be prominent in history books like no year in the 2000’s before it. It is the beginning of a new era, one that will keep us socially distancing from one another for a while; One that will make the wearing of masks and hiding our faces ‘normal’; One where handshakes and hugs are greeted with hesitation rather than warmth.

But it will also be a year remembered for bringing about social change. It will be remembered not just for changing our social interactions as they relate to salutations, but also for bringing about equity and making the world a more just place for those that have been disenfranchised and unfairly treated. Perhaps this year will be remembered as year a pandemic brought us together exactly when it was trying to pull us apart.

There is still half a year left, and many hints that economies and therefore people will struggle. The second half of 2020 will hold inequalities, political strife, and a death toll that will include those fighting against a virus, and those fighting against injustice. While the pandemic will surely be the lead story in the history book chapter on 2020, I hope that social change, and the battle against injustice is the focus of the chapter.

That is my hope, but if there is one thing the first half of this year has taught me, it is that this is not a time when it is easy to predict the future. If you don’t believe me, go back in your memory to the end of December 2019 and tell me that you could have predicted anything about the world we are living in today.

The year is only half over and it is already one for the history books.

Doing the math when trying to do better

If you are dealing with machinery, there comes a point where the cost of more efficiency or productivity can become too exorbitant to justify improvement. But is this true in the same way for tweaking social systems?

Making a car go 10% faster, or making it 10% more efficient on gas or battery life can prove to be too expensive to be worthwhile. It can be a simple cost/benefit equation. But what about improving teamwork or relationships?

What’s the price of a team not working well, but not trying to make it better? What’s the price of poor communication continuing without working to improve communication channels and clarity? What’s the price of maintaining unfairness, inequality, or injustice?

When does the cost of positive social change become inefficient?

If you ask me, unlike the simple math when dealing with machinery, we can’t do the math in improving social change until we’ve done more to make things right. The costs we can’t tolerate here sit on the extremes. They are the costs of ignorance, hate, and blame. They are also the costs of retaliation, shaming, and sweeping generalizations.

What is the cost of social change for good? My simple math tells me the effort is worth the price we need to pay. Because the value we get always exceeds the price we pay, when we are striving to make the world a better place.