Change Your Culture

A Comment on Nate Garvis, TEDtalk: Why the Common Good demands a new kind of change!

Everybody is angry about politics - a common habit in almost all nations today. You could see that in the outcome of the elections - especially in Greece.

Politics is made responsible for failures of all kind – whether in real estate or currency markets, in the educational and of course the political system itself.

We want a better world and better politics - but want to change our own lives. For decades this has been a widely accepted rule - an "unspoken" agreement in Western democracies. Now with the global crisis the role models of politics on the one hand and those of the voters and citizens on the other do not fulfill their functions any longer: Policy change to secure the future of society demands instant change in personal living styles of millions of people. Changes to the worse - the word "change" has never been a top seller, but now it is definitely on the black list.

Today we stand at a turning point of history where democratic societies are starting to learn change - not for personal improvements, but for downsizing. And why should anyone agree to this on a voluntary basis? One motive is very strong: rising personal inequality is accepted in return for more common good.
Nate Garvis' TED talk "creating the common good" is therefore more than nice to have. It is at the heart of our societal future - and it proposes to change the old democratic burden sharing: not politics is creating change, but every day personal behaviour. It is not change for all, but change by all.

Nate Garvis discusses thus how we live and thrive by public policy outcomes, not angry political inputs, and the path is to honor our community values by designing them into our daily products and services.
Will this turn our perception of "change"? From "rest and stability" which is still perceived as the aim worth striving for (success in a society meaning that you do not have to work)  to movement and dynamics which is still understood as the unwanted inevitable alternative. How does "change" become a positive value? In other words: How we leave phrases like "restless" behind?

Creating the common good therefore means to change our culture and our values which made our democracies so thriving in the last 25 years. In the future new values are necessary – with them we create new common goods and services as well. For me on top of that list stands:  A new positive image of change alongside with patience.

Bernd Fesel