Sometimes we just have to change the way we think in the light of new information that just doesn’t fit into our existing models of the world. Since returning from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 2019, much has changed about how I view the world.
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There is no one answer to what is wrong with the world. To try and address all the problems we face would be overwhelming and, ultimately, futile. However, there are some underlying factors that contribute to many of the world’s woes, including climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality, and pollution. One of the biggest problems is a misguided worldview. For centuries, humans have looked at the world as aresource to be exploited. This has led to a culture of unhealthy individualism, self-centredness, separatism and extreme consumerism. Another problem is modern capitalism and neoliberalism, which are founded on the prioritization of material wealth and self-interest. This has led to increasing social inequalities and a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. It is human nature to seek comfort and security, but when this is done at the expense of others and the planet, it becomes a serious problem. If we want to create a more just and sustainable world, we need to address these underlying issues.
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In the Tory Leadership debate, one of the candidates, Kemi Badenoch, said that “the machine of government was “not working” and as an engineer, she was the only person who could fix it.” But although it is tempting to think of government as a machine, it leads to a number of problems. It is perhaps more accurate and useful to think of it as a conversation.
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Since before the dawn of history, projects have been a principal human activity. Today, projects add significantly to the world’s GDP. They have become a common form of transforming the built environment and the way many organizations manage themselves in the private, public, and voluntary sectors.
Much modern project management guidance emphasizes the principles, structures, processes and techniques involved in delivering the product, service or transformation that is the project’s intended output. Also, both research and practice acknowledge that project executives should possess ‘people skills’. But despite this, too many projects still fail to live up to expectations, which results in both economic and social waste.
As a ubiquitous example of shared intentionality, projects can be thought of as an expression of our essential nature as human beings – what marks us out from all other species. So, perhaps what is needed is more careful and nuanced attention to the people, the context and the relationships that constitute the project itself.
Netflix’s new satirical science fiction film, Don’t Look Up, set viewing records when it started streaming on Christmas Eve in 2021. It lampoons government, political and media indifference to a catastrophic threat to the survival of homo sapiens, but unsurprisingly offers no diagnosis for how humanity got itself into such a dire state. Coincidentally, Iain McGilchrist’s magisterial new book The Matter with Things was published just six weeks before the movie, and it offers a vision based in well-researched neuroscience of how humanity could return to a better way of living.
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