Surely it’s better if everyone tries something than does nothing? Yes ok, but is it enough? The problems being addressed have a mischievous habit of proceeding undeterred. More of us may be running faster but the problems are sprinting too, and they seem to be way ahead. This has been the case ever since global scale problems reached the global stage around 40 years ago. The strategy now was the strategy then and the idea that really tough world-wide problems can be made manageable by dividing them into parts small enough for everyone to do their bit has not really ever been questioned. This ‘incrementalism’ appeared on the scene not as a product of any consensus of experts or public dialogue but merely as a presumption that just happens to suit modern compartmentalised thinking and organisations.

What if the really big problems can’t be fixed by separation into bits, each waiting patiently to be tackled a bit at a time? What would an alternative strategy look like? Suppose the kind of thinking that invited incrementalism is not the solution but actually the root cause of all the problems. If we didn’t routinely divide up reality into convenient chunks then we wouldn’t be able ignore (or externalise) the inconvenient harm that keeps happening. Instead of seeking whatever progress is possible within today’s paradigms we might redefine progress as the changes paradigm. We could recalibrate our ambition up the the scale where the problems are running. Design out waste rather than just try to dispose of it; reverse climate change and loss of nature rather than just worsen things less fast, include everyone in ‘security’ planning not just those on the ‘right side’ of the ever-expanding walls of weapons.

The public and policy-makers are both so numbed by decades of struggle to achieve so little with global problems that we forget to consider that paradigms whose time has come can arrive without much of a struggle, like the Berlin Wall falling. We forget that the root causes of all today’s problems come down to a handful of dodgy presumptions and dodgy policies. Yes we should continue to do what we can individually but spare a moment to also pursue the relatively simple switches of thinking and policy that could turn things around world-wide with a speed and vigour that would delightfully redefine what’s practical and achievable. Perhaps the price of continuing civilisation is not much more than a willingness to think differently about our predicament.