"Coddiwompling" into the future: Mary Valiakas explores what we might mean by “ALT/work", and the power of embracing uncertainty
Mary Valiakis, author pic, from ALT/work
If you’ve been sampling A/UK culture for a while, you will recognise the name of Mary Valiakas.
Mary is a Greek/American futurist and entrepreneur who wants to use the birthplace of democracy as a platform for developing a smarter, more sensitive civilisation.
Mary contributed to a recent online event, ALT/work, set up by another A/UK treasure, Jay Tompt.
it’s generated the following set of provocations from her about our ideas of work and purpose, in the face of our current crises.
‘Coddiwompling’ into the future: big picture reflections from the ALT/work careers sessions
Uncertainty has always been a certainty – but one that our society, drunk on the fumes of perpetual growth, has willfully ignored. This year, however, uncertainty has become the smelling salts that 2020 thrust under our noses. How does one navigate toward a meaningful future in the context of multiple crises?
It was in preparation for a youth mentoring session with ALT/work on alternative futures with meaningful work that I found a more universal truth than I expected. This is a time of balancing the masculine pursuit of goals with the feminine nurturing and trusting of instincts. For it is in this balance that we will discover the openness, curiosity, and bravery to lead us to better ground.
But first things first. Aimed at 16 to 28-year-olds, ALT/work is an initiative supported by the EU-funded Heart of the South West Enhance Social Enterprise.
Set up by Jay Tompt of the Totnes REconomy Project, it was designed to inspire “young ‘uns” to stay local and seize opportunities in the area, either with social enterprises or their own entrepreneurship. Through 6 sessions and 18 speakers, there was a plethora of experience and perspectives on the question of futures with meaning.
The future was always a moving target
Even before COVID turned our world upside down, uncertainty was already here to stay. The (2018) consensus was that 85% of future jobs have yet to be invented. The half-life of a skill has continually been shrinking – from 5 years in 2017 to 2/3 years in 2020. And AI and automation was set to make anywhere from 37% to 69% of EU jobs obsolete. The usual tropes about entrepreneurship definitely apply here: stay open to change to stay resilient, always be learning, network like hell, and so on.
But in the year where everyone’s plans got scuppered, the recession was set to be the worst for 300 years, and converging crises were turning day into night (California fires), the usual tropes stop working. One cannot merely advise focus, belief in oneself, and the power of routine. There is no part of life that remains untouched by either the climate crisis, COVID, or some knock-on effect of the above.
The future is not all a big blur, however. There are some things that we ARE sure of. Which is that we need new alternatives to the facets of our world that are so obviously not working. For example, how can the global economy wobble because we stop shopping for things we don’t need? Is it all really so fragile? Why can’t we regulate or limit the aviation and car industries when we’ve seen how quickly nature springs back if we only let it?
This is one of the biggest blessings of 2020: the impossible suddenly seems possible. Dislodged from our routines, deprived of our distractions, and stopped in our tracks, it’s from this eye of the storm that we can clearly see what isn’t working, and feel the imperative that something needs to change.
In short, we are all coddiwompling into the future. Coddiwomple is a great word I came across that perfectly captures my own route into a career and social entrepreneurship that means ‘to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination.’ With all of earth’s human population affected by both the climate crisis and the COVID crisis in some way, it’s never been clearer that such a vague destination should be a better future for all.
Every ending is also a beginning
And so Jay kicked off our ‘Big Picture thinking’ panel session by posing two questions to Brett Scott, activist, money innovator, and author of the Heretics Guide to Global Finance, Jabo Butera, managing director of the Diversity Business Incubator, and myself: ‘Why are things the way they are?’ and ‘How can we create a meaningful livelihood?’
Being preoccupied with all matters surrounding the creation of civilisation (the stage of human development considered most advanced) and systems change, my answer to the first question was simple. We’re in the middle of a shift akin to the move from the agricultural revolution to the industrial revolution.
It was already happening before COVID. Now, COVID has accelerated this change. If the shift from agricultural to industrial saw people move from working in fields, to working in factories, we’re now beginning to see similar fundamental and global changes in the ways we live and work.
Bypass the newscycle to build the new
But how do we create a meaningful livelihood in a world that seems to be crumbling, and none of the usual certainties remain? This question was slightly less clear, but equally as adventurous. If, as Joanna Macy says, we are in the middle of the Great Unravelling - where we witness the derangement and collapse of biological, ecological, economic, and social systems - we must each pick up a thread and begin to weave society’s tapestry anew.
By this I mean that each and every one of us will have things we care about. Things that irk us or fire us up. Do we pay attention to these? Are we curious and open to following our noses? We didn’t need COVID to teach us this lesson – but it certainly helps to teach it at scale.
So if we embrace unknowing, step out of the newscycle-induced paralysis and fear, and listen to our instincts, we will know which thread is most enticing for us to pick up.
The most critical wisdom that embracing uncertainty in this time can bestow, is this: the future is up for grabs – but it’s a future in desperate need of a moral compass. So, if systems are collapsing and the jobs of the future have yet to be invented, it means there is scope to innovate in every single aspect of what it means to be human.
From the way to grow and eat our food, to the way we make decisions as citizens and communities. The scale of the change needed to steer the proverbial ship away from the rocks dictates that we all, young and old, embrace the disquiet of this time, pay attention to, and trust our own inner compass.
This is, after all, the age of post-truth in which we must each determine what is true and valuable for ourselves. In this way, we will each have the gumption to play our part and the determination to weave into being a new social fabric – and the world our coddiwompling hearts know is possible.
As Milton Friedman said:
Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.