Happy New Year – again! – and welcome to our first full newsletter of 2021. Taking a couple of weeks away from our focus what is emerging in the socio-economic-political field, we were left observing more closely the landscape of emotions in the public space. Not simply in the media headlines, but on social media; within affinity groups, but also amongst friends.

It’s hard to find a place of calm as we are all pulled between ever-polarising extremes of fear and hope for the future. The Metro newspaper summed it up well in the headline: EVERY 30 SECONDS (a new Covid patient is admitted to hospital) EVERY 60 SECONDS (140 people are getting vaccinated in the UK). As if we are in a desperate race against time.

This spectre of time as the enemy is echoed in a number of other arenas. The upcoming American inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States was presented as a race against time to stop the outgoing President Trump from doing too much damage in his last days of office. Most excruciating was his decision to suddenly bring forward the federal execution of five long time death-row prisoners. He did this in the knowledge that with over 60% of US citizens now against the death penalty, the incoming President may want to turn his campaigning against it into law.

Equally disturbing has been Trump’s race to issue pardons to anyone he chooses (or possibly, who can pay): a Presidential privilege which might extend to pardons for himself and his family. Or the possibility that his staff will destroy all sorts of official documents that may serve as evidence of his egregious actions in office.

For some these are the actions of a man running out of time in office, whose influence is due to fade. But for others it is a spectacle of democracy being dismantled brick by brick. Trump’s decision to hold a farewell event (complete with AirForce 1) on the same day as the Presidential inauguration, instead of welcoming in his successor, is wilfully destructive. Later that day his supporters will be holding ‘their own re-inauguration’ of Trump’s 2nd Presidential term. Together these are an attempt to replace the democratic process with an act of the collective will of Trump’s tribe. Whether they succeed or not remains to be seen.

The rush to stop extreme decline (taking different forms) has long been the focus of a diversity of groups, not least our own environmental focus within the ten-year climate window. Another focus that is drawing increasing attention during the Covid crisis is taking the form of strong fears about our ability to control our own actions, or even our own behaviour.

For some this is described as ‘the rise of fascism’ – national governments becoming over-controlling of the public space. Others are pointing at technology – the huge acceleration of machine capability in running our lives and even our minds in the onset of what is described as the 4th industrial revolution (for alternative views, read here and here).

While on the one hand none of these possibilities are entirely false, the perception that time is the deciding factor in our ability to control outcomes could be countered. Not by ignoring the urgency of our situation, but instead by engaging with it properly.

When we stop being passive recipients of too much information that overwhelms us and start to become participants in the flow of events, time slows down and we begin to feel we have some purchase. This is partly to do with editing down what is relevant and not relevant to your own skillset and your ability to influence.

But more importantly, it’s about being able to acknowledge the work of others already acting to address your fears and joining forces with them. Much of our confidence that another future is possible arises from the evidence that there are many significant developments in the fields of technology, democracy, climate improvement and others in the pipeline that are not being covered by our mainstream news.

Another factor in the tyranny of time is our collective memory of how long things take to change. We look back at the emancipation of women – maybe taken as the moment when women were first allowed to vote – and wonder why women still haven’t got equal pay or status in society? Or we look at the first UN Climate Change Conference held in Berlin in 1995 – and grieve for the amount of time it is still taking to get nations aligned, committed and acting on the Kyoto Protocol.

At the same time, we might be shocked at how quickly what was considered normal at one point, fundamental changes that we barely notice coming about. Remember how quickly the streets were emptied and people confined to their homes when we had an urgent pandemic on our hands? Or how quickly Facebook established itself as an (admittedly poorly structured) form of global governance? There were less than five years – 2006-2010 - between never having heard of the network, to being potentially able to make friends with 500 million relative strangers all over the world. And how quickly the USA was demoted as the unquestioned ‘leader of the free world’, over one term of unpredictable government.

While these discrepancies in time may seem random from the outside, digging deeper is likely to show a steady relationship between resources and political will and the amount of time it takes to get things done. A second factor points at how quickly those with a good idea at the right time can move, faced with political intransigence. Meaning that when enough people are already looking for a breakthrough which government can’t offer, the project meeting that demand can spark like lightening. A third factor might point at the growth in soft power – how much quicker reputations can be made and lost in the age of the internet. In the face of these three scenarios, time seems less like a thudding imperative, more elastic and moldable.

Stepping away from overwhelming displays of information, opinion and events may not mean slowing down. It may mean that your activism or initiative finds its own pace, in which a distinctive form of power can be expressed, finding those who are ready to really take action. In this world the quality of relationships, the rhythm of activity and the beauty of the vision can make time irrelevant,. Because in many ways, you are already experiencing what it would feel like to arrive at your destination.

Alternative Editorial: The Tyranny of Time