In 2024, I thought a lot about

Mulling over people’s propensity for change is a weird thing to think about, so would it help if I told you it’s what I do for work? 

I make a living in ‘systems change’, which is a fancy term for getting to the root cause of a social issue – things like poverty, employment discrimination or digital exclusion. Once we know what’s really going wrong, we work out what everyone impacted by this issue wants and needs. Then we collectively move in that direction, hopefully creating a world that works better for everyone affected. 

A simple concept, but it can be gnarly business. 

People do not like change. 

On the surface, it can seem like people’s resistance to making things better is down to their fear of the unknown, and they lean into the idea of ‘better the devil you know’. However, I’m eight years into this gig, and actually, what I’ve observed is that it’s the complexity that comes with imagining the world anew that people don’t like.

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They find it destabilising when new ways of being emerge because – in order to adopt them – it would mean straying from a well-trodden route. New ideas threaten to force people to create new pathways, adapting to unfamiliar scenarios as they go. 

The reality, though, is that this is how life works. We can manufacture fixed systems that seek to impose rigid structures – for example, hierarchies, competition and individualism have all been created. But, at its core, the world shifts and alters and adapts. You only have to look at the natural world to see how life constantly evolves, or the universe to recognise we’re constantly expanding. 

By resisting change, we are upholding the manufactured systems that we are forced to live within. The same systems that are rigged against us.

Because those systems are familiar. They are societal norms. They are known. 

As long as we are resistant to change, we allow power to be consolidated in the hands of a dominant few who get to shape the media, government and organisations which prescribe how we live our lives. 

Those voices, which are often profit-led, make assumptions (and sometimes assertions) about what society wants and needs. This is dangerous because it binds us to untenable systems from which we seemingly have no other option – systems like rote-led education (memorising information rather than learning), exorbitant private childcare and pharmacy-first healthcare. 

Those dominant voices also tell us stories about our place within those systems depending on the groups we are part of, or how we identify. For example, we’ve been told that women exist to care for others, and that people of colour exist to serve. We’ve been told queer folk are perverse and that in a society built around the productivity of many for the enrichment of the few, disabled people are useless.

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If we are told something continuously, it gradually becomes ‘fact’ and this can shape our subconscious. This leads to us feeling unsafe, unworthy of love or not good enough because we are aware there are ‘rules’ for who gets to be accepted.

As a reaction to that, many of us work to gain power and influence, to feel ‘good enough’ in these dehumanising systems. And in so doing, we end up mirroring the very systems that got us here in the first place. 

But all the adulation, wealth and influence in the world can’t give us what we’re really searching for, which is to be loved for who we are. 

And that is the system we must build. 

The truth is, every system is just an idea which we sustain by struggling to believe the world might work any other way. 

You only need to look around you though to see things can work differently. From the co-operative structures made manifest by the Incan people, to the nature-grounded culture of Australia's first nations, it’s obvious things haven’t always been this way.

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Thankfully, there are many among us who refuse to accept things the way they are currently organised for people and the planet. Many of us are willing to lean into the discomfort required to change our world. 

New ideas, from Universal Basic Income to regenerative farming, are being seeded. People are coming together, and embracing the inherent wisdom (and ample evidence) that when richly-diverse communities are trusted and invested in, people’s innate potential can be realised.

From industry-leading organisations that afford women or people of colour equal opportunities, to phasing out unnatural monocultures so wild flora and fauna can take root instead, we are seeing the emergence of ecosystems where all life can thrive.

Maybe thinking about our propensity for change isn’t so odd after all. 

Reaching that state depends on our willingness to let go of how we’ve been conditioned by society, and our readiness to face our fears in a world that tells us we’re not OK. But in understanding we are, in fact, inherently OK, we can realise a world in which everyone gets to be so. 

It’s less about our propensity for change, as it is our desire to come home to ourselves. 

Can you imagine what’s possible from that place?

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