Our history will be marked as pre and post COVID-19
Our lives will forever be marked as pre and post COVID-19, because this is a Phase Shift.
During a phase shift the world is malleable, much more fertile and it is full of potential for change. With uncertainty there comes opportunity. These words are the two sides of the same coin. For every uncertainty out there, we can find an opportunity to change the system.
Just Focus! Look at how the system that has caused so much suffering, conflict, environmental destruction and economic despair, is now suddenly in a massive and sustained moment of glitch.
This is a tripped switch. This is a falling giant. This is the beginning of the end, and also it is just the end of the beginning. The Future is waiting to be created.
We should not for a second imagine that life will return to "normal", nor should we ever pretend that the normal we pine for was ever doing us justice. Our world was an imbalanced, unsustainable and grossly unjust system that required urgent dismantling before 2020. It just happens that our complacency has now resulted in a greater sense of urgency.
But stay calm and focused in all of the confusion. Keep your eyes on the prize; socio-economic and environmental justice.
When a social structure that is creating and feeding off of injustice, violence, confusion and disunity requires disassembly and restructure, and is left too long without proper reorganisation and repair, it will eventually collapse.
Our society, the neo-liberal consumerist driven capital controlled democracy, that was spreading and pervading all parts of the earth, was like a termite-ridden home where the lovely lawns and fresh paint on the exterior belie the deep structural defects of the building.
And like a toxic relationship with a narcissistic lover, Capitalism had failed us and was abusing us long before most of us were willing to admit it. And as with any weak, deficient and defected building, it doesn't take much for it to crumble.
This doesn't necessarily mean that society must also crumble, nor does it mean that chaos will or should rule. It just means that the economic construct that we were being forced to live by is now in its death throes and it is up to us to understand, where, why and how it failed us. When we do this, we can then become more effective in the restructuring of the new world we wish to inhabit.
If you're up for the adventure of creating social change, if you're keen to understand things like economics, ecology, communication for social change and ecopsychology, if you want to know when activism is effective and when it is not, if you're ready to admit that human society is one interconnected whole and we each have the responsibility to fix it, repair it, evolve and better it, then Systems Change 101 is for you.
- by Erfan Daliri
About the Author
Erfan Daliri is an author, poet, social change trainer and consultant with a Masters in Communication for Social Change. He has over 15 years of experience working with NGOs, community groups and government agencies in a diverse range of areas, including participatory development, cross-cultural communication, youth empowerment, education, mental health, settlement services, and social justice advocacy.
Erfan is the founding director of Newkind Social Justice Conference and programme coordinator of the National Unity in Diversity Conference. He consults and advises on communication and project design for organisations such as Amnesty International and the Australian Red Cross.
He is particularly passionate about empowering organisations and communities to address issues of social, environmental and economic justice and to help them build a more inclusive, cohesive, sustainable and equitable society. His most recent book Raising Humanity discusses the underlying causes of socio-economic injustice and covers the themes of ecology and economy, resilience, resistance and what it takes to be an effective changemaker.