As so many of us celebrate recent election victories in the US and elsewhere, it's also vital that we are clear-eyed about the nature of this moment – and what it requires of us. This clarity is what will ensure this is not a temporary pause but a turning point toward a new era of thrivability.
For me, this means looking back at the turning point that was November 8, 2016 – that year’s election day in the US (where I am a citizen, though I live in Canada). That morning, in what later felt like bitter irony, I was elated to receive the final proof for my book, The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World. It was the culmination of 15 years of research, fieldwork and writing, and as many years mustering the courage to bring it out into the world.
That evening, as the election results rolled in and it became clear that Trump would take the presidency, my elation turned to despair. Even then, the impending cruelty, corruption and harm were evident. And how would anyone now believe what I had painstakingly documented: the countless signs that humanity was at the threshold of an Age of Thrivability, if only enough of us would recognize and act on those signs?
Eventually, I found my way to renewed resolve. The election outcome was not a disproof of what my book points to; it was a backlash against it. And surely – surely – the pain, shock and inevitable failure of such a regime would finally wake us up to what is most precious and to what more is possible. Surely this would be the thing to catalyze fundamental change at every level of society.
I know I have not been alone in that desperate hope.
But these past ten years have battered and strained that hope almost to the breaking point.
Until now.
In the days since this year’s US elections and the weeks since Hungary, Serbia and Brazil led the way, two defining conditions have renewed my belief in an Age of Thrivability.
The first defining condition is the level of distributed power and responsibility.
I remember a similar feeling of hope and possibility when Obama was first elected in 2008.
But in this midterm election, there was no single heroic leader. Instead, it has been heroes all the way down, from state-level senators, congressmembers, governors, secretaries of state and attorneys general to county-level school superintendents, fish & wildlife commissioners, labor commissioners, and railroad commissioners.
Significantly, this moment was made possible by an unprecedented scale, scope and tenacity of grassroots organizing and citizen mobilization. Not only was the shift “too big to rig,” it was too distributed and diverse to deny.
And now, the feeling for so many of us is: we did this, together. We the people – each of us and all of us – have woken up to our power and our mutual responsibility, even across difference.
The second defining condition is the specific quality of conviction driving this moment.
Every election is a contest in charisma, with promises of change.
But what I have seen in this election, among Democratic candidates, organizers and ordinary citizens, is a particular quality and clarity of conviction. It is a potent combination of integrity, fierceness, love (yes, love!), joy and, perhaps most of all, moral imagination. With roots in the Civil Rights movement and the power and activism of BIPOC women (even as it is not limited to them), it is collective, creative, embodied and focused on wise action.
This conviction is not about tweaking the status quo. It is a drive to stretch the collective imagination and to enact structural transformation in service of thrivability for all.
Recognizing those two defining conditions reveals the risks and requirements of this moment.
First, there is some risk, or at least baked-in limitation, in framing these elections as a “wave.” Waves come in and out in predictable alternating rhythm, with no progress except the gradual erosion of the shore. Indeed, the back-and-forth pattern of US wave elections paints a discouraging picture: in the 40 years since Ronald Reagan rode in on one, there have been 14 wave elections, roughly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
The height of our ambition cannot be simply scrambling to accomplish as much as possible before the next wave pulls it all back, or worse. Too much is at stake, from crumbling democratic institutions and the breakdown of social cohesion to collapse of our ecological life support systems.
Instead, we must frame – and actively shape – this unique moment not as a wave but as a watershed. As the crossing of a threshold, an irrevocable passage between worlds and worldviews.
To do this, those we elected must certainly deliver specific solutions, particularly around affordability, as most are promising to do. And critically, they must also enforce accountability for crimes and harms, and shore up the guardrails against future abuses.
But what will make this a watershed moment is the kind of lasting structural and cultural change that can only happen through distributed power and responsibility, fueled by an expanded collective moral imagination. Through more people working together in their own communities to create a better world.
And here is where my book may finally find its moment, as it offers a novel perspective on the deeper nature of this moment in history, the potential it holds, and the path that must be taken.
The outgoing worldview
The book points first to what we need to move beyond: the prevailing worldview that convinces us that we are separate from each other, from our organizations and from nature; that we exist to compete and consume; and that endless profit and productivity are what matter most. At its most extreme, this is the narrative of control, extraction and domination, the driving force behind white supremacy, patriarchy, ecocide and the backlash that Trump represents.
In that worldview, our communities, governments and organizations are understood to function like orderly machines. Change is best implemented top-down, through linear control and planning, with predictable outcomes. For politicians, the story is that they are elected to make change happen single-handedly by pulling the levers of the political machinery. And aside from the power of their votes, citizens are passive recipients of that change.
There is some truth and value to this story. But there are also limitations and inaccuracies. And there is mounting evidence that this narrative is at the root of every major problem we face as a species.
The emerging worldview
Happily, my book goes on to describe the more promising paradigm that is emerging at the edges of every sector and every sphere of society: one in which we see ourselves, our communities and our governments not as machines but as living systems. As dynamic ecologies. And in this story, what matters most is the ability of life – all life – to thrive.
With this expanded worldview, we recognize a community’s dynamic, emergent, self-organizing nature and its potential beyond what we can predict and control. We see that there is too much complexity for any elected representative to be the lone hero delivering change. In living systems, change can’t truly be managed; instead, we can only nurture and support an ecology’s self-organization and emergence. We can sense possibility, nudge the system towards that possibility, learn, respond and adapt as we go. We can be wise, thoughtful stewards and participants of change.
What this means for this moment is that those we elected cannot simply retreat to the halls of power to manage change in isolation, re-emerging for the occasional town hall and community consultation.
Nor can we retreat to our separate spaces and stances, settling back in to the well-worn grooves of our division, waiting for change to be delivered from on high.
Instead, the politician’s most important role may be to capitalize on the unity and energy of the election, continuing to bring people together – this time, to draw out collective intelligence, develop collaborative capacity, and create a preferred future together.
This has been Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s approach. On his second day in office, he created the NYC Mayor's Office of Mass Engagement to continue engaging the thousands of volunteers and the grassroots movement that got him elected. He has focused on practical things everyone agrees they want to be different: potholes, perpetual scaffolding on sidewalks, traffic congestion, housing. Through conversation, collaboration and creative engagement, he is getting things done in ways that grow collective cohesion and capacity. He is putting New Yorkers to work, together, inviting them to be the heroes they’ve been waiting for.
One review of his performance as mayor reports:
Mamdani’s approach … embodies the idea that it is not enough to win elections, or even to successfully implement discrete policies. In order to create change that endures, the government needs the ongoing, organized support of the public.
In other words, an activated population makes it less likely that current gains will be rolled back in the future. People support what they helped to create.
If change is to be watershed-level and wave-proof, it must be enacted through distributed power and responsibility, on the basis of an enlarged collective vision of what is reasonable and possible.
This is also what Jon Alexander, author of the book, Citizens, observes. In a policy brief for Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, he proposes that:
To be effective and legitimate in achieving desirable outcomes, administrations need to step away from the role of service provider—and the idea that governments can or should deliver outcomes for people—and into a role that empowers, supports, and equips citizens to achieve those outcomes themselves.
To this end, he advocates for a “Department of Citizen Empowerment” at every level of government.
And then there is the Centre for Public Impact's assertion that government is better understood as "Human Learning Systems."
Outcomes cannot be “delivered” by public service – they are created by whole systems: all the relationships and factors in someone’s life. Outcomes are made by healthy systems – systems in which all the people involved can collaborate and learn together.
Backed by overwhelming research and practice, including more than 50 detailed case studies, they call this "public service for the real world."
And I would add: we don’t have to wait for government to make this possible.
In my own work around the world, I support local circles of stewards in an ongoing practice of creating the conditions for collective change. For example, this involves “tending the soil of community” among dozens of neighboring farmers in the transition to regenerative agriculture or “hosting the hosts” for communities seeking to make tourism work better for them. Government invariably plays some kind of supporting role, but it is not often the instigator.
In farming communities, local stewards have noticed some truly meaningful emergent qualities in this approach:
As a recent impact evaluation attests, these well-tended conditions are turning out to have more power to lead to desired change on the land than top-down efforts.
Can you see parallels to what might be possible in your own context and community, if only conditions like these were well tended? If people were less isolated? If there were a culture of shared curiosity, generosity, learning and change? If the community were more vibrant, cohesive and inclusive? And if that helped generate a steady stream of new neighbor-initiated, community-sustained projects that made things better?
This is what we have to cultivate.
In all, I believe that the only viable approach to lasting positive change – and to democracy itself – is a collective, action-oriented practice of learning to be together, in ever greater wisdom and wellbeing, in the particular place and context that we share.
It's about seizing the particular conditions of this moment and bringing a new level of collective awareness, intention and practice to Margaret Mead's famous maxim:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
And in this practice, as I say in my book, it helps to understand:
May we come together in communities everywhere to make this the watershed moment when humanity steps decisively into an Age of Thrivability.
