How shocking events can spark positive change | Naomi Klein | Day 35 – 100 Days 100 Thoughts

Hello Folks,

When do we change? When do we evolve? When a shocking crisis happens we will get a sense of urgency to survive. That gives us a wake-up call and we push ourselves and take a giant leap as a society. This is how historically every crisis has shaped our survival. This has led us to evolve as a society. But is the same working today? Despite having many alarming crises on hand why aren’t we taking any steps for the same? Why are we not showing the necessary rigor? What are we missing in this? Explains Naomi Klein in her wonderful TED Talk on the topic How Shocking Events Can Spark Positive Change. Watch her TED Talk below.

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This is indeed a wonderful talk. The pattern we observe so far is the shock which induces a wake-up call leading to take the leap to a safer place. But what we miss in the process is a holistic approach. So the big problem we face is agreeing upon the perfect world we want to be in. As mentioned in the talk by Naomi Klein, we tend to work in silos. This is hindering us from imagining the world we want to be in. This is a big issue since we fail to acknowledge the fact that each of these crises is interlinked and has a huge effect on one another. Finding a common ground and concentrating on the positives rather than the negatives helps us move forward.

She also talks about her movement – The Leap and how they devised the plans. The Leap is interesting and it gives us a glimpse of how to approach things. She says, ” instead of trying to scare people about what will happen if we don’t act, we decided to try to inspire them with what could happen if we did act.” This shows the approach they have in their movement. 

As a conclusion I am going to give it verbatim of her conclusion – “Here’s what I’ve learned from studying shocks and disasters for two decades. Crises test us. We either fall apart or we grow up fast. Finding new reserves of strength and capacity that we never knew we had. The shocking events that fill us with dread today can transform us, and they can transform the world for the better. But first, we need to picture the world that we’re fighting for. And we have to dream it up together. Right now, every alarm in our house is going off simultaneously. It’s time to listen. It’s time to leap.“