Being A Working-Class World Changer
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I am a working-class world changer. Most people who work on global issues are professionals — with graduate degrees and management-level job titles. They have good salaries, paid vacations, health care coverage, and retirement plans.
In short, they have immense privilege as beneficiaries of the global capitalist system that keep them comfortable and tamed, unwilling to rock the financial boat that carries them safely along or to bite the hand that feeds them a weekly or monthly paycheck.
Not me. I am not one of these people. I live in that in-between space of appearing to have made it, yet always remaining culturally on the outside.
Sure, I do have a masters degree and I’ve created plenty of professional job titles for myself over the years as a social entrepreneur. (Try making one up sometime… it’s fun! I currently go by the titles of “change strategist” and “culture designer” in residence.) But unlike many of those I wander among at conferences, plan campaigns with in non-profit boardrooms, and guide strategy around in executive leadership suites, I grew up in working-class poverty in the “fly over” zone of the midwestern United States.
Side note: I grew up on a family farm in rural Missouri.
I may look professional, but deep inside I’m a chicken farmer who ventured out into the world in search of truth and seeking to be of service to others in need.
There are plenty of drawbacks to working on global issues like the climate crisis, mass poverty, wealth inequality, and systemic political corruption. I typically don’t know how much money I’ll make in a given year. It is impossible to plan farther ahead than the current partnership or collaboration. My wife holds down the fort for us with a meager, yet steady, income. This has been essential for my ability to take risks and work toward long-range goals over the last ten years — like reframing global poverty, birthing a new scientific field for the study of cultural evolution, and challenging the dominant narratives of neoliberal capitalism.
When conferences come along (I get invited to speak at quite a few of them these days), I cannot afford the price of admission or the travel arrangements to get there. So I established the policy a few years ago of only attending when the organizers arrange to cover my travel costs. This makes me an unusual trickster in the midst — as it is the business model of conference organizers to earn their keep getting people to pay for attendance.
These drawbacks (and others I could name… like the chronic stress of being on the edge of poverty for a lifetime) bring with them several unexpected strengths, including:
- Having an authentic understanding of the struggles experienced by the majority of people in our immensely unequal world (based on my own life experience);
- Cultivating a scrappy ruggedness about politics in a world filled with privilege and entitlements for the beneficiaries of empires both past and present (as I am never an “insider” among these groups).
- The ability to be honest about the threats humanity faces because I don’t have to “protect” the brand or company that employs most professional change makers (a freedom much deeper than the false security of full employment).
- Getting to hide among the elite in professional crowds and see how they think about global issues, while playing bridge-builder with those on the front lines of grassroots struggle with their lives literally on the line every day (getting to be part of the solution on both sides of this cultural divide).
I bet many of you are in a similar situation. Maybe you even have one of those fancy job titles and a salary of your own. But in your heart of hearts you feel the struggle to get by in this world, knowing that the game has been rigged to serve a tiny elite that does not include you. It is as if you must wear a mask and pretend you are also one of them and hide in their midst.
It’s okay to conceal this truth… for a little while longer anyway. Because what we need now is for a great discernment of truth about what is really going on in the world.
Which companies are poised to become forces for good on the world stage? Are there people earnestly working to transform the Monsantos and Exxon-Mobiles out there? How do they interact with the B Corps and social impact companies like Patagonia and Ben & Jerry’s?
Who are the real leaders shaping the birth of a new economic system in service of life on Earth? Are they embedded in old systems driving change from within? How do they interact with those on the outside who share this vitally important agenda? I’ve gotten to know plenty of people working in every nook and cranny of “inside” and “outside” — together we are legion.
How will the marginalized join partnerships with the entitled to make the great transition? This is an all-hands-on-deck moment in human history. We need “both/and” strategies that transcend dichotomies of old. I embody this as a person who is not an elite, yet is in a position to influence many of them. (Paradoxes like this are plentiful during times of major change. It is better to embrace them than try to critique their existence… because they are not going away anytime soon.)
Those of us who bridge these worlds will have a special role to play. We must be good at building deep trust, revealing authentic patterns, and seeing viable pathways forward that break humanity free from the paradigm of wealth extraction and hoarding that currently dominates our fragile planet.
We definitely have a lot of work to do!
I share these words with you to say that I am ready to make my presence known. I may happen to float in elite circles from time to time, but I am still one of you. I grew up in working-class poverty and have not forgotten where my roots come from. The social welfare system of the United States awarded me university scholarships so I could go to college and learn how to be of service to my fellow Americans.
What I learned in school was that I am a fellow human of the Earth, in kinship with the great web of life that has flowed seamlessly since its inception some 3.8 billion years ago. And so I “went undercover” at think tanks, with media companies, on the public speaking circuit — giving the appearance that I might be one of the entitled who made it into the elite category of professional Western livelihood.
The truth is that I continue to live a rugged existence, speaking truth to power. This is in my bones. It gurgles in my veins. And churns in my heart.
There are benefits to being a working-class world changer. Embrace them for yourself and be the change we desperately need to create in this time of great need wherever you are in the system.
Onward, fellow humans.
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