1. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Society has been in transition.
2. Society is a system.
3. Homo narrans. Humans are story-tellers. Stories are the way we learn.
4. The best way to change systems (human ones at least) is to change the stories we tell.
5. The Nesrine Malik book, ‘We Need New Stories’, recognises this. The book describes six foundational untruths (‘myths’) and how they need to be corrected and evolved.
6. The Law Of System Completeness has six essential elements.
7. Nesrine Malik’s six new stories fit the Law. Like this:

COORDINATION (Virtuous Origin) – ‘history is written by the winners’… which means that the stories nations tell have little or no resemblance to the actual reality of what happened in the past. The historical record needs to record truth. When it doesn’t, it lays the seeds of future turbulence and chaos.

ENGINE (Free Speech) – ‘The claim that free speech is under attack is often a mask for other political frustrations and fears’… everyone should have the right to free speech. They should also recognise that every right comes attached to a responsibility

TRANSMISSION (Gender Equality) – ‘the social contract between the state and its female citizens is broken.’

TOOL (Political Correctness) – it is good to be ‘awake’, ‘wokism’ is when we become too awake and over-sensitised to what is happening around us. ‘Cancelling’ people for their unpopular views only makes matters worse. The Tool of positive societal change is all about resolving right-versus-right conflicts in a way that creates higher level (thesis-antithesis-synthesis) truths.

INTERFACE (Identity Politics) – ‘there is simply no electoral benefit to be gained from abandoning identity politics because voters are increasingly sorted it such a way that those who support economically progressive policies are also supportive of racial justice and gender equity’… society is full of contradictions… they should be embraced and challenged (transcended) rather than brushed under the carpet.

SENSOR (Reliable Narrator) – ‘If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true’… journalists, in other words, are the needed objective seekers of truth and voices of reason

8. Looking at the state of the current societal S-curve transition, most politicians seem stuck on a left-right pendulum that tries to solve the problems at one end by reverting to the other. In a complex world this can never work.

9. I’m not certain (m)any of our politicians are ready to recognise the need for new stories, but the System-change roadmap is there when they are. And that feels like a pretty good start.