“Awakening is not changing who you are but discarding who you are not.”

Deepak Chopra

Adam Cox introduces us to the quotation above in this short episode of The Hypnotist; it's well worth a listen. At the personal level, we all know how we can get bogged down by the daily grind, stuck in a rut, and how hard it can be to contemplate change. Deepak Chopra presents a liberating alternative.

However, this quotation contains a much wider logic which could benefit the whole of humanity, because we know that substantial change is necessary for us all. Climate change demands it, the pandemic has forced it upon us: but at least we have technology making it a whole lot easier.

So, this week we escalate Deepak Chopra’s rationale to see how it could help to change the mindset from challenge to opportunity, for us all.

Change is challenging for everyone, whether it's voluntary or brought about by necessity. It can be an evolutionary transition, or it can be sudden. These days, moving from a full-time job to ‘retirement’ is often more of the former, as people take on alternative voluntary and governance roles: but it requires change nonetheless – and could be eased by a bit of training.

The pandemic, however, has forced a sudden re-adjustment of almost pre- vs. post- war proportions. It’s challenged all generations, and businesses are being forced to adjust in order to take account of the new normal after a really uncomfortable past twenty months. A new, robust modus operandi is now taking shape: we clearly can't say the same for China, where the lack of a strategy for herd immunity via vaccination has led to the resurgence of lockdown threats, with the risk of further unsettling world trade.

Another example of an institution being forced to change is the Church of England, weighed down by tradition and dogmatic interpretations of scripture which allow little space for Christian logic. It seriously needs to learn to discard what is not inherent to the Christian faith, whose essence is wrapped up in just two very simple commandments: to love God, and to love our neighbours as ourselves.

And we’re now presented with the major challenge of climate change, where Deepak Chopra's quote probably has the most to teach us. We can either see the pledges agreed at COP26 as a major effort to change who we are, or we can see them as an invitation to discard what we are not. For example, it’s extraordinary that after broadcasting two weeks of excellent environmental programmes and detailed coverage of the Glasgow conference, the BBC saw fit to launch a new series of ‘Top Gear’ on Sunday night

There is so much that we do, day by day, that is not essential for everyday life and involves excess use of energy. We've learned so much over the past year and a half of how technology can render so much of our past effort surplus to requirements. Let's make the most of it, in order to enable us to simply drop stuff which is now redundant.

And while we do so, let's explore how the world of economics can change: so that it measures much more of the quality of life rather than the value of production: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) should be replaced by a yardstick which relates to that quality of life, rather than measuring effort for effort’s sake.

Our ‘Shares for Data’ proposals full squarely into this space, bringing hope for a transition from wages earned to dividends received, whereby the great majority of humanity, not just the super-rich, can derive real benefit from the technological revolution.

Our egalitarian capitalism proposals combine our passion for empowering young people with this broad strategy for letting all people participate in the benefits of technology as share owners, and over the months ahead we will be exploring how to make this happen.

The Deepak Chopra quote is therefore all about achieving change through simplification, and it's an important message for our time. Humanity has a great deal of change to cope with as we move through the 21st century. We can either set about it by hard graft, or we can strip away the unnecessary.

So I invite you to listen to Adam’s short episode of The Hypnotist; but as you do so please imagine his analysis being not just personal, but something which can also benefit the whole of humanity. The decades ahead might just seem a little easier.

Gavin Oldham OBE

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