What does data tell us about family lifestyles in 2020..? What do people actually want..?
Rampant individualism in the 20th Century doesn't appear to have left the western world any happier. Indeed the classic loss syndrome watching the rise of the developing world. we've even set us systems so we can't enjoy much of our wealth with high costs of living for what we could consider a fairly basic lifestyle (see JRF and its minimum income standard for the UK of £34,900 a year)
And as for our leisure, what does the rise in cafe culture in the UK tell us..? It might be saying that we like being individuals in a group context. We like being in groups even when we don’t interact with anyone else. we used to go to the high street to shop, and to libraries to find information. we don't need that anymore (in the main) we need different things, and have to build new institutions for social justice around the things we do need.
We like being part of a tribe, and where we go is now as important as the clothes we wear. Vast numbers of people could fit with membership organisations and causes who need more than a transactional approach to the work they do.
Maybe we are moving from a consumer model of leisure to a relational model of leisure. I think this has huge potential for social change if we can give people a way of changing things that fits with their lifestyles. Examples like Movember, Macmillan’s world’s biggest coffee morning given, or even clay shirky's cognative suplus could mean we have huge collaborative global power that we don't feel obligated to do.
The civil rights movement was based on individualism, not collectivism. The human rights act is the logical extension of this. Technological innovation always has been the invisible variable that could see the shifthappens in this..? Maybe with facilitated social interaction we can put in place the framework that could see this happening.
I think its something worth working towards.
