Anybody who wishes to monetise their ‘social’ activities on the internet knows that they should frequently remind the human beings they are engaging with of the value of those activities. In other words, they must post frequently lest their engagement metrics decline along with their potential earnings.
I said from the outset that I was not about seeking financial reward for sharing my views at MacroEdgo, even though the pandemic provided a timely opportunity to do just that given my related experience and uncanny ability to accurately forecast how the pandemic progressed which caused my readership to explode in early 2020. I recognised this opportunity, but my motivation remained true to providing a service to my community rather than seeking to profit from what was a very sad and unfortunate development for everyone.
Now I have been especially quiet in my writing this year and that is primarily because I have had to deal with some very serious personal issues. In truth these issues were present at the beginning of the pandemic, requiring a great deal of balance to pour energy into everything I needed to at that time. Then early this year, as the pandemic issues settled – note carefully, not the pandemic itself, but the rate of new issues of relevance settled considerably – and as my personal issues reached a crescendo, I needed to prioritise care for my loved ones and myself.
Now that those issues have also settled I am able to engage again with social issues that I see as critical and which I feel passionate to write about.
I continue to be more and more convinced of my views about humanity having entered the Great Reset era, and in fact I am noting how this phrase is growing in use through society, in entirety or with an alliterated R-word following ‘Great’, as in the Great Resignation, Reshuffle, Reassessment, Rethink, etc, etc.
Much of this usage to this point relates to changing power dynamics at workplaces as workers enact plans for change to balance their lives better as I foresaw early in the pandemic – this search by people for balance and purpose in their lives is, after all, one of the main underlying premises of my ‘Great Reset’ thesis.
Since career and workplace dynamics is a major focus of change, I have decided to become active on LinkedIn. Below is a recent post which was spawned from some thoughts that I shared in a comment on LinkedIn.
The underlying premise of what many say here at LinkedIn – especially those employed in the corporate wellness sector, either embedded in organisations or as external consultants – is that addressing wellness is good for the bottom line.
While I recognise the accuracy of this statement, I find it confronting.
Since work culture is a result of the behaviours of groups of human beings, what is really being said is that human beings should care about human beings because it is good for company profits.
While this argument might act as justification for a salary or a consultancy, from a societal perspective there is something fundamentally very wrong with that statement.
Moreover, while these measures may lead to improvements, I really do wonder at how enduring change will be when it is so correlated to monetary and market-based rewards. We all know that organisation/managerial fads are commonplace in contemporary workplaces.
I can say this because I am not driven by a profit imperative or self-interest. I simply want to play a role in helping society towards a better future by engaging and sharing my views.
That we have devolved to a society where it makes most sense for human beings to be good to each other, and within our broader interactions in the world (i.e. our impacts on the environment), if the market rewards it monetarily or in some other manner (typically related to societal status) is a consequence of the form of extreme capitalism that we have swung towards over the last half century.
This is at the heart of emotion and logic behind major changes, such as #thegreatresignation , we are seeing in this new era we have entered which I refer to as #thegreatreset .
People are tired of this world of transactional relationships as they crave authentic and deeper connection.
In the Great Reset era work-centric rhetoric and responses are seen as lacking and impotent.
Compassion is the only sustainable answer, and that is true in all settings 🙏
The irony is that those who understand and live that will reap the full rewards from engaging in society, including from capitalist markets as the underlying premise of the statement is correct, though they probably will not notice it since it is no longer their main goal.
For example, over many years I have closely observed one of the greatest capitalists ever in Warren Buffett and it is very clear to me that he was never driven to be powerful. Instead he was driven to excel at whatever he did, no doubt partly to provide security for he and his family, but also as a contribution to his society, and since he was especially good at capital allocation in a capitalist system he became wealthy almost as a byproduct of his passion and skill.
The short answer: if your motives are true, your actions will also be, and everything else will fall into the place it should be…
Brett Edgerton (Stay at home Dad at MacroEdgo) at LinkedIn published 3 August 2022
I have also written an essay entitled “The Great Reset Era At Work” which I published exclusively at LinkedIn.
I will still publish here at MacroEdgo, but please consider coming and following me at LinkedIn. I have a few more pieces in draft ready to be published there.
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© Copyright Brett Edgerton 2022
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