Why You Should Embrace The Chaos

change

is the only constant in the world

and yet it’s the thing we fear the most

minister fuller said you never change

things by

fighting the existing reality to change

something you build a new model

that makes the old model obsolete

we can see this all throughout history

whenever we have embraced

a new idea we have to let go of the old

idea

but what bucky doesn’t talk about is

that in between these two

models there’s an element of chaos

see systems are designed to create order

out of chaos when a system can no longer

contain the chaos it was designed for we

get what i like to call

a chaos overspell

we look at the systems all throughout

our world today

political healthcare financial education

the list

goes on and on these systems have

brought us to where

we are however the signs of chaos always

feel

self-evident all experiencing them

in one format or another

it’s my intention to share with you a

fresh

perspective of the chaos that you see

all around you

and i want to leave you with a newfound

sense of positivity not just about

what’s being done

but about what we can do as well

to begin with i just need to take us

back to 1900.

food was scarce or limited sometimes

even rationed

life expectancy and education was low

and unless

you were a white male don’t expect too

many rights

is why i can say quite comfortably that

we have never

had it so good

being born today and getting to 30 so

darn sight easier than our ancestors

ever had it and let’s just look at our

achievements over the last

50 years we have been to the moon we’ve

been to mars

we’ve mapped the human genome

but nearly a billion people still live

in extreme poverty

just so we’re clear extreme quality is a

dollar

ninety a day how many are living at 195

or two dollars

what we call hardship is a world away

from extreme poverty ten percent of the

planets still drink water

contaminating with waste 30 of the

planet

don’t even have access to basic

sanitation

but okay that’s our developing world

it’s developing and i’ll tell you what

in 50 years it has developed a lot

what about our first world

homelessness is on the rise around the

world in every single country in europe

except finland well done finland

and seven years in a row in the uk

40 to 50 of americans are one paycheck

away

from potential homelessness and some

families have to choose between

food healthcare and in the uk

sanitary towels

how can our systems that have brought us

so much greatness causes so much pain

it’s all about stress tim mentioned

earlier

these are the statistics for suicide

65 increase in 45 years in suicide every

40 seconds predicted to double

to 20 seconds by next year

this pain seems to be increasing it’s no

wonder

that our millennials and seniors of our

time or our kids becoming adults

are looking around at the chaos over

spill that these systems are no longer

addressing and asking ourselves a

question

is this really the best we’ve got are we

really a truly

global civilized society

so we know that chaos is part of the

process

a good example i’d like to use to talk

about systems and to talk about

chaos is cymatics now cymatics is a

greek word and it means

where it’s the study of sound and

vibration

made visible we do have sound

we take a plate straight a little bit we

take a plate

sprinkle some sand over it we

the sand on the top represents the chaos

when energy is applied order is created

the sound coming from the tone generator

is a frequency

the frequencies are energy the greater

the amount of energy

the greater the complexity of the shape

now the shape holds itself as long as it

can contain

the energy until the final moment where

it switches to a more complex structure

they say it’s the space between the

nodes

that makes the music but it’s the moment

between the

shapes did you find the chaos

[Music]

how much chaos well it depends on how

much pain

problems and mistakes we made in the

past

and how much we’re willing to let that

go case in point let’s look at the

abolishment of slavery

how much chaos was caused in america

when they abolished slavery they fought

a whole war

half a million people died let alone how

many people died

as part of slavery and we’re still

dealing with that today

if we weren’t we wouldn’t have movements

like black lives matter

so if we know we have to let go of the

past to move

forward but we struggle

so a good example to look at how we let

go of something is the changing gears of

a car

to come with me on this you’re on a

motorway driving at 60 miles an hour

you’re in fourth gear and your rev

counter

is a 4 000 revs you’re nearly in the red

now you could continue on your journey

but you know if you did that it would

cause damage to the engine

why would you damage the vehicle with

which you’re traveling it doesn’t make

sense

so you know you need to change gear so

what do we do we put our foot on the

clutch

now at this point we just disengage our

engine from our wheels

we’re going to hold the gear stick we

take it on a fourth we’re going to fifth

but you’re still not in fifth gear

because your engine’s disengaged

you’ve got no power being applied to the

to the engine to the wheels

technically speaking you’re costing you

haven’t got control of the vehicle

you’re slowing down

but you knew what you were doing you’re

changing gear

so you take your foot off the clutch

anyone ever been in a passenger

when someone’s done that too fast will

know that it is the worst time to be

drinking

out of an open coffee cup

an observer could look at any point and

said

this isn’t working we’re slowing down

you’ve not got control of the vehicle

it’s bumping let’s go back to fourth

gear we knew what we were doing in

fourth gear

it was safe it’s comfortable

but you knew your rev counter was a 4

000 revs you knew

that if you carried on that would cause

damage that’s why you changed gear

see i don’t believe that society is

breaking down

i believe society is gearing up

so why do we struggle letting go

or why do we attack so much to holding

on

the buddhists consider attachment a form

of suffering

the more you attach to something the

more potential suffering you could have

if someone or something

takes that away from you to

illuminate this a little bit further i

want to go back to 1846

a gentleman called ignaz semovice just

starting out

at the vienna general hospital in the

maternity ward

child bed fever was the big killer of

the time

killing new mothers within a week of

giving birth a terrible death

seminole virus was a man of science

he wanted to understand what the root

cause was so we started recording all

the fatalities

and he found out that when women give

birth to doctors

did a five times higher chance of death

than when they gave birth under midwives

it was common back then for doctors to

go from autopsy

to delivering in the va delivering in

the maternity ward

but it wasn’t until someone vice’s

colleague pricked his finger

and he died after performing an autopsy

on a woman who had childbed fever

that semivirus made his big connection

and he thought

there must be some way that matthew is

transferring from the

autopsy to the maternity ward and if i

can remove that then i can solve the

problem

he got all the doctors to wash their

hands in a chlorine solution

which is a bit like an antiseptic we

might think that’s normal but this is

revolutionary for the time

the death rate felt dramatically several

wires had stumbled onto the greatest

advancement in discovering medical

history

or so he thought because the doctors

did not take kindly to it looking like

they were to blame

they called samurais out for being

unscientific for lacking basic reason

because the model the existing model at

that time was my asthma theory

which is the theory that bad air moves

around and causes disease

they ridiculed several wires and they

lost his position

at 47 years old he got taken into a

mental asylum and he died

it took 50 years for his work

to become accepted when germ theory

became more studied

i just want to take a moment to just

think about that

because at that time they were our

greatest thinkers

how many times are we the doctors

holding on to our ideas and how many

times do we ridicule people like

symbolize

publicly and privately for bringing

forth a new

model of reality i invite all of us

to step out of our doctor’s shoes and

into some advices

and see the world with a fresh pair of

eyes the same pair of eyes that our

youth of today see the world

we are a globalized society right now

global citizenship requires global

responsibility

margaret mead said never doubt that a

small group of committed individuals can

change the world

for indeed that is all that ever has

and as i look around the world and i see

the courage and the compassion and the

creativity

that human beings have today to step

into

all of the chaos that we’re seeing warms

my heart

the number of marches around the world

for climate change for peace for

equality for justice are on the rise

month

after month after month the number of

citizens making a stance for something

greta thomberg 15 years old instead of

walking to school to start term and

taking a seat

she walked into town and found the

busiest parliament building and stood

for climate change nine months later

a hundred countries seventeen hundred

marches

and hundreds upon thousands of people

all with one united voice i’ll take my

exams when you start taking care and

responsibility for this planet

that’s our future generation talking now

i’m talking about planets

50 years ago plastic was a savior

we’ve all seen in the last 12 months the

galvanization

of the world and how countries now are

either banning

or looking to ban single-use plastics

and the earth responds beautifully in

all the instances where human beings

have removed themselves from

deforestation and destruction

the earth bounds back with beautiful

glory

this isn’t a fairytale feature for us

all this is perfectly achievable

but it requires this globalized

civilized society to begin to actually

work together now as consumers

we have always had power but not like we

have today

the event of social media has allowed

has allowed us

as consumers to galvanize around ideas

regardless of greed

creed race geography we have the power

to be able to

boycott a brand tomorrow for what it

doesn’t stand for

and raise a company to the stratosphere

because of what it does stand for and

the businesses know this

this is larry fink ceo

of the world’s largest asset management

firm to give you an idea of

size every day five trillion dollars

moves around the world he manages six

trillion

when he speaks wall street listens

his message to businesses was simple if

you want to work with blackrock you need

to be solving a social problem and stand

for a social cause

big words coming from the big side of

business

but they’re not new words b corp we’ve

been talking about embedding purpose

into people’s organizations for years

patagonia have had purpose in their

organization since dear dog

and companies like buy one give one

exist for the sole purpose to help

companies give

and stand for something beyond their

product or their service

see our old models represented the

common good

they served common interests groups

companies things like that

and new models represent the greatest

good they serve our global

society that we all live in will exist

in

if our models are changing and our past

is our past has been made

then the chaos that sits between the two

is inevitable

so embrace the chaos forgive our

mistakes

else resentment it’s like putting an

anchor in the old model

as we as we try and move forward

our greatest two assets are our voices

and the money in our pocket

used correctly they’re greater than the

sum of their parts

we spend a long time cultivating both of

them so use them

wisely use them consciously because

every day you cast a vault

with what you say with what you buy

where you buy it from

whom you buy it from the business you do

what you stand for

what you don’t stand for because in the

words of b

court every day is election day

it’s a cashier vote wisely

if the old model represented products

that took from the earth didn’t pay back

didn’t pay

people fairly maybe they used children

in their production

then the new model invest our time our

money our energy into things

which have got clear supply chains that

are sustainable to give back

that look after our people because some

people live

on 1.90 a day

if our old systems represented

inequality

injustice racism prejudice

they put our money into systems that

equality embedded into the dna of what

they are

if you don’t know how to do those things

ask questions the better the quality of

the question the better the quality of

the answer

the path forward doesn’t need to be a

bumpy road

into a fifth gear society with a coffee

stained cut

top it could be with grace

and ease like you saw the videos from

cyanotics

we know that change is the only constant

so embrace the change

embrace the chaos step forth

through the fear and through the chaos

with creativity with courage

compassion like symbolized it regardless

of the words because the only thing

that we should be in competition with

is what’s possible not each other

thank you

you