The Rise of the Radical
Demeter (right) Greek Goddess combines radical action with deep caring. By the Varrese Painter (ca. 340 BCE) ALTES MUSEUM, BERLIN. Public Domain.
Radical Change, Radical Rest, Radical Imagination, Radical Acceptance, Radical Leadership, Radical Community, Radical Candour, Radical Trust, Radical Presence, Radical Kindness, Radical Marketing and Radical KPIs…
These are just a few of the terms I’ve observed and collected over the past few months. No matter which way I turn I keep getting recommended ‘radical’ solutions to all my problems. Familiar terms are being given a makeover with radical flair to be reborn as their more edgy doppelgängers. We definitely feel to be in the era of the rising radical.
And yet to call something radical a few years ago would, in itself, be a radical act. When the purpose-led business sector set a mission to get positive impact into the boardroom, and legal structure of a business, it felt it’s only way was to creep in through the side door so as not to intimidate. The movement instead used phrases such as, ‘Good Business’, ‘Better Business’ and ‘Happier Work’. So what is triggering this changing tide with our naming norms?
What does radical really mean and why is it now popular?
So let’s first look at the word to help us understand its current context.
radical.
adj. extreme, especially as regards change from accepted or traditional forms
n. A radical is someone who advocates for fundamental changes in society, often focusing on deep-seated issues and challenging the status quo. Radicals seek to address the root causes of problems rather than just their symptoms.
Radical is in fact a political term that is often used synonymously with extremist. But radical has a specific meaning — it applies to those who want to "radically" change the system. And we have quite a few systems that we are currently vocalising our emotional resistances to.
Now more than ever, as many of us have begun trying to effect change, we're realising just how entangled our systems are. They're far more interconnected than we previously understood and we are paralysed by fear of the potential domino effects our actions can trigger. Moreover, everything today seems to operate in hyper-mode. Real-time technology demands a constant state of hyper-connectivity, bombarding us with cycles of hyper-targeted content that our brains simply can't physically keep up with processing. This contributes to levels of burnout in addition to high demands of hyper-productivity at work. The world of dating has shifted to online platforms that incubate a consumerist conveyer-belt approach to finding love, where if you aren’t ‘happy enough’ you can always swipe right again and ‘pick a better one’ rather than working on yourself. The cost of everything is inflating, but with no relative compensation on salaries, while businesses declare in marketing that they’re doing all they can to save you money. Add to this the hyper-polarisation of views that's occurring through echo-chambers, including growing trends of significant divides between genders in the Gen Z population [ft.com]. We're trapped on a hamster wheel set to sprint mode—with no stop button in sight.
Are we finding ourselves unconsciously attracted to radical ideas, both positive and negative, not because they are outlandish but because they actually feel familiar? Are we moving towards certain trends, behaviours, ideas or communities as a way to sooth something that hasn’t been figured out in our psyches? As Alain de Botton points out in a comparable unconscious human process — we are attracted to partners that feel familiar to us rather than what necessarily makes us happy in the long run. [School of Life]. The unconscious mind has a natural bias to pick what is familiar over the novel, even when the familiar is uncomfortable or painful, because the mind hasn’t figured out the remedy to its conundrum. So it begs the question, are we also being attracted to worldviews, communities and solutions that match our pain rather than provide an alternative to ease it?
Something feels to be brewing in our collective psyche. We are acutely aware that things seem to be playing out rather differently than our previous experiences. What we usually do doesn’t seem to be working anymore. We feel like we’re treading water, and so our desires are reaching for a radical antidote to what feels like is a spiralling situation.
But why are we prefacing soft skills with ‘radical’?
For this, we need to dig into a 60 year history, and take ourselves back to the 60’s and 70’s of the Black Panther Movement and their part in medical activism for their communities. Beyond their advocating for the physical health of their oppressed communities, the Black Panthers also advocated for the mental health and emotional well-being for activism itself. Understanding it to be a critical component to their fight for social justice and giving rise to the term ‘Radical Self-Care’.
Two important women of colour to credit as contributors are:
Audre Lorde, also a member of the LGBTQ+ community, stating "Caring for myself is not self-indulgent. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” She advocated that daily self-reflection and health autonomy was a civic duty, because the physical, emotional and spiritual toll of activism is highly demanding. [BBC]
Secondly, is Angela Y. Davis, "[Practising radical self-care] means we're able to bring our entire selves into the movement. It means we incorporate into our work as activists ways of acknowledging and hopefully moving beyond trauma. It means a holistic approach.” [Afropunk]
People of colour have, and continue to face, circumstances of hyper-oppression, and a radical response was the only rational response, and are an inspiration for how to create change. So to prioritise soft skills and wellbeing in experiences of hardship isn’t the property of a £5.6 trillion dollar wellness industry, it is a radical act to take a holistic, systemic approach to the wellbeing of the self and others at the same time. And I wonder whether the resurgence in the public imagination of the BLM movement, during the pandemic, is what has sowed seeds for some of these more radical linguistic trends.
But are we truly ready for radical change?
So prefacing seemingly soft, wellness marketing terms and business jargon, yes has a twinge of gimmick about it. All in all, within these new applications of the radical, there seems to be the same original theme of radical care — whether that is for the self, for others or the natural world. It does seem to be attempting to voice some of the genuine pain of our current times and propose a remedy. Things are disorientating. Our digital, political, economic, social, environmental and community landscapes seem to be running on extreme tracks towards we know not what.
As a result, we say we want something radically different.
There is a strong part of our human core that knows it, needs it and desires it.
But the real question is: are we truly willing to do what it takes to do things in radically different ways? Are our desires for radically different outcomes actually possible by making the 1% different incremental changes we usually take?
This is something I can’t answer on behalf of others, which is why the only way to finish this thought piece is to leave you with some questions.