The full
spectrum in a wheel: Less, more and the opposite spoke.
Mark Trahant
As the country -- as the world -- begins dramatic changes because of demographics and climate change, we need to think about the stories we tell. For so much of America, the story has been about growth, but does that story ring true when the world of young people today is about less? We already live in smaller houses, we earn less, we drive less, indeed, in this era of contraction, a world of less will define our prospects.
In the
business world and in government, the new narrative has been a transition
phrase, the idea of "more is less." In another words you can do everything you
did last year but with fewer resources and perhaps people. But that narrative is
hollow at best. People cannot build a story of success based on a frenetic pace.
We need a new way of describing a world of less in a way that makes sense to
someone navigating that change (or, more important, for young people, looking to
begin a career in an arch of chaos).
So what
stories do we tell about less? How can we make less seem successful, both as a
story and as a way of living? More or less can be the same story, perhaps retold
from a different perspective in the wheel. A story told from the opposite spoke.
The lecture will include examples of the same story told in a different form.