Are your change efforts hampered by ‘cruel optimism’?
Do you ever read something that just jumps off the page at you, and you can’t stop thinking about it?
I had that experience the other day, reading a segment of ‘Stolen Focus: Why you can’t pay attention’ by Johann Hari. (It’s a wonderful read, highly recommend).
Hari describes meeting Ronald Purser, professor of management at San Francisco State University.
“He introduced me to an idea I hadn’t heard before – a concept named ‘cruel optimism’. This is when you take a really big problem with deep causes in our culture – like obesity, or depression, or addiction – and you offer people, in upbeat language, a simplistic individual solution. It sounds optimistic, because you are telling them that the problem can be solved, and soon – but it is, in fact, cruel, because the solution you are offering is so limited, and so blind to the deeper causes, that for most people, it will fail” (Hari, 2022, p.143).
That felt so true I felt like I’d been hit in the stomach.
And now that there’s a word for it, I see it everywhere.
(Photo by Hybrid on Unsplash)
At work
It’s in the ‘tinkering round the edges’ approach to workplace wellbeing. With every fruit-bowl and yoga class and mindfulness lesson, there’s a subtext that says: you have the opportunity to be well, and if you are not well in this place, then that’s on you. Rather than asking harder questions, like how does the actual nature of the job that we do every day, result in stress and overwhelm and a feeling of being unsupported? And how could we design things differently?
With crime
It’s in the target-hardening, victim-blaming approach to sexual assault. What were you wearing? You must have invited this on yourself. Dress differently and avoid abuse. Rather than tackling the deeper questions – why do some men feel entitled to women’s bodies? What is the cause of that misogyny and aggression?
In the home
It’s in the overwhelm of every working mum who feels they’re dropping at least one of the balls that they’re juggling. At work, with the kids, with the cleanliness of their house, when they buy a birthday cake rather than baking it, when they don’t exercise, and on and on. If only I could be more efficient. If only I could spend less time on social media.
Yeah, maybe that’s part of it. But also – maybe we need to have a bigger conversation about how to balance work and home. Women’s workforce participation has been steadily tracking up over time in developed countries like New Zealand and the US, but women still do the lion’s share of the housework. Even when both partners work full-time.
If you do more paid work, and almost as much unpaid work as before… there’s just too much work to do. White-collar workers might have the luxury of hiring a cleaner, or buying a food box, or getting a nanny in to help with the kids. But the wider conversation isn’t happening – about how do we want to work, how do we want to raise our kids, what do we really want and how do we move towards that?
This conversation would also generate financial benefits – with Westpac estimating that the New Zealand economy would grow by $1.5 billion if housework and childcare were more equally shared between couples.
Identifying the real problem
Tackling ‘cruel optimism’ might feel overwhelming, because rather than quick-fix individual solutions, we’re talking about raising and tackling some pretty big, gnarly issues that affect us collectively.
Isn’t it disempowering to think this way?
I don’t think so. First off, once you identify cruel optimism you can start to take off that coat of self-blame that so many people wear these days. You’re not finding life difficult because you lack self control or because you’re inherently flawed. Most likely, you’re responding in a natural way to the environment that you live in. You’re doing the best you freaking can, like we all are. I reckon this line of thinking leads to more self-compassion, which can extend outwards to other people. (Side note - I have to extend that self-compassion to myself, when my house is so messy I can’t step without landing on a toy, and when the cobwebs are Halloween-worthy. Like, all year).
Second, if we focus less of our energy on self-blame and trying to optimise ourselves for the world, we’ll have more energy to optimise the world. That sounds really idealistic, but the first step in solving any challenge is to clearly articulate what the challenge actually is. Like Einstein said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
We need to channel our inner 5-year old, and double-down on asking ‘why’, rather than settling for shallow explanations and quick fixes. According to one business commentator, problem definition is ‘the most important business skill you’ve never been taught’.
Driving change
Of course, defining the problem isn’t the whole issue – you also need to change things. Sometimes social change feels like this mystical thing that happens to people who live more heroic lives than you. But the current momentum around the 4-day working week is an encouraging example of how change can happen.
The boss at Perpetual Guardian NZ decides to trial a 4-day working week with his staff, for the same pay.
The staff are just as effective and they’re happier, so the shift becomes permanent.
That example echoes around the world, and the 4-day week is now being trialled by private companies, public sector agencies, states and whole countries (evidence here and here). The Japanese government is recommending a 4-day week, and the option of reduced working hours has been offered to citizens as part of labour market reforms in Belgium.
Putting this in a bullet-pointed list might give the impression that the change is really straightforward. It’s not - but it’s also not impossible, and good change can happen relatively fast. For instance, the Perpetual Guardian trial occurred in 2018, so that’s pretty significant momentum in 4 years.
Towards genuine optimism
To sum up - change can happen. Change happens most effectively at the level of the group or the collective. And as an important side note, it’s also more fun to make change together, rather than toughing it out alone. All of which is cause for genuine optimism.