The New Possible EUK – WE Culture versus ME Culture

The pandemic has accelerated the momentum of the wellness movement and heightened the awareness of shared social responsibility. Their combined social force has since led to shifts in the collective mindset and culture, moving from wealth to health and from a ‘Me’ culture to that of a ‘We’ culture, respectively. These shifts have led to louder advocacy against climate change; but what more needs to be done for the global community at large to achieve a carbon positive future?

DRIVENxDESIGN Exec Club seeks to explore this in the 34^th episode of its Town Hall series, The New Possible, held on 9^th December. Weighing in on the cultural shift, director of DPA’s London office, Mr Frven Lim puts forth that the concept of the ‘global citizen’ will take on greater purpose: “We have got ‘I’ in ‘illness’ and ‘we’ in ‘wellness’… [With the accompanying emphasis on health and recognition that curbing contagion requires a shared social responsibility], we are in this age where what is important is the collective – the common good that serves us. The individual agenda has kind of diminished.” He also posited that social media, with its accessibility and potential to incite passion, will be the tool and platform that unites the global collective to the climate cause. Citing the momentum and reach of the US civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, fellow panelist David Constantie (Founder Director at Motivation Charitable) agrees with Frven.

Other panelists, Kristy Dias (Managing Director at PriestmanGoode), Gurvinder Khurana (Co-owner and Design Director at align), William Knight (Director at The Renew Consultancy) and Julia Monk (Hospitality Thought Leader, Architect & Interior Designer) too concurred. The discussion, moderated by Mark Bergin, was then led into an examination of how far the sustainability movement has come over the last four decades, the responsibility of policy-makers and the hope for carbon positive change with a younger generation that is aware and informed.

The discussion closed with the understanding that while BeyondZero is a tall order, with much work still left to be done through cooperation between industries instead of competing against each other.

Listen to the full podcast here.