We are not powerless
In a world of tension and hard choices, Conscious Tribes offers a map for rethinking how we can make a difference.
The world “out there” can feel too much: war, climate change, rising polarisation, to name a few. We don’t always know how to respond. We shout at the news. Or switch it off. We craft the perfect post online and hope it lands. And it’s not only the big stuff. An after-hours email from an overbearing boss hijacks dinner or sours the whole evening. We vent. We pace. We try to calm down. Because we know it will happen again tomorrow. I do it. We all do.
It’s what we turn to when we can’t see how to shift what’s bearing down on us. It might help us let off steam, but over time, we can be left thinking that our problems are out of our hands. That we are too small to make a difference.
We get told simple ways to fix our problems:
Worried about climate change? Buy an electric car.
Frustrated with politics? Vote for someone else in a few years.
Angry about the cost of housing? Sign this petition or join this campaign.
But public life is not as simple as these stories make it seem. A way forward begins with seeing how public life works more clearly — and taking our role in shaping it seriously.
A map of public life
Big and small
How large-scale change depends on small relationships, and how local action can connect to bigger forms of power.
Public and private
How private experiences are shaped by public forces, and how personal stories can become starting points for public action.
Us and Others
How change begins with us, but happens through the groups, relationships and tribes we build with others.
Power Over and Power With
How power operates in public life and our tribes, held in tension between shared agency and control.
Curiosity and Judgement
How we stay open to others without abandoning our convictions, and learn to relate while disagreeing.
Sameness and Difference
How we find belonging through common ground, and how — in public life and in our tribes — sameness becomes dangerous when it leaves no room for difference.
Action and Reflection
How action and reflection strengthen each other: action keeps reflection grounded, while reflection gives action depth and direction.
THIS MAP IS SIMPLE BUT NOT SIMPLISTIC
Unlike a treasure map where X marks the spot, it sets out the terrain without telling you where to go. The hope lies not in buried treasure, but in our agency.
The map makes clear that even big problems are not all-powerful — and that feeling powerless is not the same as being powerless. Seeing public life as a series of two-way arrows gives us more room to move: we have choices, and even in our biggest challenges these tensions open up cracks and opportunities where we can make a difference.
It’s a different way of thinking that anchors our agency in two guiding practices.
- The first is acting consciously. We are best positioned to make sense of the challenges we face, relate to others, and act to make change when we are alert to the paradoxes of public life and how they take shape in our particular situation. Every one of us can act consciously — it’s a reminder that we all have a role to play. But on our own we are not enough.
- To make a difference, we also need a tribe. Working with others, building power and acting together cannot be reduced to a single decision or plan — it is an ongoing collective negotiation that evolves over time.
That is what I mean by Conscious Tribes. It isn’t just a book title. It’s a practice — a way of thinking about public life and our place in it that expands our sense of agency and possibility.
It doesn’t wish away the pressures we face. Instead, it asks us to focus on what we can do despite them: to think, act and work with others. And as we try to make a difference in the world out there, it recognises that working with others makes a difference to us as well.
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