"Without context, there is no commitment."
Society is in the midst of a chaotic transition to a new world that is very different from the present world-one in which we think and act very differently. Present ways of thinking and being, and societal systems of doing are approaching exhaustion. Future "progress" is going to require that society mutate into new ways of thinking, and new systems of doing, that are better able to cope with the new scale and complexity of human activity and technology.
This mutation can take place in either one of two ways: despite our ignorance, or with our conscious help. The cost of the former may be higher than any endured in the 20th century. The promise of the latter is a new flourishing of multi-dimensional wealth, wellbeing, culture and society.
At the same time that leadership is urgently needed, leadership itself is in crisis.
Do we believe that society can be led to make changes as ambitious as this moment requires? No. We don't. Because popular faith in leadership is broken.
And here's an aspect of the present moment where "social media" has done us all a favour. Social media has made clear that the qualities we once esteemed in leaders were, in fact, empty. Did not, in fact, mark real leadership.
Specifically, social media has made plain that you don't need to know where to go or how to get there in order to have "followers." And it has made plain that having lots of followers does not make somebody a leader.
But "follow-the-leader" was at the heart of what we understood leadership to be. And social media has exposed it as empty.
And so many of us don't feel led anymore; we feel lost.
Leaders are Lost
People who are seen as leaders or occupy positions of authority feel lost, too.
Very often, their knee-jerk response has been to hide their confusion by latching onto a narrative. The world may be upside-down, but a narrative gives the illusion of clarity.
There are two big narratives out there right now. The first is "disruption." Everything is changing. We can't stop or shape it; we can only adapt. There's no time to ask "What should change?" or "What should be preserved?"-and even if there were time, these giant, techno-social-economic changes already possess an Unstoppable Momentum.
The second big narrative is "us versus them." They tried to humiliate us. They tried to control us. But we will show them our superiority, by tearing down or undermining everything that they thought made them superior. Pick a side, because now is a contest for the future.
But neither of these narratives fills our need for real leadership. Neither offers a destination worthy of followership. The first rejects the possibility of wisdom. The second rejects the possibility of common prosperity.
Leadership is in crisis, because we are looking for leaders who can show us the way. But they can't. And we can't find any who can.
Leading while Lost
Our error was to try.
The leader-follower paradigm of leadership is broken, because the maps that "leaders" navigate by, that tell them where to go and how to get there, no longer do either of those two things. Those maps are wrong - both because the world has changed so much since the maps were drawn, and because those maps omitted so many aspects of real-world complexity that we are just now beginning to appreciate.
The maps are wrong, and so we need to respond - meaningfully, powerfully, beautifully - to the urgent, gigantic challenges of this moment without professing to know the way forward.
How is that possible?
Logically, there are at least three ways:
re•base is a social experiment to practice and get better at all three. To create a space where people can come together and affirm - boldly, courageously - that we are lost. To create a space where we hang in the acknowledgement that the way things are now cannot be maintained, but are honest with ourselves and with each other that we don't yet see how to get to the New World.
We'll call our gatherings "basecamps," because the "summit" is something very far away. And there is an intimidating difference between here and there. We're not entirely sure you can get there from here. But we come to basecamp with the intent to set forth on Expeditions that make serious attempts to do so.
While Expeditions may be one visible, public consequence of basecamps, basecamps also aim to be the site of a profound personal shift. From a feeling of being stuck - by these giant crises in the world that we need to solve but cannot solve, and the swirl of anxiety that comes with that awful realization…
…to the discovery that not knowing the solution, not knowing the way forward, is not an obstacle to hope. It is what liberates us to hope. It is what frees us from past choices and compromises. It is what entitles us to explore fresh directions for human flourishing. The very scale, urgency and impossibility of the crises in the world is what makes it possible for people who never cross paths to come together now. All in a shared spirit of discovery, possibility and healthy self-doubt.