The world is shifting. Or to be more precise, life as we know it has been shifting at a logarithmically accelerating pace for at least a few hundred years, and now we are also experiencing human society being shaken by a new pandemic. All around us systems we thought of as invulnerable are proving increasingly fragile.
How does this moment feel to you? Does it appear as an ending? A beginning? A passing threat? A singularity — a point at which existing models fail to predict what happens next?
For me it feels like a profoundly liminal moment: the charged hush before the music begins, the rocket engine lights, the bomb explodes, the line is cut.
What will be?
It’s not always possible to tell whether a drama is a comedy or a tragedy until the very end — a comedy concludes with a celebration, whereas a tragedy resolves in a death. Some of the most memorable dramas have it both ways, as in Les Misérables.
Moreover, in this moment which is definitely not conveniently linear, we experience multiple concurrent narratives and perspectives which may not have defined or readily recognizable beginnings, middles, or endings. And furthermore, while we are not merely passive audiences in the human drama, we are also not necessarily the authors or playwrights. We’re not even necessarily always the good guys in our own individual stories. We are more like reader-protagonists of Choose Your Own Adventure books or narrative-based games, simultaneously confronted with circumstances beyond our control or experience, and also participating in shaping the story we inhabit.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the pace or scale of all that is unfolding — the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, rising extremism, hyperinequality, mass extinction / ecosystem collapse, to name just a few fast-moving global hazards — it’s helpful to take Fred Rogers‘s mom’s sensible advice to look for the helpers.
When you actually look for them, you begin to see that there are lots of people who aren’t famous or glamorous but who are doing the heroic work of making things better.
You might suddenly notice global communities of social entrepreneurs and innovators like those convened by Humanitarian Grand Challenge or the more than 16,000 members of Impact Hubs. Or you might discover the Zebras Unite! movement, Refugee Investment Network, Georgetown Pivot Program, Black Girl Ventures, Native Women Lead, Beyond the Billion, TBLI, Impact Assets, Impact Finance Center, or any number of other people working to improve on or replace broken and destructive capital systems. (We’ll be delighted to point you to many more!)
Truly, wherever you look you will find there are people who are actively doing the work of ushering in a better future. Like any other epiphany, once you see them, you will find that it’s nearly impossible to stop seeing them.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste
This is not to say that everything is going to be just fine, or that all efforts are to the good. Quite the opposite.
I have no doubt that we will experience more and even bigger — let us hope not catastrophic — social, environmental, and economic shocks in the year ahead. I fear there is much suffering to come. And simply paying attention to systemic ills we have long accepted or ignored is bound to provoke painful awakenings.
But this moment of crisis presents an invaluable opportunity to make new and better choices, to gain some new awareness or maybe even wisdom through our collective and individual experience of having the status quo shattered.
Perhaps it is too much to hope for, but as a trained engineer and a natural-born heretic and change-seeker, I do hope that as we reassemble our increasingly fractured systems we find the courage to put them back together in a better configuration.
I am hoping that by observing and listening to the helpers we will learn new ways of perceiving, thinking, and interacting not only in the ways in which we practice government, education, justice, agriculture, business, finance, research, and other public endeavors, but in gaining greater intentionality and clarity about what outcomes we aim to achieve through our institutions — and more importantly, why.
Impact investors, Save the Oasis!
It’s not an idle hope. You can be one of the helpers — investors are a necessary part of the solution.
This fraught moment offers all of us a priceless invitation to unsentimentally assess our complicity in passively or actively propagating the structural underpinnings of all of the globally, locally, personally converging crises. As many have noted, every investment — every financial decision — has impact. The too-often unasked question is what impact, where and by whom that impact is felt, and whether the impact is net positive or net negative. There is no longer any viable justification for waving aside “externalities” as though their inconvenience or complexity renders them immaterial.
If we choose to accept it, the accelerating convergence of crises can be the perfect catalyst to realize how much we have to gain from discarding the absurd notion of externalities and other increasingly discredited financial concepts, debunked “best practices,” and counterfactual preconceptions in favor of realistic models and an evidence-based, evolving approach to creating higher value outcomes in a fast-changing world.
Whether human civilization emerges from this century in collapse or in renaissance may well depend on the choices we make in the next handful of years. In the more immediate term, the health of your portfolio will certainly be decided. Will you choose to double down on the systems that led to this moment, or to participate in birthing something better? Will the outcome of this moment be tragedy or comedy?
For our part, Reinventure Capital is welcoming a wide variety of limited partners (LPs) to our US-based investment strategy for breaking the hyperconcentration of capital that tears our social fabric, destabilizes our economy, and deforms our democracy. And we know from observable evidence, including Ed’s track record, that disciplined adherence to this ends-driven practice generates both positive, intentional social impact and non-concessionary returns to investors.*
If you’re ready to commit capital to remake our broken systems and create better outcomes, please contact us. We will be delighted to welcome you. And if you are already actively investing for better systems, or otherwise redesigning investment practices to achieve outcomes worthy of celebration, please share, so others can join you!
Image credit: Nina Briski from FreeImages
*While there’s no such thing as a guarantee in investing and no one can reliably predict the future, Ed’s prior track record delivering 32%IRR to investors provides direct evidence that it is indeed possible to consistently invest for both financial returns and social value creation. If you are an accredited investor and would like to learn more about investments that can advance social, racial, and gender equity by supporting high-value companies led by women and/or people of color, please contact us to start that conversation.
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