I have a confession to make. I think it is a bit odd when people click their fingers in appreciation of a comment. In some ways I get the basic notion — you don’t want to disrupt the speaker making the point. Still, making a meaningful show of support is what we have clapping for. Clapping effectively says I agree so much I’m willing to make a big deal of my support. If you don’t think it is worth making a decent noise, then maybe it isn’t worth a minor disruption of clicking your fingers either. The obvious response to me is that I’m just an old bloke who is too set in his ways. This seems a reasonable criticism. If we want to achieve anything we need a big team, and this means approaches will be used that I find a bit strange. Being part of a big team means embracing things that seem odd to us.
Books Based On Interviews Will Contain Disparate Viewpoints
There were certainly times in Ayana Johnson’s book What If We Get It Right? that highlighted approaches that weren’t the way I would do things. There was more poetry than I was hoping to see in the entire rest of my life (i.e., a few pages). There were also strange symbols to emphasis key points. It felt a bit like a treasure hunt which I hadn’t volunteered for and didn’t know what I was looking for.
This is a book structured around a series of interviews. This means the book, by its nature, will involve disparate viewpoints. This means you get one interview where you think that the interviewee is cogent and making powerful points while other interviewees left me completely cold.
The Interviews Didn’t All Work For Me
One contributor seemed to want us to become farmers. I’m not sure why we need to do that to make the world better. Great if you like that sort of thing — and clearly we need some people to do it to feed us all — but farming really isn’t for me. Plus, there are pretty good reasons to think that modern city can be relatively sustainable compared to rural living. For example, public transport is much easier to provide to urban rather than rural dwellers.
Another contributor seemed vague, when asked for a call to action she said:
The call to action is to really be better people. I don’t know how else to put it.
Paola Antonelli in Johnson 2024, page 116
I don’t want to be ‘too marketing professor’ but a call to action really must invoke a specific action. It isn’t a call for action if you can’t put it more clearly than “be better people”.
Some elements of the book got a bit spiritual which is really not for me. One interviewee wanted us to
…. honor the seeds and all of the wisdom that comes with them.
Leah Penniman in Johnson 2024, page 70
I don’t really know what this means, but I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to do it. Indeed, the vision it conjures isn’t one that I think will work with most people. In order to create a big team, we probably don’t want to scare people away.
Being Part Of A Big Team
That said, the very thing I worry about, that these approaches exclude people is also what I risk doing. Being part of a big team means that we (including me) need to be engage with approaches that wouldn’t be how we would do things. We all (me included) need to accept that people have different ways of doing things, and working with those with different ways is critical to success.
We should be trying to create alliances that are really broad and really diverse.
Mustafa Suleyman in Johnson (2024) page 134
Lots Of Good Points
Overall, I’d say, What If We Get It Right? is a good book. Some interviews are very interesting. The interview with Kate Marvel got the book off to a very good start.
The book clearly contains some helpful ideas. The author is a marine biologist and makes many important points. Given her focus, she is keen to ensure issues related to seas, rivers, and oceans aren’t forgotten. This makes a lot of sense. It is easy to miss how important these issues can be and being reminded not to forget the water has got to be useful.
Maybe the stronger point was the optimistic premise of the book: “Giving up is not helpful” (page 28). Even if we get some bits wrong, and we will, we can still get other bits right. She shared one the best statements of why we need to take action:
… it does matter if we get it 80% right versus if we get it 10% right
Johnson (2024) page 216
For more see A Broad Or A Narrow Church
Read: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) What if get it right?, One World
