Systems change and individual change are two sides of the same coin and neither can happen without the other. But if we are going to ask individuals to make a difference then we need to move beyond thinking of people as ‘consumers’ and look to empower them as ‘citizens’.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article for Curb Your Sustainability that looked at how to overcome some of the common framing pitfalls I’ve come across (and fallen in!) as a circular economy and sustainability communicator.

In simple terms, a frame is a mental ‘window’ made out of things like words and images that affects how we see and think about an issue. For example, a picture of a sad polar bear in a news story tells me climate change is bad for animals, but it also tells me it’s a problem that is a long way away and I probably don’t need to worry too much.

One of the biggest pitfalls on my list was the ‘if everyone just did their bit’ frame, which we can see everywhere. It’s created by lots of different things all happening at once, some of the deliberate, some of them not, some of them well intentioned and some of them definitely not. Just think of the ‘individual carbon footprint’ marketing tool used by British Petroleum in 2000. On the face of it, it’s a nifty idea; most of us want to be a part of the solution, not the problem, but drill a little deeper and there is something else in play. As we all went off to focus on our own individual carbon footprints, BP was able to shift attention away from their own contribution to the climate crisis in a piece of misdirection David Blaine would be proud of.

To combat (I just framed this as a fight!) that kind of approach, I argued for a shift in how we framed issues like climate change, to look beyond the individual and focus on businesses and governments, to ensure that we look for system level solutions.

It prompted an important and familiar question from one reader:

“When is the advice to blame the system a useful reminder and when is it an insidious morale sapper that leads to learned helplessness?”

Blaming eight billion people (and trying to change their habits) does feel pretty ridiculous. It also misses the fact that while some of us are privileged enough to have access to better choices, many around the world don’t. But rather than see systems change and individual change as at odds with each other, I think its essential to recognise they are two sides of the same coin.

AND not OR

Systems change and individual change are not mutually exclusive, they are interdependent. It feels like an obvious point, but it’s one that is too often lost between the cracks of this debate. Systems change requires action from businesses and governments, and in both cases that requires actions from individuals. On the flip side, enabling conditions need to exist for individuals to act.

As former ad-man, Mark Earls, writes in Herd: How to change mass behaviour by embracing our true nature:

“Organisations are built on the interactions between individuals. This means that if you are going to study mass behaviour with a view to changing it, then you have to understand the interactions between individuals.”

To buy or not to buy

In today’s economy, our role as individuals is commonly reduced to that of the consumer. Our job is simply to purchase goods, throw them away and replace them at a fast enough pace to power growth. If that’s how we see ourselves, then our ability to influence the system is limited to the choice of to buy (including ‘buy better’) or not to buy.

That is incredibly demotivating and would simply not go far enough, fast enough. It would also divert attention and resources away from upstream solutions. But, that is not the same as saying individuals do not have a role to play. It means we need reframe the role of the individual, from consumer to citizen.

Re-write the menu?

So what other agency and ability do we have as individuals to change the system? It’s a question tackled by Jon Alexander with Ariane Conrad in their book Citizens.

“What are we doing to ourselves when we tell ourselves we’re consumers 3,000 times a day?…

“The glittering array of choices makes us forget that their might be possibilities beyond the menu, or damage inherent in the very dynamic of our choice between them. That’s true not just in stores with crowded aisles, but in politics with its well-packaged candidates, dating platforms that seek to sell us our new partner, and on and on. Intoxicated by the power to choose, we don’t realise that the real power lies in creating the menu — even in deciding whether there is a menu at all.”

The New Citizenship project created by Jon (another ad-man), set out the differences that occur when we reframe individuals in the system — from the traditional ‘subjects’ (ruled over by a leader), to ‘consumers’ (in service to self interest), then to ‘citizens’ (in which interactions are defined by interdependence and community interests).