8th June 2026
In the mechanics of my day to day life, I am a creature of control. I take comfort in knowing what is coming next, and I like to have a general plan. Although there are many moments where I am deeply jealous of spontaneous and wild natured friends, it is not something I have learnt to engineer into my everyday DNA. However curiously, when it comes to my life long love of investing I thrive on the unknown and impulsiveness of financial markets. And in a work regard, I am comfortable sliding myself into the role of an agent for change, lobbing the grenade, fully at ease with the unsurety of the fallout.
I’m not unusual. We are all some amalgamation of regimented and free wheeling in different spheres of our lives. But deep down I’m sure we’d agree, spontaneous has the cache; it is the cool chick we all want to hang out with and aspire to be. It is an aspect of the world we doff our hat to, attributing often success and great world events to its altar. Wrongly in many cases.
Spontaneity has much going for it. It releases dopamine in our brains through novelty and escape of our regular routines. It can signal authenticity or someone being true to themselves. We also judge the impromptu as a sign of embracing the present. However, our admiration for such behaviour doesn’t always translate to societal machinations around money, politics or education for example. In these realms those we empower are expected to be thoughtful, measured, play by a plan. Success or a change for the better should be based on foundations of clear beliefs and a playbook assiduously formulated even if it requires agility to implement.
So far I have attempted to lay the groundwork for our expectations of the present to lead a meander into how we assess prominent societal shifts of the past. Because I notice, contrary to what I’ve suggested above, in hindsight spontaneous supersedes our logical brain and the idea of slow cumulative transformations. Many times the prevailing or winning rhetoric attributes change to a single big bang event or charismatic individual. But the reality demonstrates it is rare for any single person to engender metamorphosis on a significant scale. Change is hard, occurring over a longer period of time than we give credit. It is a mix of random and deliberate activities proffered by many many people. Sometimes it requires battles to be fought, minds to be won, tangential or inconsequential alterations and time. In order for these simmering shifts to come to fruition.
Examples of this include The Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the USA which outlawed discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. It helped to energise the women’s rights movements and in recent years it has supported protection of gays and lesbians. The Act came about through grassroots activity beginning as far back as the early 1900’s, with tough legislative battles in Congress. Yet many would say it was Rosa Park’s defiance in 1955, refusing to surrender her seat on a City bus which triggered the beginning of the end.
Some would say World War 2 was inevitable due to the shock of The Great Depression of 1929. This caused mass unemployment, poverty and homelessness in Germany allowing the fringe party of The Nazi’s to rise to power. But retrospective analysis suggests the seeds were sewn back in the Treaty of Versailles (1919) post-World War 1. This imposed severe restrictions, mounting economic misery and seething humiliation upon the German people, causing a loss of faith in democracy and an openness to other routes out.
The internet has its foundations in a communication network funded by the US Department of Defence in 1969. Various technological advancements led to Tim Berners-Lee being able to create the World Wide Web in c1989, which is the most well known of all the developments on its way to the modern internet. From the late 1990’s we then had an explosion in how the internet was used and the rest is history. But how many of us knew the basics of it all were created more than 25 years prior?
I know we can quibble over these instances and how they truly came about. But now I’ve set your mind racing i’m sure you can ruminate on many examples of long gestating change being the norm throughout history rather than single spontaneous events. However I do accept these distinctive events can be the final touch paper so am not dismissive of their importance. Rather I believe we need perspective.
Why do we attribute complex shifts or creations to single unfettered events? Human nature prefers cause and effect over incremental change because we like to simplify and need coherent narratives. We enjoy the symbolism of isolated actions and the turning point it hoists high. The media also finds such dramatism easier to portray and so perpetuates the narrative.
And so what? Why should we care how tumultuous change has come about. I’ll tell you why. Because if we want to shape what is around us, we need to remove our blinkers and learn to scrutinise and connect the dots. We need to be aware for good and bad outcomes single events can accumulate and bring about a momentum of their own. We need to have expectations of our media and those prominent people we entrust with our future to not be sleepwalking into unintended consequences. Because that signal of the world a changing or the invention of something new will give you plenty of notice of its arrival.
Sermon over, let’s see what you observe now. But in the meantime I’m going to try leaving that creature of control behind to be the cool chick everyone wants to hang around….
Curiosity and the rascal 