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Is Britain a nation of woke warriors or culture war reactionaries, statue saviours or statue slayers, free speech martyrs or cancel culture crusaders? To answer those questions, More in Common spent last month talking to Britons from across the country about so-called cultural flashpoints.

But what we found was far from a country riven in two. Twitter may combust with one outrage after another, but most people carry on their lives unaware. When they are confronted with issues, Brits do have opinions but few choose the extremes. In a word, Brits are balancers. They feel proud of the way we have changed, but they also like a lot about who we are. And they believe we should do change in ways that are true to ourselves, and distinctly British.

Almost universally, Brits feel that they have seen significant changes in their lifetimes even those in their twenties. Theres an almost universal sense of pride in our advancements in making the UK a fairer and more equal country. But there is also a deep sense of frustration with how our democracy is working, and how divided we have become.

A key concern that is largely neglected in public debates, yet comes up time and time again around culture wars, is leadership. Why arent leaders helping us navigate change? Why are they often steering us into conflict with their soundbites and rhetorical grenades, acting as culture war arsonists rather than putting out the flames? In failing to de-escalate tensions and find common ground on complex issues the real work of leadership they are failing to do the job people expect of them.

This failure helps explain why 84 per cent of Britons feel that politicians dont care about what people like them think. More than that, it leaves them worried that our differences are deeper than in the past, and that our disagreements are beyond being solved. But this is wrong. Its easy to forget that weve been through fierce disagreements before and resolved them. Thats true of so many things we take for granted today, including religious tolerance, protections for disabled people, greater gender equality and rights for gay people.

How then did we navigate through these changes, without descending into culture wars? The answer is in no small part through leadership.

Until 1975, women couldnt open bank accounts in their own name, and until 1982 they could be refused service in pubs with no consequences. These facts seem almost unbelievable today, and that is something the public take pride in with almost 80 per cent of the public agreeing I am proud of the advancements we have made in equality between men and women.

How were those changes brought about? The answer is through leadership that persuaded the public, found common ground between groups and took practical steps forward. Schools working to dispel gender stereotypes, workplaces seeking to break down barriers to women succeeding by becoming more family-friendly, campaigners highlighting inequity and political leaders passing anti-discrimination legislation and promoting transparency through measures such as gender pay gap legislation.

Of course, there is still much more to do to secure gender equality in the UK, and most Britons agree that men still have advantages over women. Nonetheless, the change that Brits have seen within their lifetimes is remarkable, widely supported and indeed on-going as we have seen with the #MeToo movement.

In addition to greater gender equality, when we asked people to name examples of how Britains culture has changed for the better, people of all ages and political persuasions mentioned the way that we now treat gay people and their families.

This change too is even more recent. Homosexuality was decriminalised less than a lifetime ago, and even at the turn of the millennia, same-sex partnerships enjoyed no protection in law. How then has change on gay equality been both so rapid, and readily embraced in recent years?

The key lesson was that the push for gay equality was pitched as being aligned with, rather than alien, to British values. Equal marriage was presented as an opportunity to strengthen the institution, rather than tearing it down. Advocates took an incremental approach, trying to bring the public with them, including those on the right, at every stage. Rather than talking in abstract language or ideals, campaigners focused on practical steps that people could see in their everyday lives:preventing kids from being bullied and working with employers to showcase the business case for equality.

When we asked where Brits see inspiring examples of leadership today, two names came up time after time Marcus Rashford and Gareth Southgate. The England managers Dear England letter struck a chord with many, and changed their views. It helped them understand why players were taking the knee and tackling racism in sport.

The way that Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka have spoken about foregoing competitions for mental health reasons is confusing to some, but their explanations can help us better understand and talk about mental health.

Few Britons think or talk about these issues in binary forms, as if culture comes down to clicking a button to like or dislike, support or oppose. Our conversations this summer convince us that change does not lead inevitably to conflict and division, but successfully navigating change requires leadership that meets Britons on their own terms, and takes things forward.

Leaders need to play less to their base, move past the politics of us-versus-them and instead focus on helping the country to embrace change in ways that are nuanced, confident and true to who we are and the country we want to be.

Luke Tryl is the UK director of More in Common

More in Commons report Dousing the Flames: How Leaders can Better Navigate Cultural Change in 2020s Britain

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We can end the culture wars by following the example of gay rights - The Independent

Aug 2nd 2021

FEW TOPICS appear to rile people in the West as much as political correctness and its impact upon free speech. Although some on the left would like to see more laws governing what is, and is not, acceptable to say in public, most people prefer simply to avoid what they consider hurtful language. Conservatives, meanwhile, tend to complain that this tendency has gone too far and endangers the principle of free speech.

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Although people of different political stripes in Western countries rarely find common ground on political correctness, they may have more in common than compatriots in other parts of the world. A recent survey conducted by Ipsos Mori, a pollster, on behalf of Kings College London asked 23,000 adults in 28 countries about their attitudes towards free speech. They asked respondents to rate, on a scale from zero to seven, how they felt about using potentially hurtful words when speaking with people from different backgrounds to their own. A zero would mean that they felt that people are too easily offended; a seven would mean they thought it was necessary to change the way people talk.

More than half of respondents in America, Australia, Britain and Sweden rated themselves between zero and three (excluding those who answered dont know), meaning they were the most likely to feel that the general public are too sensitive when it comes to speech. At the other end of the scale, Chinese, Indians and Turks were the least likely to say people were being too sensitivefewer than one-fifth of the people from these countries responded with a scale of zero to threeinstead believing it was necessary to modify their language.

What affects these attitudes across countries? Using an index of press freedom from Reporters Without Borders, a watchdog, we found a strong correlation between the extent of press freedom and individual attitudes towards language. Although people living in places with less press freedom are most receptive to what the Anglosphere would call political correctness, it may be that, in countries such as China, cautious use of language is required for self-preservation. That might add fuel to conservatives fire that political correctness could somehow erode democratic norms.

The survey also asked respondents whether or not they agreed that culture wars were dividing their countries. Americans and Indians were among the most likely to say that they were, with about three-fifths agreeing. By contrast, fewer than one-tenth of Japanese and one-fifth of Russians and Germans thought that culture wars were divisive. Yet country-level responses to this question bear little relationship to their attitudes about offensive speech. Although Americans and Britons are similarly exercised about political correctness, just one-third of Britons are concerned about divisive culture wars.

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People in the West are least worried about hurtful speech - The Economist

Jul 30th 2021

WOKEISM, MULTICULTURALISM, all the -ismstheyre not who America is, tweeted Mike Pompeo in 2019 on his last day as secretary of state. Until a few years ago woke meant being alert to racial injustice and discrimination. Yet in Americas fierce culture wars the word is now more likely to be used as a sardonic insult. How did the word turn from a watchword used by black activists to a bogeyman among conservatives?

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In 1938 singer Huddie Ledbetter warned black people they best stay woke, keep their eyes open going through Scottsboro, Alabama, the scene of a famous mistrial involving nine young black men. The word was first defined in print by William Melvin Kelley, a black novelist, in an article published in the New York Times in 1962. Writing about black slang, Mr Kelley defined it as someone who was well-informed, up-to-date. Black people used it in reference to racism and other matters for decades, but the word only entered the mainstream much later. When the Black Lives Matter movement grabbed global attention during anti-racism protests after the killing in 2014 of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, it was inseparable from the phrase stay woke.

As the word spread into internet culture, thanks in part to the popular #staywoke hashtag, its usage quickly changed. It began to signify a progressive outlook on a host of issues as well as on race. And it was used more often to describe white people active on social media than it was by black activists, who criticised the performatively woke for being more concerned with internet point-scoring than systemic change. Piggybacking corporations, such as Pepsi and Starbucks, lessened the appeal to progressives. Wokes usage went from activist to pass, a common fate of black vernacular that makes it into the mainstream (other recent victims include lit and on fleek, two terms of praise).

Almost as soon as the word lost its initial sense it found new meaning as an insulta linguistic process called pejoration. Becoming a byword for smug liberal enlightenment left it open to mockery. It was redefined to mean following an intolerant and moralising ideology. The fear of being cancelled by the woke mob energised parts of the conservative base. Right-wing parties in other countries noticed that stoking a backlash against wokeness was an effective way to win support.

Another semantic conflict is brewing. This is over the term critical race theory, a new bte noire of the right. What was once an abstruse theory developed in American law schoolsone that helped seed core tenets of modern-day wokeism like intersectionality and systemic racismhas burst into the open. Conservatives panic that it is being taught in schools. Christoper Rufo, a conservative activist, told the New Yorker that woke is a good epithet, but its too broad, too terminal, too easily brushed aside. Critical race theory is the perfect villain. Progressives insist that it is a more honest way of teaching history. Despite using the same terminology, both sides seem destined to talk past each other. No sooner is a language battle of the culture wars over than another emerges.

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How has the meaning of the word woke evolved? - The Economist

Republicans in the United States are in for a rude awakening. The extent to which the media fog of U.S. right-wing culture wars has obscured the level of socioeconomic achievement which China has already reached is truly jarring. First, some relevant data points:

In August 2019, Pew reported that 70% of Republicans believe the United States is still in the lead and just 21% believe it is China.

In contrast, the same survey found 40% of Democrats believe the leading economic power is the United States and 40% believe it is China.

In purchasing-parity terms, the Chinese economy is already nearly 30% larger than that of the United States. Because China is also growing much faster, that means the United States will continue to shrink on a relative basis.

Of course, the question of the significance of the China challenge is just one example of a broad cultural phenomenon.

Conservative triumphalism in the United States combines bullying anyone who doubts U.S. supremacy in the world with the paranoid pursuit of policies of America First.

There are two problems with that triumphalist approach. First, it lowers the expectations and standards of competence that conservatives set for U.S. government officials and public servants.

Second, it leads to unrealistic, self-destructive strategies. In fact, it is a little like a boxer deploying a body-mass strategy against an opponent who weighs 20 kilos more.

With the Biden administration now in office, it is also important for Democrats to think more deeply about the socioeconomic achievements which China has already reached.

Only then it is possible to develop a China strategy that can be said to work for the United States over the long term.

What is particularly helpful in that regard is to think of China as actually three major countries rolled into one.

To the north, the Yellow River flows through the ancient university town of Xian to a delta near Beijing. This is the China of government, academia, security and the machinery of the Communist Party. It is Chinas answer to Americas East Coast.

Given the governments preoccupation with it, Beijing has become the center of AI research. It is where you find Baidu, the Chinese Google.

The Yangtze in Chinas heartland flows through two-thirds of the countrys rice paddies and the cities of Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan and Hangzhou to Shanghai, the commercial and financial capital.

It is a Chinese Mississippi River with five cities larger than Chicago and the metropolitan area of Shanghai, with a population 50% greater than Texas, in pole position at its mouth.

In the garden city of Hangzhou on the outskirts of Shanghai, you will find Alibaba. It is Chinas Amazon, but one playing a far more pervasive role in the lives of its hundreds of millions of customers than the Seattle-based firm does for Americans.

In Chinas south, the Pearl River Delta waters Guangzhou, the tech factory of the world. It alone has a metropolitan population greater than Californias.

This is Chinas answer to the United States West Coast. It is also the birthplace of Deng Xiaopings great economic experiment. Here you find Tencent, the social network to which Facebook aspires, as well as Huawei, Chinas Cisco.

It is also the manufacturing hub for Apple, Google, Intel, Cisco, IBM, HP, Dell and so on.

In short, any open-eyed assessment leads one to conclude that Chinas three river basins match all of the United States diversity from its east coast through the Midwest to the Pacific. However, China replicates this structure in much greater volumes.

Much worse for U.S. supremacists, todays China already overmatches the United States strength for strength, except perhaps in research universities.

The world of Chinese supremacy, in other words, is not a distant possibility. It is here. We are well into its first few decades.

What lies in the future is the eventual emergence of this economic and political reality from the United States current political fog. Once Americans recognize the practical effects of Chinese economic supremacy, however, their expectations of their leaders and government will change drastically.

After decades of Republican triumphalism, cynical nationalism and calculated deception, realism will be in demand again.

One can only hope that the American people, facing a future far more uncertain than they were brought up to anticipate, will demand facts about the problems the country faces.

It will be a demand for officials with the competence to solve those problems, a restoration of democratic accountability and a simple end to lying tactics that have become a hallmark of the United States once-conservative party.

Wrong-headed, even disastrous, Republican triumphalism has made the challenge of adapting to Chinas rise that much more challenging. Ironically enough, it may be todays populists that will demand change most forcefully.

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The Globalist The United States as Number 2? - The Globalist

By Tariq Rauf

The work-from-home culture wars are reaching a fever pitch. Between Goldman Sachs commands to get back to the office and Apples hybrid battle with employees, the way we work has never caused so much debate.

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Millions have now adapted to a fundamentally different way of working, and for some, the prospect of hybrid threatens to introduce even more upheaval.

Before taking the plunge, companies would be wise to challenge their assumptions. Is hybrid a silver bullet for creating trust? Is it a fast-track to a more creative workforce? Are hybrid and flexible work mutually exclusive? This lens helps expose foundational issues regarding trust, flexibility and creativity in modern work, and is an important starting point before considering the transition to hybrid.

Over the past year, weve become accustomed to living within specific apps at work. Branding teams might live in a project management app like Asana, content teams organize their work in an online wiki like Notion, and sales teams track everything in a CRM like Salesforce1.

The problem is that around two-thirds of us dont know what our colleagues are actually working on. This impedes trust: How can you trust that the sales team is on course to meet its targets if you have no visibility of conversations with prospects?

Hybrid is scattering our teams among homes, headquarters and coffee shops. Thats more fragmentation, and a higher risk of Team Remote becoming suspicious of Team Office. Leaders are waking up to the urgency of shaping a culture that promotes transparency between teams across organizations, but the hybrid model is making that harder.

Companies are often tempted to bring employees back into the office because of the lingering myth of the watercooler moment. But theres no evidence that this really does anything for serendipitous creativity. Were blindly pinning our hopes of creativity on totally chance encounters.

Unfortunately, fostering creativity isnt easy sailing in the virtual office either. Sure, weve had this explosion in tools that simplify collaboration, from Zoom to Slack to Google Docs, but its chaotic.

Forty-three percent of people report spending too much time switching between different applications, and losing up to an hour a day in the process. Context switching drains cognitive function human brains are not wired for a working day of glancing among your inbox, documents, slide decks and everything else that has become core to the world of work.

Enabling a culture of fair, structured creativity that spans the physical and digital needs urgent attention before taking the hybrid plunge.

Worker expectations for flexibility have never been higher. If remote work was no longer an option, 1 in 3 remote professionals would quit their job. Indeed, a record 4 million people in the U.S. quit their jobs in April alone including engineers at Google who quit over directives to go back to the office.

But hybrid and flexibility dont have to be mutually exclusive. Hybrid can be an option for workers, not a command. Authentic flexibility happens not just because you can work from home, but because the culture puts you in control of your work. This culture is brought about through transparency, clearly defined policies and clarity around goals. Transparency and clarity cut the need for constant check-ins, giving people more freedom to plan work around other responsibilities.

Unfortunately, we found that as much as 52 percent of workers say different departments track their goals in different ways. This inconsistency puts as many limitations on flexibility as a hybrid model, and is crying out to be fixed before returning to the office.

The WFH culture wars are reaching fever pitch, and rightly so. Work isnt working, and this battle will help us break from the outdated norms of the 9-5.

If anything, hybrid work is a distraction from the foundational issues of trust, flexibility and creativity that need attention in the modern workplace. Leaders should focus on these before jumping into the unknown and risking employee unrest.

Tariq Rauf is the founder and CEO of digital work hub Qatalog, a new kind of work infrastructure for modern businesses.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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Is Hybrid Work A Distraction From The Real Pain Of The Modern Workplace? - Crunchbase News