Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us

social revolutions happen in two phases. The first is when everybody realises the current system isn’t working any longer. The second is when everybody realises that everybody else has realised it too. Then the coalescence begins – the movement gels.

The Consumer Story has its own old men – referring back to Lawrence of Arabia’s lament – who will keep trying to solve the problems of our time with the same thinking that created them.

Ultimately, what we need for Citizen business to take full hold is for the cooperative model to expand massively, and for the businesses in it to step into the Citizen Story.

And of course, the membership model changed completely. Exclusivity-based Consumer membership (whether Guardian Live or even a basic content paywall) was taken off the agenda, and the priority became delivering the public good Citizens needed, and asking for direct financial support in return.

The story of humanity was largely taught to me as one of Great Men doing Great Deeds, with everyone else largely irrelevant, but there is a far more nuanced picture to be painted.

Separation bred superiority bred dehumanisation, and it started a long, long time ago.

If we look up and out again at the broader context of this moment in time, at the collapse of the Consumer and the resurgence of the Subject Story, it’s plain to see this kind of incremental, organisation-by-organisation change is necessary, but not sufficient. In parallel, this must be a moment for a radical renewal of the relationship between the

Now I see that it doesn’t take much at all, simply a spark, if there is enough poverty and hopelessness to serve as kindling, the flame burns and burns.

Once a story becomes shared in that way, current reality gets measured against it and then modified towards it. As soon as we sense the possibility of a more desirable world, we begin behaving differently, as though that world is starting to come into existence, as though, in our minds at least, we’re already there.