Weekly Reflections 16th May

On my mind

I've been thinking a lot about the idea of identity this last week.

As businesses, groups and individuals. About how what is happening now is changing them and what that might mean. Identity gives us boundaries and defines what we see as "in-group" and "out-group" - the potentially dangerous "other." Well constructed identities tend to rub along well; each knows its purpose and role, who's a friend and who is foe, and a healthy system emerges.

So what happens, I wonder when we blow that system up?

For the last two hundred and fifty years here in the U.K, and much of the West, work has been an essential part of our identity. For many of us, it replaced the farm and the village as the centre of our community. Our identity became a function of who we work for, what we do there and how successful we are together. Work became the container in which we lived our lives, and whilst that model has been crumbling at an ever-increasing rate for the last couple of decades, it has taken the…