Say hello to the bystander planet

Imagine your neighbour’s house is on fire, but you’re too busy scrolling through social media to call for help, or you just assume someone else will handle it. Scale that up globally, and you’ve captured how public apathy operates during major crises.

Public indifference isn’t just inconvenient – it can be deadly. When people mentally check out from global problems governments lose political pressure to act, funding disappears and windows of opportunity close. The psychology behind this is well-documented. Our brains respond more to individual stories than mass statistics. One child in a well captivates us. 25,000 children dying daily from preventable causes is easily filed away and forgotten.

The consequences can be devastating. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, 800,000 people died in 100 days while public pressure for intervention remained virtually nonexistent. Climate change offers another stark example. Despite scientific consensus since the 1990s, Yale research shows only 8% of Americans are worried enough to take action, giving politicians cover to delay meaningful responses for decades.

History does, however, show that apathy can be overcome. Live Aid concerts in 1985 transformed abstract Ethiopian famine statistics into urgent, actionable concern for millions. The 2014 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge used social media to raise $115 million and massive awareness for a rare disease. Environmental movements have learned to make climate change feel local and immediate rather than distant and abstract.

The most effective strategies combine emotional storytelling with clear actions, make distant problems feel personal and local, and give people confidence their contributions matter. Youth climate activists like Greta Thunberg have been particularly successful at creating urgency around problems that for many seemed distant.

Breaking through public apathy isn’t about making people feel guilty, though. It’s about understanding human psychology and designing engagement accordingly. As global challenges intensify, overcoming indifference isn’t optional – it’s existential. The biggest problems facing humanity can only be solved when enough people decide it’s worth solving.

If you feel confused, angry, disenfranchised or simply frustrated at the state of the world, check out my new project, apathy to action. You are not alone. 

From apathy to action

Twenty years ago this summer I was sat at a kitchen table in Finland writing the early beta version of FrontlineSMS, a project which would go on to define my contribution to what was, back then, the fledgling world of mobiles-for-development. I’ve had a brush with the odd idea or two since, but never really launched a project in the same spirit. Until now.

It took a few of my recent LinkedIn posts discussing humanitarian crises around the world, in particular the horrors taking place in Gaza, that got me thinking. Most passed through people’s feeds without comment or reaction, but I refused to believe that people didn’t care about what was going on. It’s the same with environmental issues such as the climate crisis. We’re all now living its reality, and many people speak about their concern but don’t act. Why?

Unlike many of the problems that FrontlineSMS helped solve, apathy is something I suffer from myself, making this the first time I have a very personal motivation in trying to solve something. Public apathy to global crises is such a huge problem, too, and I haven’t found much about it online. All of this makes it a particularly exciting initiative for me.

apathy to action is a research and development project combining principles of Buddhist thinking with global activism, neurology and the latest behavioural research to identify technology-based solutions that help lift people who genuinely care from a point of apathy and helplessness to one of empathy, action and change.

The first phase of the project will last until the end of the year, and will focus on building a vibrant community of interest of people who feel a mixture of anger, powerlessness, frustration and disempowerment around global issues. The project launched with a founding essay which looks at the causes and impact of public apathy to global crises. I’ll be posting the essay as a separate post soon, but you can read it here if you can’t wait.

We’ll be firming up plans for the project in the coming months, but in the meantime we’d love for you to join us. If you feel any sense of apathy to what’s going on in the world you can find us on facebook and LinkedIn. And if you don’t use (or don’t want to use) either of those platforms, you can sign up with email, too.

I hope to see you there.

Live Aid @ 40

It’s not often you can pinpoint the precise moment in time that your life moved in an entirely different, and unexpected direction. For me, 13th July 1985 – probably around midday – was that moment. I remember it well.

Live Aid that summer has come under intense scrutiny, particularly over recent years, accused of oversimplifying the Ethiopian famine and failing to address the complex political and structural causes of the crisis. In particular, critics argue that the event promoted a ‘white saviour’ complex. Many of these accusations are fair, but not all.

What follows is an extract from my latest book, The Pursuit of Purpose, where I share what, back at the time of Live Aid, was a desperate search for purpose and meaning in my life. I owe a lot to Live Aid, faults and all.

“It took a global music event, of all things, to give me what I was missing. At precisely noon one hot Saturday afternoon in July 1985, Live Aid kicked off with Status Quo’s aptly-named ‘Rocking All Over The World’, signalling the start of one of the largest and most ambitious live music concerts and global fundraising events ever held.  As I settled down to watch the opening of the show, little did I know how significant this day would turn out to be in my life. Over the previous two years a famine of biblical proportions had gripped Ethiopia, the worst to hit the country in over a century. These were pre-World Wide Web days and incredibly the famine, which was estimated to have impacted seven million people and killed another one million, had been kept largely hidden from view by the Ethiopian government. Described as ‘the closest thing to hell on earth’ by BBC reporter Michael Buerk, it was his report and film, the first by any journalist, which drove home the severity of what was happening and spurred a massive UK and global humanitarian response.

After watching Michael Buerk’s report, pop stars Bob Geldof and Midge Ure quickly mobilised two dozen fellow musicians and, in a single day in November 1984, recorded ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, a hugely successful charity single released to raise urgent funds for the famine response. It became the fastest-selling UK single (it has since been overtaken by Elton John’s 1997 ‘Candle in the Wind’, a tribute to Lady Diana), selling a million copies in its first week alone and hitting the top of the charts in 14 countries, including the UK. The summer Live Aid concert was conceived as a follow-up to the Christmas single and, at its peak, boasted a global audience of almost two billion people in over 150 countries.

And sitting uncomfortably at home on Five Oaks estate, I was one of them.

My immediate reaction that day to stories and images of poverty and famine was one of shock, horror, embarrassment and guilt. Up until then I’d been largely focused on my own little world and, I hate to admit it, I poorly understood life for other people in other places. Jersey can do that to you. These days we have little excuse for not paying attention given the rise of the World Wide Web, online news and social media. Back in the 1980s, news occasionally bubbled slowly up out of the ground. There was no such thing as ‘breaking news’ that you could follow. Instead, an event would often come straight out and hit you like a ton of bricks. One minute there was no famine, and the next minute there was, and a biblical one at that.”

When is enough, enough?

If you’re the kind of reader who wants to cut to the chase, here’s the link to my new project, apathy to action. The following post gives a little background and context, and explains what drove me to create it, if you’re at all interested.

As many people might know from my work over the years, I’ve dedicated most of my life trying my best to develop, and help others develop, meaningful and impactful social and environmental solutions to some of the world’s biggest problems. On the surface I’ve done a pretty good job of it too, and have the recognition and best-selling books to prove it.

But it’s never felt enough.

People are often surprised when I say that I feel powerless to all that’s wrong in the world today. It feels like nothing less than radical change is what’s needed. I can’t help but think that this is not the time to tinker around the edges. It’s time to stand up, use our voices, get out on the street, be ‘more activist’ (whatever that means) and put what we believe in on the line. “That’s all very well and good,” my inner voices says, “but you’ve never been brave enough for any of that.” And it’s right. I’ve never even been to a demonstration.

But I can use my voice – it’s just taken me far too long to wake up to it. I’ve been so slow off the mark that I’ve only recently started sharing posts – mostly on LinkedIn – about all the horrific things being inflicted on innocent civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. It’s also been a topic of conversation with my children, something I remember doing with my mother as a child. Has this crisis really been going on that long? And why are my LinkedIn posts met with a wall of silence? Why are good people seemingly ignoring what’s going on, perhaps hoping it will go away?

It’s the same with many other conflicts destroying peoples lives around the world, whether they be in Sudan, Yemen, the DRC or Ukraine. And let’s not forget the refugee crisis, climate crisis or threats to democracy, to name just a few more. None of our collective silence on many of these issues makes much sense to me. I know we all care, so what gives?

So I decided it was only right to try and figure out why so many others, like me, have struggled to adequately respond to these unfolding global issues. A couple of weeks ago I kicked things off with a post about my apathy, and I attended a War on Want event in London a few days later. I continued writing LinkedIn posts about Gaza, posts which continued to be met with a wall of silence. And in quiet moments in between that thing called everyday life, I wondered how many other people out there cared like I did, but simply didn’t know what to do, or where to begin?

So this is what I’ll be doing.

First, find as many people who feel like me, but do little like me. I know there are a lot of you out there. Once we’re together, we’ll collectively unpick our apathy and explore how we might find ourselves, and everyone else, a way out. I won’t promise you an ‘app for that’, but hey, there may end up being an app for that. Help me decide.

So, welcome to apathy to action, the first new kiwanja initiative since I published my memoir three years ago. As always, I’ve put together a website where you’ll find more details, a little background, and a link to a short 3-minute survey which acts as your registration of interest. I know there are a lot of people out there who feel as disempowered as I do, and I’d love to bring as many of us together so we can collectively move from a state of apathy to one of action.

Because we need it. And the world needs it. 

Hope to see you there.