Achieving Transformation in Our Highly Interconnected World II: The Role of the Individual

Our global economy is currently driven largely by the pursuit of individual selfinterest. What can we do as individuals to help achieve transformation to an economy where the interests of society and the world as a whole take centre stage? To take effective action, we must see ourselves as nodes in a vast global socioeconomic-ecological complex adaptive network (Preiser et al. in Ecology and Society, 23, 46, 2018), where multiple feedback loops and non-linear interactions mean that the network is constantly changing and evolving in response to internal and external pressures. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, such networks can develop emergent behaviours that are more than the sum of their parts, and which may be inimical to the interests of its individual members. To avoid or ameliorate such situations, and to get our global socio-economicecological network functioning for the benefit all its members, human and nonhuman, living and non-living, we need to work together to transform the network as a whole so that it becomes a functionally cooperative unit, with cooperation replacing competition and the interests of others take precedence over the interests of self.