4.
THE CORE INSTITUTIONS OF SOCIETY
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
JOHN F. KENNEDY1
Which do you think sums up America today:
Prosperity or poverty?
Thriving communities or struggling individuals?
Upward mobility or economic decline?
In each case, the answer is both.
On the one hand, there’s never been a better time to be alive. Think back to the Great Enrichment. The past two hundred years have delivered us to an age of incredible opportunity, and the future holds the promise of even greater progress.
On the other hand, millions of people aren’t sharing in that progress. They’re being left behind. This discredits everything our country stands for, weakening America more every day. Moreover, it threatens to tear us apart.
Our country was founded on a deep belief in people—the idea that everyone has something to contribute. As you read in chapter two, ours was the first country in history to extend the promise of the pursuit of happiness to everyone, not just the privileged few. The story of America’s progress is one of continually struggling to live up to the principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. We have spent more than two hundred years moving toward, and sometimes away from, our ideals. The journey has been a bit like someone who periodically gets lost because they lose the North Star behind the clouds.
Thankfully, many of the worst injustices in our history are gone. But their legacies remain, in the form of racism, sexism, and other deeply destructive attitudes. At the same time, new barriers have been built, preventing millions more from realizing their potential.
Of course, the challenges we face today differ greatly from the injustices of the past. They are not as brutal as slavery or as all-encompassing as the many limitations put on women in U.S. history. They nonetheless ruin individual lives and limit society’s progress by preventing people from contributing.
These injustices are the source of America’s current predicament. Whereas for most of our history more and more people became empowered, now, increasingly, many are being held back—and falling behind. America is sprinting toward a two-tiered society.
The difference between the two tiers could hardly be starker.
America is sprinting toward a two-tiered society.
In the first tier, many people are thriving, doing better than they ever thought possible. They’re usually affluent and educated, with strong families, good schools, and well-paying jobs. In places where this holds true, there is low unemployment, rising income, and other indicators that things are generally going well. Fortunately, this is still the case for the majority of our country. A recent study found that just over half of Americans—52 percent—live in strong communities. Another 24 percent live in areas that are doing relatively well.2
But it’s a completely different story in America’s other tier.
There, people are struggling, often in dire circumstances. In about one in five ZIP codes, you’ll find a quarter of the population living in poverty, on average.3 The unemployment rate may be low, but labor force participation is also low, meaning people are stuck without jobs—either because they have stopped looking for one or don’t have the skills to fill those that are available. In these communities, millions of Americans don’t know how they’ll get by for the next week, let alone the next year. And in many areas, this experience is characterizing life for more and more families.
The country is divided about what the future holds. In some places, parents have optimism—even confidence—that their children’s lives will be better than their own.4 Chances are they’re right. In other communities, people have little reason to think the next generation will be any better off. They’re right too.
Children born in the 1940s had a 9-in-10 chance to earn more than their parents. By comparison, it’s more like 50-50 for the children of the 1980s, and it’s probably worse for younger generations.5
Poll after poll shows that Americans are losing hope—and for many, their lives.6 Suicide rates have been rising for more than two decades. There haven’t been this many suicides since World War II.7 Drug overdoses are also skyrocketing. In 2017, a record 70,000 Americans died from drugs, a number that has nearly quadrupled in the past 20-plus years.8 Alcohol-induced deaths have also greatly increased—by 50 percent since 1999.9
The economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize–winner Angus Deaton call these “deaths of despair.”10 Such deaths claim the lives of people who are struggling to find fulfillment and personal success. Without a path up, they look for a way out.
These developments help explain why U.S. life expectancy declined for consecutive years in the late 2010s.11 The last time our country saw this kind of sustained multiyear drop was during the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918.12 (While this worrisome trend halted in 2018, the toll the coronavirus pandemic may have taken in 2020 is not yet clear.13) This is despite a century of cures, vaccines, and incredible medicinal advances. Considering these breakthroughs, and with the promise of even more radical developments in the near future, life expectancy should be rising without interruption. The fact that it’s not should worry us all.
THE PACE OF CHANGE
These stories and statistics should cause us all to ask: Why are more and more Americans falling behind and feeling left out?
The most common answer is rapid social and economic change.
It’s definitely true that the pace of change is faster than ever. Developments in software, artificial intelligence, data analytics, communications, robotics, biotechnology, and other fields are improving lives in extraordinary ways, but they’re also profoundly disrupting people’s day-to-day experiences.
“Creative destruction”—a term coined by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in reference to innovation—is all around us, destroying much of what we had come to rely upon in the process of creating the new. Those who bear the brunt of this disruption understandably see more downside than upside.
For example, automation is upending manufacturing. Robots and machine learning are paving the way for self-driving vehicles, which may soon completely change how we drive and transport things. What a frightening thought for truck drivers especially, since in many states that’s one of the most common occupations.14
Even without automation, the nature of work is profoundly shifting. A couple of generations ago, there was a widespread expectation that you’d be able to hold a job for life. Now the median duration for a job is less than five years, and it’s still lower for younger workers.15
No wonder so many people, facing constant disruption and dislocation, are falling behind. Even if they believe a brighter future is coming overall, they don’t see how they fit into it. They see a society that doesn’t need or care about them. Sadly, they have a point.
But disruption isn’t the real problem. After all, progress is impossible without this kind of major change. The underlying issue is that society is failing to help people adapt to these rapid and radical social and economic advances.
While it’s tempting to blame seismic change, it’s dangerous to buy into the argument that progress is bad. This fearful mind-set looks at creative destruction and only sees the destruction. When this fear turns into action, progress suffers, harming the least fortunate most of all.
The most telling example is the Luddites of the nineteenth century. They smashed textile machinery in a desperate attempt to keep weaving clothes by hand. Yet the textile industry made clothes affordable for virtually everyone, providing many more jobs, reducing poverty, and improving quality of life.
This is the story of the Great Enrichment, past and present. Every material, technological, and social advance in history upended whatever preceded it. We see it in the car replacing the carriage and the cell phone ending the era of landlines, and on and on it goes.
But major change only becomes progress if we as individuals are able to keep up with it—and if the benefits are widely shared. True progress requires all of us being able to contribute more, not less, as the world shifts. We can’t allow a future that leaves some behind.
We also shouldn’t discourage progress. Few things would be more disastrous for Americans’ future well-being. Rather than trying to limit economic or social advances, we need to empower those who are struggling in the second tier to succeed like those in the first. The latter aren’t inherently better; many just have the right support. Every person deserves the opportunity to realize their potential.
Which brings us to the core institutions of society.
WHAT ALL OF US RELY ON
When I say “institutions,” I mean the aspects of society that are most essential to our ability to live well together. My view of them has been formed through decades of personal involvement and study. There are different ways to categorize these institutions. For ease of analysis, I do so as: community, education, business, and government.
These institutions play an essential role in helping each of us find our purpose, develop our skills, and apply them in a way that enables us to contribute and succeed.
How the institutions function also profoundly affects how we respond to change. When change affects us positively, they help us reap the benefits and build on them. When change affects us negatively, the institutions help us get back on track. When they’re working, they instill in us the principles and practices that are essential to success and provide the support we need to keep pace with progress.
While each one plays a different and distinct role, the goal for each institution is the same: empowering us to discover and continuously develop and apply our unique abilities in a productive way. That’s how we become contribution motivated and find fulfillment, making a better life for ourselves by benefiting others.
At least that’s what they’re supposed to do. When the institutions perform well, they engage and empower people, strengthening our country. When they fall short, they create barriers that prevent us from contributing to and sharing in society’s progress, hurting us all.
America is on the trajectory toward a two-tiered society because the institutions are breaking down. They’re no longer helping an increasing number of people find their gifts and best path.
The institutions’ failures don’t affect everyone equally. Some are injured more than others. For example, failing schools mean that students who can’t afford an expensive alternative suffer more than those who can. Similarly, corrupt business practices based on corporate welfare can make it difficult for companies to compete, especially small ones and start-ups.
If the failures of our core institutions are the primary reason people are falling behind, then it stands to reason that we need to address those failings to help them succeed. That is, we need these institutions to break, rather than build, the barriers holding people back.
This is a tall task. We’re not talking about tweaks at the edges. Transforming these institutions is the key to changing our country’s current trajectory, which should be a major project for Social Entrepreneurs. First, however, we must understand what each institution is, and why it matters. Then we can turn to how you can make a difference.
Part 3 of this book addresses these institutions in much more detail, but here is a snapshot of each:
Community: Community includes all aspects of civil society, from neighborhoods to families to religious organizations to voluntary associations and more. Most simply, it is where each of us lives. It is supposed to be where people come together to solve common problems, support each other during difficult times, and discover and develop their gifts and aptitudes in a friendly and loving environment.
Education: Education is the primary way people identify their gifts, their passions, and their path to fulfillment. Rightly understood, education is three-dimensional. It helps students learn to be—who they are and what they do and don’t do well. It helps them to know—finding out how the world works and the principles that undergird it. And education helps them to do—experimenting to discover what they will be rewarded for and find fulfilling.
Business: The role of business is to create products and services in a manner that helps people improve their lives. This requires creating an environment where employees thrive and find fulfillment by developing and applying their knowledge and skills to satisfy customers’ needs. A business’s profit ought to reflect its contributions to its various constituencies—customers, employees, suppliers, investors, communities, and society—and nothing else.
Government: Government is a powerful institution with an important purpose: keeping people safe and securing equal rights. In America, the vision of a government is best articulated in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted.”
THE PATH TO EMPOWERMENT
Each institution is badly broken, as you will also read in part III. Rather than consistently empowering people to contribute and succeed, they too often erect barriers that hold people back. The institutions are also interconnected: a failure in one usually creates problems in the others.
For example, when government policy distorts the criminal justice system, it causes many businesses to steer clear of hiring individuals with criminal records; it locks up young people at a time when they most need good mentors and a good education; and it shatters communities by tearing apart families and perpetuating poverty and crime. At every point, individuals are prevented from rising, cut off from contributing and pursuing happiness. The longer those barriers stand, the wider the chasm in our country grows.
Fortunately, none of the institutions are irreparably damaged. Each can still be transformed to change America’s trajectory and empower every person to succeed by contributing. As we have seen time and time again in our country, this kind of progress can only happen from the bottom up. The task falls to you and me, and to millions of other Social Entrepreneurs.
If transforming these institutions sounds like a tough task, that’s because it is. I have spent the better part of my life working to understand the role that institutions need to play and how to transform them for the better. Through trial and error, study, and challenge from people I’ve partnered with, I have learned a lot about what it takes. It has helped me see that the path to transformation is grounded in the principles of progress, and it starts with us—you and me.
What injustice do you want to end? Which barriers do you want to break down? This is your motivation, your starting point. Perhaps you want to end poverty or fix the failing school your own kids attend. Perhaps you’re sick and tired of special-interest handouts to businesses or upset about a terrible policy that pushes people down instead of enabling them to rise.
As a general rule, the people best suited to end an injustice are those closest to it.
Once your sights are trained on a specific injustice, you need to accurately diagnose the problem. The most common response to injustice is to double down on the approach that created and compounded it—usually one based in controlling, not empowering, people. This is no solution, no matter how well intentioned, and it usually causes more problems and ruins more lives. You will soon see how this same sad trend is playing out in each institution today.
The alternative—the real solution—is to empower people. This looks different with each injustice and within each institution. In broad terms, the right approach is the one that enables people to discover, develop, and apply their gifts so they can succeed by contributing.
KATHALEENA MONDS
FINDING MY PATH AND HELPING OTHERS DO THE SAME
KATHALEENA MONDS IS A PROFESSOR AT ALBANY STATE UNIVERSITY. SHE RECEIVED A UNCF SCHOLARSHIP IN 1984 THAT ENABLED HER TO ATTEND COLLEGE.
It’s tough going back home to Detroit. Most of my childhood friends are still there, and they are not doing so well. It’s hard to see their struggles.
It’s kind of a miracle that I got out. After all, we were all in the same boat back in the day. We hung out in the same places. We went to the same schools. For all intents and purposes, we were on the same track, and it wasn’t a great one.
Maybe I had a better shot because of my family. My mother emphasized the importance of hard work and community, and she did her best to raise us seven kids with those values. One of my earliest jobs was helping my brothers fold the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press in preparation for their paper routes early, early, early in the morning. I learned a lot of good lessons at a young age.
Even so, by the time high school ended, I didn’t know what to do next. I went back to a counselor and asked if she thought I could go to college. She told me there was a school in Atlanta, Georgia—Spelman College—where I might be a good fit.
I applied. A few weeks later, I got accepted.
I should have been excited, but instead I freaked out. No one in my family had ever gone to college, and we didn’t have the money for tuition. We didn’t even have a car, so I didn’t know how I’d get down to Atlanta.
Two weeks after I graduated from high school, my family was evicted.
Kathaleena is dedicating her life to helping others discover, develop, and apply their gifts, as she did.
My mom asked her employers—the family she worked for as a domestic—to provide some support in renting a car to get me from Detroit to Atlanta. My mom and eldest brother dropped me off, turned the car around, and went home.
There I was, at a school I couldn’t afford, and with nowhere else to go. So I went to the financial aid office and told my story.
That’s when I learned about UNCF. They gave me a scholarship. I couldn’t believe it. I could stay at Spelman. I could get the education I wanted.
Spelman helped me discover what I was best at, putting me on a completely new path. It awoke my passion for inspiring young adults.
I now teach and lead the Center for Educational Opportunity at Albany State University, where we focus on research to help fragile communities build stronger schools so children can thrive. My goal is to help as many young adults as possible find their own upward path through the education that’s right for them. Just like I did.
— KATHALEENA MONDS
Kathaleena grew up in Detroit, where she faced many challenges.
Kathaleena graduated from Spelman College with the help of a UNCF scholarship.
As a general rule, the people best suited to end an injustice are those closest to it—a crucial component of bottom up. Consider your own aptitudes, skills, and experience when figuring out where and how to apply yourself. I’ll soon report on this concept in action—and the people who are getting results from it.
After you find what works—what enables people to contribute and succeed—support it in whatever way you can. Not everyone can start an organization from scratch, and worthwhile projects need volunteers, funders, promoters, and others to help them grow. The project with the most potential in the world is not transformative if it only empowers a handful of people.
As you help these efforts succeed, others will start to take note. The positive results will put to rest the bankrupt ideas that have long held people back. (You’ll encounter these ideas in chapters six through nine.) You, in turn, will find new avenues to apply yourself, new opportunities, and new partnerships that will enable you to better help others. You can create the sort of never-ending cycle that expands your effectiveness by orders of magnitude.
This road map is grounded in sound theory, but results also require sound practice. In the chapters that follow, you’ll meet many Social Entrepreneurs who are beginning to transform each institution. Their experiences are enabling me to improve my own efforts to empower many more people. It is my hope that their experiences will provide the same benefit for you.
THE COURAGE TO ACT
At the beginning of this chapter, I asked you which description fits America today—prosperity or poverty, thriving communities or struggling individuals, upward mobility or economic decline. The answer is both, but it doesn’t have to be.
The path we take depends on the choices we as Social Entrepreneurs make—on how we lead, empower, and inspire others to tackle society’s most pressing problems.
We are not locked into our country’s destructive path, where fewer people will be able to realize their potential. Nor are we promised a future of opportunity and fulfillment for all. The path we take depends on the choices we as Social Entrepreneurs make—on how we lead, empower, and inspire others to tackle society’s most pressing problems. As we do, we help transform the institutions from the bottom up.
The past and the present are filled with examples of these pathfinders—Social Entrepreneurs who can inspire and inform our work today. There are many more than you think. It’s time we meet a few.