[urs 5] – It Completes Me!
Well in this case the book less completes me then it destroys me in the best possible sense. Books that fundamentally challenge my worldview and the assumptions I have lived into for decades are often my most favorite reads. “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas is far and away one of the best non-fiction books I have read in a while and it absolutely destroyed my understanding of social change.
Over the last few years, I have found myself wondering why with all the money, time and commitment to change, does so little actually seem to fundamentally change? There are so many NGO’s, so many businesses trying to do good in the world and for the world and yet, the structures remain that oppress, exploit and entrap a vast majority of humanity. Giridharadas wrestles with this observation and unveils the assumptions that we have been living under and into which have trapped us in a system of perceived effort, though no fundamental change.
I want you to read this book. I want you to examine your own presuppositions and the ways in which the status quo perpetuates even as the rhetoric around social change has accelerated and intensified in the last couple decades. I am not going to pretend to summarize Giridharadas’ observations, arguments or conclusions, I am simply going to say we do have to be willing to critically examine the systems that continue to oppress and exploit and see our own culpability and benefits from these systems. History tells us social change is possible, but as Audre Lorde so eloquently put, “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”
Read this book.
Happy Reading!
Hannah
