Despairing
3 years, 9 months, 3 days, 21 hours
18 October 2025
Our world will not change unless we do.
There was a tension in the mood, as I felt it, in the main theatre of the House of People in Stockholm on Wednesday this week. More than 800 individuals had come together, with more joining online, for the Inner Development Goals Summit, 2025 and I was there by kind invitation of the Executive Director, Jan Artem Henriksson. It felt like the perfect family - deeply welcoming and supportive, and happy to be together - and I felt at home there at once.
But fuelling the enthusiastic clapping and finger-clicking of approval, the hugging, the overt caring and sympathy shown to all, was a shared pain. This was a community of those alive and sensitive to the existential threats facing our future, and feeling battered and exhausted by the indifference of a world that will not listen and cynical leaders who try to thwart every inch of progress.
To say it was a room in despair would be too strong. But it was a room despairing, and grasping for ideas to lead humanity out of its many crises, so we could all hold on to hope. At the heart of that hope lies the mantra of the Inner Development Goals that ‘Our World Will Not Change Unless We Do’, and underneath that the now 25 skills and qualities of the Inner Development Guide about which I wrote in January 2023 (see blog ‘Our Biggest Challenge’).
But unfortunately no amount of hope will carry the principles of Inner Growth into the hearts of all the world’s leaders, a point sadly illustrated yesterday when the 176 Member States represented at the International Maritime Organisation failed to reach agreement on the Net-Zero Framework for shipping. That proposal, advanced by the industry itself as the ‘Green Balance Mechanism’ would have placed a levy on fossil-fuel burning ships to subside the uptake of green fuels. The discussions were adjourned for a whole year following opposition from states including the US and Saudi Arabia. For all those who have worked for more than three years to bring that decision to the table - more fatigue, more despair, more having to pick themselves up to fight again.
We will prevail. We will win. Because the alternative is the implosion of humanity on a dying planet. But it would be so much easier if we didn’t have to fight short-term stupidity all the way.
Image: Inner Development Goals Summit at the House of People, Stockholm