It definitely seems that when change is more threatening than promising, everyone collectively hits the brakes. I’m not sure if that’s a lack of imagination, or perhaps even a correct risk-adjusted calculation. People just have less faith in the promise of change.
Every step of the way, to everyone around us, we should be asking the question, what are you building? What are you building directly, or helping other people to build, or teaching other people to build, or taking care of people who are building? If the work you’re doing isn’t either leading to something being built or taking care of people directly, we’ve failed you, and we need to get you into a position, an occupation, a career where you can contribute to building. There are always outstanding people in even the most broken systems — we need to get all the talent we can on the biggest problems we have, and on building the answers to those problems.
– Marc Andreessen in his essay, Time to Build