· 6 min read
In recent years, a certain cultural refrain has gained traction: that we must “do the inner work” before we can take meaningful action in the world. This idea—appealing in its simplicity and moral earnestness—suggests that individual reflection, healing, and self-awareness are prerequisites for effective engagement in social and political change. While this notion holds a kernel of truth, it also conceals a deeper danger. The ability to pause, reflect, and attend to one’s inner landscape is not a universal resource—it’s a luxury. For millions of people who are simply trying to survive in the face of poverty, displacement, racial violence, or ecological collapse, introspection is not just inaccessible—it’s a distraction. To suggest that the most marginalised must first engage in personal development before participating in collective action is not only unrealistic; it’s unjust.
This is not to dismiss the value of introspection. But We have to stop pretending that inner work alone can undo systems designed to extract, exploit, and divide. Let’s not replace systemic change with personal advice when the issue is systemic by design. This article is not arguing for either/or—it’s a call to recenter the collective in a culture obsessed with the individual. It’s about shifting the emphasis, not denying the whole.
Self-awareness, healing, and growth are meaningful and necessary. But when inner work is framed as a precondition for action, it becomes exclusionary. It subtly upholds a worldview where those with the time, resources, and emotional bandwidth to do that work are seen as more ready or more worthy of leading change. That framing reveals itself as deeply classed, racialised, and steeped in privilege.
Moreover, the insistence on inner transformation before outer action often echoes the logic of neoliberalism—a system that relentlessly individualises responsibility and deflects accountability from the structures that actually shape our lives. If only you could fix yourself, the narrative whispers, the world might improve. But the truth is more radical: the world doesn’t change when everyone engages in introspection; it changes when people organise.
We are not isolated individuals awakening separately into wholeness. We are members of a shared world, a deeply interconnected superorganism. We become who we are not in isolation, but in relationship—in struggle, solidarity, and shared experience. Inner work is most powerful when it is done with others, not in spite of them. In fact, it is often through action, through stepping into the unknown, through confronting injustice, that our values are clarified and our healing begins.
Everything is design. We design the world—and our designs, in turn, design us. This applies not only to physical spaces or social systems but to narratives and norms. One particularly persistent narrative is the idea that we must first possess inner clarity before we can act meaningfully in the world. But this linear framing misses a vital truth: values are not fixed, pre-existing beliefs. They are shaped by experience, and they evolve through practice. Our ethical commitments are not born in solitude—they are forged in the fire of collective engagement.
Overemphasising inner work as a prerequisite for social change doesn’t just individualise responsibility—it individualises failure. Just as the neoliberal system tells us that poverty is a result of personal inadequacy, this framing tells us that injustice persists because not enough people have healed. It turns systemic problems into private moral failings and treats transformation as a matter of personal enlightenment rather than public accountability. In doing so, it lets systems off the hook.
“When inner work becomes the answer, the system escapes accountability.”
This is not an argument against introspection. It is an argument against its elevation as the cornerstone of change. Healing is essential—but healing begins in community. Healing begins in action. We are shaped by what we do, by the roles we step into, by the risks we take, by the relationships we build. We don’t become ready and then act—we act and then become ready.
Consider the chilling historical example of Reserve Police Battalion 101, documented in Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men. These were middle-aged, working-class Germans—many of them fathers, neighbours, and seemingly ordinary people—who became perpetrators of the Holocaust. They did not begin their service with genocidal beliefs. They did not undergo some profound personal transformation before committing atrocities. Rather, through repeated participation in violence, their moral compasses adjusted. The more they acted, the more they justified their actions. Their values did not guide their behaviour; their behaviour reshaped their values.
This example is not intended to compare activism to atrocity but to highlight a powerful truth: values are formed through action. When we treat introspection as the sole or primary site of transformation, we risk misunderstanding how human morality actually works. Our environments, communities, and actions shape our values more than private contemplation ever could.
So where does this leave us? It leaves us with a renewed understanding that collective action is not the result of healed individuals—it is the terrain on which healing, transformation, and solidarity are made possible. It’s in the act of standing up together, resisting injustice, and imagining new systems that people discover not only their power but also their purpose. When we fight for a better world, we don’t just change the system—we change ourselves. Inner work is not the answer—it is a tool. Treated as the answer, it becomes escape. Used as a tool, it deepens everything.
It doesn’t look the same for everyone. For some, it’s silence. For others, it’s movement, dialogue, or service. The task is not to standardise it, but to create space for many paths—so the work can grow through all of us. The path forward, then, is not to abandon inner work, but to contextualise it. To decenter the idea that personal growth must come first, and instead recognise that growth is emergent. It arises from action. It arises from relationship. It arises from being in the messy, unpredictable, often painful work of building something better together.
This is not a call to be reckless, reactive, or unreflective. It is a call to be collectively awake. To understand that we are not waiting for everyone to be healed before we move—we move to make healing possible. We act not in spite of our brokenness, but because of it. Because the world is broken, and the repair will not come from introspective retreats, but from organised, sustained, courageous action.
The privilege of introspection must be named—not to shame those who engage in it, but to shift the focus away from individual journeys and toward collective liberation. The world will not be saved by those who meditate hardest or journal the most. It will be saved by those who join hands and do the work—together.
Nothing changes until we do. And we change through collective action.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
