A Fraying Social Fabric

You’re reading this column during the Thanksgiving season. But as I write it, The Council team is still recovering from the 112th Insurance Leadership Forum at the Broadmoor—an event described by Insurance Insider as the “Davos of the property casualty industry,” terminology that tickled us pink.

The purpose of the meeting, as always, is to bring the very highest levels of brokerage and carrier executives together. Everyone, naturally, was talking about shifting market conditions, further broker consolidation, and, of course this year, all things Howden.

We don’t do much of a public program at ILF, no trade show, so our brokers can do their thing with carrier partners. But the 2025 event featured three esteemed speakers: former President George W. Bush, bestselling author and New York Times columnist David Brooks, and acclaimed broadcaster Meredith Vieira. Our chairman at the event, Woodruff Sawyer Chairman and CEO Andy Barrengos, noted afterward that these three very different speakers shared themes on the need for a social fabric and the risks facing that fabric today. That was a happy accident, as we did nothing to coordinate between them. But for an audience longing for normalcy and achieving good, these were indeed thoughtful remarks.

Here are some comments that I found particularly affecting.

BUSH: If your perspective is based upon things, material things, and, particularly in being powerful, then you miss out on the important things of life, which is to love a neighbor like you’d like to be loved yourself, for example. That’s one of the great parts of the American fabric.

BROOKS: The most significant social statistic in the world is social trust. Do you trust your neighbors? Used to be a generation and a half ago that if you ask people around the country, do you trust the people right around you, 60% said yes. Now that’s down to 30% and 19% of millennials and Gen Z. The younger you go, the more distrustful people are….Over the past 10 years, when we’ve been through a bit of a valley, I sometimes ask myself, how is this country going to turn itself around? I’ve come to the conclusion we already are, that the pain we’re going through is part of the necessity of turning a country around. I often ask people what made your life who you are. And nobody ever says to me, “You know, I went on this vacation in Hawaii. It was so fantastic. That made me the person I am today.” No one ever says that. They always talk about some hard time they had to go through, either professionally or personally, and how they recovered.

VIEIRA (on taking her children to visit the World Trade Center ruins only days after Sept. 11): We were where all the pictures were of people— have you seen my brother, my sister? [My children] had seen some of the news. They weren’t oblivious to what had happened, but we wanted them to see the pictures, to see that something very sad had happened. But also to see that there was goodness. There were people trying to help, and we wanted to know what would be ways for us to help. That was a unity message, but I don’t see people talking to each other anymore. It’s talking over each other.

BROOKS: You probably all know the social statistics. The rise in mental health, the 30% rise in suicide. Thirty-six percent of Americans report feeling lonely. Forty-five percent of high school students report feeling persistently hopeless and despondent. The percentage of Americans who say they have no close friends is up by fourfold since 2000. The percentage of Americans not in a romantic category is up by 50% since 2000. The percentage of Americans who rate themselves in the lowest happiness category is also up by 50% since 2000. So we’ve just gotten sadder as a society. And when you get sadder, you get meaner. Because if you feel yourself unseen, lonely, untaken care of, you regard that first as a threat and then as an indignity, which it is.

VIEIRA: I’ll share a piece of advice for my kids and you. Share something that you could tell your earlier self at the beginning—“Hey, you should do these things. You should do this part different.” Just that advice for younger you. I wouldn’t have listened to it, but [the lesson] would have been: don’t sweat the small stuff. Because I do sweat the small stuff. Even now.

BUSH: I’m asked a lot about leadership. The key thing to be a good leader is humility, and by that I mean you got to know what you don’t know. Power basically says, “I must know everything.” If the culture of an organization is based upon a personality, it fails. In other words, if people work to say, “I’ve got to work to make this person look good,” it’s not going to work. The culture has to be based on something greater than an individual.

Yet we have a Constitution that has endured over time. The question is, can it endure this period? Because if it does, democracies self-correct. That’s the beauty of the system. And so I’m very optimistic about the future, I really am. I know it’s tough, but we have elections coming up and it’s very important for people to take their citizenship duties very seriously and get involved and vote so that democracy can self-heal….Be a good example. Love your neighbor, care about your family, be kind to your employees, share credit, take the blame. You know, all the basic management tools that have worked throughout the years. We need you as good examples. When people look at you and the way you run your company say, “Wow, that’s the kind of person I’d like to be.”

These are words to live by.

To all, please have a healthy, happy Thanksgiving season.