Alternative Editorial: Small Big Thinking
We won't be alone in our dismay at watching the leadership elections for the Conservative Party. Not for any shocking content (although Suella Braverman did surprise us for the absence of compassion in her promises to challenge welfare claimants, in the midst of a cost of living crisis ref). But for its lack of big thinking or vision.
On the table as defining issues in choosing the next Prime Minister for the 5th largest economy in the world are 1) the size of your tax cut 2) disputes over shifting positions about sex/gender and 3) whether or not your boss is honest. Not a single one has mentioned the multiple crises of climate, social justice or well-being as the reality we are facing.
Also noticeable is the battle over character. Three out of five (and one man, Rishi Sunak) are competing to be the next Margaret Thatcher - the Iron Lady - as if being tough is the only way out of the state we are in. Where is the warmth, trustworthiness, inspiration needed to get us through these global challenges? While all of them mention levelling up and uniting the country, are they imagining the population as an army, willing to live on rations and obeying orders?
Look away, we tell ourselves, but it's hard to ignore the ghoulish spectacle of a system in breakdown. This is not simply about a few competing ministers lacking charisma. They are simply the tip of the iceberg: the visible representatives of a socio-economic-political reality, made commonsensical by the operations of the mainstream media, that has destroyed our planet. Their lack of life-force - dead identities, peddling destructive cliches - arises directly from the forces that are killing our planet.
A genuinely alternative space of creativity, delivering for people and planet
In a Zoom room, at roughly the same time as these leaders debates but in an alternative world - a group of diverse agents gathers (we’re observing, but we’re also allowing them some privacy, at this development stage). They are considering how to accelerate our response to the news that we are unlikely to stay within the 1.5 degrees rise in temperature that the planet needs to stay stable by 2030. While some of the participants have published their thoughts, none could be called household names or prospective candidates of a political party.
All are talking about “systems thinking” and there is lively competition between visions for the future. Some see nature as central - describing a regenerative system that uses biomimicry to get impressive results in both farming and social design. Others lean more towards technological enhancements (rather than solutions); they emphasise the game-changing effect of new currencies, cosmolocalism and the impact of quantum computing on health.
Still others are focused on the human being as itself a system. Of course we think about ourselves as an organism - cells and organs working in an integrated way for the functioning of our bodies. But there is a tendency to think of flesh as material, requiring maintenance. This Zoom inquiry is more about how the human flourishes as a bio-psycho-social-spiritual entity. What kind of society do we need to stay mentally and physically healthy?
The debates in this room - and many others like it that we participate in, most days - are more subtle than competitive. Should we, collectively, face the public with shock tactics: tell them about the true state of our planet and the slim chances that large populations have of survival in the next twenty years?. Or should we stay resolutely calm: pushing the fantastic number of initiatives taking shape, only requiring integration and grassroots self-organising to cause our redirection from the cliff edge? While all of us hope to combine these two approaches, we know it's next to impossible without a genuinely effective new media system that could reach people via a blend of local and global news.
Another debate would be whether those with clear vision should try to lead change from the front or from behind (or from the side)? The first means involving the current political structure, developing policy and doing a lot of orating and movement building. Jon Alexander's book Citizens describes this well (and Jon has a lot of charisma to boot). The second is more like funding the grassroots to do what they do best: philanthropists, NGOs, lottery funds, all helping organic community development to get traction.
The third, standing to the side, would look at all this organic development and initiate a wider system capable of connecting the micro to the macro, trying not to disturb the system’s fractal coherence. While that may sound mystical or fanciful even, it's mostly the way that nature works or, how successful global movements come together. It’s less trade unions or numbered “internationals” of the left, generally organised in a topdown way. And more self-organised like Pinterest, some religious groups or even football clubs.
And yet the technology that can bring people together flexibly, allowing them to retain their autonomy, is still elusive. Not because it can't be designed, there are many effective platforms. But mostly because - to be effective - there must be a system of shared ownership and data in place. Imagine a new system, locally and globally connected, that helps communities flourish, giving rise to a regenerative economy, that is also co-owned by all the participants?
Where is the Prime Minister in waiting who can commit to creating the conditions for people to develop their agency in this time of unprecedented challenge? Who, instead of focusing on their party's fortunes, can think about giving people practical tools and resources in which they can become response-able and agentic? To mention a few possibilities, how about a Universal Citizens Income combined with shorter working weeks to help people at all levels become more creative; free broadband and education; handing over local buildings and empty homes to localities, generating community wealth; easy grants for local energy and food systems that would lead to self-reliance in the future. In other words, massive investments in people and the place they live in - their own incubator - as the resources we should develop for the future.
Many reading will be familiar with a similar moment in history (narrated beautifully in Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Bjorkman's book The Nordic Secret when Sweden, Denmark and Norway were on the verge of bankruptcy. Instead of spending money bailing out business, the government opened a folk-education system when anyone could go and learn whatever they chose for free. From sex education to permaculture - just sign up and spend time with your community, to grapple with your personal and collective future.
A new politics is coming - but what can that mean? As we've explained too often, a new political party would have little chance of making an impact in our first past the post system, which rules England out. But it rules in Scotland, or anywhere else in the world which has a proportional system. Where independents are ready to go beyond traditional division, and stand in their parliament for people and planet.
We can't ignore the political nature of so much of our current social innovation. Firstly in the sense of 'the personal is political' popularised by feminism. In this age of the non-state actor what matters to us deeply has a direct impact on the way we are able to progress in the public space. Whether as a blocker or an enabler of policy, our identity and our self-expression is shaping socio-political outcomes.
But less often talked about, the significant increase in community innovation and regenerative practice means that a new socio-political system is forming. Social infrastructure for people power is developing fast, bringing with it new forms of governance and an emerging fourth sector economy. Its soft power of storytelling and future narrative building is becoming more influential on current institutions, even government. How long before this aggregating power begins to look like a parallel polis - a genuinely alternative space of creativity, delivering for people and planet?
Jump straight in or invest by giving it your daily attention. Something new is on the way.