Alternative Editorial: Be Careful What You Wish For
This is our first editorial from our new base in Edinburgh, Scotland. And while the physical location of this text won't register much difference in a virtual world, the sense of a new context for change is palpable for these writers. Because there is no party-political brick wall - such as offered by the first-past-the-post system in Westminster - the energy is higher: as if anything political entrepreneurs might do from here could cause a tremor.
Old political thinking might sneer at that suggestion: what's so special about Scotland, a tiny country on the edge of a fading Empire? But new political thinking would look at the past thirty years and say, we're living in new times, with different forms of agency. This is no longer about numbers and speed, control and geography but storytelling, attraction and attention: soft power more than hard power.
To get from London to Edinburgh was an act of imagination, prompted by seven years of evidence-taking, followed by putting the architecture in place, ready for a leap. All of it born of a yearning for somewhere to live and breathe well, amongst people already anchored in community, with an activated vision of better days to come.
Of course such people exist everywhere in pockets all over the world. We've blogged such visionaries in community agency networks (CANs) everywhere. Some are inspired by regenerative agriculture, some by collaborative ways of working. Others are technologically driven, or busy building new economic tools. Very few comparatively (but there are some) are designing the political tools for mass participation through deliberative democracy.
Others still are focusing on internal development and education, building capacity for futuring within and amongst the people. And then there are all the media initiatives that acknowledge the historic and ongoing power of the written word to shape reality. Like the many perspectives of the blind men meeting an elephant, each one is important precisely because it is different from the others. Without the ability for each to listen to the other the elephant could not be perceived as a whole.
That sense that a whole new system is emerging 'out there' is the reason we opened our four incubators for transformation. We invited anyone searching for the whole through their particular entry point to join in a growing conversation between builders of the future. As systems convenors, here’s what we see: once a hopelessly fragmented movement of positive actions is beginning to cohere under the broad term ecocivilisation.
Interestingly, no-one owns this term: instead, it seems to name a logic that responds to the 'polycrisis' of personal, social, political and planetary breakdown we all seem to be experiencing - polycrisis being a 'word of the year' in 2023. You'll hear the eco-civ response from philosophers such as Jeremy Lent in his soon to be published book on Ecological Civilisation. Or from politician Violeta Bulc who convenes global gatherings of largely women to map Ecocivilisation's emergent nature (see our event section in this week’s newsletter).
For those looking further East, ecocivilisation has been the proclaimed goal of the Chinese governmentsince 2007. Each version sets a different context, set of rules and methods of getting there. In China, the state will be the driver; in Eastern Europe it will be much more reliant on feisty entrepreneurs. Whereas the global story from the USA will give far more agency to more abstract principles, human rights and consciousness.
What we find in Scotland - not uniquely, but clearly - is signs of all of these elements present in the one country, small enough to interconnect. In that sense, Scotland is becoming a fractal - a microcosm - of the ecocivilisation others are imagining and calling for. Some of this is at level of the local Holyrood parliament: a well-being economy already in development, a coalition around green energy, an integral, U-lab, developmental culture in the civil service, Universal Basic Income in full trial and ambitions for Citizens Assemblies as a second chamber, should Scotland become independent. Add to that a manifesto pledge to get rid of nuclear weapons and you have a very deep and broad political vision on offer.
But maybe it's the fabric of the nation outside of Parliament that makes Scotland even more promising. Media and independence-movement stalwart Lesley Riddoch's three books - Blossom, Huts and Thrive - shift the focus well away from the map of possibilities, a campaign or manifesto, to the fertile territory on which such a map could, and is slowly, getting purchase. Weaving the history of social care in with the many forms of community building and the front-line of our individual relationship with nature, Lesley describes a profoundly feminine culture at the heart of a national project already underway.
Even so, following the two big divisive events - the Independence referendum of 2014 and Brexit 2016 - the way forward is not so obvious. For Scotland to establish a clear path towards ecocivilisation, it needs to transcend the binary choices the UK government keeps obliging them to make. It needs a new unifying language that lifts the whole nation away from the 'one last heave' mentality that the Labour Party keeps evoking, hoping finally to win against the behemoth of a Conservative Party wanting mostly to conserve the past.
In some ways, the alternative is obvious and already taking shape - although maybe not appreciated as a political narrative per se. This is because Scotland is still occupying the old model of a political system - with a Parliament at the centre and all power emanating downwards from there. What if Scotland was able to really develop and deliver on its constitutional vision and have a working parallel polis (ref), ultimately represented by the second chamber Citizen Assemblies?
What might that look like? Rather than replicate the Left /Right, or Scotland/Westminster divides might it not express the wholistic nature of Scottish culture more readily? Not simply the historic closeness to Nature, but the propensity to give the Arts more visibility, a futuristic ambition, a confidence in community and socio-economic vision Scotland as an ecocivlisation of the future?
To realise this potential, there’s no doubt there will be some radical play needed. Words that are barely registering in the UK could become the mark of a Scotland streaking forward towards a powerful goal. For example, take cosmolocalism - the notion that we are all increasingly living in connection with the wider world through our lives on the internet, while living in real time in a community on the ground.
While most are now used to the world of social media and virtual reality, there is often a disconnect between its promise of infinite possibility and what is actually happening around us where we live. Cosmolocalism is the real time exchange of peer-to-peer groups all over the world, sharing experience, challenges and innovations. Communities in Eastern Europe sharing with others in South America, Africa or the USA.
While one part of the world can offer break-through blueprints to another for free, others can share hard-won lessons of resilience and creativity in the direst of circumstances. In many ways cosmolocalism is a great leveller - especially in the Zoom room where everyone has developed the listening protocal. While Scotland has a small population, cosmolocally Scotland in the world can have immense influence as a real-time global innovator. Especially placed within a complex power relationship to its neighbours - England, Wales, Ireland, Europe and the Nordic countries.
A cosmlocal Scotland's strength will lie in its ongoing success in building relationships within Scotland between the people in their communities, informal and formal institutions and a developing governance system as described above. When this becomes stronger and clearer, suffused with the artistic and creative culture already core to Scotland's soft power, it can be shared cosmolocally around the world - constantly enriched by similar patterns of development elsewhere.
Of course none of this happens easily or automatically - yet the potential is clearly there. While it might be tempting for any one political party to jump straight into the breach and claim this narrative as their own, there will not be anything real to champion until the architecture for meaningful citizen participation is built. And we should hesitate to build it before enough communities have a real sense of their relational capacity for convening and deliberating.
In that sense, here - and in similar polities the world over - the impetus for change is more social and cultural than party-political. It’s as much, if not more, about people themselves desiring to be more directly involved in decision making and having more agency, giving rise to the best tools for realising that. While it will continue to be the modus operandi of the formal political system to hold elections, referenda - and likely more forms of direct democracy such as polling - there is an urgent need for more deliberation amongst the people.
For example, the more organically tried and tested tools developed within citizen agency networks (CANs) in different parts of the UK and globally are better for connecting individuals, to their communities, to the wider world. Particularly with a view to naming and exploring new futures, in ambitious, concrete terms: that's what cosmolocalism can deliver. By developing original visions more autonomously, the people can begin to shape the agenda for political parties, help them to get out of the trenches. In year four of a crucial decade for the environment for example, we urgently need new attractors for change.
It's early days for this phenomenon everywhere. Although maybe Scotland is ahead of some others in respect of a well-developed narrative around the need for more autonomy, self-reliance and urgent futuristic green innovation. As a small country ready to be a leading voice for a radical future - right in the heart of a Western democracy still failing its people - it's promising.
From our new perch in Edinburgh, we are certainly feeling it. And are ready to get stuck in.