‘To be truly radical today is to make hope possible, not despair convincing.’
- Raymond Williams
‘I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it difficult to plan the day.’
- E.B. White
‘So what is the point of Utopia? The point is this: To keep walking.’
- Eduardo Galeano
‘If success or failure of this planet depended on how I am and what I do […] HOW WOULD I BE? WHAT WOULD I DO?’
- R. Buckminster Fuller
Way back in the Introduction, I raised three concerns. Where is the vision for a better world? Why are people’s visions for a good life so premised on wealth and materialism? Why is politics seemingly so polarised, with neither right nor left addressing the concerns of ordinary people? To these questions, I added a personal concern. Do I really trust people? Do I trust others enough to encourage deliberative democracy, where ordinary people have a say in how our society is run? As we reach the end of our discussions, it’s time to review where things stand with those concerns and questions raised at the start.
I hope I’ve convinced the reader that there’s a lot of vision out there. We have studied the utopias that are alive and well in our society right now and named them with the three flavours, Privatopia, Cornucopia and Ecotopia. We could summarise the positive contributions of these utopias as follows: Privatopia — freedom, independence, autonomy. Cornucopia — positivity, hope, abundance. Ecotopia — recognising that we are all one eco-system with the Earth and the wider universe. Drawing on these positive narratives and collecting ideas from many sources, this book puts forward a new story. It’s a vision for a prosperous and happy future, but also, I believe, one that is pragmatic and most of all, based on the active participation of all of us. A utopia is built together, or otherwise it is a utopia for just a few and a dystopia for the rest. Participation is the key, and along with this we need a good deal of trust. And our consideration of the commons suggests that fairness — equity — is also critical. So the three big things that form the vision of a new story are participation, equity and trust.
Why do people envisage a good life as consisting of financial wealth and material possessions? We explored this question through the dominant culture described as Privatopia. Some economic theories suggest that we are pleasure-seeking machines. The sources of pleasure on offer though are of the acquisitive, material kind — the substitute pleasures of stuff. We need the stuff for our sense of who we are, because relationships have suffered and we have been driven towards seeking self-actualisation and self-esteem as ends in themselves. But this reliance on stuff as a prop for the ego is a fragile arrangement at best. It leaves people stressed and defensive, narcissistic and vulnerable. Instead of ego plus stuff, I have suggested the alternative pleasures of beauty, silence, slowness, peace, grace, kindness, conversation, humour, art, play, celebration and carnival. That’s the offer of our new story. I’ve suggested that many people secretly long for these ‘different pleasures’ and a few are forging ways to realise them, through changed lifestyles. So the contrast with the materialist ‘good life’ need not be austerity. It might be termed ‘frugality’ instead — living within our means — or it might be best called ‘simplicity’ — a term we took up in Chapter 11. There we saw that simplicity represents an abundance of a different sort — meeting genuine needs in beautiful ways.
We’ve seen that the word politics has its roots in polis and polity, so is ‘of the people’. By contrast, the state, and ‘statecraft’ are the troubling aspects of governance that should be our real worry. There is not actually much true politics going on. Instead, there are states threatening each other with nuclear annihilation, conducting trade wars and condoning the actions of big business, which is trampling on human rights and destroying natural ecosystems with little or no accountability. Meanwhile, ordinary people, and true politics, actually have very little say. Party politics — partisanship, the politics of the state — is the danger then, and not the true politics of the people. So maybe this section should be called ‘polarised statism’. We will stay with the more familiar labels, but I hope the reader will keep in mind that the issues addressed here may well be there because of statism and would largely become irrelevant if we had a true polity and a real politics.
Why has politics become so polarised and why do politicians on both left and right not seem to be addressing the concerns of people they claim to represent? This is probably the most complex problem to answer. We have described it partly as the dichotomy between left-wing equality and right-wing freedom. On the left there are two main concerns. The left still looks for equality of outcome. But, equality of outcome, in the main, is not seen as fair. People are generally more inclined towards ‘proportionality’, in other words, society rewards a person according to how much they contribute. Alongside this, the left still continues its valorisation of the underdog, which some would claim is, in reality, a contempt for those whom they perceive as holding power. It used to be greedy fat-cat capitalists, but now it tends to be capitalism itself and its most visible protagonists, the big corporations, the neo-liberal elite and the ‘paternalist’ hierarchies of society — real or perceived. To make matters worse, ‘the left’ in the UK (I use the quote marks advisedly) has been off on a thirty year bender where it embraced the neo-liberalism of the right and tried to mix it with a liberal internationalist and intersectionalist stance. No wonder we’re confused! No wonder at the rise of populist right-wing parties that take away this conflicting narrative. Another rather awkward aspect of the left is picked up by Darren McGarvey (Poverty Safari). He says: ‘I no longer believe poverty is an issue our politicians can solve. Not because they don’t want to, but because an honest conversation about what it will require is too politically difficult to have. If those in power were straight about what addressing these problems would require it would shock us to the core. And not merely because of the magnitude of the task facing society, which is unconscionable in scale, but also because there is a certain level of personal responsibility involved that’s become taboo to acknowledge on the left. For all the demand we in left-wing circles feign for fundamental change and radical action, people get a bit touchy and offended when you suggest that might apply to them too…’
McGarvey goes on: ‘In Scotland, the poverty industry is dominated by a left-leaning, liberal, middle-class. Because this specialist class is so genuinely well-intentioned when it comes to the interests of the people in deprived communities, they get a bit confused, upset and offended when those very people begin expressing anger towards them. It never occurs to them, because they see themselves as the good guys, that the people they purport to serve may, in fact, perceive them as chancers, careerists, or charlatans. They regard themselves as champions of the underclass and therefore, should any poor folk begin to get their own ideas, or, God forbid, rebel against the poverty experts, the blame is laid at the door of the complainants for misunderstanding what is going on. In fact, these types are often so certain of their own insight and virtue that they won’t think twice before describing working class people they purport to represent as engaging in self-harm if they vote for a right-wing political party. Not only does this broadcast a worrying lack of self-awareness regarding why many are turning away from the left, but it also implies that those who no longer see the value in our ideas or methods are not just ungrateful, but stupid.’
From these comments we can appreciate the paternalism that can come from supposedly left-leaning and sympathetic sources and as McGarvey himself observes, how poorer people may be driven towards ‘populist’ right-wing parties. If they can express simple messages then such ‘populist’ parties (and we will unwrap this term a bit more below) have a broad appeal. The generally tougher and more nationalistic stance of such parties further adds to their appeal. In times of trouble — economic and climatic — tough policies offer a sense of security. We can also note (from Jonathan Haidt — The Righteous Mind) that the left traditionally only tap into a few aspects of the ethics that people hold together in life — namely care and fairness — the basis, as we have seen, of our emotional economy. The right take on a much broader range, to include liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity.
The problems on the right are even more difficult to unravel. One issue plays on something often heard on the left. Leftists sometimes claim to be ‘citizens of the world’. In other words, the issue of achieving equality of outcome is going to be played out across all nations. But this internationalism is probably a step too far for many folk. Perhaps the reader felt a deep sense of unease about the suggestions of tariff-free trade and open borders given in this work? One of the problems of the right is that it can take the polar opposite view. As humans, we identify most with groups — communities, religions, ethnicities, nations. The left can sometimes drive too far towards dissolving all differences; the right can narrow the group identity too much. One aspect of this is to focus only on individuals — so no group at all. It encourages the kind of self-actualisation that is the hallmark of Privatopia. It favours equality of opportunity over equality of outcome. The middle-class right are all for the individualism and the free-markets of neo-liberalism. (Remember Mrs. Thatcher’s famous quote about there being no community.) The other aspect of course is nationalism. The working class right tends towards the fierce group identity of nationalism, with results that are as damaging as the autonomous self-actualising mindset of the middle-class right that we mentioned above. Conservatives and republicans are the more neo-liberal, which seems to be a contradiction in terms. What are the links? Perhaps the most obvious one is through commodification. There is a ‘tradition’, unfortunately, of colonisation, of enclosure and therefore exploitation, that monetises the commons and ultimately monetises our relationships with others. This is the status quo that conservatives seem to want to maintain — they wish to ‘conserve’ the exploitation of nature and the appropriation of the commons — and neo-liberalism is just a further way to achieve this. But we should note that the term ‘conservative’ — with a big or a small C — is a very broad term (as indeed is ‘Republican’). So this is all something of a moveable feast. As we saw earlier in the book, the right might get around to conserving things that really do matter to us — there’s could be a broad church.
The hard-right sometimes use the term ‘cultural Marxism’ when referring to left-wing policies. Meanwhile, the left deny that any such phenomenon actually exists. It does however have a meaning of sorts. The idea is that Marxism saw an underdog — the proletariat — and sought their emancipation. Left-wingers arguably take up this idea and apply it to many different situations, seeing an oppressed underdog that needs freedom and equality — such as women, immigrants, homosexuals, and so on. The left have a term — ‘intersectionality’ — which touches on all these issues, so we could say that cultural Marxism is just a more pejorative term for the aims of intersectionality. By opposing cultural Marxism though, the hard-right reveal where their concerns and fears reside.
Cultural Marxism is sometimes conflated with post-modernism (the idea that there is no ‘grand narrative’ explaining the world, but rather a series of alternative narratives — each of which could be considered legitimate). Jordan Peterson is especially prone to making this connection. There is a link of sorts — the minorities favoured by intersectionality can hold alternative narratives and be validated in this by post-modern thought. But really, it’s a bit of a stretch.
Meanwhile, the left often use a term described as the ‘red pill meme’ — a reference to The Matrix series of films — in which ‘taking the pill’ is the means of revealing the true nature of the world. In the left-wing scenario, taking the pill reveals the neo-liberal hegemony of our culture. But this suggests there is some kind of elite conspiracy to remain in power. Recently the red pill meme has come to be adopted for many other kinds of ‘seeing the truth’, so the term is used now as much by the right as the left. The Red Pill is also the title of a film about a feminist discovering the men’s rights activist movement.
I hope it is clear in this work that I am very much in favour of identity that is derived from place — thus communities, neighbourhoods, cities, counties and nations need strong identities. This might be seen as potentially leading to an inward-looking and an exclusive attitude that, in turn, might reflect the more negative side of nationalism. But the critical difference is that this strong affiliation is about patriotism, not nationalism. Patriotism is place-centred. The patriot celebrates the place to which they belong and seeks to honour it, improve it, respect it. Most critically, the patriot welcomes the stranger, the visitor, the newcomer. The patriot can afford this generosity because patriotism is about having something to give not something to defend. It is generous, welcoming, kind, considerate. Those who are strangers and visitors are not just ‘tolerated’, far less, abused. Rather they are treated with even greater care and respect. Patriotism celebrates place by celebrating others and sees that we share more similarities than differences.
But consider this quote from Karen Stenner on celebrating sameness and difference:
‘All the evidence indicates that exposure to difference, talking about difference and applauding difference — the hallmarks of liberal democracy — are the surest ways to aggravate those who are innately intolerant… Paradoxically, then, it would seem that we can best limit intolerance of difference by parading, talking about, and applauding our sameness… Ultimately nothing inspires greater tolerance from the intolerant than an abundance of common and unifying beliefs, practices, rituals, institutions and processes.’ (Karen Stenner — The Authoritarian Dynamic, as quoted by Jonathan Haidt — The Righteous Mind)
After quoting from Stenner, Haidt continues:
‘The small scale and particular is what matters to most people. Politics should build these up where possible from the affections that people have for their localities. (It should perhaps start with naming places with their historic and popular names. According to Maurice Glassman a Labour party survey discovered that about two thirds of the population misname the places they live, having failed to keep up with multiple local government reorganisations.)’ (Jonathan Haidt — The Righteous Mind.) The difference between nationalism and patriotism takes a bit of explaining, and it is not an argument that is easy to present, especially to people who may be burdened by austerity and looking for a scapegoat. Unfortunately nationalists will tend to describe themselves as patriots, so we need to be watching their actions to see if these really square with their words.
We mentioned populism above and it is helpful to consider the meaning of populism here. The term means gaining popular appeal by means of identifying some external threat. Often that threat is perceived as coming from some minority of the population. Populism channels resentment against this perceived cause of the nation’s problems. We can see how this links to the right-wing nationalist parties, where it may be immigrants or some other section of society who are demonised in order to gain popular appeal. But, although it is not commonly done, we could accept populism as equally applying to left-wing politics, where it is the 1%, big corporations, or the ‘neo-liberal hegemony’ that are demonised in order to try to appeal to the majority of the population. So, nationalism, patriotism and populism are slippery terms, and it may be that within a few years of writing these words their meanings will have shifted. David Goodhart (The Road to Somewhere) speaks of ‘Somewheres’ and ‘Anywheres’ and suggests there are left-wing and right-wing versions of both. In Goodhart’s terms, our left-wing parties are too much ‘anywhere’ at the moment (internationalist and intersectional) whilst the right-wing populist parties are too much ‘somewhere’ — too much rooted in group, tribal and national identities to adjust to multi-cultural societies. But I hope this essential distinction is clear — we can be united with others in affection, or we can be united with a few and exclude others — united therefore in hate. It is in groups that we find our strength. It is in groups that we can celebrate all that we share as people living in a particular place. We honour ourselves by honouring and respecting others. We serve our town, city and nation best by making it a place where everyone feels safe.
Some have advanced the opinion that two of the issues identified above are linked. It is suggested that the paranoid and aggressive nationalism is deliberately stoked up by the right as a distraction from the actions of the big corporations and the tiny elite of the super-rich. Like the left-wing red pill, it verges on a conspiracy theory. Whatever the truth, or otherwise, of this suspicion, I feel we must treat the nationalism of the right with special care. Trying to bring these things together — in terms of left and right — consider this quote from Jonathan Haidt: ‘Now imagine society not as an agreement amongst individuals [as with John Stuart Mill] but as something that emerged organically over time as people found ways of living together, binding themselves to each other, suppressing each other’s selfishness, and punishing deviants and free-riders who eternally threaten to undermine co-operative groups. The basic social unit is not the individual, it is the hierarchically structured family, which serves as a model for other institutions. Individuals in such societies are born into strong and constraining relationships that profoundly limit their autonomy. The patron saint of this more binding moral system is the sociologist Emile Durkheim, who warned of the dangers of anomie (normlessness) and wrote, in 1897, that “man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free himself from all social pressure is to abandon himself and demoralise him.” A Durkheimian society at its best would be a stable network composed of many nested and overlapping groups that socialise, reshape, and care for individuals who, if left to their own devices, would pursue shallow, carnal and selfish pleasures. A Durkheimian society would value self-control over self-expression, duty over rights, and loyalty to one’s groups over concern for out-groups.’ (Jonathan Haidt — The Righteous Mind.) Conservatives tend to fear change — in case things get worse instead of better — and prefer the authority and power of the state over the liberty of the individual, so we can see how the Durkheimian society might have its appeal. (Although, as we saw in the discussion of neo-liberalism in Chapter 7, right-wing governments will usually claim they are seeking the exact opposite of this — a limited state and maximum personal freedom. So I suppose we should see this as referring to a conservative mindset, with a small c.) The right of politics are ‘conservative’ about human nature — about our ability to change and to achieve personal autonomy. Therefore leadership, authority and control are important elements in their mindset. The reader may well agree with this stance, of course, and see this as pragmatic rather than overly-controlling or patronising. But most of this book relies on a more positive view of human nature and our ability to change for the better. So this book is suggesting ways to live and govern ourselves that would move us beyond the polarisation of politics. In particular, we brought in the social commons (re-making) as the true base of society. This aspect of our society is already there, but it is suppressed and disregarded, and to some extent the mindset of consumer capitalism has polluted our own individual mindsets and means that we just don’t see the underlying and neglected realities. So it is changes to people that will bring about real change in society. We need kindness and compassion and to look out for our communities and care for the planet. It is narratives, above all, that will foster such change. It is accountability — where we endeavour to retain a vision of heroism for ourselves — that is the driving force. Governance systems such as Sociocracy and Parapolity reinforce this, and offer us an escape from polarised politics. These systems, as we have seen, are bottom-up systems — they rely on the local and the small-scale. We can have both the freedom of the right and the equity of the left. The freedom is the ‘freedom to’ of forging our own stories as individuals and as communities. The equality of the left is through our understanding of the commons.
We set out on this journey by considering three types of utopia — Privatopia, Cornucopia and Ecotopia. Referring back to the three utopias, we observed that the current culture of consumer capitalism is best described as a Privatopia. In Privatopia the system is accepted, either grudgingly or enthusiastically, as inevitable. Everyone looks out for their own best interests and compassion does not extend very much beyond one’s own family. Whilst concerns over environmental destruction may be voiced, in Privatopia it is seen as something governments need to sort out. People pay lip service to this need, but if it is suggested that citizens may need to make changes or sacrifices in order to protect the environment then this is met with serious opposition.
Within Privatopia are the seeds of a future utopia called Cornucopia. Cornucopia more or less agrees that current lifestyles should not need to be compromised. The Cornucopians will point to a steady improvement in all aspects of human life over the last two centuries or so, and suggest that there is no reason why this should not continue into the future. The Cornucopians downplay the accelerating problems with the climate and habitat destruction and species extinction. A better future (at least for humans) is promised, mainly by way of technology.
Ecotopia, by contrast, is a vision that takes the environment much more seriously. Ecotopia covers a broad range of beliefs. We noted that sometimes a better world is thought to come about because of the collapse of capitalism. Or it may be that future large-scale disruption to the climate forces us towards a more sustainable existence. The speed of such changes is critical and it has to be said that rapid changes of the sort envisaged by some Ecotopians are likely to bring chaos to the world rather than the harmonious new existence that they sometimes promise. A slower, smoother transition, however, can only be welcomed and would be more manageable.
Ecotopians don’t often suggest political change to sit alongside the necessary lifestyle and business changes that would be needed to bring about an ecologically-sustainable world.
We’ve seen that Privatopia and Cornucopia are leading us to disaster, and that Ecotopia, by itself, seems to struggle to be realised, because of the complacency of both governments and citizens. As such, a fourth utopia, a new story, has been suggested, which takes mostly the message of Ecotopia and sits it within a political context. This is summarised below, but first let’s look at the six questions raised in the Introduction. The answers to these questions are essentially the ground for the new story that is being proposed.
Those six questions were: Who decides? What do we own? What should we share? What should we make? How should we trade? How should we live?
Who decides? Most countries have a system of representative democracy at the moment, so a small number of people make the decisions and the rest of us get only the chance of voting them into or out of office every few years. This book suggests that this is not working, especially with regard to the difficult issues facing the world around climate change.
So, we went on to consider different types of political organisations — polities. One person deciding is a monarchy or a dictatorship. All people deciding together is communism. Everyone deciding for themselves is anarchism. We explored anarchism in particular because it digs down to the roots of why we have politics in the first place.
The lessons of anarchism led to an alternative politics being proposed, where all citizens have the opportunity to participate in decision-making. Three particular styles of governance system were introduced — Sociocracy, Parapolity and Parecon. In discussing Sociocracy in particular, I stressed the need for people to recognise and focus on a vision for the particular business or organisation with which they are involved.
I suggested that Parapolity and Parecon need not be brought about by sudden change away from the current system. The measures suggested could be gradually adopted by current political systems, giving citizens increasingly greater say from the bottom up. Representatives from the smaller circles of governance — neighbourhoods, towns and counties — would go on to form part of national governments, partly or wholly replacing party politics. Another idea is utilising such methods as Citizens’ Assemblies for specific issues and possibly having a People’s Parliament with representatives chosen by lot to form a permanent fourth estate of government, perhaps replacing the House of Lords or House of Commons in the UK, for instance. Government may then be made up of the two types of People’s Parliaments — with one house having the representatives from the counties and the second house being the citizens chosen by lot. Party politics would be at an end. As I’ve tried to stress, this is a system of reform and not a call for revolution. Also, institutions — including the executive arms of local and national governments — would still be in place. Indeed, these would be properly independent of the legislature, so arguably less compromised than at present.
To address the questions of owning and sharing we started out by looking at the meaning of a commons. We noted that an unmanaged commons of whatever type is likely to lead to injustice and even catastrophe. The world today, for the most part, runs as an unmanaged commons under capitalism. We explored this in relation to nature, and to the way the material and the cultural economies function. It was noted, in particular, that the economies — as well as disregarding the commons, and the issues of equity that this involves — also fail to recognise the deeper links back to nature inherent in all society and the social relations that underpin society. We observed that there are already social relations supporting the material economy (usually referred to as reproduction). We noted the wider circle of social relations — giving it the name of ‘re-making’, and including care, maintenance, solidarity, conversation, friendship and intimacy. We have variously described this as the ‘emotional economy’ (by way of contrast with the financial) or the social commons or just as ‘commoning’. Re-making though, also refers us back to all the other economies and to the commons. Our freedom is a freedom-from, but also a freedom-to, and, especially, a freedom to make. So the ‘production’ of the material and cultural economies should be part of that freedom of everyone to be fully involved with their making, and not alienated from it, as we can so often be in the capitalist economies.
Whilst the elements of commoning (maintenance, friendship etc.) are familiar to us all, they are perhaps so close to us that we can miss their relevance. So commoning remains as yet a rather woolly concept; it seems insubstantial. But if commoning were to stop then society would collapse. If, on the other hand, commoning were to increase ten- or a hundred-fold, society would be transformed. That is the new story in a nutshell. In our discussions we have seen the relevance of culture in bringing to light our need for ‘re-making’, for commoning, for the social commons. It is based on personal transformation and on community. It needs therefore to be based on trust.
Participatory Economics — Parecon — was introduced to address two of the remaining questions given above — What should we make? How should we trade? Parecon recognises that our making and re-making are aspects of community — they are not done in isolation. We noted that Parecon, with regard to trade, could start with those things usually related most closely to governance, such as large infrastructure projects. So, Parecon need not wholly replace a market economy with a planned economy — only as much, or as little, as a community may decide. It leads, amongst other things, to businesses shared as co-operatives, respecting their communities, answerable to the nations that host them, conscious of an environmental ethic and seeing their role as providing a service to others, solving problems and meeting needs in society.
The move to a planned economy, of course, would start to undermine the market economy of consumer capitalism. Throughout the book we have noted calls for the overthrow of the capitalist system — either because this is seen as a necessity to achieve ecological stability, or as part of a political revolution, or to usher in a ‘gift economy’ as an alternative way of living, for its own sake. The message of this work is that contempt for capitalism is a serious error. Overthrowing capitalism is not the path to utopia, it is the zombie apocalypse. Capitalism should not be seen as the enemy, but certainly it needs radical change. It does not need to be premised on debt and seeking profit above all else. The change involves all of us. Neo-liberalism doesn’t care about our identity, so long as we’re working and spending. It pretends to foster individuality but just wants us as drones. We saw that we’re not really looking to challenge the number-crunching side of economics. The concern is rather that the social side of things is neglected. The economics — especially neo-liberal economics, sees us as fully rational, individual and entirely self-interested in our behaviour. It ignores the complexity of humans as, firstly, irrational. And, along with being irrational, we are not purely self-interested — we have as much interest in friends, family, relationships, community, solidarity, care, compassion, celebration, harmony, conversation, carnival and art. These ‘different pleasures’, I have tried to suggest, are the undergirding for changes to our politics, our institutions and our economy. Throughout the book we have been contrasting what might be termed structural change (changing the system) with personal change. But, to an extent, changing the system comes down to changing people as well. We would not seek to change the system, or try to impose the changes through laws and regulations, if we had not ourselves first changed to want to live in different ways and see different outcomes.
I have suggested that this personal change is partly about us being open to different pleasures. Finding our pleasure, I suggest, is a better path than seeking emancipation from some perceived oppression. This thought takes us on to consider our final question — How should we live? To answer this, we move on to summarise the new story that the book has proposed.
In the Introduction and Chapter 1, we looked at the contrast between abstract ideals and concrete utopias. If we are promoting a utopia though, we cannot be overly-prescriptive, we cannot have all concrete, we need a balance of ideals and concrete proposals so that the better world we hope for will be open to change and can unfold over time. So any new story needs to be open to changing circumstances and dissenting voices. Throughout the book I’ve been suggesting that we already live in stories and identified three ‘flavours’ — Privatopia, Cornucopia and Ecotopia. We’ve seen from Chapter 1 that Cornucopia is a golden age of the future, Ecotopia, to an extent, a golden age of the past, and Privatopia recognises what we have already achieved and hopes to preserve our ‘good lives’ indefinitely, without considering the consequences. A new story, I’ve tried to suggest, blends all of the good elements of these stories whilst taking heed of their blind spots.
What is the vision for the new story? The vision needs to be a broad one, that considers the Earth and future generations as well as our own immediate needs. The new story is primarily about three things — full participation in our governance, equity in our dealings with each other and trust.
Today we are well-placed to take up such a broad vision. Communication is at our finger-tips and we can learn and comment and criticise as never before. The critical attitude can be negative — leading to internet trolls and personal attacks on politicians. But the critical attitude also has the potential to be a very positive thing, meaning that we will demand a much greater say in how our lives are run as communities and as nations. This is my hope. The very first thing is that we get a vote about the kind of government we would like. The number one vision is for everyone to have a say in how society is organised, from the local to the national and international levels.
Society is changing and people are questioning authority more and more, especially as the world wakes up to issues around climate change. If we abdicate responsibility for our politics, we can blame politicians for our problems and absolve ourselves of responsibility — but this is a cop-out. The message is — start living the new story now. Don’t let us underestimate the influence that a minority of voices can have on the majority. Even although the number of dissenting voices is small, change can happen fast. There could be enough counter-culture — enough of the emerging new story — for us to achieve radical change. In 50 years’ time, young people will be asking why people of our time were so stupid.
Given the type of polity I have promoted in the book, I have had to try to avoid being too prescriptive about the decisions it might make. I cannot even presume to judge what decisions may be reached over our six questions, or indeed, what a Parapolity might make of the related matter of the commons. However, I have tried to give some pointers in relation to four specific areas — nature, place, compassion and pleasure, and the suggestions are summarised in the chapter on, What We Might Decide, If We Could Decide.
What does living the new story really mean? As I’ve suggested above, and throughout the book, ‘different pleasures’ would be the best way to sum it up. We are already sacrificing a lot to serve the masters of consumer-capitalism — including our time, our money and often our sanity. How about instead seeing any sacrifice we might make as being a sacrifice to bring us more pleasure and beauty? The new story is about the play-off between the materialism of neo-liberal capitalism and a world premised on beauty, pleasure, silence, slowness, peace, grace, kindness, conversation, humour, art, play, celebration and carnival.
Of course, I have to face up to the fact that if a system of Parapolity were set in place, people might make many choices that I found fool-hardy, reckless or irresponsible. We might all quickly conclude that a representative democracy was not so bad after all, and beat a hasty retreat! We definitely need to have an escape hatch, back to the ‘Westminster model’ if necessary. And then maybe our best hope would be to get Westminster to abide by its own Westminster code of conduct.
But even if the decisions that people find are not to our liking — even so, I feel the effort of raising questions about governance will have been worthwhile. Just knowing more about what we really think will have been a step in the right direction. The burden is not on us to convert the whole world, or to rescue it, or somehow force it to be different. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to do, but it’s about getting out of the way sometimes and letting things take their own course. At best, we can only be catalysts — enablers — and try to live our own truth. Then it’s down to trust. Through our explorations in this book, we’ve seen that culture, narrative, story-telling, drama, fiction, art, celebration and carnival are the routes most likely to get us to adopt new stories in our real lives — stories that will make for a sustainable and flourishing world. Also, of course, a strong link to a particular place and to nature.
So what about that personal issue mentioned in the Introduction — the issue of trust? If participation at all levels of politics really took off then, of course, it means ordinary people like you and me being trusted with big decisions that affect our lives. Would things really be better? In particular, would people be willing to make the tough choices that we must face in relation to climate change? This issue of trust is really at the core of all the ideas expressed in the book about governance, the commons, and even in our stories of utopia.
The key question is — if we were all genuinely given the opportunity to fully participate in decision-making — would we make good decisions? It has to be faced that sometimes the decisions will not be good. There will be mistakes, but there will also be the opportunity to change decisions and learn from our errors.
What if a Citizens’ Assembly was set up on climate change — as proposed by, amongst others, Extinction Rebellion? The people chosen for the assembly are then faced with making changes that would deeply affect them personally, like giving up their cars and paying heavy taxes on anything involving carbon emissions — which, let’s face it, is more or less everything. Would people make the choices necessary to help the planet and future generations? Or would they choose instead to protect their own lifestyles?
Well, part of the answer is that there is our general stance towards society and there is our personal stance towards people we meet directly, such as family, friends and work colleagues. We can choose to trust. As with the discussions above about changing the system and changing people, I think changing our personal attitude in our direct relationships is the key to changing things at a broader level. If we invest people with enough responsibility, give them the benefit of the doubt and trust them to make good decisions, then, I believe, most people will rise to this challenge and make choices that will be for the good of society and not just to protect their personal lifestyles. They are all premised on trust, which leads to a hope for the future. It is not a naïve hope, even although the troubles the world faces now are significant. It is not mere optimism, or wishing for the best. It is making a decision to work for a better future. I recognise though, that this places a certain burden on the reader. I am indirectly saying that yes, you too must change. And perhaps that will leave readers uncomfortable. Maybe it will help to say that the issue of trust remains a burden to the author as well. Depending on mood and the most recent encounters with others; I am sometimes filled with hope and at other times I discover I have a leaning towards the need for authoritarian power to impose change on society.
I am not fully cured of my issues around trust. But, perhaps with my advancing age and the good experiences I’ve had in recent years, I believe that, for the most part, humans are incredible. With time and focus and thought, ordinary people are more than a match for any circumstance that might confront us. Choosing to trust should not be a burden, it should not be striving, it should instead be relaxing into an easier relationship with ourselves and our fellow human beings. So, yes, the story can be a journey of trust. I invite the reader to trust too. I invite the reader to participate, so that together we might build a new story.