Getting closer: discovering Alan Carter

Another glowing book review, I'm afraid. Or rather, the preview review. I found The Politics of Nature -- Explorations in Green Political Theory, edited by Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie in a secondhand bookshop in Brighton. The book is still in print for £29 but Amazon has several secondhand copies. I would have bought the book anyway, simply on the strength of the editors and the blurb on the back, but what caught my eye was an essay by Alan Carter, then lecturer in philosophy at Heythrop College in London.

I say "then" because he is now the Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. The Politics of Nature was published in 1993 and Carter has subsequently expanded his ideas on green politics into A Radical Green Political Theory, which I will read, whether I buy it for £80 or borrow it from the library. I will read it because I think his model of how damaging governmental, economic and security structures embed themselves is close to the critique I've been trying to build, and because I think his counter argument that localised action to de-power damaging institutions matches my instinct for a green anarchist ideology.

Before I try to explain Carter's model, it's worth mentioning other essays in The Politics of Nature. They are all worth reading and include contributions by some of the biggest names in green political thinking such as Ted Benton and Wouter Achterberg, but one other stands out--that by Andrew Dobson. Dobson's primary role in green politics has been to chart the development of green ideas, which he did Green Political Thought in 1990. His essay in The Politics of Nature, brings the tools of critical theory to green politics, particularly those of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, to bear on green ideology.

Part of the problem with such an exercise is that much of the literature on green politics is written in terms of what a green society should look like, rather than how such a society might be achieved. Critical theory was built on a mainly Marxian foundation, which is anti-Utopian. Dobson finds enough common ground to make the analysis useful, but it highlights a weakness in much of how green politics is sold. Which is also a weakness in the coherence of green ideology. A common-sense response to green politicians is that what they propose is impractical--based on wishful thinking.

I would add that the dominant method for building a green manifesto--starting with a list of principles--does not necessarily help. It declares that one must buy into a our list of priorities or sod off. If a green ideology is to be practicable, if it is to effect substantial change, then it must give a message that chimes with most people. Our list of principles might be very logical, but it won't necessarily chime with everyone else's.

Which is where Carter's analysis and proposal for action is strongest. One does not have to declare allegiance to four, five or ten principles. One does not even have to accept the criticism of the status quo. One simply has to see the benefits or the right of a community to take control of its own resources.

In explaining the model of how politics, economics and security currently reinforce each other, Carter uses the following diagram. I like diagrams. What it shows is that growth economics is embodied in the system as a whole by funding the security system (forces of defence) that protect the nation state, political elite and institutional bodies. The cycle is completed by the bodies politic and elements of the security system protecting and enhancing economic control systems that nourish economic growth. I like that it avoids too much specificity, and as such I think it captures the ecological relationship between its element. That is to say, if one particular body within one element (for example, the financial regulator) is changed due to popular pressure, then its role in the cycle may be taken up by others parliamentary committee, the police, or voluntary self-regulation).
This model also encapsulates the way in which scale is so corrosive to democracy and sustainability, which Carter illustrates with a second version of the same diagram. And it is by taking the reversed cycle below as a necessary part of achieving sustainability (or as Carter puts it, an environmentally benign dynamic) that he produces a second model, this time with a loop of decentralisation, self-sufficiency, egalitarianism, appropriate use of technology, and non-violent means of achieving security.
Again, this is an ecological relationship. And unlike most other green political theories, this doesn't have to be implemented by government or by blocks of legislation. Instead, we can work towards it by piecemeal commitment to local communities, refusing to accept the demands of outside business and government, and by eschewing violence. If these strategies work, we don't have to sell them on principled grounds--they should sell themselves.

A clearer view of Darfur

How often do you read a book that confirms long-held suspicions, lucidly spells out and expands upon ideas you have not heard expressed by others, is deeply informative about a subject in you were previously satisfied with passing knowledge but it turns out is fundamentally important, and shatters some little-considered assumptions? I would guess that any of these benefits are rare, but you might never see the combination.

Of course, anyone who aspires to write about "big ideas" hopes that their book will have this effect on a few readers, but I'm not claiming that I have such a book in progress. But I have just finished one that had this combined effect on me: Saviors and Survivors -- Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror by Mahmood Mamdani. I might have to write a fan letter.

Before gushing some more, also have to thank my cousin, Angus Clarkson, who recommended the book. He works for the UN in Sudan and cites Mamdani as the most authoritative writer on the topic of Darfur. I thought I was going to learn a little about the complexities of the situation, but Mamdani's analysis is much deeper and the truth much different than I expected.

The truth that has been in short supply in media reports on the conflict in Darfur. It isn't simply a case of over-simplification. The number of casulaties has been greatly inflated. The ethnic divisions have been portrayed as much more strongly polarised than in reality, and worse the portrayal of the conflict as being between good Christians and bad Muslims is partial and over-simplified to the extent that it is simply wrong. The label of "genocide" is definitely misplaced.

I stongly recommend you read the book, obviously, but in summary: the factors that led to the conflict of the early 2000s in Darfur were the artificial ethnic division created by British colonialism and entrenched in post-colonial law giving land-ownership to some but not all, a drought across the Sahel deeper and longer lasting than ever recorded before, changes in land use from subsistence to commerce, and the use of the region for proxy wars between global powers that made machine guns and other weapons commonplace. The result is inevitable conflict over access to resources--conflict that could not be resolved by traditional methods of local mediation, mainly because the causes and consequences were not restricted to the local.

It has long been my suspicion that cultural changes are rarely the result of mass migration, which Mamdani confirms with respect to Sudan. Migration back and forth, up and down the continent has been a constant throughout recorded history, but not in overwhelming numbers. The most obvious cultural influence is Arab, which was adopted through admiration, to aid commerce or through coertion rather than by the spread of ethnic Arabs. At the same time, it is important to realise that cultural influences have come from south, east and west as well as the north, creating the richness of Sudanese cultures. Racist colonialism could not accept that advanced agrarian and civilised culure could have evolved without the influence of lighter-skinned people, but it did.

The counter-examples, where mass migration has led to overwhelming change, share certain characteristics. Subjugated minorities become a constant source of rebellion and have to be isolated or wiped out, which is what native reservations in North America and Australia, or the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, or the townships of apartheid South Africa are perfect examples of.

Possibly the most important question Mamdani attempts to answer is why the facts about Darfur have been so distorted by Western media and the influential pressure group, Save Darfur. The answer is that there is a mixture of sophisticated colonialism and an unsophisticated vision of the world as polarised by the "war on terror". The rhetoric of the "new generation draws the line" is of people that have to be saved from their own "failed states", which contradicts itself because the intervention to protect the survivors does not nurture the grass-roots political structures needed to strengthen or resuscitate the alledgedly crumbling or absent democracy.

Similarly, the protagonists in a given conflict are portrayed as good Christians, our allies and/or victims, under attack from bad Muslims, our enemies and/or the bad guys. This distorted picture allows any conflict to be added to the catalogue of crimes perpetrated by Muslim terrorists against the free Christian world. This helps justify military intervention, directly or by proxy.

The resolution of conflicts in Darfur, which Mamadani points out already fell to sub-emergency levels in 2005, lies in de-militarisation, improvement of the rights of the landless, and a revival of traditional methods of local mediation, at the very least. The people of the Sahel are capable of resolving their issues themselves despite the pressures of climate change.

As John F Kennedy said, in a very different context: "We choose to [do] things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." If an ideology is to prove its functionality, it is by working in the most difficult situations: World War II and the rise of Nazism being the most obvious test. I feel that Mamdani's analysis does fit with a Ghandist perspective, although I appreciate that there are elements of self-determination that he is uncomfortable with. My guess is that we could agree that local determinism has to be without isolationism.

Something I had never appreciated was that the International Criminal Court has been established with aims that appear to be apolitical but under the control of the UN Security Council. The result is that all of the prosecutions so far have been of men who oppose, or are seen to oppose, US/Western interests. The conflict in Darfur has been portrayed in the UN as a one-sided genocide, so it is no surprise that it is President al-Bashir that has been indicted by the ICC. We will never see George W Bush or Jacques Chirac in the dock although their proxies in the Darfur conflict have also committed war crimes.

It is impossible to compress the wealth of information and insight in Saviors and Survivors into a single blog post. I can only urge you to read it yourself. If nothing else, you will learn the meaning of the Sudanese saying: "Only a turtle knows how to bite another turtle."

Amoral to the story

Having grasped the nettle of morality as an integral part of sustainable development (see http://pictograph.blogspot.com/2010/01/want-sustainability-need-more.html), I find that it raises as many questions as it answers. How, for example, does a community undergoing sustainable development deal with the amoral? Should we impose our own moral code? Are some morals a pre-requisite for sustainable development?

A goal of a sustainable society does not undermine the thinking of John Stewart Mill and his successors. If anything, attempts to legislate for sexuality and hedonism in the last two decades have shown that Mill was right: it is simply wrong to restrict freedoms on a moral basis.

That said, there are large parts of our society where it appears that morality has broken down. Individuals with nothing left to lose, taking and destroying without any apparent qualms. Vandalism, theft, intimidation, rape, assault and murder seem to be less the result of desperation and more the effect of devaluation.

To say these things is a hair's breadth from the Daily Mail view of sink estates filled with feral children, their feckless teenage single mothers and drug-fuelled gangster fathers. An extreme characterisation with a sliver of truth behind it.

All this obsession with sustainability, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly middle-class. There are great examples of green activism in the inner cities, but most activists and agitators come from more comfortable backgrounds, and apply their thinking to the comfortable communities that they already inhabit.

In my own mind, the hypothetical community-in-sustainable-development looks more like a village than a council estate. I think the ideas can apply to any self-identifying community, but it must be easier for places with more room for crops and with people with a broader education.
Development, in other words, isn't going to happen uniformly. In Hackney, where I live now, it is Stoke Newington and Dalston that have most of the community activity, and Stoke Newington that has an active Transition Town group. But these things can't happen in isolation because a sustainable community can't survive when its neighbours are not sympathetic.

A sustainable community should act as an attractive model for others, whether the original ideas were appealing or not. Who wouldn't want to live in a more peaceable place with lots going on? And similarly, a sustainable community should be one that shares with its neighbours, helping those in need.

This is one concept that works at any scale. Certainly, the North has become wealthy partly by exploiting the South and that imbalance cannot last for ever. I don't believe there is a significant risk of the UK being overrun by immigrants for the UK, but the wealth divide we have created does lead to increased migration. Injustice is not sustainable.

Many things create a community, including history, natural and artificial boundaries, transport hubs and routes, common cultures, and market centres. The result, in Hackney as in many other places, is that some communities thrive and dominate as Stoke Newington is doing now, while others like Homerton wither and have little to identify themselves.

This ecology of communities means that some will be subsumed into others although the physical geography remains the same, and some places will find a new identity if not a new name and follow the lead of more successful neighbours. If there is successful and meaningful sustainable development in one area, its development will affect surrounding areas, absorbing some and influencing others.
The moral element of sustainable development should be as contagious as the ideas behind and results of the development itself. If anything, the principled and generous behaviour of a more sustainable community should be more infectious than simply being seen to have a better life.

This entire argument presupposes that there is a moral vacuum, when the reality is more one of moral relativism. Spend any time in a poor community and you will find that most people have a strong moral code: respect for ones parents and a general sense of fairness are particularly important. Many sanctify the home. Many will not tolerate discourteous or profane language. Most young people form strong bonds with their peers and demonstrate great moral strength in preserving those bonds.

Aside from the fact that everyone is different, it is simply wrong to say that amorality is rife because some people do not share all your values. Levels of crime are higher in poorer neighbourhoods but that does not mean that there is no humanity for sustainable development to build upon.

Some myths destroyed

Another election looms for those that care. In the next two months, party activists and political journalists will try to enthuse everyone else about voting for local councilors and members of parliament. Everyone else will likely wonder what all the fuss is about.

I will follow the General Election in the way I follow the football World Cup or a drama series on television. I will invest my emotions in the arguments and take sides with those I feel some connection to or empathy with, but I know that ultimately it is insignificant. Insignificant although, like Hunter S Thompson, I have an addiction to political contests and I am the sort of amateur wonk that sits up waiting for European Parliament election results.

One thing the professional wonks will certainly debate will be the low voter turnout, which will mostly be attributed to apathy. Apathy in an election that is seen as a foregone conclusion, which will bring an uninspiring, insipid Tory to Number Ten, is only to be expected, but it misses a growing constituency of deliberate non-voters. My constituency.

I have given my reasons for not voting above the local level before, but there are some counter-arguments that also need to be identified as myths. Like myths of good English usage, once identified, they can be appreciated and then put aside.

Myth 1: people fought and died for universal suffrage, so not voting dishonours their struggle.

Obviously, the first part of this is true. Reformists and suffragettes devoted, and sometimes lost, their lives getting the vote for almost every adult citizen. And whatever the causes and motivations, the Second World War stopped the growth of fascism in Europe.

The question that remains is how to honour that legacy. It would be non-sensical to think that our form of democracy should neither be stagnant nor evolve without popular examination. It is a common fallacy among US conservatives that the founding fathers created and/or revealed true democracy, and that it has not and should not be altered again. The US Constitution was almost immediately amended by the Bill of Rights, and has been amended another seventeen times. Not every amendment was progressive or successful, but the rules for running the federation include rules for changing the rules.

If you believe that democracy can and should evolve beyond nations and federations, and that not voting is one suitable method of effecting that change, then you do more honour to past reformers by following your beliefs than by devaluing your suffrage by giving it to the least-worst candidate for Member of Parliament.

Myth 2: significant localisation can be achieved through election to a higher parliament.

Also covered in previous posts. Power is what drives change, so it is a rare politician that will give power away.

Myth 3: it is better to vote for something with somewhat positive intentions (e.g. Labour) than not vote and allow the election of something worse (e.g. the BNP).

It is easy to think that we have to use every resource to oppose extremism, and it is not obvious that voting in national elections is a negative act. But if our aim is to deligitimise national government then we will have demonstrably succeeded when an MP is elected by only 5% of the eligible voters, whether the winning candidate is Green, Labour or BNP.

It would, I admit, give me great pain if I could contribute to the election of a Green MP but did not. I never said it was easy to stick to your principles.

Myth 4: we are working towards a unified world with one government, which equates to world peace.

If positive political change is driven by utopian vision then it can also be driven by visions that are unhelpful. Utopia by definition is nowhere and therefore unachievable, but some are more unachievable than others.

In science fiction, one-world government is not unusual, possibly so that inter-planetary politics can act as a substitute for international politics, but also because many writers think societies will evolve towards global harmony. In Star Wars and The Fifth Element, advanced planetary civilisations are mostly ordered and peaceful, truly post-modern and technocratic.

This assumes a homogeneity that cannot be desirable, surely? Our cultures have more to distinguish and differentiate themselves than colourful languages, clothes and customs. And that is within a single species. Self-determination preserves the differences in value hierarchy, moral code and cultural history, and self-determination cannot be achieved under a one-world government.

More practically, bigger government simply means greater alienation of the electorate. Opinions are formed and elections won and lost by popular media. As the political race gets bigger, the differentiators between candidates are reduced to the soundbite, the smile and the wave.

Want sustainability: need more

I've avoided it before, but I have to dish the same old quote from Bruntland: "sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." There are many other definitions that are just as good, but this one famously talks about "needs" rather than activities. Perhaps, after four years of debate on the bleak future for humanity, the Commission felt that we could only plan for necessity rather than desire.

Others have made the connection between Bruntland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brundtland_Commission) and Maslow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) since both use the same frame of reference. It only seems right that we should aspire to meet all our needs, including self-actualisation, so any sustainable development has to leave room for or nurture individuals' whole being.

Among our higher needs is an appreciation of the balance between the individual's desires and the effect that acting on those desires will have on others and society as a whole: an appreciation and formation of a personal moral code that interfaces effectively with others'. The exact method by which such a code is developed and adopted cannot be immaterial: codes handed down by religious order will be different from those developed in conservative societies, which will be different again from those developed in more liberal communities.

Although the differences might be critical, it would be hypocritical to say that one methodology should be preferred over another if we value self-determination. Which is one reason why it would be wrong to add transcendence or spirituality to the top of Maslow's hierarchy as some have done. One may believe that morality is handed down from God, but one cannot impose that belief on others.

Similarly, although several religions (notably Buddhism) see transcendence as the ultimate goal in personal development, that does not make it a need that has to be facilitated through sustainable development. Further, it cannot facilitate transcendence. One can be achieved in exclusion of the other.

What can be argued is that in facilitating moral development, an organisation has to be moral itself. Codes of conduct are not unusual, but are usually part of corporate or political image building. A social organisation with a moral code would behave somewhat differently, and the recent snow highlighted one particular way how.

Like many companies in the UK, my employer either believed that clearing the snow from outside the building was not its responsibility, or that clearing snow would leave it liable for injuries suffered subsequently. In the latter case, behaviour is decided by straightforward risk assessment. But what would the "right" thing be to do? Surely, for the good of the community that my company is part of, we should have cleared the snow and taken the risk?

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Another thing that Bruntland's definition brings attention to is that the Commission was clearly talking about development and not sustainability. Committed effort by motivated individuals has moved the mainstream focus to the point that surely we should be talking about "sustainability development"?

A kick in the teeth for optimism

There has been a recent smattering of blog posts and discussions out there about the need for optimism in the sustainability movement. The gist being that the only alternative is pessimism, and that is neither practicable nor appealing. Certainly, if we are pessimistic about our chances of success then we will be demotivated and will essentially be admitting that our project is not likely to succeed.



I might seem like a matter of semantics, but I think the only thing we can allow ourselves is hope. The difference between hope and optimism is the difference between a thoughtful human and an open-mouthed labrador. I know which one I would prefer to be.



Having said all this before, I succumbed to optimism recently. I thought that the dangers of climate change and the action necessary were so clear that our national leaders and negotiators would do the right thing. Just this once.



I'm not going to lay particular blame or analyse the Copenhagen process in detail: others have done that to death. But I do have to admit that I was wrong. The process of international negotiation is inherently unsustainable, which is what I had always said before: undemocratic, untransparent and subject to disproporionate vested interests. There is a possibility that an agreement with half-decent, binding targets will be made in Mexico this year, but we can't count on it. Besides which, time is running out.



Somewhere between luck, the effects of campaigns like 10:10 (http://www.1010uk.org/) and movements like Transition Towns (http://transitiontowns.org/), we might get through this crisis. But there is no place for optimism. 10:10 might demonstrate that ordinary people are aware of what has to happen and are willing to make the changes needed, even if it involves expense or changes in lifestyle.



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Another dose of cold reality came from reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle). The book is seen as the predecessor of modern exposes of the food industry and working life at the bottom of the social ladder such as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation) and Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed). It would be wrong to leave it in the footnotes however.



Towards the end of The Jungle, Sinclair spells out the alternative vision he sees for America and the world. It is a hardcore socialist vision, where the proletariat takes control of all industries and runs them for the benefit of all people, sharing the profits and making safe and fulfilling workplaces. Interestingly, he also catalogues the counter-arguments given by working-class voters: that it is unreasonable to believe that power could be rested away from the barons of meat, steel and coal, that a free-market capitalist system is more efficient than any alternative, and that people's place in society is somehow predestined and immutible.



A century later and many of those arguments against the practicability of socialism, which are also directed against green anarchism, do hold some weight. Capitalism itself has evolved to entrench the interests of big business, with oil now the dominant force. Corporations have have also evolved so that there are no longer industry barons such as John D Rockefeller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller) that can become permanent hate figures; for comparison, even if he had not gone to jail and died, Kenneth Lay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay) was an entirely removable figurehead at Enron. What's more, corporate activity has become globalised and global corporations have negotiated themselves into operating conditions that cannot be rationally justified.



State organisations have also managed to build a reputation for terrible inefficiency, usually bound to bureaucracy apparently for the sake of bureaucracy. Anyone who has suffered at the hands of one of the United States' Departments of Motor Vehicles might find it hard to believe that a state-owned industry could avoid a decline into nincompoopery.



Why should a green anarchist vision succeed where the rabble-rousing might of socialism has had few successes? The same vested interests and arguments of potential inefficiencies stand against it. Worse, capitalism has evolved to be more pernicious rather than less.



On behalf of socialism, I would point out that the same old inequities still remain to be opposed. This is a matter of principle rather than pragmatism. It is still wrong that wealth is accumulated at the expense of the most vulnerable. And that is also one of the principles of green anarchism. Ecology simply adds the evidence that wealth is finite and cannot sustain indefinite growth, which means that this is not simply a short-term limitation.



Further, anarchism may be spelled out as an ideology, or family of ideologies, but it does not have to be espoused in the way that state socialism does. A movement that wants to change state-level organisation has to build consensus amongst the population of each nation. A majority is needed in elections or enough revolutionaries are needed to overthrow the government. Anarchist ideas and initiatives can be taken up by any community group, whether they are labelled as such or not.



There are enough of these ideas and initiatives in action today to give me hope.

The hero in all of us

One of the reasons that I studied (if that's the right word for going to a few lectures) physics at university is that it has a very simple view of creation. General relativity, quantum electrodynamics and statistical mechanics might get quite complicated, but they never try to address the question: "Why?"

The question is probably unanswerable, but it is part of our nature to ask it. Having wondered why, we also seem to find it impossible to accept that things might just be the way they are for no reason at all, so we attach meaning where none already existed.

This is part of the premise for The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces). And since we share the same psyche, the meanings we tend to attach to our reality share similar themes, conforming to what Campbell labelled the "monomyth".

The Hero was first published in 1949, but gained noteriety when cited by George Lucas as an influence in writing Star Wars. Ever since, Hollywood producers have sought scripts with similar elements and structure.

The hero, the quest, the journey through the underworld, the tests, etc., have become de riguer and, as a result, movies have become depressingly predictable. You can see the pattern in everything from Dodgeball to Die Hard, but The Matrix is its ultimate update. Or should that be upgrade?

What Hollywood missed, or discarded, are Cambell's final thoughts on what the monomyth did for the ordinary individual when the myths were developed, and what they tell the modern individual. It's all very well knowing why the deeds of Beowulf and Odysseus appeal to the human brain, but how did that help the ploughman and what can it do for the telesales operator, other than provide a distraction from drudgery?

Cambell's view is that historically myths provided an analogy for everyone's life. We are all the hero on a quest. The quest is probably not what we think it is but we will learn and grow as a result. What we learn is to accept our changing role within family and community.

These lessons are still relevant in the modern world, although the rise of nations and corporate globalisation make it even more difficult to feel connected to community. Contentment can still come fom being the ordinary hero.

If nothing else, Campbell's words amused me when they came back to mind in John Lewis, while buying a vacuum cleaner. I reluctantly answered the hero's call, journeyed far (on the Overground and Underground), was assisted in my quest (by my wife), faced my ordeal (finding the toilets), passed through the underworld (the Waitrose food hall) to the reward (a Dyson, waiting to be picked up from Customer Orders) before returning home to share my treasure (with an unappreciative cat).

Myths are full of the extra-ordinary, so we know what is expected when we hear the call. And the call to extra-ordinary or difficult tasks is more common than you might think. There is always a need to speak up for the voiceless, stand up to bullies, take up the minority cause. Myths reassure us that there is something magical in simply doing the thing we believe is right.

Further, the line between ordinary and extra-ordinary is impossible to draw. Disease and disability, childbirth and child rearing, devotion to parents and siblings, are ordinary challenges that often require extra-ordinary character.

What is usually lost in the Hollywood version of the monomyth is the analogy to the everyday. As a result, we are allowed to long for a life like Luke Skywalker or Neo without any hope of fulfilment.

But the Jedi Order and the Matrix are both real and unreal, now that they have become rooted in our psyche. They provide us with another set of analogies and sometimes a touchstone for modern life.

A question of strategy

It's Blog Action Day, with an estimated 8,000 bloggers and 11 million readers focusing their efforts on combating climate change. Well, here's one more blog and maybe two more readers.


The focus on climate change is, by necessity, on the now and the near future. It has been asked whether dealing with this crisis will leave us any wiser, assuming we survive. One would hope so, but any victory will be claimed by authoritarians, capitalists and chauvenists as much as localists, anti-capitalists and progressives. So, while everyone (OK, nearly everyone ) is listening, we have to make our case for a fairer, more caring society, as a long-term method of avoiding future crises as well as a form of common sense.


Yet this is not nearly the only opportunity to evangelise about sustainability. The direct political approach makes most sense to me: seeking election at local level with a manifesto of responsible community control over community resources. But there are "ins" of all sorts, including the standards I work on in my day job.


Perhaps it's a sign of gathering momentum, but radical ideas are showing up in surprising places. Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach (http://www.strategyforsustainability.com/) is one example, and currently a bestseller among business books in the United States. What's really surprising about Werbach's book is that, although it contains a lot of radical thinking, it is based upon work with some of the largest corporations in America, and should appeal to many others.


It attempts to bridge the gap between reactive, arse-covering attitudes to social and environmental issues, and genuine commitment to improving corporate culture. The book, and Adam's activity as a sustainability consultant (now for Saatchi and Saatchi S; saatchis.com), chimes well with advanced sustainable development thinking, including the thinking behind recent British Standards and a lot of my own beliefs.

If I had one serious reservation, it was that Adam doesn't emphasise the need for balance between different aspects of sustainability or the desirability of trying to be objective about which issues are most critical for an organisation. One particular case study, WalMart, is portrayed as a surprising success, which it is in mainly environmental terms, although most critics of WalMart are more concerned about its social impacts, particularly how it treats its employees.


Having mulled over the contents of the book for longer than it took to read it, my residual feeling is one of hope. If the megacorps of America are even taking Adam's advice in a lop-sided way, it will begin the embedding process and a mixture of improved management and stakeholder engagement will push them towards a more balanced approach.


Around the time that I was reaching these conclusions, I attended a seminar organised by London PR and branding (https://twitter.com/lonpr) and led by my friend Erica Grigg (http://www.carbonoutreach.com/) on social media PR 2.0 for sustainability. Although the time was taken mostly with using social media (blogs, facebook, twitter, etc.) for public relations, it did make me think about PR and its role in sustainable development.


Judging by what some people have said, the connections aren't obvious to them either, but PR is a perfect part of an organisation's strategy for sustainability. And sustainable development is where the distinction between marketing and PR is most obvious. Marketing is about communicating and selling to customers, but public relations is about communicating with a user community, and therefore building relationships with stakeholders. In other words, stakeholder engagement. When building transparency and inclusivity, the goal is to get the communications right for the stakeholders involved, and publicists should be the people who have the tools and knowledge to get it right.


New social media should be in the publicisist's tool kit because they allow the creation of virtual communities of concerned and interested individuals. They provide a way of getting the two-way communication that can seem impossible for an old-fashioned outfit. Even better, although it might be seen as a problem by some, a real community spirit will only grow under an open and honest approach. Which brings us back to the principles of sustainability.

Lessons in democratic intellect

I must admit a simple motive: I was persuaded to read a book, I found it to be a satisfying mountain to climb, and now I want to reflect on what I learned. The book is The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and Her Universities in the Nineteenth Century by George Elder Davie. The subject could hardly be less intriguing but the subtext is profound. So, even though I would want to write about The Democratic Intellect anyway, I would argue that it does have relevance in a blog about Gandhist politics. Just bear with me.

In the Act of Union of 1707, Scotland retained independence in law, religion and education, which it retained to a great extent to the creation of the new Scottish Parliament in 1999 and on to today. However, the Nineteenth Century saw a challenge to Scotland's independent education system and, by the end of the century, its universities were more closely aligned with England's. But it is not merely nationalist pride that was dented by the change: Scotland had nurtured an educational system that was beneficial in ways that could not be reproduced in the English system.

In particular, Scotland had a preference for teaching philosophy to all students and any subject from first principles. What it lacked in detail, it more than made up for in rigour. The traces of this method can still be found today, but it is continually diluted and political pressure is always towards vocational training and away from strength in generalism.

This has immediate and pragmatic effects. The ability of science graduates to think around a problem or to come to terms with a new subject area is very poor. I remember a tv documentary (but can't find it archived) where engineering graduates were asked to explain where the mass of a tree branch came from--many of the answers were non-sensical. We're becoming increasingly dependent on computer software that makes complex calculations for us without having to understand the maths. It would simply be good sense to teach some problem solving to scientists, some Latin and Greek to English students, and some history and philosophy to everyone.

Davie also made it clear that an internationally respected school of philosophy, whose techniques were powerful and useful, was essentially lost in the political turmoil of the 1800s. With every Scottish student learning philosophy, academic philosophers were hugely influential, which meant that a dynamic community of philosophers was an obstacle to alignment with England. The obstacle was removed, as the result of both in-fighting and political machinations, by the appointment of less erudite men.

Even before I read The Democratic Intellect, I wondered about how we learn. Not so much as individuals, important though that is, but more as a culture or a species. Areas of knowledge grow and evolve with time: science becomes more coherent and universal while the arts explore different ways of seeing and thinking. Some progress is haphazard, like noticing the behaviour of penicillin, and some is planned, like mapping a new island.

Yet knowledge is only part of learning in the same way that training is only part of education. It is an enrichment of our intellect that has raised us from smart animals to cultured and sophisticated people. How did that happen, and how do we keep it happening? We have a good idea how to reproduce our values and our intelligence in the next generation, but how do we encourage them to build on what we have achieved?

I would argue that only people with a grasp of the fundamentals of why we believe what we believe and how we know what we know can question those facts and beliefs in any meaningful and productive way. Such an education is not cheap, but what we would be buying is immeasurable.

Of course, I have an ideology in development, but I'm not arrogant enough to believe that a progressive education system would lead everyone to the same conclusions as me. Self-determination means accepting the will of the community, after all. But surely a progressive education system would nurture a progressive society, locally if not more widely influential?

There is one last aspect of The Democratic Intellect that I have to mention. Historically, the alignment of Scotland's universities with England's meant a loss of identity. Not knowledge of its differences or knowledge of its heredity, which is all that seems to justify narrow nationalism, but genuine cultural distinctiveness. And it is depth and diversity of culture that provide comparisons for future development. Not all aspects of a culture are worth preserving but something good was undoubtedly lost in this instance.

Given the freedom to develop independently, perhaps we can build a culture that regains its democratic intellect.

Didn't vote and don't feel sorry

Britain has fascists elected to the European Parliament. It's sickening and sad. The racism is inexcusable. For whatever reason, nearly one million people put a cross in the box in favour of the neo-Nazis.

But I didn't vote for them. I didn't vote at all, and even if I lived in the North West or Yorkshire and the Humber constituencies, I wouldn't feel guilty.

I don't and won't feel guilty because I didn't vote out of principle and conviction. The election of BNP representatives is incidental in sticking to my principles. That doesn't make it any less sad but it doesn't make it more my concern.

The principle is that devolution should be maximised and my belief is that achieving such devolution cannot be achieved via overcentralised governance bodies. I've stated these principles, why I believe them and why they matter in previous blog entries, but some things are worth re-stating.

For one thing, it is a fallacy that the way to deal with globalising corporations is to globalise democracy. If anything, local communities being able to keep posession of its own resources and set conditions for external businesses is the only way that they can keep control of their lives. Even more importantly, a fragmented economy can only be more stable than a globalised one: like leaves of grass are more resilient in a storm than a single exposed tree.

In recent times there have been positive changes and initiatives, supported by central government, such as Agenda 21 and the Sustainable Communities Act, but the overwhelming tendency has been to liberalise markets and agree to more consolidated power and decision-making. How else could it be when power comes with money, and corporations and corporate lobby groups continually stay richer than elected governments?

I assert that the ideal distribution of power is a pyramid, with local communities at the bottom and the United Nations at the top. The current power distribution, with nations of various sizes wielding most power and a mish-mash of supra- and sub-national bodies taking a lesser share, is therefore wrong, but also impossible to dismantle from within.

In practical terms, I can't see how voting will lead to signficiant devolution. What's more, without the ability to change power distribution, the large regional, national and supra-national bodies are illegitimate. If a body, elected or not, is illegitimate, it doesn't matter how it is populated, or by whom.

As I've admitted before, the most difficult historic situation to face as a pacificist and anarchist would have been the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. So what happens when Nazis or neo-Nazis gain control of national parliament? The parliament is no less legitimate and the right to disobey becomes even clearer.

If anything, my conviction will only get stronger if the BNP continues to gain ground. I will not be intimidated by the politics of hatred, but neither will I be scared into voting against them.

Whatever happened to the leisure society?

Obviously, Schumacher's projections of resource depletion have not come true just yet, but many still believe that peak oil is just around the corner, with all the scary consequences it will bring. The fundamental message, that we have to live within our planetary means, still holds true.

Other projections of the future have not aged so well, particularly the predicted leisure society, where automation would mean fewer working hours and more, cheap-to-participate activities for our own time. Few people are content to work less than a full week and no-one would call the theatre, cinema or going to a football match "cheap".

So, what went wrong?

Socialists will say, no doubt, that market forces have kept wages low through competition (both in the same region and against poorer regions of the world). And they would be right. Incomes have grown when compared to some basic commodities like bread or beer, but other living expenses have kept disposable income in check. Most notably, the price of property, which homeowners were so overjoyed about until recently, has meant that the cost of accommodation is now over half of many people's income.

Social pressure has multiplied "ordinary" living expenses too. We expect to be able to buy take-away food, eat out, buy new clothes, and go out to bars, the cinema and clubs more often than we did 20, 30 or 40 years ago. In the last 40 years, the home telephone, television, video, games console, home computer, personal music player and mobile phone have all become considered as possessions for all. No wonder we need to work every hour our new-found legal limits will allow.

None of the above is exactly insighful. Yet, where would we be if we abandoned the luxuries we have grown used to? If we did the same job, lived in a modest flat, travelled infrequently, bought clothes out of necessity alone, and got our entertainment from books and the radio. We might be able to save money more effectively (or give more to charity), but what else would we achieve? Would we be any happier, or would our anachronistic lifestyle just feel like being deprived?

Perhaps this is looking at things the wrong way. The leisure society was supposed to make us happier: perhaps it's the fact that we aren't significantly more contented that is more important and interesting.

Like incomes, my guess is that people are generally more happy with what live brings than they were in, say the 50s. More room, better clothes and furniture, tastier food, and a broad choice of types of entertainment all make life more enjoyable. But like incomes, it feels like the gains are marginal and are somewhat eroded by other changes.

Most notably, couples find it increasingly difficult to live, let alone raise children, on a single income. It feels as if the cost of getting women into the workplace was a hike in the cost of child-rearing to make taking those jobs almost compulsary.

Now, bear with me if I return to the limits to working hours that I mentioned earlier. These were introduced, in the parlance of the day, to guarantee some kind of "work-life balance". Certainly, anyone who has worked a 12-hour shift pattern (worse if it alternates between days and nights), will tell you that there is no room left for a life. But way work drains you is not simply a matter of the number of hours worked. Miners and mill workers would find it hard to contemplate running or cycling in their spare time, but many read extensively and were deeply involved with trade unions and politics. After a day of intensive editing, I find it hard to choose a book or writing over the tv.

What I'm trying to say is: the same market forces that keep wages in check have also optimised the effort demanded by employees. Legendarily relaxed workplaces such as newspapers have gone. That was time and, therefore, effort that was going to waste.

We are left mentally exhausted at the end of the week, if not every day, with little appetite for leisure activities that take mental or physical effort. Even if we do sport in our spare time, or write, of join a political party, there are few of us who can get involved with running clubs, developing and promoting our writing or standing in elections.

The expression "things that are worth doing are difficult" has been in my mind lately (perhaps because Andrew Motion said something similar about poetry), but the way we have organised ourselves makes everything harder than it has to be. We're not lazy: we're just tired.

Ecology of ideology

Google any combination of words and it’s likely that the combination has been used before. Originality was a scarce commodity before the internet, but the internet can prove to you just how scarce it is.

I had an idea for a Third Testament: The Book of the Spirit. It seemed like the natural progression from The Old (Father) and New (Son). I thought I might write the book as a work of fiction (sort of) or as a fictitious element in something else. But I did a web search first and discovered several Third Testaments, and most of them centred around the Holy Spirit. Oh well.

So I should have known that the concept of an “ecology of ideology” would not be a new one. It’s not, although there aren’t many ideological ecologists out there. And what I can glean from their abstracts is that it’s at proof-of-concept stage at this point.

Well, if the good professors at Carnegie Mellon have proved the principle (by studying moshav and kibbutz) then let the concept take flight—what does it mean to have an ecology of ideology/ies?

Ecology is the study of interaction between entities and between entities and their environment. When biological ecology is extended to human culture, the environment is usually understood by its conventional definition: trees, rivers, bunnies and stuff. Hence the “green” movement, and its focus on how we exist within the world.

But sometimes the dominant interactions aren’t with the planet, but with similar human entities and the environment they create. That’s not to forget the bunnies and their effect on us, but it is possible to extend ecological thinking into areas that are not specifically green.

So it is with ideology. An ideology is a comprehensive set of ideas to encapsulate a particular world view. Usually, an ideology forms from the sum of the beliefs and actions of a group of people. It can then be codified and used as a reference against potential progress or against other ideologies.

Species classification, from what little I know, isn’t easy, but the principles are quite clear. Ideology classification is similarly easy in principle but very difficult in practice. The process is made more difficult by the human tendency to bend the definition of what they say they agree with to what they believe in.

That said, it is possible to classify ideologies, and the most straightforward way to do so is by their proponent’s principles. A survey of a large number of self-described Marxists, anarchists, socialists, conservatives, liberals, neo-liberals, fascists, neo-fascists, etc., etc., could provide a map of priorities.

What I picked up from the abstracts of the Carnegie Mellon group is that ideologies can affect one another in their evolution, but principles are immutable. That’s not to say that individual’s principles and priorities cannot change, but that ideologies never die.

That is a great source of hope for me—clinging to principles that are commonly seen as subservient to pragmatic powerplay—hope that a kernel of writing and activism that places non-violence, self-determination and sustainability at or near the top of the priority list will always survive. And, more faintly, that it will be in ascendancy some day.

Inclusion

“This land is your land, this land is my land.”

Make no mistake: ownership is the ultimate form of inclusiveness. By which, I mean we all, collectively, own our world. Arguably, I own the bit I’m in more than any other bit, but that’s finesse to the principle.

What that most definitely does not mean is that we should be able to buy shares or property. Money inevitably separates us from our responsibilities.

As usual, the question is how we get from the present situation where people believe they own next to nothing and are responsible for even less, which is hardly surprising when the economic system considers every community as ripe for investment from half way round the globe, to the communitarian utopia outlined above?

This is mostly a matter of perception. Repeat the mantra: “This land is your land, this land is my land.” We already own it. Having said that, changing people’s perceptions is also the hardest thing to do.

The present situation does present a few opportunities to move things along the road of inclusiveness. Devolution is happening in small but encouraging ways: from the elected bodies for Scotland and Wales to the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 (http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2007/ukpga_20070028_en_1). More obviously inclusiveness-related initiatives are happening: encouraging companies, organisations and governing bodies to be open in everything they do and involve those they effect (stakeholders) in planning future activities.

There is a chasm between stakeholder engagement and meaningful community ownership, but small steps add up (as Lao-Tzu kinda said).

Integrity

When I started this blog, it was to counter the idea that a Gandhist solution is impractical because human nature will undermine it. Essentially, I thought that if it came down to whether we are inherently good enough or not then we had better be good enough or we might as well give up and go home.

But what if we can make integrity a must-have element of the way things are organised? Like sustainable development and stewardship, integrity could become an aspiration or buzzword that becomes embedded in how we do things.

So what does that mean?

Law is the bedrock of a harmonious society, but it alone does not foster gentility. If anything, the cold, hard surface of legislation can cause resentment. Laws are seen as something to be grudgingly accepted, worked around, bent or slyly broken. In other words, law alone does not promote integrity.

People of faith might argue that the shortcomings of rigid structures of statehood can be overcome by a moral outlook, based on religious teaching. And they would have an essential truth in saying so: while laws are often based on moral principles, their operation and adoption often does not. It is soft, moral values that have to be implemented too.

Whether morals require faith or not, or as I would argue, they are a facet of human nature, the challenge is to effectively join two very different materials. To stretch the metaphor of law as bedrock, integrity must lie on top and in the crevices, providing fertile soil.

Already, the line between compulsory laws and voluntary standards is blurred, both where standards become de rigeur and where management systems standards require a commitment to obeying relevant laws. But this doesn’t encourage a mindset that sees personal, organisational, corporate and societal behaviour as interconnected.

Such a mindset is critical to a sustainable community because any disharmony between the levels of and elements of society makes it harder to keep together.

Integrity will be seen as an essential part of how the elements of society operate in the same way that many individuals in desperate need of positive thinking operate. They “fake it to make it”, smiling until smiling becomes second nature and they feel a genuine warmth for others.

Organizations can and should claim integrity as an aspiration until that is exactly how they behave. At that point, no-one is being conned, trust is earned and “light-touch regulation” can become a reality.

Transparency

Why is transparency a principle of sustainable development? Surely I can be sustainable in my actions and keep myself to myself?

Maybe so, but how do we know what is sustainable? Surely sustainability is also a matter of interdependence? And isn’t secrecy an extra burden that detracts from our (mainly social) sustainability?

The Carbon Disclosure Project (http://www.cdproject.net/) was established for many reasons, but the most straightforward one was to find out how much carbon we’re releasing into the atmosphere and how. With hundreds of companies taking part, in every sector of industry, the data gathering gets more accurate and simultaneously more straightforward every year. Once we know where we’re going wrong, and how badly, we can put it right.

The project has some interesting secondary effects, however. Having disclosed their carbon footprint, companies are immediately under pressure to reduce their emissions, despite there being no-such pledge in participating. What’s more, the exercise highlights the reporting culture and amount of transparency these companies are comfortable with: very few companies will disclose their carbon targets to the outside world. At very least, that makes it very difficult to predict overall reductions in carbon emissions.

Like BS 8900, the CDP’s quiet insistence that transparency in past, present and future activities puts pressure on the establishment to fundamentally change the way it works.

So we know how much each community, organization and average individual has to change to make our species sustainable. What’s more, most of us don’t live in isolation, so the calculations of carbon footprint, resource use, permissible pollution levels, etc. often have to be made in collaboration, making estimates of the interplay of different substances and activities. So we need to communicate about our needs as well as ‘fessing up to our messes.

In asking for transparency, we also hear objections on grounds of practicality—particularly how transparency removes commercial advantage. Disclosing your carbon targets might affect your share price or make you liable in some way, but being open about everything you do would let your competitors know your next unique selling point, and very quickly it wouldn’t be unique any more.

Although lots of time, money and effort is wasted in hiding new products, services and ad campaigns from the opposition, for very little long-term gain, I’m not going to go so far (today) as to claim that all companies and organizations should have “glass walls”. But I do believe that the best way to retain customers, clients, employees and friends is to let them feel part of what you’re doing. “Valued”, in other words.

Stewardship

At first glance, stewardship seems like the most obvious principle of sustainable behaviour. But look closer and it brings a much richer meaning.

As many have said in many ways, including Gerard Winstanley, the earth is not ours to own. We are simply its inhabitants and caretakers. This is the principle of stewardship.

What this means for any organisation or individual that intends to improve itself against the principles of sustainable development is that, not only must the future of their “property” and share of the commons be ensured, but that property must be restored to the community in some meaningful way.

If sustainable development becomes embedded throughout society, the process can only accelerate. Companies will create permanent shareholdings for their neighbours, employees and other dependants. Governments will enact stewardship legislation, which will codify the responsibility of property owners to conserve the ecological, as well as functional, value of what they own, and perhaps will go further to remove the status of property ownership altogether.

This is meaningful responsibility. And it should be reciprocated by society.

For example, stewardship of a council property should be available at little cost. In itself, the responsibility that comes with the property, to maintain it for future inhabitants, will bring enough costs, but the story shouldn’t end there. Although decorating and maintaining a house is cheaper if you do it yourself, it would be in the interests of the council to run a communal tool bank and to source bulk supplies. Similarly, providing free training in practical skills would benefit everyone.

Through a gentle push towards a benign principle, society becomes a simpler, more responsible, more far-sighted and self-supporting. Before you know it, the progress gets rooted in too deep to be dragged out easily.

Taking them on at their own game

The most daunting facet of capitalism is its ability to adapt. Essentially, the system we have created is self-sustaining because, having established a means of isolating and accumulating power, the motivation (conscious or unconscious) is also established to consolidate and defend any advantage. In other words, the world’s elites are now wealthy and will use their power (influence/authority/etc.) to shore up the system to maintain that advantage.

This does not preclude a certain amount of progress in the treatment of the under-privileged and the environment, but the fundamental flaws will remain: the division of wealth, the impossibility of full employment, and the inherent unsustainability of economic growth.

Nothing new in that observation. But I recently realised that progress is being made in bringing fundamental change to what Orwell called our “smelly little orthodoxies”. It might not be enough, in itself, to topple the dominance of neo-cons and post-modernists (or any of the rag bag of what amounts to stasis), but seeds of radical thought are being left in unexpected places.

The established order is maintained because those with power can afford to populate the committees, councils and parliaments that set the detailed rules for how we run society. The interests of the wealthy are reflected in the skew of our criminal justice system towards harsh punishment for “poor people’s crimes” like drug dealing and robbery and little or no penalty for large-scale financial mis-management or fraud. The difference doesn’t end at the sentence imposed: if you are considered dangerous or likely to escape, then you go to a prison where, sure, you are less likely to escape, but you are also more likely to be a victim of violence, including rape.

As times change and questions are asked of the ethics of our system, those acting on behalf of the powerful ensure that new legislation, policies and procedures to not make a material change to the balance of power. So, for every political movement there is an approximately equal and opposite counter-movement. They might not be labelled as such—very few of these jabs and blocks, feints and counter-feints are ever categorized—but they happen nonetheless.

What I realised recently is that the counter-culture is also becoming more effective at evolving. The system has evolved to consolidate power but its harshest critics are learning how to infiltrate it effectively. Western democracy, in the first order, gravitates to the centre-right, which impedes any progress, but that doesn’t stop radicals from getting in.

I’m not talking about the so-called Marxists who have made a fool of themselves in cosying up to ultra-conservatives and big business. Neither am I too concerned with former radicals that have mellowed with age and found a comfortable place in the post-modern centre-left (such as Danny Cohn-Bendit and Joan Ruddock), although I’m glad to have them inside their respective parliaments.

In fact, many of those making a difference were never fire-brand protestors or politicians. What has evolved is the way progressive ideas get implemented: crudely speaking, it is not protest that pushes change by reluctant conservatives, it is infiltration of motivated people and ideas that make the changes directly.

There are several examples of the old way of making progress, including the Reform Act of 1832, reluctantly supported by the Duke of Wellington, and the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, reluctantly supported by Lyndon Johnson (I’m short of evidence on the latter, I admit). But protest has to be overwhelming to make a difference on its own; it has to be perceived as the manifestation of a majority viewpoint to influence government, and even then, the legislative process will water any new requirements down.

Protest is not dead, but capitol cities see protests almost every week, which makes media coverage and the attention of parliamentarians unlikely. Hundreds of thousands protested the Iraq War in London, New York and several other cities, and it made no difference whatsoever.

But here is a prime example of counter-subversion: having had “sustainability” co-opted and de-fanged to become “sustainable development”, which includes economic growth as one of its pillars, radical ideas have begun to permeate the implementation of sustainable development.

So, the British Standard guide to implementing sustainable development, BS 8900, insists that maturity against “principles of sustainable development” is measured and continual progress made. Those principles are to include: stewardship, transparency, integrity and inclusivity.

This is more powerful than it seems at first glance. Any organisation that claims to comply with a UK sustainable development standard must not only behave more sustainably (by environmental, social and economic measures) year-on-year, but it must demonstrate better performance against principles that will embed sustainable thinking and change its way of operating for the better.

I intend to say why each of these principles matters next.

150 years On Liberty

Next year (2009) is the 150th anniversary of John Stuart Mill’s landmark “essay”, On Liberty. Much credit, perhaps the majority, should go to his wife, Harriet Taylor, so please take that as read throughout the rest of this deposit.

I have to admit to have been 149 years behind the time in reading On Liberty, but I do have the excuse of not being born for 110 of those. But this isn’t such a bad time to catch up.

The basic principle that everyone should be free to do whatever, say whatever and think whatever does no harm to others is often forgotten in politics, even and sometimes by those that call themselves liberal.

Green Party politics (in England and Wales but also in much of the world) is quite akin to traditional Liberalism and its policies are stacked with ideas that would impose the Green “opinion” (to use Mill’s vocabulary) on the rest of society. Education, healthcare and animal rights, for examples, would all have national guidelines and rules to ensure that the “right” sort of education, healthcare and animals rights were being supplied nationwide.

In fact, nationhood was something Mill never questioned, as far as I can tell, but he did have a sense that the national level was not always the most appropriate one for running society’s affairs. He was greatly impressed by the way ordinary Americans could establish order in remote townships, without help or hindrance from a central bureaucracy, and thought it a model for England.

If anything, On Liberty is more applicable today than it was on its publication. I say this because, although we have gone through a century of clashing ideologies and many would now have us believe that politics has been reduced to the perfection of societal management, opinions are still being thrust upon us and withheld from us.

The most notable opinions that it is not considered suitable to hold and express are those of Jihad and theocracy. Like Mill I am merely advocating the right to hold and express these views, or to establish consensual communities that follows their ideals, while also considering these opinions to be deeply flawed.

Again, as Mill would have it, it is only when someone’s actions negatively affect others that society has the right to react. A theocracy established by military coup is obviously not OK, let alone killing others to “promote” your cause.

Where we draw the line, however, is an important part of how we win the argument. The Terrorism Act 2006 gets it very wrong, by making it illegal to disseminate a publication which is either: a) likely to be understood as directly or indirectly encouraging terrorism; or b) includes information which is likely to be understood as being useful in the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism.

The main focus at the time of the legislation was on periods of detention, which is also deplorable, but the first conviction (although subsequently successfully appealed) was on possession of records likely to be useful in terrorism. Samina Malik had, it seems, some dangerous books and wrote some dangerous poems.

In some ways this is farcical: who can handle dangerous books? A licensed librarian? Worse, it is counter-productive: removing people’s right to read, associate, discuss and disseminate as they please weakens our own position. Society, as Mill was saying, is stronger when everyone freely forms their own opinions.

Are you OK?

Was (Not Was) asked the question. As a side note, can I explain the name? The Was brothers at the heart of the group always had to explain how to say their name, much like I do. It’s pronounced “wahz”. Not “was”.

Seems like they were on a hiding to nothing.

Anyway, the question was one of concern. And people do get concerned. People care about other people. People care a lot more about some people than others, but there is an overwhelming amount of consideration going on.

How does that scale up in society? In a static society, it means that everyone knows about everyone else’s problems and the majority looks after the minority. In nomadic cultures, everyone is aware of how delicate life’s balance is and everyone looks out for everyone.

Maybe that’s a bit over-simplistic, or even rosier-then-reality, but I do think there’s more than an element of truth in it. And I also think there’s more than element of truth in the assertion that large-scale societies don’t have the same tendency to care for the vulnerable.

Like climate change, nuclear waste disposal, child labour and poverty, there is a tendency to see caring as something for others to deal with—somebody else’s problem.

If a centrally organised society will not support those in need, can a devolved one do any better? Obviously, I think it can. By taking responsibility for anyone that strays into your community, it ceases to be anyone else’s problem.

There are a couple of real-world examples that strenuously test my assertion. First, my experience of a successful “intentional community”—what would be colloquially termed a commune. Second, the way the most difficult-to-deal-with homeless people in my own neighbourhood.

One of the longest-lasting intentional communities in the United States, if not the world, is in rural Virginia and I had the privilege of staying for a night and meeting many of the members. One of the reasons it might have been so successful is a refusal to deal with members with serious mental health issues: minor problems and idiosyncrasies were almost de rigueur but the members would ask anyone that was, in their opinion, too disruptive to leave.

If the world were composed of intentional communities, where would that leave its most vulnerable? I would like to think that, like many things that require concerted effort, that resources would be pooled to help those that need specialist care, while retaining a sense of responsibility for each individual. That, I have to admit, is still a sizeable issue.

The other instance worth mentioning are the homeless, here in Shepherd’s Bush. We have a hostel (or two) in the area, in which very few local people have any involvement (me included). I like to think that most people feel that their presence is no major inconvenience. At worst, it is depressing to see people in bad shape, begging, living from one can of beer to the next, or sometimes exhibiting the behaviour typical of smack addicts. At least, we can think, they have somewhere to sleep and get some hot food.

But even these hostels cannot accommodate anyone and everyone. Like the intentional community, without extra help, some people are just too disruptive. Excluded from shelter, their situation only gets worse and their attitude more belligerent.

One particular individual, Paul, was a real nuisance to everyone. Before they started locking the gate, he was sleeping in the parking area behind my flat, usually with his girlfriend, which was no big problem in itself, except they would scream at each other at all times of the night, fight, and break anything that came to hand. During the day, they would demand money on the street, still fighting each other, and turn on random passers-by.

The result for the community was edginess and extreme discomfort. The police were often called and eventually they used the only tool available to them—an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) that excluded Paul from the area altogether. I’ve been told that ha has accommodation elsewhere, but essentially they made it clear that this was someone else’s problem.

Again, how would a world of intentional communities have dealt with Paul? And again, I can only suggest that individuals as difficult as him would have to be supported with the pooled resources of several communities, whether that meant improving the resources of the local hostel (in current terms) or having a specialist institution shared between, say, all West London.

Heroes Season Two

Having wittered on about the difference between fictional heroes and those worth giving some credit as humanity’s great achievers (might I also mention that I want to distance myself from childhood idolatry—something I don’t believe I ever really suffered from), I only had time to credit Per Gahrton as my first “hero”. This time, I won’t hang around.

Obviously, as someone calling himself a Gandhist, the Mahatma is a hero of mine. I’m not as widely read as I would like, but I deeply admire what I’ve discovered. I don’t believe in perfection, by which I don’t want to offend those who believe Gandhi achieved spiritual perfection, but I do want to acknowledge that there might be a grain of truth in accusations about his ego or sexuality. But his spiritual quest is not what makes him a hero of mine anyway.

The two things Gandhi did that I most admire are: that he professed a unity of faith with the conviction of Akbar, in which he saw common spiritual, but also highly practical, bases for all religions; and that he put his beliefs into practice with complete conviction. I think of what he did and said whenever I am trying to resolve issues of principal.

From the same country, but still very much alive and influencing people is Vandana Shiva. If anyone is the inheritor of Gandhi’s legacy, she is. She and I are also physicists first, but I have yet to see any influence on her ecological writing.

Shiva would be my hero for her chapters in Ecofeminism, which she co-wrote with Maria Mies, but she is also a leading light in the anti-globalisation movement (defending poor farmers against the grasping food multinationals). There are times when it is difficult to reconcile ideas in one area (such as feminism) with those in another (such as ecology), and it’s invaluable to have someone as lucid and sane as Shiva to guide you through.

At another point in my life, when I had joined the Green Party, read the manifesto, and a handful of books and pamphlets, I needed to make sense of how it all fitted together. If ever there was book to satisfy a need for a deeper understanding of green politics, it is Green Political Thought by Andrew Dobson.

I’ve met Andy Dobson (I’ve been in the presence of Vandana Shiva, but couldn’t find the courage or words) and he’s incredibly easy-going and approachable. Should I be surprised? After all, he’s provided an intellectual yet easily understood text contextualising almost all of ecopolitics.

My guess is that everyone in green politics has been inspired by the books or speeches of certain individuals: Henry Thoreau, John Muir, Petra Kelly, Jonathon Porritt, Ralph Nader, Al Gore, and even David Icke. These are many people’s heroes and deserve credit for the inspiration they have provided.

And I have one more to add, who I can’t quite call a hero because of a racist and sexist edge to his writing. Yet his writing is still inspirational: the original monkey-wrencher, Edward Abbey. Go read The Monkey Wrench Gang and consider blowing up a dam.