I have been away for a while, all-consumed, writing my first book. That’s a process that plays, usually joyfully, on the mind all the time and whenever I have had a moment to write, the book has demanded first dips. Substack has had to sit quietly and wait.

The book is called “Finding the Ape - Why Our Future Depends on Reclaiming Our Animal Nature“. It will be published by Permanent Publications in April 2027. You can read all about it here:

Curiously, whilst I’ve been writing, polishing, editing and re-editing, I have witnessed something strange. The Prime Minister has started to seem to agree (with a heavy emphasis on ‘started’…).

Finding the Ape is tries to suggest a way to escape the ecological predicament we find ourselves in. The predicament, I suggest has two fundamental causes, and each of them is feeding the other.

One is our anthropocentric sense of human exceptionalism. We live in societies in the West that are based at their very core on the myth that we apes are something different, special and better, than the rest of life. It's a myth that has wrenched us culturally-apart from ecology.

The other is a millennia-old pattern of a greater-and-greater centralisation of power and resource. Centralisation isn’t a new phenomenon. It started way back in the fertile crescent as we emerged from the ice age, and it’s been growing ever since. Today’s hyper-connected world of hyper-inequality is just the latest stage in a very old story.

Each of these causes is a problem, but our predicament is worsened by each ones's capacity to fuel the other. It is the combined force of the two that lies at the heart of our woes.

In Finding the Ape, I explore why this is, and how we might escape this toxic spiral. The key, I suggest, is a reawakening of our inner animal, finding our place amongst, not above species again and rooting our solutions in a reconnection of local community and local ecology.

Throughout the book, I meet with people and projects that are showing, very practically, how it’s done. I tell their stories and I start to find patterns.

One pattern is found in how we respond to, and counter, centralisation. Part of the answer to that, I argue, is localisation.

Localisation is a fundamental repositioning of power and a fundamental redesigning of community and economy to one that operates at the human scale. It localises production, exchange and decision-making, placing power into the hands of smaller, independent actors that must then collaborate. That collaboration helps generate a system that can operate in the interests of most of us, not just a few of us, partly because it is owned and run by most of us.

Localisation embeds power locally and connects power horizontally through cooperation and collaboration. Centralisation pushes power ever more-tightly into smaller groups of people, upwards and further away. Localisation distributes power across small, diverse communities, horizontally and closer to home.

As I’ve been writing Finding the Ape, time has ticked by and UK PM Keir Starmer has gone, inevitably, replaced by Andy Burnham, inevitably. And Andy has been saying something a little more interesting.

Power in Britain, Burnham says correctly, has become too centralised. It is too far from the hands of communities and regions and it is held too tightly in Westminster. In response, he promises to build "a ​more collaborative politics in Westminster, by taking power out of the centre and putting it in the hands of the people and places who can use it best."1

He wants to decentralise and his plan is to devolve power down.

It might seem, at its simplest, that the answer to centralisation is decentralisation, of which devolution is a form. And to a degree, it is. Almost by definition, decentralisation offers to undo the problem of centralisation. The trouble is, on its own it doesn’t replace that problem with anything. Dismantling something doesn’t create something else.

Devolution of political power does move decisions closer to home. It shifts power downwards, closer to people. Done well, it makes power more visible and it might even make it feel within reach. But devolution is a start, not an end. By shifting power down tiers of hierarchy, the hierarchy is still retained. And the people will always find themselves at the bottom of hierarchy.

Despite ‘decentralisation’ and ‘localisation’ being used interchangeably by some commentators, localisation is not just the devolution of power down through tiers of authority. Localisation is the building of something entirely new. It is the building of horizontal power from below, from community. It is a form of power that is owned locally by people and cooperation. Localisation is not just dismantling, but rebuilding.

It may feel fanciful to imagine communities in which power and decisions are owned locally and in which we are accountable and responsible for the decisions that impact us. Perhaps the idea that we might organise from the bottom-up, collaborating with others beyond the local through forms of cooperation, sounds dreamy. In fact, as I argue in the book, it’s the our natural state.

When we remember the simple fact of our animal nature, we can start to imagine what it is that that animal needs. And like most animals, what we need, deep-down, is to be grounded in the familiar places we call home. We may roam and wander, but we still look at the world through the lenses of place and community; through our local relationship to the landscapes we are based in, and our local relationships with the apes, and others, we live amongst.

Cityscapes and townscapes might feel more familiar than landscapes to many of us. Ecology may feel like it visits rather than resides amongst us in many of the places we live. But the animal in us still craves a return to a relationship with place, community and ecology, however distant it feels. And recovering this is not a nice-to-have, it is vital if we are to escape this spiral.

The real test of whether politics will be re-written by our new Prime Minister is whether he will not only devolve power to more localised forms of authority, but whether he will start the wheels rolling towards truly localised communities. Ones in which power, production, distribution and consumption are all thoroughly localised, smaller-scale and independent. Ones in which we feel a return of a sense of place. In particular, whether we can wrestle power and control from those that hoard wealth, as well as the distant politicians.

That requires a decentralisation not only of politics, but of economics, authority, wealth and society.

Burnham takes over as the Prime Minister of a heavily centralised country which is built on an economics of growth. It’s taken as red that if the economy doesn’t grow, Burnham has failed. For that reason, Burnham promises Britain's "biggest rebalancing of power", but he also promises “good growth in every postcode”.2

But like any child, as economies grow, so they must be fed.

Feeding growing economies requires growing use of energy, growing extraction of resources, growing consumption, growing waste. Growing economies, competing with other extractive economies around the world, require an economic system that is bent towards centralisation of power and resources to compete. Economic growth is a cancer to localisation. It destroys as it grows.

A centralised system of power and resources demands economic growth.

Economic growth then fuels that same centralised system.

We are back in a toxic spiral.

We could distribute power locally and encourage us ordinary apes to take greater responsibility for our communities and our shared welfare, rebuilding a sense of place amongst not only our human communities but our ecological ones. But where is the growth in that?

Without economic growth, Burnham is a dead duck. With economic growth, localisation is a dead duck, or a sick one at least. But this is not to say Burnham’s mission is pointless. What we need is a shot of reality.

People are hungry for a sense of agency, a sense that they can influence their worlds for the better and that their communities, the places where they experience most of life, will feel connected and communal again. Too often, we look higher up the hierarchy to try to find that. We ask the authorities, be they political or financial, to rebuild the communities that centralisation has destroyed. But even when they want to, their power to do so is limited by the system they operate within. The sooner we stop expecting the answers from above, the sooner we can lift the veil, see each other and start to collaborate from below.

To devolve power downwards, as Burnham promises, is to push decisions and decision-makers closer to the people. It creates some energy in the right direction. But make any further progress towards a meaningful goal requires a building up from below, not a delegation from above. It requires people to start to own community, to take control of place and to build localised alternatives.

It is possible for politicians to make policy decisions that helpfully shift the direction of the wind. When that happens, it is worth celebrating a hint of momentum in the right direction. It is not worth expecting fundamental change, because fundamental change of the sort we really hanker after must be led by those that are not shackled to the cause of the problem.

For those reasons, my reaction to this snappier-dressing PM is this:

• I welcome that a senior politician recognises that the centralisation of political power is an obstacle to our needs

• I welcome that a senior politician promises to devolve power down, closer to people

• I wish, with no expectations of satisfaction, that that senior politician would take a very serious look at the enormous potential of genuine, radical localisation, not just political decentralisation. That he might consider returning trust and capacity to the hands of people and community, at the genuinely local level

• But more than anything, for the real hope, I look sideways, towards community. I look towards cooperatives, community buy-outs, citizens assemblies, small independent businesses, community transport, community supported agriculture and much more.

• And I hope that this small gust of wind in the right direction helps a few more of us to start to build place, locally, between us from down here, where dormant power resides.

You can, of course, read a lot more about all of this and how it might work, including some startlingly inspiring examples, in Finding the Ape when it comes out in April 2027…

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I write, it’s true. But I mostly do other things, largely of a more practical nature than typing.

One such thing is running a fruit and agroforestry tree nursery (which, like so much else, I do not do alone, but with my marvellous wife).

Every year, around March-time, we will gather together hundreds of fruit tree scions we’ve collected over the winter, many of them rare and heritage varieties from across Wales.

With small, sharp knives in hand and the radio on, we’ll sit under cover outside and “bench graft” these scions onto fruit tree rootstocks, using techniques handed down from generation to generation over centuries; techniques that differ in only the smallest ways since the Romans brought them here.

We’ll plant those out in the tree nursery and we’ll lovingly care for them, feeding them with all manner of home-made concoctions, watching them grow as the sun shines.

Come Summer, we’ll propagate more fruit trees. This time we’ll take just a single bud from a tree that we want to grow, a bud that is perhaps no larger than a ladybird, and we’ll delicately connect it to the living tissue of a rootstock in a technique called bud chipping. The next year, these trees will grow from that one bud to six foot tall in just a few months.

These old practices happen all over Britain through a massive diversity of enterprises. Together they are literally carving out a living keeping the fruit heritage and diversity of Britain alive.

After a few months of growing, the trees lose their leaves and head into dormancy. That means it’s tree-planting season. And so it is that when the nights set in, the West Wales winds start to howl, and all I want to do is light the fire and read, it is then that with a good coat on and a spade in hand, we head out to the trees, dig them up and send them out to be planted in the homes of whoever has bought them.

It can be cold work, but there is something very magical about bringing a tree to life and then sending it out to the world.

Most of the trees we send will live well beyond my lifetime. And over all those many years of their lives, they will produce blossom that feeds all manner of visiting insects, and leaves that feed caterpillars and, when the leaves drop, fungi.

They’ll produce fruit, which lest we forget, is why we plant them in the first place, and we’ll enjoy that for generations, as fresh fruit or, more often than not, in the marvellously processed forms of juice, vinegar or cider.

These trees grow outside of course, in full view of wild passers-by, so that same fruit will be food for blackbirds and badgers and mice and all manner of invertebrates. The tree itself will be a home and shelter through the seasons, for lichens, mosses, squirrels and birds, to name just a few. Meanwhile, the infinite world in our living soils will build up a close and symbiotic relationship with the tree through its roots, growing in population as the tree grows.

And all of that for decades, at least.

That’s worth a cold trip out in the winter.

The apples we eat aren’t domestic to this country, but they feel it. They were here when the Romans were tiling floors and building roads (they brought them over in fact). They were hanging from the trees at the very same time the battle of Hastings took place. They were a favourite on the feasting tables of Henry VIII. Every county had its apple varieties, its apple grafters, its cider producers.

It’s a story that is replicated around the world. Every culture that grows the apple seems to fall in love with it. Just take the largest city in Kazakhstan, from where the domesticated apple originates. It’s called Almaty – translated as “rich with apples.”

There seems to be something about the apple that somehow stirs our hankering for the traditions, rituals and community that are bound up with the living world around us. The apple connects us to place, to history, to the rest of life. And it’s infectious.

No wonder then that it didn’t take much for the annual ‘Apple Day’, on October 21^st, to catch on. It has all the feel of the same age-old traditions and rituals, although it was invented by the charity Common Ground in the 1990s.

Like all great and resilient ideas, apple day has grown and diversified organically from that original seeding to a mish-mash of variations across the country. Apples Days are organised by everyone and anyone, in whatever way feels like it works for that group of people.

Yet just tell someone that it’s apple day and they have a sense of what to do.

Dunk, bite, juice and bake. But more than anything else, dunk, bite, juice and bake with others.

We know it straight away. It’s so obvious it hardly needs saying. Apple Day is about community. Of course it is. Come together, celebrate together, eat and drink and dunk together.

Wonderfully, Common Ground, and all hail to them for this, just launched Apple Day and let it go. They don’t claim to own it, they don’t manage it, they don’t earn from it and they sure as hell don’t own any rights to it. That’s not how these things work.

Five-months on from Apple Day and the apple pies will be a distant memory. The apple trees around us will again be toying with the idea of blossoming and we’ll be fast-approaching another annual event. One that couldn’t feel more different: Earth Hour.

Organised by WWF, Earth Hour is an annual event that encourages us to save electricity for an hour. In what they say is a “stunning display of solidarity for our natural world”…, “Every March, millions of people around the world come together for one hour to show they care about the future of our planet.”

Now it would be too predictable to ask about the other 8,759 hours every year, so I’ll leave you to ponder that.

“Our world,” they explain, “needs our help. Nature gives us so much, from the food we eat to the air we breathe; it keeps us healthy and thriving. WWF’s Earth Hour is the perfect moment to switch off and give back to the planet. Because when we restore nature, it restores us.”

The principle is simple enough. Turn off the lights for an hour and save some electricity. If it sounds good and you’re feeling ambitious you can even “go the extra mile” and avoid using your phone and computer too. That said, WWF hardly encourage it. Instead, they provide a set of playlists to listen to, and a youtube channel to get a “dose of nature” to help you kill time while you wait for the hour to be over and can return to normality.

(Don’t worry about using up the battery – it’s only an hour, and then you can just charge it up again.)

Apparently, the average home in the UK has a slightly astonishing 67 light bulbs, including all the lamps. I’ll be off to count mine in a minute. Meanwhile, it seems fair to assume that before Earth Hour even starts, at least half of these are turned off. So that’s 33 an imaginary average home will be turning off for Earth Hour.

Given the folks in that home are “planet-conscious” enough to participate in Earth Hour, let’s assume they have low energy bulbs already (if not, they should probably spend Earth Hour going and getting some).

A typical energy efficient light bulb, below the quality of an LED one but better than an old-fashioned incandescent bulb, uses about 10 watts in an hour. So turning 33 bulbs off for an hour will save around 330 watts.

Getting a bit of that nature dosing done watching Youtube for an hour is going to use something in the region of 100 watts. So the net gain for our average home in Earth Hour is in the region of 230 watts give or take (plus an incalculable amount of feel-good-factor of course).

An average, medium two-bed house uses around 2,700 KW of electricity every year, or 2.7 million watts. So that’s a saving of around 0.0085% of their household energy use.

Every little counts though. And WWF would never claim that Earth Hour is just about saving energy. It’s also about “showing we care for the planet”. And “giving back to the planet.”

Except, of course, every little doesn’t count. Every single ‘little’, insufficient, glossed-up, tokenistic drop in an increasingly-warming ocean is, I’m afraid, a kick in the planet’s teeth. It’s gesture environmentalism. It’s a greenwashing lock-in, coordinated from the top, down to the individual, via a trademarked brand. It gives nothing back, it just takes a little bit less for an hour.

And it is miseducation.

It could hardly be better designed to leave you with the misplaced sense that the smallest, almost unnoticeable of tweaks to our lifetyles equates to sufficiency – to ‘doing our bit’. And all with the reassuring sponsorship of that panda logo.

It might save a bit of carbon, that’s true. But it doesn’t save enough carbon to make any difference to anything and crucially, it doesn’t build the foundations of anything better. It doesn’t get us anywhere. It misdirects our energies.

Compare back to Apple Day.

You might argue that dunking your head in a bowl of apples, water and other peoples’ spit isn’t going to save the world either. You’d be right there. It definitely isn’t, thank goodness.

Luckily, the Earth’s future doesn’t depend on us all attending our local Apple Day any more than it depends on Earth Hour.

But Apple Day’s very existence is a reminder of something important. That wherever the state of our delicate planet takes us, the way we may find a balance with it lies somewhere in community and in a connection to the rest of life around us.

Apple Day is a project that is about genuine, physical, human and local community. It’s impossible without that, in fact. And through that, it connects us to the almost unfathomable diversity of cultures and heritage from around Britain and the world. To stories and recipes and memories that extend down family bloodlines, have been passed around by friends or have arrived from overseas.

And it’s about trees and birds and fruit and leaves and blossom and soil. Those things we find outside the door.

What’s it’s not about is “giving back to planet earth,” like some kind of cosmic philanthropist. Rather, it’s one small part of many, many small parts, which together add up towards something like an infrastructure; an infrastructure that might allow our mislaid species to realign itself to the Earth. An infrastructure, like any infrastructure, that is made up of genuine connections.

Sorting out the mess we’ve created will take more than our participation in an annual event of any form. But if we are to discover where to put our energies in unearthing a solution to this most difficult of planetary times, it matters that we choose the activities that build something resilient and lasting, that get us somewhere.

Pleasingly, resilience lies somewhere rather nice - in the local, in strong community and in connection to the local living world that lies outside our electric homes.

Happy Apple Day.

There are few things less exciting than the prospect of a Keir Starmer speech.

Listening to it, when it does finally come, is much like listening to a plastic bag that’s caught in a tree flutter in the wind. It’s empty and yet somehow, still annoying.

But like death, we know it will come sooner or later. And this week, it did.

He did his homework, I’m sure. Coached in all the rules for good speech-making by a doubtless increasingly desperate team of choreographers and secretly watching speeches by Obama and Churchill for weeks, taking notes.

He’s underlined all the important bits of his speech with red pens, and when he gets to them he’ll get louder, or thump his finger on the lectern with vigour and purpose. It’s there in the notes to remind him when to be authentic.

He’s highlighted all the parts where he thinks he should pause for dramatic effect too. He’s practised in the bathroom mirror until bedtime.

We know. And yet. And yet. There is just something that isn’t there, and never will be.

It is perhaps admirable and worth protecting that our main political parties still often choose their leaders, at least in part, because of their policy positions rather than their charisma. After all, we are surrounded by a growing rabble of charismatic, egotistical narcissists gnashing and scoffing their way to power and I’m not convinced more of them will improve matters.

But in the face of the rise of these grunting, manipulative men there is still room for a leader who can communicate their ideas with clarity, purpose and a sense of passion, in a way that the rest of us can get hold of and cling to.

The ones we remember could do it. Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, David Cameron. All bastards, but all able to get the message over.

But not Keir Starmer.

Harsh though that reality is, whether you are Keir yourself, or you are faced with the prospect of listening to Keir, it is reality even so.

So, it was with some substantial doubt in myself that I choose, without obligation, to listen to his speech to the Labour Party conference 2025.

To manage the jitters, I decided I would do it on my hands and knees in a field, getting wet from the rain whilst weeding out unwanted plants. There is something in the tactile that gets me through times like these, and the occasional discovery of a toad or a ladybird did somehow help make the experience manageable. God knows how the delegates at the conference got through it.

And so it started, drifting along with the energy of a deflating balloon, full of predictable anecdotes and references to lines that had already been floated for the media. A lot of words with very little to bind them.

But then, suddenly, I was jolted.

Did he just say that?

“We placed too much faith in globalisation.”

The G word. I’d not heard it from a politician’s mouth for years.

“The establishment,” he went on, “across so many institutions,” was, he explained, “in hock to its lazy assumptions.”

Where was he going? Were we about to experience a renaissance in British politics? An awakening to the harms of the global economic system, of extractive capitalism and the manipulation of people into consumers for the benefit of the few? Of the raping and pillaging of our planet’s living and non-living systems by “the establishment” or the violent crushing of dissent, or even just variety, in the name of growth and an ever-expanding global economy?

Obviously, no.

In fact, we were never to find out what these “lazy assumptions” were because he moved on, to bang on about immigration again.

He’s right though. Globalisation, the ever-expanding reach of capitalism and economic-growth-mindset into every facet of every life in every town, is the problem. Its control of what we buy, we see, we do and ever increasingly, what we read and think, replacing dignity with servitude, quality with quantity, variety with homogeneity, patience with pace, pride with insecurity, these are the damage it wreaks.

What problems had he spotted with it? Well, the high street, the pubs, the youth clubs, all of them, we were told, are “struggling against the tide of decline” for one thing.

And wealth creation, is being “hoarded by just a few communities.” It’s not wealth that’s being hoarded you might notice, despite the repugnant cabal of frenzied billionaires that can’t stay out of the spotlight, but “wealth creation.” And not people that are hoarding, but communities. I started to wonder what was going on here.

And then, in words that seem to say almost nothing, there was the “world” which we have come to believe is “always on hand to give us the goods.” A passing and disinterested nod, perhaps, towards planetary limits.

With this vapid analysis of the symptoms, were we readied for the solutions. The ones that will address that grating feeling across the country that we’re all being pissed on. The ones that will tackle the threats of globalisation head-on.

The “extremes of the left,” he monotoned, do not even want to renew Britain. But he did. He had the solutions to this previously impenetrable problem.

And here they came…

“Unlocking the potential of every community”

Sounds good.

“Embedding wealth creation in every single community.”

Not sure what that means, but OK.

“Putting working people in control of their public services.”

What is that? Does that mean I have to drive the bus? What is that?

“Getting rid of mindless bureaucracy so we can build and keep building.”

Building? Where did that come from?

“Stripping out bad regulation.”

Hang on. Isn’t stripping out regulation what capitalism does?

“A more a muscular state…”

Eesh. I’m not sure about that.

“An escape from red tape that stops us building.”

Building again. And regulation again. I’m beginning to doubt these solutions.

“Growing our economy from the grassroots”

“Growing the economy”

“An economy that grows”

“Industrial policy”

“Unleashing British enterprise”

Oh. I see.

It’s growth.

Just growth.

Again.

Freedom for companies to grow. More of capitalism. More of globalisation, with fewer safeguards (known, sometimes, as regulation).

More of the same.

Just growth.

What do we need to tackle the symptoms? More of the cause, of course.

What was perhaps more striking than anything else from that speech, which I listened to all the way through, pulling up chickweed and nettles as the rain fell on my hat, was how brazen our nominal leaders now are in their disregard for peoples’ real needs. They know ‘globalisation’ is harming us, but they also know they can’t do anything about it.

So they sell us, well, snake oil. A different brand to the oil that Farage sells perhaps; not as toxic and potent as that. A snake-oil that’s already been pre-mixed in the bottle to water it down into something blander. It gets us drunk rather than febrile. But snake oil it is.

Sadly, it is precisely because people like Keir Starmer are so very out of touch with, and disinterested in the real, between-the-lines, deeply embedded frustrations with the fundamentals of how the modern West works, that charismatic, populist, gut-wrenchingly unpleasant men are managing to stir, spit and claw their way up towards power, selling their intoxicating alternative oils.

So, all we get is the continuation of an unflinching commitment to the dominant ideal that politicians can’t really do anything about any of this stuff anymore.

And perhaps he’s right. I suspect he is.

I suspect the solutions do not lie in a more muscular state. I suspect they lie somewhere in the opposite direction. Somewhere where power is devolved massively down, to the hyper-local level, where it is focused not on the demands of sociopathic billionaires and shareholders, but on shopkeepers, food growers, schools, high streets, youth clubs and pubs. Towards living, thriving, localised democracy held by people who are invested in the real lives that they live and who care about the real lives that others live too, whether those people are nearby or far away.

Keir Starmer is worth having in place only because he’s less mean than some of the others. We chose a pathetic king over a psychopathic one. Hardly inspiring. But the response to that pitiful truth is not to vote the nasty one in next time. And it’s certainly not to sacrifice democracy at the alter of frustration. It’s to start to build a better version. One with us, not them, at the top.

Localisation - rebuilding power and democracy in the hands of communities and away from the centre, that is the solution to the symptoms of globalisation. A turn away from the muscular state, and from the impotent politicians, to a trust in the honesty, kindness and power of real people.

The oil salespeople never try to sell us that, because it’s like water. It cleans out the toxins. So thank you Keir Starmer. For all the muttering I did whilst listening to you amongst the chickweed and toads, you helped confirm my suspicions.

In the last few posts, I’ve bounced around some ideas of what I think may well be essentials to help us find a way out of the ‘now we are in’.

That’s the ‘now’ of growing intolerance and a burgeoning enthusiasm for convenience, conspiracy and populism, all occurring alongside the simultaneous collapses of the global climate system and the earth’s biosphere.

That ‘now’.

My short play with these ideas has led to a few principles which are, in short,

1. A celebration of individuality

To celebrate the individual’s own liberty over their mind, their views and their body’s destiny. Of the autonomy over our character, qualities and ‘usness’. Of the sovereignty of the individual.

2. A rejection of individualism

A rejection of the placing of the wants and desires of the individual above all else. Hope lies in the placing of community, not the individual, at the very core of any human future. A community that is real, human, and face to face, not distant and digitally veneered.

3. Individual sovereignty may be a key, but diversity is a keystone.

Diversity of ideas, diversity of actions, diversity of people. It is in ‘experiments in living’, and celebration of colour, complexity and mess that our worlds, our communities, our ideas, our principles, our movements and our societies develop for the better.

4. Lasting change is a long-game

The need to accept that changes, in any meaningful sense - changes in our world that last and differ to now - take an age. So long in fact, that those who start the change don’t see it, and for those that see the change, the story of that change is a story of history.

Perhaps these might act as some useful building blocks to find a way out. Or foundations at least, if not the building blocks themselves.

But wait.

For all my talk of individuals, a quick skim of a few articles online suggested to me that I’ve been using the wrong term all along.

Forget individuals. It is ‘consumers’ that are all the craze now. And an opinionated lot they are:

How did I miss this? Where could I have gone wrong, I wonder?

Delving a little deeper into these articles, I find all the reassurance I could need; it turns out, terms like “individual”, “member of the public” or “people” on the one hand are just other ways of saying “consumer.”

As interchangeable as fart and trump[6], you might say:

Sadly, there is I fear, something very, very dark at play here.

When I speak to my friends, no one talks about consumers. When I talk to community groups I work with, no one talks about consumers. When I speak to my local shop keeper or garage, no one talks about consumers. They all talk about people, some of them about the public, at a push maybe one or two might even talk about “Brits”.

No one talks about consumers.

But watch a senior politician speak and they use the term all the time. Listen to and read some of the media and there it will be again. Hear the wisdom of a corporate leader, and guess what? It’s there again. And, as the example above show, it is, so often, used interchangeably with person.

I worry a great deal that this is not a mistake. Not lazy language. Because the language we use so often gives away the unconscious biases and hidden priorities we hold.

Instead, I worry instead that this is a product of two more troublesome things.

One is a mindset within those with the greatest power that the only thing that matters is economic growth. That all decisions, all policies, all fights are viewed through the lens of growth. In that world view, the role of the individual is consumer. Ideas of justice, fairness, equality, happiness, meaning, value have no definition, except when provided through consumption.

Vision, dreams, ideas? These are worthless. Rest, pleasure, joy? These can be bought. Fairness? Beauty? The natural world? These are irritants.

Such ideas are hardly hidden in the UK now. After 14 years of hellish, gluttonous conservative rule, during which the only thing that could slow their destruction of the state was a global pandemic, we might have hoped for … maybe not “better” as such but at least “marginally less bad.”

But no hope there this time. We have a government of ‘change’ that promises, in any meaningful sense, more of the same. An obsession with growth[7] that, in the long-run, all science shows leads only to hell[8], and an awareness of our inter-connectedness with the rest of the complex living world we inhabit that would rate equal to that of a turd’s.[9]

Our leaders, as far as any one of us can call them that with any sincerity, are blind to all but money. Pound signs in their eyes and dollars coming out of their arses.

But there is a second, perhaps even greater worry I have about that term ‘consumer.”

It is that it’s used interchangeably on purpose.

The lobbyists and corporate kings and queens that have the ears of our flaccid senior politicians have been drip-dripping this term for decades now, using it interchangeably with the person, the individual, the ‘Brit’.

A rebrand, you might say. They certainly would.

If you label people as consumers, you focus, with some subtlety, on their individualism. It is their individual desires, needs, purchases and behaviours that become the focus. Give the consumer opinions, framed around how their purchasing choices influence and reflect their concerns, and you position consumption and individualism as the only role a person has to address issues like the collapse of the biosphere.

View us through the lens of what we eat, and buy, and wear, and can’t afford, and then there no need to be distracted by community or radical ideas like a circular economy.

The consumer is the corporate-friendly version of the individual. The bland-magnolia, sensible-car-driving, holidaying-somewhere-nice-this-year version of the vibrant human ape.

It is a subtle repositioning of the very nature of humanity.

Not so much one person one vote, as one burger one vote.

The corporate world, through the mouths of our politics, is disenfranchising our very being. We are being replaced not (yet) by robots, but by consumers.

This language is fundamental and dangerous. It should be avoided at all costs and called out where it can be.

So we have four principles above, and perhaps now a fifth: To fight for the person, and to trample the consumer.

[1] 85% of consumers want government to 'encourage' reuse of electrical items - letsrecycle.com

[2] Majority of consumers want better government support for green initiatives - EIBI

[3] Brits want to fight climate change, but a third of consumers unaware of how to make homes greener | Ipsos

[4] New polling shows UK consumers want a renewables-led Energy Supply Strategy - Vattenfall

[5] 24% of UK consumers want regulations to reduce meat and dairy intake - Foodservice Footprint

[6] If you’re reading this somewhere other than in the UK, you may not know, and may enjoy knowing, that over here, trump means fart.

[7] I’m a Labour MP – but the government’s ‘growth’ mission reeks of panic | Clive Lewis | The Guardian

[8] Biosphere collapse: the biggest economic bubble ever

[9] Rachel Reeves blasted after 'picking a fight' with bats and newts - Big Issue

Freedom.

Could there be a dirtier word?

In my last post I celebrated the liberal ideal of the sovereignty of the individual over themself. That post was inspired by John Stuart Mill’s famous quote,

“over himself, over his own mind and body, the individual is sovereign.”

The reason to celebrate that lies in its powerful faith in the autonomy of the individual over their mind and their decisions. A two-fingered salute to the overly-authoritarian or judgemental controls of powerful entities over how we choose to think or what we choose to do in our private worlds.

But take that idea just a very, very little further and you end up somewhere different.

Individual sovereignty over our own mind, and our freedom over the choices that impact only (or mostly) us, seems worth fighting for. And as anyone supporting the assisted dying bill in the UK might say, worth dying for too.

It celebrates our right to be who we are, and in doing so, it encourages a wider community saturated with a diversity of ideas.

But there comes a risk with ideas like these too; that in our pursuit of our own individual liberty, we either see our friends and neighbours as competitors, or worse, we sacrifice the very idea of community, or society, in favour simply of our individual desires, wants and perceived needs.

That the rights of the individual usurp the needs of the wider whole.

We end up with individualism; the idea that the individual is all that really matters. That, I think, is not by necessity an end-result of liberal ideas, but it does feel like where we are headed.

It’s striking that Mill also said

“The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”

And that could easily be interpreted as “each for themself” even if caveated by “so long as it doesn’t hurt others.” Where is the room for society in there? Where is the room for the protection, or celebration, of community?

There is something entirely wonderful in the freeing of the individual to be all that they can be, and to allow their individual uniqueness to express itself in its fullest sense. That, I think, is essential. But it is not enough to provide us apes with what we need. Far from it.

We apes are social animals. We depend on community.

Those of us that are older and that are also lonely, have a 26% higher risk of death, suffer more from cardiovascular disease and have much worse mental health. Those of us that are younger and that are also lonely, have an increased likelihood of smoking, of misusing drugs and of anxiety.

All of us, if we are lonely, have an increased chance of depression and suicide.

A world in which only the individual matters is one which forgets and disregards our animal needs. We need to not just be individuals. We need to be individuals within community, and that requires us to value, and champion community.

A world in which only the individual matters, is also a world in which we risk forgetting our empathy, and the needs of others. Where so long as our impacts on others is benign, that is enough.

In that world, we might leave others to wither, if withering is their doing, whilst we thrive, just so long as our thriving doesn’t cause them to wither more. A world in which the rich get richer and richer and richer, for example. A world in which the very idea of community is anathema. A world in which the individual is sovereign over not just his or her mind and body, but over everything.

In my last post, I also argued that liberal values require not just the sovereignty of the individual over themself, but the willingness to compromise within a diverse community of voices. A willingness not just to defend fiercely one’s individual rights, but to value and defend the views, and rights, of others.

To celebrate diversity.

We live in a time when the individual is indeed sovereign over much more than themself. We are encouraged to travel individually by car, to be entertained individually on screens, to shop individually online, to receive that shopping individually by drone, even to scan individually our own shopping when we do venture out.

Our libraries are closing at a rate of 50 a year, the same rate applies to our youth centres, whilst our pubs are closing at a rate of 1,000 a year. Our community-owned and locally-owned spaces for gathering together are disappearing, whilst the ways we can pay privately, to branded overseas corporations, to service our individual needs, to gather with ourselves alone, seem only to grow.

At some pace, we are being trained out of the social and into the individual. The individual, with its rights to freedom over itself, over all else, over us-ness.

I don’t think this is an end result that John Stuart Mill had in mind; the death of community at the hands of the individual. But is something to be watchful of, and to fight at every opportunity.

Two-hundred years earlier than John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty’, a different John steered us towards another principle that is critical to any meaningful, good version of a liberal world: the principle of connectedness, inter-dependency, the importance of collaboration and community. Only by finding ways to combine the importance of the liberal ideal of freedom of mind and body, with the importance of dependence on, and investment in, community, might we find a solution to now.

Or to put it as John Donne did, 400 years ago last year,

No man is an island,

Entire of itself;

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less,

As well as if a promontory were:

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Some references

Understanding Loneliness in Younger People: Review of the Opportunities and Challenges for Loneliness Interventions - PMC

Loneliness and Depression in Young Adults | Newport Institute

Facts and Statistics | Campaign to End Loneliness

“Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

When I first read those words, in John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, I fell in love with them. It is as empowering a statement as they come. One of personal power; of power of the mind. Of liberty.

It encapsulates the essence of Mill’s political philosophy. In On Liberty, written back in the 1850s, Mill argues for freedom of speech, freedom of thought and freedom of expression. He believed that no external authority should have a role in curtailing the freedoms of your consciousness.

Likewise, if what we choose to do does no harm to others, them we should be free to act as we wish, he argued, no matter the opinions of others on those actions.

Much of Mill’s work, including On Liberty, builds on the equally, if not more influential work of his immediate predecessor, Jeremy Bentham.* Together, they were influential advocates of what at the time were bold ideas, like women’s suffrage, secularism, welfare, freedom of sexuality, and the abolition of corporal punishment, capital punishment and slavery. Ideas that seem to sit at the heart of what we tend to call Western, liberal culture.

It’s easy to see how Mill and Bentham still influence these societies today. Apparently, a copy of In Liberty is given to every new leader of the UK’s Liberal Democrats (of which I am not a member). But in truth, most (though not all) mainstream politicians in places like Britain would agree that in general, gathered together, these ideals tend to steer society in broadly the right direction.

Of course, that we can point at these ideals in a society’s fabric is not alone sufficient evidence that that society is somehow universally just, if a society ever could be. Of course not. But I think it is necessary evidence for a society that is at least progressing towards justice.

You only need compare places that hold these ideals to places that don’t, to work that out. Places that supress the ability to express the thoughts in your mind, that limit, define or control the role of women, that value some races of people over others or that define their values by the doctrines of one religion. These are not societies that are progressing towards justice. They are societies that have self-limited. They are at best stagnating and will, in time, decompose.

Now I loved Mill’s words a lot. I wrote that quote into a song many moons ago and I even considered having it tattooed on my arm (a whim I’m glad I didn’t act on).

There is a vital nuance to the idea though. It’s hinted at in the words “over his own mind and body.” It’s more obvious if you happen to know Mill’s moral philosophy, which is based on the idea of utilitarianism – that a good act is one that does the least harm and brings the most happiness.

Key is that these liberal freedoms should not come at the expense of others. We should be entirely free to do as we wish and to say what we wish, as long as that doesn’t harm others or their own freedoms.

And there again we see Mill reflected in our modern world. Because this nuance leads us directly into the unattractive worlds of cancel culture, “wokeism” and MAGA, where the debates between freedom of speech and protection of minorities rage.

Let’s agree some premises, or principles.

1. Firstly, that the liberal ideals of freedom to act, say and think as we wish, (at the heart of what we might call our ‘western ideals,’) are a good thing.

2. Secondly that those freedoms are only a good thing if they can be enjoyed without curtailing the freedoms or welfare of others.

3. And thirdly, that where there is a chance that those freedoms might curtail others’ freedoms or welfare, we should look to find solutions through open-mindedness, tolerance and compromise.

In some circles, particularly loud in the USA at the moment, there are those that will fight to the hilt to defend an absolutist interpretation of the freedom of speech, that first principle, to the point that the second principle is sacrificed.

In other circles, there are those that will fight to the hilt to defend the views or freedoms of some groups over those of others, with a willingness to sacrifice the first of these principles in that defence.

In both cases, where we seem to miss a trick is in a resistance to the gentler, reasonable calls of the third principle; that mild encouragement to find compromise. Fuelled by pride, fury, distrust, power and competition, they shout so loudly, and with such confidence, that the voices of the third principle go unheard.

Open mindedness, tolerance and compromise are a lot less exciting than rolling up your sleeves and kicking the metaphorical shit out of your opposition, after all. And they grab a damn sight fewer headlines and ‘likes’ too.

But return to Mill and once again, he’ll shine a light with an invigorating turn of phrase, on the value of the liberal perspective: “experiments in living.”

Mill was an empiricist, meaning he believed our knowledge is gained from our experiences. If you believe that, then it follows that the more experiences we have, the more we might learn.

But it also means that if many people have many different experiences of handling the same conundrum, then they will gain many perspectives on possible solutions, and they are all more likely to find the answer together. Whereas if all of those people respond to that conundrum in the same way, they will get far fewer possible solutions presented at the end.

Stretch that thinking out and it follows that following strict doctrines from authorities above can only limit our ability to build our knowledge and to progress our understanding. Whereas building diversity of thought and action into our communities strengthens our ability to build knowledge and understanding.

Society, culture and community thrive, flourish and progress thanks to many different inputs.

Diversity is strength.

Those many barking hordes in the culture wars, desperate to win and secure society in their image, miss the point entirely. It is by encouraging and celebrating experiments in living, expression of different views and ideas, celebration of differences and willingness to debate all of it that we get anywhere.

Without that crucial third principle, we risk allowing the loud voices of the intolerant to enable the decomposition of our societies.

* (It’s worth noting by the way, that Mill’s wife, the philosopher and feminist Harriet Taylor Mill, was herself hugely influential on John Stuart Mill’s work, although true to form, is a lot less well-known.)

Whether we look towards the Earth’s balanced systems, the nature of politics or even some of our shared ideals, the things we have relied on as stable have started to show cracks. It is unsettling. And it can leave us feeling frustratingly impotent.

But it’s also a moment of potential. It stirs in many of us a desire to find different ways to get out of this problem we’ve ended up in. This is the second in a series of articles focused on how we might respond in ways that are rational, fair and empowering.

Ways that look to our shared humanity, rather than top-down authority, for solutions. Ways that we, the ordinaries of the world, might organise ourselves, and reframe our perspectives, to respond to the obvious stresses of the moment.

***

In my last post I started to consider the role of movements in creating change, and the vital need to allow time for the scale of change we’d like to see, however desperate we may be for it now.

Movements, it seems, are the framework for how we may create a better now than our current now, from the bottom-up. That’s because the change that comes from a movement is driven by the needs and demands of ordinary people – the yous and mes.

And with their inherent complexity and diversity, movements provide a route towards change without reliance on the authority of some greater power, be that a divine one, a rich one or an authoritarian one (or all three). A complex, diverse, overlapping mess of pressure is a hard thing for an authority like that to control.

Yes, it feels reassuring to know movements could be our way out. But in truth, that doesn’t tell us too much about what next.

I’m in search of what might make a better now than our current now. Tempting as it is to dive into the possibilities for what shape a better world might take, there is still more to consider about how.

Might there be any common ingredients for success in ‘change-making’?

To find some hints at answers, we could do worse that to look at the work of Hahrie Han, Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University in the US. She studies that very topic – change-making – and she’s written several books on it.

Some years back I co-organised a UK speaking tour with Hahrie, after she published her book “How organizations develop activists”. That book asks a simple question:

“Membership-based civic associations constantly seek to engage people in civic and political action. What makes some more effective than others?”

As the quote suggests, it’s not really a book about movement-building. It focuses on what in Britain we tend to call “campaign organisations” - the Greenpeaces and Petas - and how they might harness people power to drive change; how they should run effective campaigns, essentially.

A professional, membership-based campaign organisation is not a movement. But, it turns out, there is a common thread that runs in what they, and movements need if they are to be effective.

Distributing power

Hahrie Han argues how the sorts of significant changes that campaign groups are searching for come, essentially, from a strong grassroots.

Real impacts seem to arrive when organisations apply a model in which power is distributed to community activists and organisers, who themselves hold autonomy and responsibility.

The challenge to these big campaign organisations, in other words, is to let go a little. To focus more on the autonomy, empowerment and capacity building of real people. Alongside a strong vision and good leadership from anyone willing and able to lead, you have some of the key the ingredients for effective change-making.

The organisations that do this, she argues, succeed more than those that don’t, whatever their issue.

Now having read all of this, I and a few others, all working in campaign organisations at the time, were inspired by it. We wondered if we could build some of the learning into Britain’s big campaigning organisations.

So, we gathered the senior folk - CEOs and the like - from a large number of major British environmental and poverty groups together in one room, and presented Hahrie Han to them.

And she set out the facts: The organisations in the room held enormous potential power. Their visions were achievable. But they needed to focus more on building power at the base – networks and communities of powerful, autonomous folk at the grassroots.

Power to the people, you might say if you like a good cliche. Almost everyone in the room got it. And in truth, little changed overnight. But then as I said in my last post, change is sometimes slower than we’d like.

People need people

That though, is not the point of his post. The message I take away from this now, years later, is not about the structure of contemporary campaigning organisations.

It’s that, within the all-important movements I wrote about last time, as well as in these organisations, there is an essential element without which there can be no success: that we can make noise alone, but it is when people gather together, with a sense of collective purpose and a desire to collaborate, that meaningful change is possible.

There is no point in distributing power to individuals, just for them to remain alone. The noise they can make, whilst sometimes impressive, is rarely sufficient. You can play a nice solo on a violin, but you need an orchestra to play a symphony, you might say.

Key to Hahrie Han’s recipe is the buzzy, networked, collective noise of people doing things together. People, organising together.

People need people.

In other words, it seems to boil down to community. Without community, there is no chance of an effective movement and no chance of any change that matters. Now we’re getting somewhere.

***

In my first post on “Responding to now” I found movements to be the route to change, and in this one, it seems that community, not individualism, is key.

But we live in the age of the individual. So how do we square that? We’ll look at that next.

Whether we look towards the Earth’s balanced systems, the nature of politics or even some of our shared ideals, the things we have relied on as stable have started to show cracks. It is unsettling. And it can leave us feeling frustratingly impotent.

But it’s also a moment of potential. It stirs in many of us a desire to find different ways to get out of this problem we’ve ended up in. This is the first of a set of articles focused on how we might respond in ways that are rational, fair and empowering. Ways that look to our shared humanity, rather than to authority, for solutions.

***

Nowadays, I am, most days, muddy. Or grass-stained.

I spend a fair bit of my time with trees and vegetables and compost and soil. It’s one of the main ways I pay the bills. I grow things to sell, I teach people to grow things, and I potter outside for fun, when there’s time, which I’m lucky to have sometimes and always wish I had more often. I get through more trousers than I used to.

Quite a few moons ago, I wore a different hat (and different trousers) to earn my keep. A slightly professional one, in the charity sector. For quite a time, I worked in the activism section of a big (ish) campaign organisation. I played my small part in all sorts of impressive national campaigns – fights that were undoubtedly worth fighting, on topics like fracking, insect decline, climate change. You know the sort of thing.

Battles were won sometimes. The war was not. Our living world was, and still is, collapsing. That was a strain on us all at the time, whether we said it out loud or not. It is a greater strain, on ever more people, today.

Now, I consider it to be a fact that the world would be worse if it weren’t for these battles. There is no excuse for giving the bastards an easy ride. Opposition, obstruction and resistance to the powerful elites that thrust the world in a direction that most people don’t want it to go in, are vital and valuable. Imagine what the world would be like if those that caused the worst of the damage knew no one would even try to stop them.

Battles matter. Even so, back then, as now, it could be hard to feel that we were just building more and more dams, with ever-greater desperation, simply to slow the rate of an inevitable flood. We knew the bastards were winning. The campaigns we ran weren’t having enough of an effect.

But. But…

Ever-present in that charity, was a collection of the most bizarre, extraordinary, fantastically difficult, stubborn, effective, passionate and driven people you could meet: the local activists. The people who, in their spare time, were knee-deep in local authority development plans, site battles and street stalls. They were talking to whoever would listen and lobbying councillors, MPs and, when they got the chance, even Government Ministers.

They ran their own campaigns, on the things that mattered locally and beyond. Campaigns of all shapes and colours, with all manner of tactics and campaigns. Campaigns that meant nothing beyond the borough they ran in, to campaigns that made national news.

Like everyone else, they won some and lost some. The luxury of my position, working on activism from the ‘centre,’ was that I could stand back and see the full extent of this maelstrom of resistance - happening all at once, all over the country, different campaigns, different people, different tactics, different messages.

As when looking at the Earth from space, that perspective was very different. From that wider perspective, you don’t see just individual campaigns, projects and challenges. You see something else that is magical, uncontrollable, unstoppable. You see the beehive buzz of activity spread in its diverse glory across communities everywhere. You see a movement. And it is in movements that I think we may find hope.

As I wrote in Permaculture magazine in 2016,

“None of us really hankers for small, piecemeal, bit by bit, change. What we really want to see, and arguably can’t see enough of right now, is really big, significant change…

But that real change – the substantial, lasting, visionary and progressive change that really feels like the scale of impact we’re all wanting – can’t be achieved through a simple project, or a campaign or a group. It never has been and never will be. That kind of change can only ever be achieved by movements.

Movements are beautifully messy collections of groups, opinions, tactics and ideas from all over the place, that are all heading, sometimes loosely, in the same direction. They are bursting with variety. Different people in different places doing different things in ways that together are slowly adding up.

Not everyone in the same movement can recognize how vital they are to each other and not everyone in a movement will get along or agree with each other. Indeed, many will passionately disagree, on tactics, ideas and even solutions. The priorities of different groups will differ and different groups will look different, sound different and often demand different things.

That can be frustrating but excitingly, what makes a movement so powerful, so unstoppable, is the very fact that it is so diverse, so varied, so bursting with colour, creativity and innovation. It is impossible to control, impossible to manage, impossible to predict and outwit.

And slowly, over time, so often, the different actions generated by the different people start to add up. Shifts start to happen and at some point, hard to predict quite when, a momentum becomes unstoppable and accelerates, a tipping point is reached and what seemed so far away not so long ago, starts to feel within reach.”

There are some out there, often including those with power, that would have us believe that we are powerless. That our world changes around us, and we ride along. A fine way to protect your own power is to make others forget the potential of theirs, after all.

But when collective humanity’s energy is driven through the medium of a movement, made up of a vast array of campaigns, projects, arguments and actions, it seems to me like a power that is almost impossible to contain or control, even if you have billions of dollars to play with.

Unlike a single campaign or a single project, the power of movements is in their vastness and their inherent complexity. Through such diversity of approaches, tactics, messages and campaigns, through their goal not of a policy change but a vision, there is nothing concrete to pin down, nothing to grab at. It is a murmuration: a vast mass of whirling and swirling that makes it impossible to focus on a target.

Of course, the anarchic strength of movements doesn’t make the goals of their participants inherently good. Movements grow out of darkness, and it’s easy to get lost in the dark. All movements are searching for the light, but some movements end up searching down dark, dead-end alleys; looking for solutions in the wrong places. Solutions that rest on the blame or suffering of others, for instance.

But these strange, collective energies we call movements are themselves powerful, and channelled towards a better world, towards things like social justice, equality, democracy – they are probably the only route to the realisation of those ideals.

The great changes that nudge humanity towards something that feels fairer and kinder, to each other and the living world around us, can only be realised through movements.

Movements have something of the murmurating starling to them, it’s true, but often also something of the oak tree. Time moves differently to these great trees, living as they do for upwards of six hundred years. What feels like a year to us, feels like a month to an oak. Perhaps their perspective might help when we despair at the state of the world around us.

It’s easy to see the negative headlines and the losses, the changes in the wind and the switching of narratives, and to feel at a loss. But like it or not, the scale of betterments that we all dream of, that we know are essential, and which sometimes feel so far away, usually drip-by-drip their way into reality at a far slower pace than the pace we live at. It can be hard to see it happening and frustrating to see it happening not-fast-enough.

At times like that, like now, it would seem to matter more than ever that we remind ourselves of the ‘timescale of betterment’. To be a starling, but to think like an oak. Some things cannot be resolved as fast as we would like, or as fast as they need to be. These are not reasons to stop trying. Even when it all feels hopeless, the oak tree is our reminder to keep the energy up.

Imagine if we held on to our belief, in a time when things seem darker, that in humanity, and in our chaotic, clamorous, collective energy, there is power to be found in every one of us that cannot be clamped down on, cannot be controlled and cannot be contained. Within the diversity of movements lies strength that no authority can grab hold of. Strength that in its core essence, is unstoppable.

So long as we don’t stop.

If we buy the marketing spin from those in power, and we stop believing, and acting, then the bastards win. If we stop shining a light to the way out of the darkness, however far away that feels, then the disoriented movements will continue to search in the dark.

Martin Luther King once said “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Inspiring as this is, it implies that justice will eventually prevail, come what may. That justice is fated. In fact, as any pole vaulter will tell you, the pole only bends when you bend it. If we stop, there is no bend to be had.

***

There is something in all of this. Movements seem to be the foundation for the yous and the mes to harness our collective power, and build something better than we are led to believe is possible.

But it’s not enough. Broad, humanist ideals are great, but we need some meat on the bones of these ideals. What do we build? And how do we build it? We’ll come back to that.

Hope. It can be a slippery fish. Hard to cling on to as it fights to get away. If I’m honest, it often feels hard to keep a good grip on it, despite a consistent and irrational optimism I seem somehow to maintain. But there are times when, more than usual, it seems about to escape.

Now, it feels, at least for me, is one of those times. And I know I’m not the only one.

I remember times before when it seemed to be on the wane. There have been acute moments, a memorable one being the coming to power of George W Bush in the US, surrounded as he was by a panting cabal of neo-conservative psychopaths bent on global, and outer space, domination. That was definitely one of the acute ones.

There have also been the moments that gradually emerged, unnoticed at first. Those feelings of seeming chronic decline of hope, with no particular occasion to pinpoint. Just a dawning realisation that for some time, hope’s been taking a battering. The rise of the ‘conspirophile[1],’ from the dark corner of an internet café to seeming ubiquity, that’s one of those for me.

Now, I never let go of hope. It tries to get away. It wriggles with the news, but I cling and I cling. But I think I am one amongst a great many now, and a growing many at that, who feel it fighting harder than ever. There seems to be a crescendo. A perfect storm. A polycrisis. An end-of-days feeling. A collapse. Call it what you will. Whatever else it is, it is unnerving.

In short, there appears to be a rapidly developing loss of faith in the type of society we in Britain have come to recognise as the norm. To a large degree, that’s reflected in a deepening crisis of faith in democracy. Back in the 2000s, when I was in my thirties, around two-thirds of people my age were satisfied with democracy. Now, less than half of people aged thirty feel satisfied with it.[2]

An Ipsos Mori study in December 2023 found that “just over a quarter of people in the UK (27%) are satisfied with the way democracy is working, with three in five (61%) saying it has worsened in the last five years.” And that’s not exclusive to the UK. Across European counties studied in that report, “approximately one in two people [were] dissatisfied with the way democracy [was] working in their country” [3] Meanwhile, a poll published in January 2025 found that one in five people aged between 25 and 44 thought a strong, unelected leader would be a better system for running a country effectively than democracy.[4] Of course, it’s important to note that that poll asked people to focus on the effectiveness of models of government, not on which they would prefer to live under. But it’s striking anyway.

I’ve lost count of the conversations I’ve had with people recently that feel that democracy doesn’t work, or even that it’s against us. An enemy. But is it really any surprise people feel like this? There is scant evidence that the systems set up to govern the Western world are delivering for people in any way that feels meaningful to them. We live lives of relative luxury, but we feel powerless, exploited and surrounded by decline. Decisions are taken above our heads, by governments that are obsessed with growth, whatever that is, and who are at the servitude of enormous, sociopathic corporations, and eye-wateringly rich, sociopathic individuals. Jobs are less secure, prices seem only to rise, communities feel fragmented, disconnected and distant.

There’s only one game in town, and it’s capitalism, delivered through a structure called globalisation. We watch as the rich get richer, now so much so that they no longer feel they have to pretend to be embarrassed. It’s now just a game of overt, gluttonous gathering. We all see it but I think now, we all feel it too. We feel what is being done to us. And it angers us. It causes that hope to toss and to turn.

This globalisation thing. It’s letting us down.

The news, meanwhile, draws our eye away, and towards other threats. More immediate ones. Ones that are easier to shout at. Dangers from people of this sort or that, coming from here, or from there. From the left, from particular communities, from the shoreline.

And online, well, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re in an enormous satire. Not only do we discover there’s a network of Satan-worshipping paedophiles running a surprisingly flat world, spraying chemicals on us from a sophisticated, global network of jumbo jets. But worse, we discover we actually know people ourselves that believe this to be true. It’s enough to forget what those corporates and disinterested governments are doing to us all. Almost like they distract us on purpose. Now that would be a conspiracy.

But one of the most worrying trends in all of this, is a tendency to blame democracy for the damage wrought by capitalism and globalisation. To argue that democracy is dead, because of the agonies of capitalism. To suggest the two are interchangeable and that the removal of democracy is the solution. To argue that it is tolerance and relative freedom that is hemming us in. It’s a tendency that is reflected in the statistics earlier and it’s perhaps obvious why it’s happening. Democracy is the delivery framework for society. If society doesn’t feel like it’s working, we understandably blame the framework.

But to reject the fundamental idea of democracy, because the democracy you’re in isn’t delivering, is to go on hunger strike because you didn’t like your dinner. It is to stab hope in the heart.

In democracy lies our ability to speak, to write, to argue, to complain, but more fundamental than anything else, the ability to organise ourselves. In democracy lies the route to somewhere new. And in democracy lies the ability for us, as people, to work that out between us. It may not be this version of democracy we need, this piss-poor, unrepresentative, weak cordial of a democracy, but it is a version of democracy. A kind that can stand up to, and dismantle, globalised capitalism.

Increasingly lashed to the same noose as democracy is a collection of ideas that have, until recently, felt familiar and inherent too. Ideas we often call western, although you find them all over the place. They’re often called liberal too. They are ideas like fairness, altruism, equality, civil rights, the scientific method of enquiry, the right to consent.

Yet somehow, a growing number of people are feeling a pull to elsewhere. An urge to blame these ideas, and this concept of democracy, so poorly delivered so often, for the frustrations and pains of exploitation. Instead, we’re urged, there are alternatives. Two in particular. And like two flies stuck in the same web, they are connected to the same fundamental problem.

One such alternative is found in the plunderers of capitalism. The egotistical, extroverted and gigantically rich victors of a system that has bred such insecurity and dissatisfaction further down: the billionaires. Riding in on stallions shaped like jumbo jets, private yachts and space rockets, from the East and the West, they promise a new dawn. They blame democracy, they blame liberal ideas, they blame foreigners. They blame the Earth’s delicate balance, the scientists that observe that balance, and the thinkers that don’t agree with them. Sitting atop piles of gold that would make Smaug jealous, they declare a love for the ordinary folk. All they need, to solve their problems, is a scale of political power to match their economic power. What could go wrong?

God help us.

Well maybe he will. As the second alternative we’re being sold, that’s certainly the promise. The failure of the west, we’re told by anyone from the Pope to Russel Brand, is a failure of secularism. We’ve lost the god and in doing so, we’ve lost our moral compass. We’ve lost the meaning behind it all. We’ve lost a purpose in something greater than ourselves. Blame Richard Dawkins if you like. Or go for Christopher Hitchens. He’s easier because he can’t answer back.

Without the Christian god, we’ve become obsessed with the individual, with woke, with gender, with rights, with equality. We care for ourselves, but we have lost a reason to care beyond that. Our church now is the shopping centre, our god is the dollar. Or so it goes. A return to that particular god (not to any of the others around, mind), to Jesus, to faith, is all we need.

This god, who demands our love like a dictator, who approved scripture that records his genocides, his psychopathy, his self-obsession. Who, not unlike the first alternative, seems to favour the domineering male. And who doesn’t appear to have much time for democracy or the scientific method either.

One, or both of these, is our alternative to that terrible democracy. But imagine this. Imagine that the solution is not that we need a vicious, self-centred, psychopathic, chauvinistic and offensively powerful male at the helm, be that a human one or one in the form of a deity.

Imagine if the solution lies, quite simply, if more messily, in us. The fundamental problem, which connects our two sickly alternatives earlier, is our lack of belief in ourselves. What lies beneath our discontent is our loss of faith not in gods, but in humanity’s potential, and a lack of confidence in our ability to do anything about it.

For as long as we have been thinkers, we have had within us the ability and the drive to work together, to struggle, argue and try solutions. To debate, consider and trial frameworks for our societies that work for people. And to rise up and fight when we are being oppressed.

We are, lest we forget, social animals. We need much more democracy, not much less. More democracy means more routes for us to organise, to be heard, to debate, to shape and to have faith in ourselves, as these smart beasts, to identify and own our futures together, not just as individuals, but as communities of people. We don’t need this democracy, we need far greater democracy.

Our democracy needs to be much more intensively localised, placed much more at the heart of our communities, which themselves need to be better connected and genuine. Communities in which economies are localised, enterprise is independent, corporations are history and people are welcoming and integrated.

The solution lies not in a belief in god, nor a faith in billionaires, but in the belief that we can sort this out ourselves. More confidence, less following. An understanding that it is in community, connection and humanity that the alternative lies. The radical realisation that the solution lies in every one of us.

There is an idea that speaks to this solution already. They call it humanism. It’s the simple idea that we as humans have everything we need within us to create just, equitable, progressive and kind societies, if we’d just get on with it.

But by god it needs a reboot. Too often, it feels like it lives in the dusty corridors of a university philosophy department. Speeches about David Hume, articles about Charles Darwin, explanations of how quantum mechanics might answer questions of existence. A lot of talk of logic, and philosophy, and the renaissance. All great stuff, but hardly the ingredients for a revitalising of society.

There are people out there with zeal and the bit between their teeth. They are energised, they are focused, they are thriving. But they are the armies of the billionaires and the gods. Where are the armies of humanists? Where is the zeal and energy of those that understand we must sort this out from within, with dignity, empathy and compassion as our tools? Where is the urgency that we see on the other side? It’s too quiet for times like these.

The humanists are out there, I’m certain of it. But it feels a little like Humanism has settled into old age. It’s turned the armchair towards the fire, pulled the blanket up over its knees, picked up the cocoa and sighed. Just tick along now. Go to one of those innovative, non-religious weddings we do, flick through the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, watch another one of those fantastic debates with the Hitch.

It’s no one’s fault, I suppose and it’s not for wont of trying by those with the Humanist pin badges. Humanists UK, for example, has energy, dives in where it can, and runs great campaigns, no doubt with tiny resources. But movements are more than their representative NGOs, or at least, let’s hope they are.

There is, within this simple idea one of the fundamentals of the solution to our predicament. A radical, confident, belief in the power of humanity. In there, lies the potential for a new, visionary explanation for a way out of this pickle. Not to turn to the skies, or the gilded towers of New York, the Kremlin or Silicon Valley, but to look within ourselves, our communities and our species, for everything we need to find. And a belief that, in more powerful, localised and vibrant democracies, the framework can exist that enables that potential to be realised.

Humanism is needed. It is necessary. It is key, in fact, to our future, if we are to resist a return to domination by one authority or another. But we seem not to realise it. It’s time to shake off that blanket, rediscover our youth and welcome a shot of urgency and purpose into the arm.

Less obsession with science and more obsession with change. Less about David Hume, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russell, Brian Cox. But maybe a bit more of the energy of the Hitch. It’s time to channel his spirit, if he doesn’t mind me using that term. Radical, fiery, energised, passionate, determined, confident, bold, urgent, combative.

In the face of the threats to democracy, kindness, humanity, even intelligence, it’s time for humanists to get out of their chairs. How we might do that will doubtless be one recurrent theme of this site.

[1] I struggle to bring myself to use the term, “conspiracy theorist.” You have to work hard to develop a theory. Gravity, evolution and quantum physics, those are theories. I’m not sure flat-earth, contrails or QAnon deserve equal billing.

[2] Faith in democracy: millennials are the most disillusioned generation ‘in living memory’

[3] The State of Democracy

[4] One in five Britons aged 18-45 prefer unelected leaders to democracy, poll finds | Voter apathy | The Guardian