Citizens / Consumerism / Digital Democracy / Individuality / Leadership / Manifesto for Change / Politics / Trust / Wellbeing
Who Leads The State? (Part One)
The State has fallen from fashion and from grace. For many, it now encapsulates everything that is wrong in life: pointless bureaucracy; nannying interference; needless cost. The social democrats among us – too many falsely seduced by the Reagan/ Thatcher legacy – have failed to persuade, while market fundamentalists have filled the intellectual vacuum by...
Citizens / Digital Democracy / Individuality / Leadership / Manifesto for Change / New Economics / Politics / Trust / Wellbeing
The Indecency of Power
Plato famously believed that philosophers should rule. Aristotle argued that the political class must be led by ‘men of virtue’. They both had a point. “Much of what is amiss in our world”, as Judt commented, “can best be captured in the language of classical political thought”. In today’s city states, nation states and business...
Bright Ideas: On Creative Spaces, the Citizen State & Sex as Science Fact
Three short, ‘Bright Ideas’, as featured in today’s eI Individual Digest. These are thoughts collected amid the peaceful beauty of Aldeburgh, Thorpeness and Snape – home to Names Not Numbers 2013, a symposium created by @juliahobsbawm and dedicated to discusing the role of individuality in a mass age. Also billed as “like Davos, but with...
Citizens / Consumerism / Digital Democracy / Individuality / Leadership / Manifesto for Change / New Economics / Politics / Trust
World Gone Wrong
“The idea is essentially repulsive, of a society held together only by the relations and feelings arising out of pecuniary interest” John Stuart Mill As though scripted for a 1970s dystopian SciFi fantasy, society has landed in the wrong place and is apparently marooned here. Our people and our planet are not at ease with...
Only greed can save us?
I just read a tweet by someone who follows me on Twitter, via Solitaire Townsend, on a piece by New Scientist’s environment correspondent Fred Pearce which suggests that greed will save us from the impending perfect storm.
Big Society through the crystal ball
Great Edelman event this week all about the Big Society. Nick Hurd MP explained his view of what Big Society actually means. Peter Oborne journo'ed it out with Kevin Maguire while the other two panellists - Greenpeace's John Sauven and London 2012 Chair John Armitt CBE - both provided interesting perspectives.
A cross between Pol Pot and Attila the Hun, or more Mother Theresa?
I suspect if you plotted Pol Pot onto the third (International) map here on this Political Compass page he would come somewhere near the top left hand corner. It’s not really clear where Attila the Hun would fit. He was maybe just a fairly average type of blood-thirsty warrior King of his time. I guess...
Citizens / Climate change / Communications / Individuality / Leadership / New Economics / Trust / Wellbeing
Inverting The Power Pyramid
Preparing some notes for a panel session at next week’s CBI forum on Climate Change, I am struck by how top-down the world still really is and suddenly alarmed that I remain in a narrow minority of those wishing and willing to embrace bottom-up democracy and ride the chaos of new networks. The CBI intro...
Debunking the Tragedy of the Commons
One of the final myths holding us back from a much needed updating of corporate-consumer-growth-capitalism has now been debunked with Professor Elinor Ostrom becoming the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Ostrom’s work won the prize for the way it debunks The Tragedy of the Commons which has long been used as...
