Politics, Psychology and Physics
Or what it means to be living in the real world.
The politics and psychology of climate response
In Climate Change, Psychology Often Gets Lost in Translation
https://psmag.com/in-climate-change-psychology-often-gets-lost-in-translation-ca4f9d0bc7f9#.mq54ags0c
Why are we not responding more actively and effectively to one of the greatest threats facing life on the planet today?
‘It’s now become acceptable to acknowledge that climate change is, in fact, not only a scientific, political, economic, technical, and industrial issue, but also a deeply psychological one. To reckon with this “super-wicked problem” effectively, there is a growing awareness that we cannot ignore the underlying psychological dimensions that inform engagement, innovation, and political response.’
Praise be! I’ve been arguing it for years.
There is ‘a growing movement to translate and bridge research findings with on-the-ground applications in policy, advocacy, and communities of practice. We need this kind of connection between research and practice, without question. However, we must ask: What about additional — and arguably critical — psychological insights that may be lost in translation?’
‘Perhaps we have trouble grasping the abstract nature of climate change because it’s too scary to contemplate, unless there’s a sense of a solution. Perhaps we need to not shy away from the potential losses relating to climate change, but to find skillful ways of acknowledging loss while turning our sights to the enormous opportunities we have for an even better life if we act accordingly. Perhaps, rather than focusing on only the cognitive challenges, we can come up with innovative ways of measuring the experience of climate change that include conflicts and dilemmas that can make it hard to respond, so we can capably support, facilitate, and enable collective forms of engagement. Then we’d really be on to something big.’
Now then, what could these collective forms of engagement be? What kind of collaborative forms of self-expression and mediation can we develop to control the collective forces we have unleashed? That’s work for politics and economics. Here I am focusing on psychology.
Psychology is central to climate communication and climate action. We have a wealth of information. We also have the technological capacity to address climate change in an attempt to prevent the worst from happening. We have a wealth of means. But these are misapplied and misdirected through deficient worldviews. When a way of life which is familiar, and which yields certain immediate benefits, is in jeopardy, cognitive dissonance can kick in. Many people who can accept the science on climate change as a rational proposition will become sceptical and refuse to act when they see the practical implications, the changes for the long run that may involve sacrifices of short term interests.
In my work, I argue for an environmental ethic which gives us a positive and hopeful vision of the future, a future that is within our intellectual and institutional and technical reach, and which functions as a future object of our willing and acting. Such a vision interests, influences, inspire and, crucially, obligates people, bringing them together, creating enduring commitments and solidarities as they act to realise their ideals.
So I look at the psychology of this, I look at the ethics of it, I emphasise the creation of the right character traits, the social relations that bring people together, virtues as the qualities and the habits for successful living, setting it all within an ideal of the future society as one that combines social justice and ecological health.
I take this to be a building project. ‘You have many habits that weaken you. The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’
The more I come to know Katharine Hayhoe, the more my respect and admiration for her work grows. ‘I take this as encouragement: to be a doer of what I really believe in, not a hater of those who don't.’
We need dialogue on this planet, we need to work for common agreement, achieve as much consensus as is possible to build support for climate action. That's not easy in a social system that seems designed to fail in the way it divides us according social class and interest, ensuring that individual/particular rationality and freedom generates a collective irrationality and unfreedom. In rejecting the common solutions and collective actions we need, we some people need to take a good, hard look at themselves, and see the greedy hand of politics, half-truths, patent falsehoods, scarcely reasoned nihilisms, stereotypical thinking, caricaturing, straw men and vested interests at work. I am pretty tired now of seeing religion rationalising some vicious and nasty politics. "Don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says." There can be an idolatry of words as much as an idolatry of things, paying lip service to beliefs but not practising them, doing the opposite even. ‘To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.’ (Mahatma Gandhi.)
It is easy to love our family and friends. How we relate to others beyond our immediate loyalties matters too. Those abusing Katharine Hayhoe here are motivated by reasons other than religion. To God, there is no 'other'. Of course, collective arrangements for the common good are concerned to marginalise and eliminate free riders, aiming directly at that handful of polluters and emitters who are throwing away our future. We put an end to this 'something for nothing' economy, or it will see the end of us.
Texas Tech’s Katharine Hayhoe is one of the most respected experts on global warming in the country. She’s also an evangelical Christian who is trying to connect with the very people who most doubt her research. Too bad the temperature keeps rising.
“The poor, the disenfranchised, those already living on the edge, and those who contributed least to this problem are also those at greatest risk to be harmed by it. That’s not a scientific issue; that’s a moral issue.”
I'm checking my enthusiasms for now, they are getting me into too many arguments. And I'm pushed for time.
So, for now, I shall just say, in the most restrained of tones: GO KATHARINE GO!!!
See more at: http://www.texasmonthly.com/…/katharine-hayhoe-lubbock-cl…/…
It's the approach I take.
‘I care about climate change for two reasons. I care about the world my daughter grows up in. And I care about the same things that the God I believe in cares about - the plight of the poor and vulnerable.’
This is why John Cook founded Skeptical Science, the best resource on the internet for solid, science-based information on climate change. Not to be right, not to argue: but to fulfill his responsibility to his family and his faith.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-I-care-about-climate-ch…
And here's what I mean by the 'something for nothing' economy - the exploiters, extractors and emitters who are closing the door on the future for their own private gain.
Anna Kalinsky, Granddaughter of EXXON scientist, confronts EXXON CEO Tillerson over their climate lies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUybdNcpmbI
Climate Change: April 2016 Hottest on Record, By Largest Margin Ever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e08CUFtxpTc
Highlighting the truth, exposing the lies, working with the willing, and pushing past the haters. This is the big cause of our times, the big challenge for our generation.
For the common good. I'm with the scientists, NASA, the National Academy, the Royal Society etc etc on this. I'm with The Greens on this. I'm with the Pope on this.
And I'm with Herman Daly on this. It's an old book now, but still worth reading.
For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future by Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb, Jr.
For the Common Good outlines a new economics based upon community as an alternative to capitalism and socialism.
http://www.ecobooks.com/books/comgood.htm
'The book is a profound critique of conventional theories and policies and the authors offer an alternative approach that considers a wide variety of consequences and priorities, such as the needs of communities and the environment. One of the key ideas they advocate is creating smaller economies that are built around communities and are scaled to need, rather than a central economy that has far-reaching, and often negative, implications for other regions.
The authors focus strongly on the importance of stewardship and placing other needs before that of growth, giving some policy suggestions that are controversial and can certainly spark debate. These include placing taxes on industrial polluters, businesses creating partnerships with employees and creating an economy that is less reliant on imports.'
I like prefiguration strategies, focusing efforts not so much with struggling with the old order but on building the new. There is a great danger of getting drawn into the swamp world of politics, this destructive cycle of claim and counter-claim that gets us precisely nowhere, just keeps us playing the same game. I can't say that I am a huge fan of Buckminster Fuller (an 'interminable tape recorder of the future' is how Lewis Mumford described him), but I do like this quote from him: ‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’ I think that's the right focus. Bad systems, like bad theories, hang around until they are replaced with something better.
This is what I like about C&C and the GCI, Climate Truth and Reconciliation, a justice without retribution, and an informed and scientifically literate argument that establishes the basis for the common agreement we need.
http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings.html
I am forever working these issues over, the idea that there is such a thing as ‘the real world’, truth – and how we bridge that gap between scientific knowledge, technological know-how, policies, motivations, actions. That’s the transition from field of theoretical reason to the field of practical reason, and I’d throw economics in with ethics and politics in that field. How can we, in our institutions, laws and practices, relate factual truth to evaluative judgement? Scientific truth is not a matter of negotiation, agreement and consensus … but as social beings living in a political world, dialogue is key in generating support and commitment, working with the motivational economy and changing socially structured patterns of behaviour to ensure that human beings act appropriately, in accordance with ecological constraints/planetary boundaries.
I’m having an absolutely horrible time trying to write this book of mine, Being and Place. I’m just drowning in materials, can hardly start let alone finish. I’m seeking to crack the key problem of politics: how to reconcile the one and the many, identify arrangements and relations so that individual/particular interest/good/action in the short run coincide with the common good in the long. There’s a whole lot of questions involved in that, but the ‘bottom-line’ is how we can constitute a comprehensive (institutional and ethical) framework that facilitates concerted action, what kind of social identity is needed to ensure individual and social good coincide, as against the current identity in which individual action for a long range collective good entails a sacrifice considered irrational (the reasoning is symmetrical, so each individual chooses as a rational self-maximising being and brings about a collective irrationality, what economists call externalities, let’s call it climate change and global warming, a collective unintended consequence of uncoordinated human actions). We are effectively having to re-orient the entire social metabolic order, change economic purposes and arrangements. Somehow … I need to simplify, cut to the chase, identify the spinal thread and keep hold of it. Just throw out endless commenting on other works, avoid side-debates, avoid expressing opinion, dreary moralising, etc etc. I’m going to read over my notes again, and this time highlight the essentials. The world doesn’t want a war of the footnotes.
Aubrey Meyer gave me this wonderful tale and quote:
‘50 years ago an old mystic said to me at my wedding (I was 20), "Aubrey between you and reality lies a great pile of books." (He then went on to say, in a man's life there are three things: his birth, his marriage, and his death, and for Aubrey that leaves one of them.’
You say, "I’m after cracking the key question of politics, how to reconcile the one and the many, identify arrangements and relations so that individual/particular interest/good/action in the short run coincide with the common good in the long."
I do see your struggle and agree with so much of what you are saying and the rightness of the questions you are raising. Yes, answers need to be short and clear, hopefully to become key to unlocking the destructive trends in which we are increasingly caught.’
Aubrey offered this:
‘An intelligent-design person wrote to me recently about this (perhaps esoteric) 'GCI memo': -http://www.gci.org.uk/Documents/Mayer_Penrose_Memo.pdf saying: - ‘All this argues for intelligent design, and as you point out, is agnostic about who the designer might be. This is the point of our work. We see evidence of design as revealed by science, independent of any theology.
However we would not go so far as to call it a causeless causality. In our uniform and repeated experience, such integrated and elegant design only comes from mind.’
He wrote back:
‘In a fundamental sense, 'music' is completely abstract. Is it the performance? Is it the score? Is it just the seminal idea (mind)?
Stringularity' is 2*3=3*2, which are perfectly commutative parts of 'one'. Within this cause & effect are reversible; so a 'source-code for a 'three in one 'trinity of wholeness' perhaps.
That 'fundamental sense' is - rather than comes from - 'mind'. Words are baggage-laden and clumsy, but that is all that is intended by the words 'Causeless-Cause'.
So not so much where does it come from, as what is 'it'.
What we now call the 'Pythagorean Comma' comes 'deterministically' from this - let's call it 'fact' - to the irrational but 'perfect' 'Golden Section', as follows:
http://www.gci.org.uk/images/PCGS.png As 'feedback', this 'Stringularity Phi' relationship is 'self-referentially fixed'. This simply means that cause and effect are interchangeable, the path and its integral are known, so at this scale, effectively you can say design and designer are 'one'.
From there, all the 'beautiful', 'flexible', 'versatile', 'intelligent' yet not-entirely-deterministic design-diversity of the creation we humans latterly inhabit is a function of that 'Stringularity Phi' relationship remaining true in any space/time-scale in what we experience as an interplay of choice and goal-focus, wonder, failure & success.
That lovely video you sent is an expression of that.
https://vimeo.com/9953368
As harpist, violinist, musician, as sentient beings we instinctively know all this every time we practice/play, otherwise music couldn't exist, and we wouldn't be here at all, let alone able to play.
So as I see it, mind is timeless and embedded within mind is a source-code - i.e. not just a theory - of everything.
By comparison, while I see creationist/evolutionist disintegration as a false and destructive dichotomy, I see intelligent-design as an integrationist understanding that inter-alia seeks to reduce that falsity.
That is good.
With kind regards
Aubrey Meyer
Wonderful words. In the old realist vs nominalist debate, I am a realist. There is a real world beyond our words, concepts and means of intellectual apprehension. In Being and Place, I have a foundational chapter called Philosophical and Methodological Foundations which looks at this ‘real world’. I have it under the subheading of ‘the rational universe’, going back to that Pythagorean-Platonic tradition. I am digging away into this whole area of 'the rational universe'. Sometimes I think I should dispense with the chapter on philosophical and methodological foundations - I am sure readers will be turned off and stop reading (at least that's what publishers say, they don't want 'academic' books and theses - and go straight into what people tell me are the 'solutions'. But we have no shortage of those books and those 'solutions'. It's why they keep falling short and misfiring that is the issue. In truth, this question of 'the real world' is indeed seminal. The rest follows from here.
‘In fact strongly agree with that Peter.’ (Aubrey Meyer).
I tread nervously in this area, because I have friends who believe in God and friends who are Atheists, yet seem to be united in the view that our Earthly home is precious and should be preserved. I strive to bring the sides together. By seeing and avoiding false dichotomies, as indicated above.
I strongly believe that right relationships are key. I am striving to bring the worlds of fact and value together. They parted company at some point in our history (Weber's 'disenchantment of the world' is good on explaining this with reference to modernity), and we have been struggling since. Einstein once said that the world has a perfection of means but a confusion of ends. This, for me, is the problem, explaining why our technics continue to misfire. Knowledge and know-how give us the ability to act, but not the will or the motivation in themselves. So I strive for an argument that bridges the gap between theoretical reason and practical reason (ethics, politics and I'd say economics as our practical interchange with nature). As far as I'm concerned, the science on climate change is now clear, the scientists have done a fantastic job here. I am trying to get to the next stage, though, that of the psychology and politics of human collective action, the motivational economy. That's the world of values. We've been slow here, there is a psychological and institutional inertia that we need to subvert. The enlightenment model of simply presenting facts and evidence alone will not suffice.
‘Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.’
― Henri Bergson
But back to the common good, and the idea of Contraction and Convergence. Here is the Asian Development Bank on C&C.
‘It has the advantages of simplicity & transparency & has the widest support base.’
Can we ask anything more of any political/institutional framework?
A couple of decades ago I was asked to make political philosophy sexy for students, get them interested, excited, arguing. It was a last minute thing, so I set up a completely false antithesis between ‘good government’ and ‘representative government’ to force students to choose – really get students arguments as to what these things entail. We got into popular sovereignty, consent (tacit and active, Locke and Rousseau), the principle of self-assumed obligation – people are only obligated by laws they have had a hand in making – and how this could be radicalised so that people owe allegiance to each other within right relationships rather than to abstract bodies, laws, entities. People have a right to be wrong if they choose. OK. But this isn’t satisfactory because, it seems, there really is a ‘real’ world whose truths need to be respected (I’m thinking planetary boundaries these days) and not a socially constructed world based on agreement alone, which means that there is a right way of doing things and there is a wrong way. The liberal framework which allows different platforms and is ‘neutral’ between competing conceptions of the good was discussed. I say ‘neutral’ because this presentation of the ideal polity is itself a version of the good life as far as I am concerned. Libertarianism and communitarianism, Rawls, Sandel, Walzer, Raz, Nozick, Taylor, MacIntyre, Arendt. Interesting stuff. And an exciting couple of hours.
Here’s my question now, can we have good government that is also representative/democratic? It’s Plato’s old question of whether democracy can be supplied with an inbuilt principle of self-limitation.
Is politics about truth, or is politics, as with Aristotle, judicious?
I'm recalling this article in the context:
‘Physics Doesn’t Negotiate. Notes on the dangerous difference between science and political science.’
https://medium.com/climate-desk/why-the-earth-is-heating-so-fast-267072ab2b49#.bxozs9ocr
‘But climate change isn’t like that. Balton — and Obama, and almost everyone else in power — makes the same simple-but-deadly category mistake. They think the relevant negotiation is between the people who want to drill and the people who don’t. But actually, this negotiation is between People and physics. And therefore it’s not really a negotiation.’
So what is truth? What is 'the real world'?
If politics is the art of the possible, what are the parameters of the possible? What is possible in the political world may well be impossible in the real world.
A philosopher I studied in depth is Immanuel Kant. He repays careful consideration. Kant did not regard the free will of the moral agent as being irrelevant to politics. His argument that 'a true system of politics' must pay 'tribute to morality' (PP 1991:125) presses against the boundary separating the political from the moral, overcoming the distinction between the politically possible and the morally right (Riley 1982). Right .. 'ought never to be adapted to politics, but politics ought always to be adapted to right' (in Reiss ed 1991:21). Thus Kant affirms that there can be no conflict of politics, as a practical doctrine of right, with ethics, as a theoretical doctrine of right: 'all politics must bend the knee before right' (PP 1991:125).
Now we can say that "all politics must bend the knee before climate realities". So how do we bring the worlds of theoretical and practical reason together, build the bridges between scientific knowledge, technical know-how, motivations, value and will? That would be to constitute good government through common consent.
I remember this quote from Pope Benedict. ‘It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.’
But is the aim of reaching common agreement the ‘above all’. We may sink our differences, draw a line in the middle of our stated positions, and come to agreement. That may work in the political world. But the political world is set within the physical world.
‘The point is, we’ve got to stop pretending. The idea that you’re doing the right thing when you meet in the middle is, in this case, a dangerous delusion. It’s as if King Solomon had really wanted to cut the baby in half; some things simply can’t be split down the middle.
Which is why the rest of us need to join the scientists.’
Truth matters. But human beings are not just natural beings, they are social beings, they exist in association with each other. We live in a political world. How do we come to recognise truth, act on it, come together on its basis.
It I had to sum up the ideal polity, I could do no better than
a) Simplicity;
b) Transparency;
c) Popular consent.
The words of Nicholas Stern are also worth quoting:
‘The challenge is to produce an effective, efficient and equitable set of principles and policies to guide both national action and a global deal. If the global deal is not effective, we will be sentencing future generations to living in a very risky world; if it is not efficient, we will have wasted resources and possibly undermined support for action; and if it is not equitable, we will not only be treating poorer people unjustly, but we also risk damaging the international coalition for action which is vital for success.’
The inaction on climate change requires explanation in terms of political and psychological inertia. The two go together and in an electoral politics where opinion reigns in public and vested interests reign in private, political and psychological inertia reinforce each other. There is an inability to link actions to impacts, to see the problem and the challenge as it unfolds.
The difficulties of responding to a scientific knowledge focused on the long range within a political world geared to short term opinion are particularly acute with respect to climate science. As Stern writes, ‘climate change is a problem which arises from a build-up of greenhouse gases over time and the effects come through with long lags of several decades. If the world waits before taking the problem seriously, until Bangladesh, the Netherlands and Florida are under water, it will be too late to back ourselves out of a huge hole’ (Stern 2010 ch 1). The political predicament is this, effective action to deal with the environmental crisis in the long term is required at the level of public policy now, even though the real magnitude of the crisis will only start to become visible to politicians and people over a longer period of time. The ecological imperative is much more clear to those fixed on the science in the long run. It is not so strong to outweigh short term political and material considerations which normally drive public policy. To delay action until the environmental effects are real and tangible is to conduct policy making in the most inauspicious of circumstances, collapse of livelihoods, mass impoverishment, mass movements of people, increasing conflict between greater numbers over dwindling resources.
The problem is one of translating scientific knowledge into public policy. The science of climate change is of long standing and is well established; dealing with the policy implications is a recent phenomenon.
‘There is a pressing urgency to settle policy now; we must act according to what we already know. Postponing a global deal will put both policy and markets in a limbo that could be very destructive. Those making the crucial investments in energy-related and other industries will not have the clear signals necessary to make considered and responsible decisions. The relentless logic of the flow of emissions adding to the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will place us in an ever more difficult position. We cannot afford to wait until we know everything with certainty. Indeed, the pervasive uncertainty makes it imperative that we act now to reduce the risks of a planetary disaster’. (Stern 2010 ).
From people in their communities to members of the political system, there is plenty that could be done to manage the risks not only to resolve the environmental crisis but to unleash a new era of progress and prosperity. New technologies, new sources of energy, secure energy supplies form the basis of a sustainable growth which creates new opportunities for investment, employment, and industry. The current high-carbon economy struggles to deliver on its promise of growth in the short term; it cannot deliver growth over the medium and long term.
Since the environmental crisis is global in its origins and its impacts, it requires a global deal concluded at the supra-national level. Stern sets out the terms of this deal. ‘That global deal must be effective, in that it cuts back emissions on the scale required; it must be efficient, in keeping costs down; and it must be equitable in relation to abilities and responsibilities, taking into account both the origins and impact of climate change’ (Nicholas Stern, A Blueprint for a Safer Planet 2010 Vintage Books).
The problems of climate change derive from the economic dependence on hydrocarbons. The resolution of these problems requires substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions over a period of time. There needs to be climate change action plans, effective policy frameworks and evidence based policies at government level, investment in 'green energy', international agreement, coordination and cooperation and a profound shift in time scale and perspective.
We need a comprehensive framework which enables concerted action, canalising particular interests to the common good, and social relations that create social identities and patterns of behaviour that connect the individual good and social good.
An Evolution of ideas and a Revolution in society are and will be required.
Ecological restoration is a restorying. Human beings are not just ‘tool making animals’, they are symbol makers, homo symbolicus. We are story-making animals. We live by stories. And with the wrong story, we may die.
‘In 2013, one of the world’s leading public relations experts, Bob Pickard, cried out to the climate world: “mobilise us!” In a frustrated op-ed, he listed 20 key problems with climate communication. One of them was “story fatigue”: bland stories with “highly repetitive and stale” themes.’
We should be doing more than just inform the public when it comes to climate communication; we should be looking to engage, influence and inspire so as to get people acting, changing their behaviour. This has proven to be the big obstacle when it comes to building an appropriate and effective response to scientific knowledge with regard to the crisis in the climate system. My work specifically targets the motivational economy of human beings, treating the environmental crisis with a moral and psychological depth. More and more research on this is now highlighting the need to go beyond an enlightenment model which simply seeks to inform and educate the public, and instead engages with their ‘deep frames’ – the beliefs, habits, behaviours formed over a lifetime. Much of this exists at a subconscious level, as part of a person’s character and social identity. To simply address climate communication to the conscious level in terms of reason, logic, fact and evidence will be to miss the very things in the unconscious that induce human beings to act.
‘My research paper, recently published in WIRES Climate Change draws upon cognitive science, evolutionary psychology and philosophy, among other fields, to explore the emerging idea that global warming exceeds modern humans’ cognitive and sensory abilities.
To overcome this impasse, climate communication needs to engage people at a philosophical, sensory and feeling level. People need to be able to feel and touch the new climate reality; to explore unfamiliar emotional terrain and be helped to conceive their existence differently.’
‘It’s fine (and fun for some) to talk about future technologies, planned future mega-cities, energy systems, transportation systems, water producing systems and the like, when contemplating transitioning to the RBE. But if you’re really wanting the RBE to become your reality, you’re going to have to start focusing on changing people.
Technology is not going to make the transition happen. Psychological change within a critical mass of humanity will.’
I'd add, it's not an either/or, but this is interesting in light of the above.
How do we reclaim the common ground and come to constitute the common good?
Worth reading is David Brooks’ The Fragmented Society, which is a review of Yuval Levin’s new book, ‘The Fractured Republic.’
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/opinion/the-fragmented-society.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1
We have moved to an age of decentralization and fragmentation, breaking down the left’s commitment to economic equality and the right’s values of cultural cohesion.
‘In case after case we’ve replaced attachments to large established institutions with commitments to looser and more flexible networks. Levin argues that the Internet did not cause this shift but embodies today’s individualistic, diffuse society.’
We are less embedded in tight, soul-forming institutions. Yet we need to avoid the nostalgic frame. ‘Our fundamental problems are the downsides of transitions we have made for good reasons: to enjoy more flexibility, creativity and individual choice.’
‘Levin says the answer is not to dwell in confusing, frustrating nostalgia. It’s through a big push toward subsidiarity, devolving choice and power down to the local face-to-face community level, and thus avoiding the excesses both of rigid centralization and alienating individualism. A society of empowered local neighborhood organizations is a learning society. Experiments happen and information about how to solve problems flows from the bottom up.
I’m acknowledged in the book, but I learned something new on every page. Nonetheless, I’d say Levin’s emphasis on subsidiarity and local community is important but insufficient. We live within a golden chain, connecting self, family, village, nation and world. The bonds of that chain have to be repaired at every point, not just the local one.’
An ecological self-socialisation from below within a comprehensive framework that enables and encourages concerted action from above ...
Such is my view.