21st century enlightenment – a new plan
I had some stunning comments on my last post on 21st century enlightenment (thank you!). A number of people suggested I needed to set out the structure of the argument (and why I am making it) more fully. I have done this below:
1. 21CE is the new mission for the RSA. Explain what I mean by this. Show this a powerful way of understanding the progressive challenge. Define the broad terrain for our work and the challenge for the Society as an institution
2. Original enlightenment was a shift in ways of thinking about who we are and the world in which we live. Describe key elements of this with particular reference to ways of thinking
3. Why might we now need a similar shift in consciousness now? Four reasons ?: a) Climate change, finite natural resources, protecting the environment. b) Global interdependence. c) Lack of well-being, fulfilment and social inclusion in rich world esp UK. d) Pace of complexity and change
4. Another way of thinking about this is the great transition between the world human beings lived in throughout their evolution and the accelerating change that has transformed the developed world since the enlightenment.
• From small, homogeneous closed communities to mass, open diverse communities
• (In the rich world) from scarcity and subsistence to plenty
• From deferential, slowly changing, bounded-information cultures to reflexive, always changing, information-overloaded cultures
5. In each transition we can see the signs of dislocation but also imagine a new
way of thinking
• From conflict about nationalism, religion and identity to the emergence of a global civil society
• From individualism, consumerism and inequality to a focus on well-being and the good society
• From trying to make the world fit the ‘traditional’ world view relied on by most people to enabling the majority to reach what Robert Kegan calls a ‘modern’ world view.
6. Are there already concrete signs of the emergence of new ways of thinking, fragments of a 21st century enlightenment?
• Just as new technology was crucial to the first enlightenment – especially the mass production of books (ref Benedict Anderson) so the internet is vital to this. It is crucial to get behind the hype and try to understand the real and possible impact of the internet of the way we think and live (ref Morozov)
• Growing debate about redefining progress (ref Sarkozy Commission)
• Public awareness of science of brains and human behaviour leading to new models of human functioning (esp social brain)
• Focus in many countries on the importance of the early years in fostering capacity for ‘self authorship’ and empathy
• Work of inter-faith groups in acknowledging the importance of the sacred and the ‘golden rule’ at the heart of all religious belief (ref Armstrong)
• The growth of downsizing and social enterprise as people seek to bring their work and life into alignment with their values
• Growing interest in ethics as the essential core of organisational mission (why it is more effective than regulation)
• Focus on capabilities approach to education and social rights
7. Finally, crucial to the enlightenment was the emergence of new institutions (as it was to the American ‘gilded age – ref Putnam). The RSA was one of those institutions now it needs to be a 21st CE institution. Explain what this means for how we work.
Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #21CE
21st century enlightenment – a nervous toe in the water
Despite my earlier enthusiasm and the supportive comments I have received, blog posts about 21st century enlightenment haven’t exactly been flowing from my keyboard. I have fallen into the predictable undergraduate trap of reading too much too indiscriminately.
In part I blame you, dear readers. On the basis of your (and other) recommendations I have on my desk the 600 pages of Iain McGilchrist’s ‘The Master and his Emissary: the divided brain and the making of the Western world’ and the 300 of Robert Kegan’s ‘The Evolving Self’. I have worked out that if I read these along with the historical tomes by Jonathan Israel then I will just about have finished reading by the time I have to deliver the final version of my 21CE pamphlet. No wonder I am feeling even more anxious and inadequate than usual.
I need to get to a hypothesis for the first part of my speech. This is where I examine the idea of a shift in consciousness in which the enlightenment played the crucial role. The enlightenment was not a single cohesive movement nor did it have a simple start and finish. Many of the ideas associated with the enlightenment can be found somewhere in the philosophy of the ancients or being prefigured in the renaissance or reformation. Even as enlightenment thinking was provoking reaction and counter reaction in coffee houses, church pulpits, and royal societies, it was hardly touching the lives of the overwhelming majority of the rural and just emerging industrial working class. As Israel has shown, the enlightenment itself was riven by conflict between its establishment and radical variants. As for the completion of the enlightenment project, it could be said we are still waiting. To steal Ghandi’s joke: ‘what do you think of Western enlightenment?’ answer ‘it would be a very good idea’.
Yet despite these provisos, it is possible to identify the core ideas which were together the building blocks of enlightenment thought. Tzvetan Todorov offers three: autonomy, the human end purpose of our acts and universality. These are powerful ideas but they don’t exactly represent what I mean by consciousness. I am interested not just in the ideas to which people may have ascribed but the way they thought about themselves and their place in the world. In this regard I would like to suggest some ways that we tend to think now which became dominant over the course of the enlightenment.
First, we became more likely to see ourselves as part of a mass society, that is to say that we shared something important with a mass of other people even though we will never meet them. The core unit for mass society was the nation state and a key issue for enlightenment thinkers – and a key division between them – was what membership of this unit should entail. Thus the ideas of society as a phenomenon, the nation as a unit and the citizen as a political category come together.
Second, that while we are members of a nation who share common responsibilities and (to some extent) rights we are all also individuals whose life involves an unfolding personal (inner) narrative as well as the destiny which flows from our place in society and history.
Third, we get to assume that progress from the past to the future is the natural flow of human affairs and that progress should be measured in human terms (this is what Todorov means by ‘the human end purpose of our acts’). That society should progress and, that we ourselves should progress, comes not only to be seen as natural but the ability to achieve progress is how we should judge ourselves, our bosses and our leaders.
Fourth, we see the route to progress lying fundamentally in the discovery and application of knowledge derived from reasoned inquiry. We think of a world can be explained by discovering its rules in ever more detail, not simply accepting the rules handed down by gods or monarchs.
I am sure there are problems with this list and I need to look out in my reading for more vivid ways of capturing the change in the way we think. Any help gratefully received.
Looking ahead to the next stage of the argument, can we use this list to suggest ways in which 21st century consciousness might need to evolve? In very broad terms:
First, that the thing that we belong to is no longer the nation state but the world and that by this we also mean the biosphere.
Second, that we should understand that the voice in our heads that we call ourselves is only a part of who we are and that the best way to unleash the amazing power of conscious thought is not to exaggerate its power but to see the part it plays in the whole system governing our character and actions.
Third, that we must think very hard about what progress now entails especially for those of us fortunate enough to be in the rich parts of the world.
Fourth, that in many parts of our lives and in many parts of our complex world there are no laws or rules that can predict the future or tell us what to do. Instead we must be willing to rely more on ethics, intuitions and trusting relationships to guide us.
After exploring all these thoughts a great deal more the final part of the speech will explore aspects of today’s world which seem to me to be significant in pointing the way towards a 21CE
Oh dear, just writing this exhausts me. I haven’t the heart even to read it back in case it’s such nonsense it ruins my enjoyment of Crystal Palace versus West Brom tonight (a man must have his pleasures). I would love some comments – but please be gentle.
By the time you’re reading this I already look a fool
Three bad ideas: One, comment on the General Election on my blog (please don’t report me to the Charity Commissioners!). Two, make a public prediction just before it can be shown to be completely wrong. Three, have confidence in Gordon Brown.
In for a penny, in for £30. I’ve just bet three tenners that Gordon Brown will win the debate starting in 45 minutes. I couldn’t resist the odds of 11 to 1 (in a three horse race you wouldn’t get such odds if one horse was missing a leg).
Here is my deranged prediction in full
Nick Clegg won’t live up to debate one and will look a bit flaky on defence and Europe
David Cameron will do better but will also look like he is moving to the right and being a bit too aggressive on helicopters and Europe and debt
Gordon Brown will finally manage to seem a bit statesmanlike, winning the first half of the debate by gently explaining the realities of foreign policy and using the second half to get back to his favoured ground of the economy
So, assuming you are reading this after the debate, on a 1 to 10 rating where 1 is a genius and 10 is an imbecile how big a fool have I made of myself?
The power of thinking about thinking
Thinking about thinking appears to have special qualities. Reading Sue Gerhardt’s book ‘The Selfish Society’ (she is speaking at the RSA tomorrow) I am struck by the importance in child development of what Peter Fonagy calls learning to ‘mentalise’ – in other words to understand others’ behaviour in terms of their emotions and ways of thinking.
In turn Elizabeth Meins from Durham University has research suggesting that if parents talk to babies about their (the baby’s) feelings this seems to accelerate the development of empathy. Connecting to how we feel and think helps us to understand that other people also feel and think.
As part of our social brain project we have are testing out a set of simple rules of thumb about cognition with various public sector professionals. Although the evidence is at this stage only suggestive it does indicate that people find the process of thinking about thinking stimulating and powerful.
There is also evidence (sorry, too little time to check the source) that children’s learning is enhanced when they spend time thinking about how their brain learns.
There are various ways we might explain the power of thinking about thinking.
The prosaic explanation is simply that it is inherently interesting, in the way that, say, discussing the origins of the universe might be
A psychological explanation would be that thinking about thinking doesn’t just provide us with information but it encourages a deeper more powerful type of introspection. This, I guess, is the idea of ‘mindfulness’, as the practice of meditation is now often called.
I am also interested in the neurological processes. What is it that happens when the networks of our brain that are thinking reflect back on themselves? Is it something akin to what happens when we stand between two large mirrors and our image rebounds into the distance? When we think about thinking do our brainwaves (excuse the shorthand) rebound generating more neural connections than occur when we simply think about something outside us?
I realise that there is a wealth of literature on this topic, although I’m not sure I’ve seen anything on the neuroscience of thinking about thinking. This is an idea that Matt Grist is exploring in his latest RSA social brain pamphlet so I’m sure he – like me – will be interested in any comments.
Can political parties deliver the big society?
Last July, here at the RSA, I spoke at a conference to discuss Conservative Social Action. This is an initiative to encourage Tory MPs and parliamentary candidates to establish social action projects – charities or social enterprises – in their constituencies.
At the conference and in various written pieces I applauded the initiative. For years I tried without success to get Labour leaders and officials to see that the change model of political parties was bust. Young people in particular weren’t interested in the idea that change came only from electing people to make decisions on their behalf. Instead, I argued, local political parties needed to be change agents themselves, making things happen in their own communities which symbolised the kind of progress they wanted to make in the council or at Westminster. It was a poignant for me to see an idea I had failed to get established in my own party being taken up by the Tories.
So it was sobering to read this piece in the Times on Saturday. It’s not for me to comment on the individuals named in the article, but the fact that Conservative Central Office could apparently only cite five projects out of the 150 claimed doesn’t sound good.
If it is true that the Conservatives’ hopes for a different type of political activism haven’t been fulfilled, what does this tell us? Perhaps the Conservatives have just been guilty of over-selling what can be achieved in a couple of years. With a General Election in the offing the social action projects may have been relegated in importance. The question then is whether the Tories will continue to push the idea after May 6th.
A more depressing conclusion would be that the ethos and image of political parties is simply not reconcilable with that of grassroots charitable endeavour. Maybe my colleagues in the Labour Party were right to ignore my call for a new model. Against this pessimism, I know several MPs of various parties who have played an important role in establishing and developing local third sector activities.
As long as our democracy relies on political parties it is in all our interests that they are reasonably strong organisations which attract talented and energetic people. This will only happen if they are organisations that make change happen, not simply ones that tell us to vote for other people to make decisions.
Perhaps after the election we can invite the Conservative social action team back and ask them what lessons they have learnt from the faltering attempt to make their party symbolise David Cameron’s big society.
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