The Home of Shehaios

Last Christmas, I was given a book with the snappy title, ‘The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous’. The author, Joseph Henrich, is an anthropologist and chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. In the book, he argues that WEIRD people – Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic – have a civilisation like no other. It is individualistic and monogamous, as opposed to the overwhelming majority of human civilisations which place prime value not on the individual but on the status and prosperity of the kinship group (tribe, clan, call it what you will).

While there are many positives in such traditional societies – stability, long-term vision, respect for ancestors – the trade off is the lack of individual rights. There is no real concept of individual rights. Individuals are born into a role within the group, defined by their gender and by who their parents are. Romantic love, the whole idea that individuals can choose for themselves who to mate with, is an aspect of individualism. In most human societies, the choice is made for them. High status men typically take multiple wives, and women aspire to bear the children of high status men. WEIRD people (like me and you) think that is abhorrent. We have developed a totally different sense of moral value founded on the concept of individual rights.

The book looks at how this WEIRD mentality has developed over the last 2000 years or so, and how it affected the way European civilisation developed – particularly in relation to trade. It looks at the relationship to religious beliefs (the one, of course, begets the other) and the huge influence of literacy on human psychological development. (The very act of learning to read the written word, it turns out, actually changes the way the brain perceives and processes information.) It’s a fascinatingly different take on European history that goes to the psychological root of why Europeans created empires that spanned the globe – and all the misery, oppression and dislocation that goes with that imperialism.

I was most of the way through this book when I came across the transcript of an interview with an Australian biologist, Jeremy Griffith, who claims to have identified a science-based theory for why humankind’s natural state is peaceful co-existance and mutual aid, and that aggressive competition for land and resources, far from being intrinsic in human nature, is unnatural. He cites the example of one of our closest animal relations, the bonobo, with whom we share 99% of the same DNA, and who live in social colonies distinguished by the tenderness and care individuals show for each other.

Bonobo zoo keeper Barbara Bell writes that ‘Adult bonobos demonstrate tremendous compassion for each other…For example, Kitty, the eldest female, is completely blind and hard of hearing. Sometimes she gets lost and confused. They’ll just pick her up and take her to where she needs to go’ (‘The Bonobo: “Newest” apes are teaching us about ourselves’, Chicago Tribune, 11 Jun. 1998). Primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh says, ‘Bonobo life is centered around the offspring. Unlike what happens among chimpanzees, all members of the bonobo social group help with infant care and share food with infants. If you are a bonobo infant, you can do no wrong…Bonobo females and their infants form the core of the group’

Griffith’s argument is that the aggressive and competitive traits in humanity arise from the conflict between this ‘natural’ state of unconscious harmony, and human consciousness which always wants to free itself from the constraints of inheritance and push against the boundaries of cultural conditioning – in other words, the questing human mind which rejects the constraints of a pre-ordained life in pursuit of individual freedom. He believes this continual inner turmoil is where all human psychosis, anger, fear, guilt and insecurity comes from – we are all continually trying to work out the meaning of life as individuals, not as part of a tribe where the individual’s purpose is to serve the needs of the tribe in pre-determined ways. Griffith therefore concludes that the conscious re-discovery of that pre-conscious (‘innocent’) state of peaceful and harmonious co-existance resolves the psychological conflict and heals the human psyche.

Randomly, I also came across a new word the other day. The ‘noosphere’ is “the sphere of human consciousness and mental activity especially in regard to its influence on the biosphere and in relation to evolution.” In practice, it means that people who have no apparent contact or connection to each other can come up with the same idea, invention or discovery at roughly the same time because the noosphere is right for that revelation to take place.

Working through in my imagination the conflict between the dream of the Fair Land existing in a war-torn, conflict-ridden, progress-obsessed human world governed by a patriarchal and individualistic god, I blundered blindly and unscientifically to the same conclusion as the anthropologists and biologists (as many others have done before and will continue to do). It may well be that the time is right now for us to discover our birthright – our capacity for peaceful co-existance. It seems to me that the ultimate stage of the search for individual meaning is the conscious re-discovery of how to live in harmony with each other and with the rest of the natural world – only in that state of harmony can the individual be truly free. We need to finally understand where we belong, and what made us.

It won’t happen overnight. But what I suspect we will see in the coming decades are more and more societies experimenting with peaceful co-operation, quite likely underpinned by concepts such as the doughnut economic model, or the Wellbeing framework. The governing structures, habits and mores of that culture will not be like those of our world today. The things people value and the traits they respect will be different. The interactions between different social groups will be different – the whole concept of ‘nationality’ is part and parcel of our dysfunctional conflict-ridden world, but the emotional connection people have to the land where they feel they belong, and the people they feel they belong with, is not.

Where I differ from Jeremy Griffith is that he sees a conscious return to some kind of Eden as an inevitable future for humanity. But it is not just DNA that makes us who we are. Humans are not bonobos. Bonobos walk upright, like humans; their young need a lot of nurturing, like humans. Unlike humans, they live in matriarchal groups, not patriarchal ones, which is why that nurturing of infants is central to their community life. Humans live in a global patriarchy where status and power are central to community life.

There are two forces I see at play in the world today – the awakening consciousness of a mass of individuals who are working with humanity’s key adaptation – the thinking, learning, problem-solving mind of each individual – to create a culture of peaceful co-existance and mutual aid. Ranged against them is the formidable force of the status quo which concentrates wealth in the hands of a few, and is aiming for the survival of just a few individuals on a world of drastically diminished resources. At the same time as some places and societies are experimenting with peaceful co-existance, we will see other places – and sadly Britain, or at least England, is almost certainly going to be one unless there is some kind of a revolution in its current political direction – where reactionary forces dominate. Resources will be increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, dominant elite; some will be dispensed to a corps of people who serve the needs and fancies of the elite. Anyone else who has the misfortune to share a geo-political location with these oligarchs doesn’t get a look in. There is no support, no concept of public welfare, no recognition of common wealth, no respect for the rights of the individual – no real ‘government’ as we understand it. The legacy of cultural conditioning comes to the fore, giving rise to a popular culture that suppresses individual choice and individual rights. It’s fertile ground for corruption, crime, misogyny, greed, short-termism and abusive and addictive behaviours of all kinds; all the evils of individualism flourish, and it is barren soil for the compassion and creativity that might challenge the elite. 

These reactive enclaves are by nature aggressive and expansionist. They focus on immediate gratification, and very little on long-term thinking. The ruling elite are uninterested in understanding cause and effect because they are completely unaccountable – they have no internal conscience, and there is no-one with the power to hold them to account. They foster over-consumption, so they will always have an eye on other peoples’ lands. They may drive out the peace-loving mutual-aiders, leave them no space to be. In which case, whatever human-like creatures continue to walk the Earth a few generations hence, they will not be the thinking, learning, adaptive, loving creatures we are capable of becoming but something other. Something less.

The New Testament – a text that has been hugely influential in the formation of WEIRD psychology – says that God is Love. In other words, love is what has made us the way we are, which is the basic concept of the scientific theory proposed by Jeremy Griffith (and the basis of the infant-centred bonobo culture). The New Testament also says the meek shall inherit the Earth. Let’s hope it’s right on this as well.

Humans are conscious animals, we evolve by conscious learning more than we evolve through genetic adaptation. If our environmental niche is co-operative social groups living within the resources available to them, then we cannot inhabit it living under a competitive global system that fosters wars and conflict, and all the over-consumption that comes with those conflicts. But survival is not compulsory. Humans have to make a conscious choice to return to their environmental niche – co-operative social groups living harmoniously within the resources available to them. If we humans are collectively incapable of learning our place, if we surrender our individual capacity for critical thinking and revert to the cultural habits of the kinship group where rebellion against the status quo is shameful, individuals have no rights and creative thinking is heavily constrained by what is acceptable to those of high status, we surrender our future to the reactionaries. These are the choices we are living with today. Which path do we each, individually, want to tread?

Below is an extract from my book, the Hills of Gold. It features Therro, the pirate, the highly individual, typical rags-to-riches WEIRD hero, talking about life in Shehaios, the Fair Land:

“The people [Shaihens] saw themselves as just a part of the place, they supported the life around them and it supported them. It all went on just exactly the same, day after day, working in between the spaces left by all the bloody ants and all the bloody ancestors. And no-one could govern the place without the consent of these people. That’s why the rate of change was so glacially slow. Every bloody peasant had to think about it for half a lifetime and study the ants before they could decide whether to accept it or not. Why they called it the Home of the Free I did not know. Every slave-driven bugger beyond the Gate working for a starvation wage was more free than the highest-born Shaihen, tied to his inheritance and fettered by his obligations.”

Later, the Magician of Shehaios confronts Therro with the choices facing him:

“You don’t want to be tied down by the things and people you love.” [says the Magician] “I get that. That’s why you’re my hero. [but it]…Looks to me like you’re facing a straight choice. You do a deal with the higher authority – and we both know who that is. Or you make your peace with Shehaios.”
“I don’t belong in Shehaios. Never did. Never will.”
“Bollocks. Of course you belong here. This is the land of the free.”
Therro gave a cynical grunt of laughter.
“And that’s the biggest joke of all. No-one in Shehaios is free.”
“By choice,” said [the Magician] looking him in the eye. “And that’s the difference, Therro. The only difference. Anyone can be a Shaihen if they choose to give their allegiance to the Fair Land.”

Jeremy Griffith: Breakthrough Biological Explanation of the Human Condition,
https://www.humancondition.com/

Joseph Henrich: The Weirdest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous. Pub. Penguin, widely available from booksellers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubKZ0IbX7Ic

S.A. Rule: Shaihen Heritage Series Book 5, The Hills of Gold www.shehaios.co.uk

Freedom is a philosophical concept that politicians and lay-people like myself would do well to tread warily around. Wild animals are not “free”, they are wild. They concern themselves with the basics of living – feeding, sleeping and reproducing.

When it comes down to it, most people would like the freedom to concern themselves mainly with these things, too. They certainly do not flourish in a society that denies them time to eat, time to rest and time to nurture relationships.

We must stop conflating freedom with privilege; privilege does not respect the freedoms of others. 

I believe what we generally mean when we talk about “freedom” is actually self-determination; agency over our own lives. The wealthy have an enormously privileged position in the world, and wealth gives you the security to explore your individual potential. To dream, to experiment, to create. To take risks, and act irresponsibly. 

But the security that allows individuals to do these things comes ultimately from belonging to a stable society, based on trust. Unstable societies breed insecurity, fear and hate. Destroy the trust, de-stabilise society, and you lose your freedom. All your wealth goes on security and defence against the hostile forces surrounding you. The un-governed engine runs out of control until it tears itself to pieces.

Self-determination, or ‘agency’, is recognised as a fundamental requisite for human wellbeing, but so too is a sense of belonging. We are not isolated individuals. We are social animals, who depend on each other. The security that gives individuals freedom of self-determination comes not from amassing wealth, but from nurturing a caring, compassionate society that respects the worth of each individual human being purely because they are a human being – not because of what they contribute to the economy.

Compassion is not a soft, optional extra; it is an essential survival trait. Unfortunately, it’s one the wealthiest sector of British society – the ones with a natural path into positions of power and authority – systemically undermine in their children by severing family links at an early age and placing their offspring in the care of educational institutions frequently modelled on militaristic lines. They are taught to base their sense of self-worth in an arrogant self-belief that they spend their lives striving to live up to. It makes them terrified of facing the truth. Of being found out. They have to live the lie. 

This concept of self-determination and belonging applies not only to our identity as individuals, but also to our collective identity; our nationality.

Both Brexit and Scottish Independence are arguments about the right to national self-determination; but while the SNP have embraced the global concept of Wellbeing as a unifying message to shape the Scottish identity, the Brexiteers have clung to worn-out, Imperialistic notions of national identity. Deluded by the myth of the ‘self-made man’ and the dangerous concept of national exceptionalism (the same myth that underpinned the Third Reich) they have gone down the road of isolationism. There is no future in isolationism; it is fed purely by a desperate desire to ringfence the status quo. The system that has got us into this mess in the first place.

The future of political decision-making needs to be localised, humanised, and optimised for survival on planet Earth. But the systemic social and environmental threats to our civilisation are global. We tackle them together, equitably, or we won’t tackle them at all. Survival is not compulsory.

I was challenged the other day to summarise the insights, in terms of re-shaping economics, that I gained from writing the Shaihen Heritage series. That’s quite an ask – but I gave it a go. The books are my own personal journey of learning and discovery, so I don’t claim any of what I have to say is new. But this is it.

The core insight I discovered is that the only reality is life and death and the natural cycles and systems that arise from mortality. Everything else – the concept of a ‘Fair Land’, or any other vision of how human beings interact with each other and the rest of life on Earth, arises from human imagination. It’s a story. It’s only reality derives from the fact that a sufficient number of people believe the same story that it has agency in human society. It is “true” because we behave as if it is “true”.

So “capitalism” is a story, and “communism” is a story. The whole body of economic theory is a collection of stories.

If economics were a science, the stories would be continually challenged by rival theories. We would be looking at what happens when those stories are enacted, and how closely aligned the lived experience is to the theory. We would be continually adjusting the theory in the light of new information. But once we drew battle lines between the rival camps of “left-wing politics” and “right-wing politics” that was never going to happen. Each side claimed ownership of the ‘truth’ and saw theories which disproved their own tenets as enemies to be shot down, suppressed or denied.

That’s not science. That’s religion. The ‘continual growth’ theory of capitalist economics and the rampant, nihilistic consumerism it drives has the same hold on human imagination as any other heirarchical religion which sets up groups of humans as interpreters of God’s will. It cannot be challenged. Criticism is blasphemy. Dissent is a punishable crime. If the lived experience does not fit the theory, those in power (which, in a democracy, can simply be the majority of ordinary people) would rather deny the lived experience than adjust the theory.

The first thing we need to do therefore is to make economics a science, rooted in reality. We need to define its aim – which I suggest is to create a system that enables human beings to survive, and live peaceably alongside each other (since we have the capability to destroy ourselves and the planet if we don’t live peaceably alongside each other.) The economic system we create to achieve that needs to continually be taking soundings against reality to adjust the theory so that it functions as a chaotically adaptive system able to work within the constraints of the chaotic adaptive system we call “life”. Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Model” captures this far more learnedly than I can.

However, to lose the stranglehold of consumer capitalism and make the human behaviour change necessary for the survival of life on Earth, we need to be telling ourselves different stories. We need to go back to the root of reality, and re-discover our spiritual connection to warp and weft of life and death.

The story I subscribe to is that every human being is a sovereign individual. But we can only realise our potential as sovereign individuals by acknowledging that we are part of the chaotic adaptive system of life on Earth. That is what should govern our actions. When our actions negatively impact others and the natural world around us, they negatively impact on us too. We feel it in our bodies. It creates anguish in our large brains, to which different personality types respond in various ways – arrogant and aggressive denial, helpless despair and cynicism, or a courageous resolve to remain true to reality and re-write the stories we’re telling ourselves.

Humans are social animals – we cannot function as individuals without connecting to each other and to the culture shaped by our ancestors. But sovereignty cannot belong both to an individual and a nation. Thinking of ourselves as British or American, French or Russian, black or white, male or female, is helpful for building a sense of community, for understanding our past and how we belong together, but it is not helpful when it becomes exclusive and arrogant, when it starts telling a story that my group is superior to your group, or, worse, that my group has a right to steal the future from every other group. Culture and community should be about celebrating our humanity, not about oppression and dominion.

That’s about as good a summary as I can come up with.

So, Leaving on the Tide is with the publisher (New Generation Publishing) and Hills of Gold will be following shortly once I’ve summoned up the courage to part with the manuscript.

I owe a debt of gratitude to my guinea-pig readers, Helen, Dan and Annette, and to my wonderful editor, fellow author Karen Tucker. Not to mention Andy for putting up with me throughout the process and keeping me well-fed and watered (or rather, tea-ed).

It’s ten years since I published my last book, Spirit of Shehaios in 2010. The world and I have changed quite a lot in that decade, and this time round I have had the experience to be able to stand back just a little and observe the writing process. I thought maybe it is worth sharing some of those observations.

The key thing I figured out is that I have to tell the story to myself first. That’s the reason I write. I do not want to re-hash someone else’s story, follow someone else’s formula. I am on a journey of discovery. I want to know what happens next – but when I turn the page it’s blank. So I’ve got to figure it out from the clues already laid in the pages with writing on.

I once saw the late, great Terry Pratchett give a talk at Winchester Writers Conference, in which he compared starting a new novel to standing on one side of a cloud-filled valley. Your travelling companions – your key characters – are standing beside you, but you don’t necessarily know them all that well. You have no shared experiences. They tell you their back-story as you travel on together through the plot. And you don’t really know where that plot is going to go. You can just about make out the end-point of the journey in the hills opposite you, but you have to go down into the clouds and bumble about a bit before you can emerge on the other side.

Quite often, I find I’m climbing up the valley on the opposite side heading for the final destination, only to find I’ve lost one of my characters in the mist. Or left them stranded at the start of the story. I have to go back and retrieve them.

When Grant and I used to do hill-walking with the Scouts, the rule was always that one of the more experienced members of the group should be the back-marker, staying with the slowest member of the party to make sure no stragglers got lost along the way. (Our collie, Megan, considered it her job to keep us rounded up, but she tended to just race backwards and forwards between the fit and determined heroes at the front and the strollers sub-group at the back.)

Karen has been my “back-marker”, pointing out the missing links, the bits that don’t quite work from the reader’s perspective, and the sections where I’d left behind the scaffolding I’d built to construct the narrative on. Usually because I was in love with the words and phrases I’d used. Sometimes I was able to salvage my favourite phrases and put them in the mouths of my characters. Sometimes, they just had to go.

That’s the point about recognising that my early drafts are always about telling the story to myself. Although they do contain quite a lot of dialogue, as my characters tell me what’s happening to them, they tend to be heavy on exposition. On telling the story, rather than showing it as it unfolds. Telling the story to myself is the bit I find most exciting and rewarding. This is the part of the process that feels as if it’s coming from somewhere beyond myself, as I reach down into all the memories and experience buried in my subconscious, absorb influences from the news and stories surrounding me and process my emotional responses into the thoughts and actions of my characters. But it’s the very opposite of what works best for the reader. For the reader to invest time and emotion in reading the story, they need to be able to engage with the characters and travel through the plot with them. The motivations buried in the back-stories of the character; the history that shapes their present; the root causes of their problems and dilemmas need to become apparent as the story unfolds – they can’t be pointed out in flashing neon letters.

I used to struggle with the idea that when the final work failed to connect with people, failed to make its mark on the world in any meaningful way, that negated it’s significance to me. The conception of the story taught me so much, meant so much to me, it hurt that it meant so little to anyone else. But if it meant as much to others as it meant to me, it would have been a work of genius. And my rational brain knew perfectly well that it wasn’t a work of genius. So I didn’t know how to value it. I vacillated between valuing it at nothing and defensively thinking of it as having the enormous value it had to me. Not the most helpful state of mind to conduct a sales campaign in.

Whenever I finish that early drafting process, I have always needed a friendly reader to validate the story and persuade me that it’s worth polishing for publication. Because all I am aware of is the extraordinary, emotional, exhilarating process of creating it. I have no idea if there is anything in it that makes sense to anyone else. Grant used to be that reader – I always knew if it didn’t make sense to him it wouldn’t make sense to anyone. This time round, my daughter Helen was able to fulfill that role. She was invaluable in helping me understand what I needed to retrieve from the mist and where the scaffolding was getting in the way. And in retrospect, I began to understand, with the help of a little mindfullness coaching, a little more about my writing process.

The first stage is an outpouring of personal creativity that for me is expressed in story-telling, through the written word – others paint, dance, play music, talk, make things in wood, till the soil or nurture plants. Train dogs. Restore steam engines. Whatever. We do it for the pleasure and satisfaction we get from doing it.

The second stage is to tell the story to others. And that requires technical skills and knowledge that needs to be learned. It’s something that can always be done better. So if my stories don’t connect to readers, it’s not because my story is worthless. It’s because I need to improve my skill in communicating the story.

Of course, I also have to recognise that many people – perhaps even most people – will not be interested in my journeys of exploration. They want something that takes them on a more familiar journey – they want a formulaic tale, a re-hash of a story they’ve read a hundred times before. There are times when I want that kind of a read too – that’s when I turn to a Georgette Heyer, or an Inspector Morse tale. I don’t write that kind of story. I don’t want to write that kind of story. So I will never write a best-seller.

I am retired. I write mainly for my own pleasure – in purely monetary terms, my books cost more than they generate, just as my music always has. I’m going to spend my time writing the books I want to write, whether or not they’re the books people want to read. But I do derive a lot of pleasure from sharing my work, so I do want to improve my craftsmanship. I want the modest number of readers I do have to have the best reading experience I can give them.  What I’m aiming to do is delight and intrigue the kind of people who want a book that makes them work a bit. Think a bit. Dig a bit deeper.

I want to do it with enough wit and skill to keep my reader turning the pages. I want to create characters who behave like real people, that the reader does not necessarily like, but can relate to. I want you to feel glee when the villain gets his come uppance. I want you to feel frustrated with the obstinance of the anti-hero and the naiveté of the hero. I want their adventures to make you smile and their tragedies to make you sad. My characters teach me a lot about human nature and human folly as I swivel my writer’s lens to look at the action from their point of view. I want to share those insights.

Those of us engaged in the folly of trying to create the Fair Land in the real world have a really important story to tell. It’s about the survival and evolution of human beings on planet Earth. It’s about being part of the complex adaptive system of life on the blue-green world of dreams.

What I see happening right now is that there is a bunch of us who have told the story to ourselves quite lucidly. We are passionate about the outpouring of creative thinking that went into that process, and we have a tendency to yell at people who have just opened the book, because they’re making rookie mistakes based on the most rudimentary grasp of the problem. We’re like Olympic athletes condemning a toddler who has just mastered walking. He comes to us beaming with pride because he can walk upright on his own two legs just like us, and we scowl at him because he can’t get near the world record for the 100 metre sprint. He gets tired walking down the garden path, and we’re trying to coach him to run a marathon. How would you feel if that happened to you? Or worse, it happened to your child?

Those of us who have been active in the environmental movement or campaigning for social justice for decades need to learn how to tell the story to the reader. In a way that people who don’t want to do the deep dive into the fascinating complexity of the chaotic adaptive system of life on planet Earth can relate to. Negating the story of their own experience, telling them what they should and shouldn’t do (or even what they should or shouldn’t think) is as counter-productive as trying to get them to think like people who are fascinated by the complexity of the chaotic adaptive system. It just isn’t going to build the social consensus we need to transition to a sustainable lifestyle.

We need to start condemning less and celebrating more. We need to talk less about the problems and more about the destination, the joyous hope of life abundant, that contrasts so markedly with the dark fatalism of the old economic story. Then, and only then, can we trust each other to find a way of getting through the clouds to reach our destination.

Enjoy the journey.

Oh – and buy the book(s)!

I am a writer of fantasy. I do world building. I do big picture stuff. Not very good on the detailed practical work. I am a relative newcomer to the world of environmental politics, and I’m really not an activist. I have only ever been on one protest march in my life – the peace march opposing the Iraq war. I just write stuff. Talk to people, if they’re interested in talking. Listen, if they have a good story to tell. You never know the truth until you have heard all the stories, and as you never hear all the stories, you never know the whole truth.

I am what one of my delightful Facebook friends calls the chattering liberal middle class. I don’t just write about a fantasy world, half the time I live there. It’s nicer than the fantasy world the mass media try and tell us is reality – all that doom and gloom and death. As if doom and gloom and death were not an intrinsic and indivisible part of life. Just as much as love, hope and laughter are. 

Our living, breathing presence on planet Earth is the only reality. The gift of life that is given to us at birth and taken from us at death, and the interdependencies of the complex adaptive system we are born into. Economy, society, politics, religion, nationality – these are all stories told by human beings about how human beings live on planet Earth. They only have credibility because a significant mass of human beings believe the same story. We can change those stories. We can believe in something better. We can’t change the interdependencies of the complex adaptive system, nor the impact our stories have on it. But belief – faith – can move mountains.

To change our whole global economic system is a huge ask, and I think it will take more than one generation. I also think if you take the long view, we’re making huge progress in the right direction, it just doesn’t look like it from the front line. Partly that is because the media constantly batter us with news of our defeats. Stories about the triumph of gloom, doom and death. But a lot of the reason is that we do think of it as a battle. We think in terms of winning it or losing it. We have been conditioned by the story of “good and evil” to think that all life is a battle between the two. You can see it that way. Or you can see it more like the Tai Chi philosophy, as a constant flow of energy from negative to positive, the tension between the two being what creates energy. AKA life. Evolution. Everything. The complex adaptive system reacts to the pull and push of that energy flow – so there is no ultimate victory. Every life, every day, every moment, contributes to the positive, or to the negative. And often to both. Like COVID-19. It’s a human tragedy. But a chance for Earth to take a breath after the hammering humanity has been giving it. Maybe teach us to use our adaptation for survival – our large brains – a bit more than we have been doing.

If you want a battle, then seek out humanity’s main competitor for the accolade of most successful life form on earth. Viruses. Once we start realising that all humanity is on one side and the “aliens” (the viruses) are on the other, we might start thinking differently about where we invest our energy, resources and capital, including financial capital. We combat viruses with healthy human societies where no one is left without the basic essentials of life – food, water, shelter, warmth. Dignity and self-respect. We combat it with investment in healthcare, and scientific research. We combat it by looking after and looking out for each other, around the world. We combat it with a joint sense of purpose that celebrates life over money. Those are the foundation stones for sustainable human life on Earth.

Most people won’t want to understand any of that. They just want to do things the way they’ve always done them and bullishly defend their “right” to do so. But once a new normal is established, those people forget that they ever did it a different way. They’ll defend their new “tradition” just as bullishly as they defended the old one. So it is down to those of us who are privileged to have the time, security and inclination to try and understand more – those chattering liberal middle class people – to guide, shape, steer and above all, to dream. That’s where the magic of creativity comes from.

And in the meantime, we can start building a Wellbeing Economy one community at a time.