Finding Willpower to Work Together.

In the context of his role as Co-Chair of the Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales, Rowan Williams questions our capacity for working together:

‘One of the questions we face now in building a really participatory political culture — in our pervasive climate of obsessions with “growth”, cynicism about leadership, malign and inward-turned localism, and the mechanical, functionalised models of education seemingly so popular with all political parties — is where we find resources for critique, vision and solidarity.’ [The Guardian, 30th December 2023]

Rowan highlights four suppressants and, for sure, we can all recognise three of them — the challenge of cynicism (a plague on all our houses), the Nimby-like corruption of localism (used to justify centralised command), and systemic reduction of education to robotic routine. Far less widely appreciated is the implicit call to question ‘growth’ obsessions — an arena for debate that is frequently trashed and wilfully mis-represented.

There is no lack of intellectual rigour in the works of eminent economists (Raworth, Hickel, et al) but a deep dedication to not hearing their work persists — a deliberate deafness — as if denial might in some way alter reality. This is not unlike resistance to the implications of climate chaos and the hope that the issues might go away.

My 2024 resolution is to recycle. I am resolved to repeat, to retell, to re-use, to recycle, the words until I detect some positive signals that those words have been heard and understood. And on this central issue of ‘growth’ obsessions this offering from the archive is a primary example. We need to know that we can make a difference. Only then will we find the resources for ‘critique, vision and solidarity’ — the willpower — to build a participatory future.

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This note is listed in the Governance section of the Groupe Intellex archive for students questioning their ability to make a difference within the UK’s social democracy.

Further reading of works by Jason Hickel can be found via Nature | Vol 612 | 15 December 2022.