A modest proposal from Colin Tudge to establish a new, people-led initiative to save the world from terminal decline
Part I: WHAT IS AND WHAT COULD BE
On every front there is disaster: ecological, social, political, economic, moral, spiritual; and, unsurprisingly, a pervading mood of pessimism and indeed of despair. Yet if only we – humanity – worked together, and did conceptually simple things well, we might still be heading for what Winston Churchill called “the sunlit uplands”.
As things are we will be lucky to survive in a tolerable form until the end of the present century. For many millions and indeed billions of people the world over, life is already intolerable if not impossible and our fellow species – the creatures that Robert Burns in To a Mouse in 1785 called
“Our Earth-born companions and fellow mortals”
— are disappearing hand over fist. The Earth is wonderfully resilient and forgiving but we surely are testing it too far.
Furthermore: the policies and technologies that are being brought to bear are generally making things worse.
Worst of all – the coup de grace — is that we – humanity — have elected or otherwise allowed the wrong people to be our leaders. No existing government is up to the tasks that now face us, and although there are some very good and even saintly thinkers and moralists in high places, to a very large extent the world is driven and led by psychopaths. (‘Twas ever thus, so history suggests. For Putin and Trump read Nero and Caligula).
The sound ideas that we need to act upon, spelled out in high-sounding treaties and agreed in high-profile conferences with flags and motorcades and battalions of bodyguards are in large part ignored or placed on indefinite hold if they do not fit the economic norms or are otherwise inconvenient to the people with most influence. Many good and brilliant and sometimes heroic things are happening to be sure, which do not feature on the national news as much as they should. But on the whole, we, humanity, have the wrong mindset, the wrong policies, are focused on the wrong issues, and are led by the wrong people; and in net, unsurprisingly, the world continues to decline. We are running out of road and there seems to be no will among the world’s most influential people to apply the brakes or change direction, even if they knew how to do so.
Yet it should still be possible – just – for humanity and our fellow creatures to enjoy a long, harmonious, and eminently agreeable future. Indeed —
Our descendants and the descendants of most of the other species that are with us now should still be here in a million years’ time –and indeed for aeons after that. We need to attend to the short term of course. But if we are serious about the future, we also need to think on the evolutionary and indeed on the cosmic timescale. A thousand years should be a standard unit of political time.
In short: that we seem to be staring Armageddon in the face is not only tragic. It is absurd. Right now, though, humanity has drifted so far off course that to put the world back on to an even keel —
We need to re-think everything we do and take for granted from first principles; to re-think everything in the light of everything else; and to re-structure where necessary – which is much but not all of the time.
From this, we need:
To frame a worldview, a body of understanding, and a moral philosophy, that will serve the real needs of all humanity and of our fellow creatures for all time
The goal these days, even among those who give a damn, seems at best to devise policies and modus operandi that are “sustainable”. But the real task before us now is to re-create a world that is actually viable.
The necessary re-think, the shift in worldview, is what the old Greeks called metanoia. The re-structuring is metamorphosis: the butterfly emerging from the chrysalis.
The shift required is truly radical: bearing in mind that “radical” should not be equated with “violent”, or with a gratuitous desire to shock. It simply means “getting down to the roots”.
For we need not simply a change of policy or a change of government but a change ofMindset. For starters we need to shift the Zeitgeist, the “spirit of the age”: a shift both in understanding and inattitude. Then we need to act accordingly.
It all amounts to nothing less than a RENAISSANCE – which must delve more deeply and stretch even more widely than the European Renaissance from the 12th century onwards that eventually brought the Middle Ages to a close, at least in Western Europe, at least up to a point, for better and for worse. (In truth the seismic shift from mediaeval to modern has not been all to the good. As many have pointed out of late, there is much in Mediaeval thinking that seems far more to the point than much of what now passes as modernity. But we will come to that).
One further thing. Since the powers-that-be have so decisively lost the plot, and are leading the world even further into the mire,
We, People at Large, Ordinary Joes and Jos, must make the Renaissance happen.
We, people at large, have the necessary skills and ideas and – together with our fellow creatures – we are what really matters. Far too much of humanity’s efforts is focused not on the general weal but on the comfort and whims of the rich and powerful, even if, as is often or usually the case, the rich and powerful do not have our or the world’s best interests at heart, and do not return the favour. (Does the world really need a mock-up of the palace of Versailles, tacked on to the White House, as Donald Trump is planning? Or weekend trips to the Moon for billionaires? Or trains that trash ancient forests and agreeable villages to clip 20 minutes off the journey from London to Birmingham? Or fungi masquerading as pork, of the kind that now is attracting so much investment? Or – but you get the point).
To be sure, many have doubted whether we, Ordinary Joes and Jos, are really able to run the world. A diversion is called for:
Are we – Ordinary Joes and Jos – up to the task?
Are we – People at large — morally capable of doing what needs doing? Or was Thomas Hobbes right to tell us in The Leviathan in 1651 that human beings in an ungoverned state are basically vicious and need “the constitution of a civil power” to keep ourselves from each other’s throats? Indeed, said Hobbes, without strong government to keep us in check
“The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
Are we indeed forever tainted by “original sin” as St Augustine assured us is the case, circa 400 AD? Augustine profoundly influenced both Catholics and Protestants; and the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer of 1662 invites us to implore God to forgive us for being such a bad lot:
“… there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders”
In short, western thinkers at least over these past two millennia have encouraged us to take a dim view of ourselves, and to rely on authority to keep us on track, or chaos awaits. Or hellfire.
Worse, philosophers and poets and scientists these past few centuries have combined to tell us that Nature itself is inveterately cruel and nasty and self-seeking. Most resonantly, Lord Tennyson in In Memoriam, in 1857, spoke of
“Nature red in tooth and claw”.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882), kindly soul that he was, added fuel to the flames of self-deprecation and pessimism in his wondrous Origin of Species in 1859. For the full title of his master work is On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In short, he seemed to argue, Life is, and is bound to be, one long battle – against natural forces and against other creatures of the same or other species. A little later the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1920-1903) summarised Darwin’s argument in another memorable phrase:
“Survival of the fittest”
— and Darwin himself adopted the expression in later editions of Origin.
Competition in the spirit of friendly rivalry is beyond doubt a constructive force, urging us to rise to greater heights, encouraging us to bring out the best in ourselves and others. Sport as a whole should be of this kind – and usually is. Olympic athletes strain every fibre to beat their opponents – but also train together with athletes from rival countries, and exchange tips. It’s the excellence they really care about – excellence conceived as a common cause; that, and the camaraderie. But competition to the death – out-and-out conflict – is destructive: vide the rubble and the misery in Gaza or Ukraine or a score of other trouble spots right now. (Can Gaza ever be restored?)
Yet Darwin, among the very greatest of all biologists, seemed to be telling us in Origin of Species that all-out, no-holds-barred competition is a creative force – indeed is the most creative of all; the force that shaped the evolution of all living creatures including human beings. Evolution itself of course was a most controversial proposal in the mid-19th century, and many still doubt the truth of it, Darwinian or otherwise. But at least among modern western people the Darwinian idea of evolution by means of natural selection has become the orthodoxy. It is indeed a truly wondrous insight (and there is no need, no need at all, to see it as an innately atheistic doctrine. In truth, despite what we have so often been told, many 19th century Christian clerics were perfectly happy with it).
But “Darwinism”, like all big ideas, is always liable to be over-stretched and misapplied. In particular, modern capitalists of the kind known as neoliberals are wont to invoke what they conceive to be Darwinian ideas to justify their own particular brand of economics. They put their faith in the supposedly “free market”, which in practice is conceived as an all-against-all punch-up between producers and traders of all kinds from all around the world for maximum profit and market share. They often invoke Spencer too – “survival of the fittest”. Whoever makes the most profit is the winner, and only winners matter. The losers fall by the wayside. There is no moral restraint. Or at least, the “free” market makes its own morality. Whatever sells is good. But since the traders succeed only by providing what people want – or at least are prepared or can be persuaded to pay for – the whole exercise is ultimately democratic, is it not? Isn’t that what democracy is supposed to be about? Giving people what they say they want? Thus the neoliberal “free” market and the neoliberal thinking behind it are both science-based and democratic. How can that be bad?
In reality however this form of economy and the thinking behind it is too simplistic by half and is largely responsible for the ills of the world. For the economy in practice shapes our entire lives; more than anything else it determines what we can do and what we cannot do. Indeed to a significant extent the economy determines what kind of people we become. We need an economy that will provide us with a world fit to live in. A world that is fit to live in and indeed is viable must be guided by values of a moral, aesthetic, and indeed a spiritual kind but the only value that the market recognizes is the value of cash. The albeit fictional Lord Darlington in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan in 1892 opined that
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing”
— and by this definition neoliberalism is the embodiment of cynicism. Neoliberals like to see themselves as modern representatives of Adam Smith (1723-1790) who is commonly seen as “the father of modern capitalism”. But Smith was a moral philosopher before he was an economist. He surely would have hated much of what is done in his name. It is alas one of life’s misfortunes that great thinkers of all kinds are so often ill-served by their would-be disciples.
Fortunately, there is another, quite different way of looking at life: one that is just as “true”, and is far more optimistic.
The Harmony of Life
All in all, western thinking has generally painted a gloomy picture of human beings and of life in general. Christianity emphasises our faults. What is perceived to be Darwinian science tells us that life is one long punch up, and that we are obliged to compete as ruthlessly as necessary to survive. And the prevailing economy is rooted in cynicism – presenting ourselves and other people as self-seeking ultra-materialists, measuring worth in money.
Mercifully, though, others in the history of the world have seen things differently. Notably, the Eastern religions in general emphasize life’s harmony. Thus to the Taoists of China the whole universe is a vast exercize in harmony, and our task as human beings is to immerse ourselves in the harmonious whole – “follow the Tao (or Dao)”. All in all this is a wonderfully benign outlook on life. Daoism is one of China’s great gifts to the world. It’s still out there, beneath the belligerent surface, waiting (and needing) to be called upon. Indeed I suggest that a prime task of the Renaissance we need now is to create conditions in which the Daoist view of life, or something very like it, becomes the norm.
Neither need we suppose that the idea of universal harmony falls foul of modern science, and therefore is nonsense, or is simply wishful thinking. The ideas of science are commonly deemed to be true, and, we are sternly and self-righteously reminded, truth must prevail, however painful. For although Darwin in The Origin of Species in 1859 emphasized the role of competition in shaping living creatures via natural selection, he also, not least in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex in 1871, noted the role and the importance of cooperation; and cooperativeness is a vital ingredient of harmony. The combative Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) saw himself as “Darwin’s bulldog” and defended Darwin against the more conservative Church of England clerics who saw the idea of “evolution by means of natural selection” as a kind of blasphemy, seeming as it did to deny the role of God the Creator (although many Christian clerics were content to see evolution as the mechanism by which God shaped his creation). But Huxley, unfortunately, being Huxley, stressed the importance of competition in natural selection. He paid far less attention to Darwin’s ideas on cooperativeness.
Fortunately, though, some notable thinkers did see the importance of cooperativeness – notably the Russian naturalist and polymath Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921). Kropotkin greatly admired Darwin – he was much younger, but their lives overlapped. Nonetheless in his most famous book, Mutual Aid (1902), Kropotkin wrote:
“As soon as we study animals … in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains [we] at once perceive that although there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, there is, at the same time as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species or at least to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle”
And:
“… wherever I saw animal life in abundance, for instance on the lakes where scores of species and millions of individuals came together to rear their progeny …. I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution”
Kropotkin in turn was inspired by the German biologist and Russophile Karl Kessler (1815-1881) who in 1879 said in a lecture in St Petersburg:
“I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle … I am inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world – in the progressive modification of organic beings – mutual support among individuals plays a much more important part than their mutual struggle”
In more modern times, the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal (1948-2024) in particular has developed this theme in a whole series of books including Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (1996); and The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society (2009). I discuss all this at greater length in my blog of July 22 2024, The Battle for Darwin’s Soul.
For my part, I am inclined to suggest in a general way that natural selection is about survival and successful reproduction: in modern terms, passing on our genes to the next generation. And the biological insights of Kropotkin, Kessler, and Frans de Waal, and common observation, all suggest that –
The most universally successful survival strategy is not to compete as the prevailing Zeitgeist so ardently urges to do, but to cooperate.
We should predict, then, that on the one hand natural selection must favour creatures that can survive life’s exigencies, and also, when necessary, fight their corner. But we should also expect natural selection to favour a propensity and – at least in thinking and feeling creatures — a desire to cooperate. And this is precisely what we do find. To a very large extent a propensity for cooperativeness is built into the genes. As is widely recognized these days, forest trees cooperate with their own and other species in many ways, not least in feeding and in warding off predators. The cooperativeness of ants and honeybees is the stuff of folklore.
Human beings like to think that we have free will, and so indeed it seems, and so we have or seem to have a greater capacity to choose our courses of action than other creatures do. So we have the freedom to choose not to cooperate if the mood takes us; to betray trust; and to put the boot in to gain short-term advantage. This applies at the personal level and in politics, as described not least by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince in 1532. Judicious betrayal is the prime theme of Shakespeare’s history plays.
But if there is advantage to be gained, why don’t we put the boot in more often than we do? Evolutionary psychology offers one very plausible and widely accepted reason: that if we put the boot in too often nobody trusts us. Knavish tricks don’t work unless the trickster is trusted and the victim drops his, or her, guard. To be effective, treachery must be used sparingly.
That may well true. But it is surely true too that most people do not behave badly most of the time because we have a built-in sense of right and wrong. We are not simply Machiavellian. We are moral beings. Morality is built into us. Demonstrably – there’s a growing literature on this – many and perhaps all intelligent animals including monkeys and apes and dogs, have a keen sense of justice. So too do small human babies. Theologians and psychologists and biologists may care to discuss where this sense of justice – of morality – comes from. Was it endowed by God? Is it an evolved propensity, favoured by natural selection? Should we invoke Jung’s idea of the “collective unconscious”? Or perhaps all three – since the three kinds of ideas are not mutually exclusive? No matter. However it arose, our sense of justice, and, more broadly, our moral sense, are very much a part of human nature. In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) the King of Brobdingnag after listening to Gulliver’s account of humanity declares:
“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”
— which is very much in line with Hobbes’s conclusion from a few decades’ earlier, and is still widely believed, and serves to justify top-down and authoritarian government.
But the 18th century wasn’t always so downbeat. Adam Smith, he who the hard-headed, ultra-competitive, ruthless neoliberals see as their godfather, clearly believed that human beings are basically good, or at least are capable of being so. As he wrote in his first ever book, Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759:
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”
All in all indeed I reckon there is good reason to agree with Anne Frank (1929-1945) who circa 1943 at the age of around 14, while she and her family hid from the Gestapo in a Dutch attic, wrote in her diary:
“ … in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
I have quoted these words many a time and oft and wrote a book around this whole thesis called Why Genes are Not Selfish and People are Nice (2012).
It is also the case of course that people-at-large are wondrously ingenious – the ultimate source of all big ideas and technologies. Put the two together –humanity’s innate niceness and cleverness – and we, human beings, emerge as wondrous creatures all together: as Hamlet said:
“What a piece of work is a man!”
George Orwell too remarked in one of his essays how strange it was that despite the evidence so many left-wing intellectuals continued to think that the Soviet Union under Stalin was benign. He said:
“One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool”.
Put all these thoughts together and we see that far from being the brutes that Thomas Hobbes (and a great many Christians) perceive us to be, an “ordinary person”, an ordinary Joe or Jo, is a good thing to be. It is a state to be aspired to, rather than to be surpassed. We should have more faith in ourselves. Abraham Lincoln after the battle of Gettysburg in 1863 spoke of
“The better angels of our nature”
— and if only we could devise a world that encouraged the better angels to rise to the fore; and if only the governance of the world and the global economy truly reflected the ideas and attitudes of those angels; then the long and glorious future could be the reality. These thoughts lie behind the proposed Renaissance Movement.
The chances of success are slim indeed. But the prize for success is so great, and the price of failure so dire, that we have to give it a try. The powers-that-be are not going to do what’s needed. So as far as I can see the only hope is humanity itself, or at least our better angels. The point and purposes of the proposed Renaissance Movement is to help create a world in which the better angels prevail. As things are, they feel obliged to keep their heads down.
Of course, though, to have any chance of success, the Movement needs a strategy. To this end, in Part II of this grand thesis I will suggest a possible agenda. This cannot be a solo turn however. Please do comment.
In summary
These, then, are the premises, the presuppositions – four in total — that lie behind the idea of a People-led Renaissance and hence of the proposed Renaissance Movement. In a nutshell:
1: The world is in a frightful mess but it doesn’t need to be. If only we – human beings – approached the world’s problems in a more humble and more open frame of mind and worked together to do conceptually simple things well then we and our fellow creatures could reasonably expect to live harmoniously and agreeably on this Earth for many millions of years to come. We need to attend to the short term but we should also be thinking on an evolutionary and cosmic time-scale.
2: Our and the world’s problems are now so broad and deep that only a complete Re-Think – a Renaissance, meaning “re-birth” – can save us.
3: The world’s leaders – the “powers-that-be” have lost the plot. If we really care about the plight of the world, and the future of humanity and our fellow creatures and the fabric of Planet Earth itself, then we, Ordinary People, must make the Renaissance happen.
4: Despite what we have so often been told, and is so widely believed, human beings are basically good. Most of us want the world to be a better and kinder place and between us we have the ideas and the skills to do what needs doing. Perhaps above all we need to believe in ourselves.
To help things along it seems to me worthwhile formally to establish a Renaissance Movement: like-minded people the world over working together to bring about the necessary transformation – and invite everyone who thinks this is a good idea to join in. In Part II of what promises or threatens to become a long series, I will propose at least a preliminary Agenda.
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