“No one knows what the “big society” is, say MPs

I just cannot help feeling people are being naïve about UK Prime Minister Cameron’s “The Big Society.” I think I call it Real Community, and that is a term more readily understood across the world.
“No one knows what the “big society” is, say MPs.” That is the headline in today’s newspaper.

In the same paper I read that “Paris bans beggars from top tourist and shopping spots,” as these vagrants upset and offend the shoppers. The poor and homeless begging in shop doorways and at entrances to the metro or underground whether in Paris or London are not part of a “big society.”And the only offence we should feel is that in 21st Century Europe there is any need at all for begging.
Kids roaming the streets out of boredom, getting involved in gangs and drugs; that’s not part of a “big society.” Over 1 million unemployed youngsters in the UK; that’s not “big society.” The filth and litter all over our streets; that’s not part of a “big society.” The elderly who are lonely and isolated at home, or abused and bullied in care homes; that’s not “big society.” The young family struggling to bring up their disabled children on insufficient income who don’t even know their neighbors, who wouldn’t know where they could knock on a door to get help or support in an emergency. The rogues stealing metal plaques from gravestones and war memorials because scrap metal dealers will pay good prices now for them; that most certainly is not “big society.”
Perhaps it is easier to say what a “big society” is NOT than what it is.

The people selling the Big Issue on the streets – now that IS part of a bigger society! At least they are aspiring for a better life and doing something about it. But they receive support, both from the Big Issue operation itself, and from those of us who stop and talk to them, get to know them, buy their magazine (fantastic value and cheaper than that hyper- caloried drink you have just bought), even on occasions buy them a hot drink (OK call me a softie). But little things like that, being nice to other people, helping them on their way, all help to make the world a little bit better and ARE one step towards a “big society”.

Real community starts in the streets where we live. It starts with our own families, with our neighbors and friends, and extends to friends at work, in our church, in our club or society. But it should never ever exclude others around us who share our “space.” We are all human beings, with the same needs and vulnerabilities, and even finding just a little time to help others is time very well spent in the huge scheme of things.
Of course we cannot personally solve all the seamier problems of our broken society. We will sometimes need help and support from local and national government, and from other agencies, whether this comes through regulation or from practical resources. Of course we cannot solve housing problems on our own, for example, or the gangs on “sink” estates. But Gandhi did say: “YOU must be the change you want to see in the world.” And for that change to come about we all have to start small. Start in our own back yard. And that way we WILL start to build a “Big Society.”

Jonathan Sacks wrote somewhere that  

‘A community is where they know your name and where they miss you if you are not there [Sacks’ italics] Community is society with a human face.’ 

In other words, Big Society.

The Big Society and the Cultural Creatives

Here is a post I published in September 2010, and since someone recently told me they had not heard very much about the Cultural Creatives movement, I make no apology for re-posting it, perhaps to a new audience:

" I know that I am not alone. From reading the websites, articles, and books around us, many of us clearly feel the need for a return to spiritual values in our lives, coupled with the need to heal our desperately fractured world and halt what may otherwise be our march towards spiritual bankruptcy and physical destruction. But how will this happen?

My own conviction is that no amount of law and regulation alone can be the full answer. We need to take personal responsibility for the way we live our lives.
This is behind Prime Minister David Cameron’s ideas for a Big Society for Britain, a society in which we rebuild family, rebuild community, but above all rebuild responsibility.

But I don’t think it is quite as simple as that.
We are after all human, with all our frailties, and our vulnerabilities.
Our behaviour is often flawed, we do not behave like saints all the time, even the very best of us. And sometimes, perhaps often, this may be traced back to our own wounds:
wounds we have inherited and those from our own suffering; wounds from the personal experiences that life has thrown at us;

for example, our insecurities and fears, our feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Surely such wounds are reflected in our greed and envy, in our over consumption, in violence and in our addictions to work or harmful substances.

And these wounds, left unhealed, not only affect our own mental and physical well-being.

I believe that they must also be seen within the context of the wider world fellowship of which we are such an integral part. We must understand the significance of our own healing in addressing the wider social issues and the often seemingly intractable problems of our fractured world. I would go so far as to suggest that this healing is a fundamental directional force in our own evolutionary progress as we become catalysts for our own social change.
And to find real, meaningful healing of these wounds then I believe we now have an urgent need to rediscover our spirituality and the spiritual element in all our material experiences, to reconnect with our roots and our souls.

In the latter half of the 21st century we seem to have lost sight of this essential truth.

Materialism, observes Satish Kumar, now rules economy, politics and business. There is nothing wrong with having material or bodily needs of food, water, shelter, for example, but we need to have the wisdom to know when we have enough and to be satisfied with that. Instead, we are pressured into striving to have more and more beyond our needs. Spirituality rather than materialism is something that should infuse our lives at all times.

This is where the Cultural Creatives come into the picture. It is estimated that there are 50 million adults in the United States and about 80-90 million in Europe who have the worldview, values and lifestyle of the Cultural Creatives. Are you one of them? And what are they?
If you are a Cultural Creative you “hunger for a deep change in your life that moves you in the direction of less stress and more health, lower consumption, more spirituality, more respect for the earth and the diversity within and among the species that inhabit her…"
You are one of a growing number of people who want to see deep, integral change in the cultures that have evolved in industrialized nations.” (Paul Ray)
The term was coined by Paul Ray who with Sherry Anderson wrote a book; The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World

“to help make cultural creatives visible to each other… to find new ways to work and learn together…in service to the world, in service to this emergence of a new, integral culture.”


Are you a cultural creative? Are we doing all we can? How much time do we have?
We all need to start our own Ripples of Hope for a better world."

The photo is of my allotment.
 

The Pope's Visit - a Time to Reflect

So. Pope Benedict XVI has left these shores after what must have been an exhausting trip for him. I liked the idea of him having "an afternoon nap." At his advanced age that must have been essential. But how wonderful that he came, for Catholics and Anglicans alike. I have just read the comment in the Periscope Post and left my own comment there, reproduced below:

"From my perspective I see the Pope's visit as a great success - and I am thrilled with David Cameron's response, linking the teachings of a great faith with his own Big Society. Yes terrible things have happened but apology has been made unreservedly and we need to forgive and move on, or we do not heal. And a conversation has been started, as David Cameron observed. Also I do not think the rude and often downright offensive comments from angry humanists and atheists really gain much respect - or they certainly shouldn't, but I guess the publicity does help to sell their books.
And what about the cost? I see this as being part of a package that comes with being British. I am not in the slightest bit interested in sport of any kind, let alone the Olympics, but I accept that those costs also come in a British wrapper and I cannot and would not complain."

The Big Society and the Cultural Creatives

I know that I am not alone. From reading the websites, articles, and books around us, many of us clearly feel the need for a return to spiritual values in our lives, coupled with the need to heal our desperately fractured world and halt what may otherwise be our march towards spiritual bankruptcy and physical destruction. But how will this happen?

My own conviction is that no amount of law and regulation alone can be the full answer. We need to take personal responsibility for the way we live our lives.

This is behind Prime Minister David Cameron’s ideas for a Big Society for Britain, a society in which we rebuild family, rebuild community, but above all rebuild responsibility.

But I don’t think it is quite as simple as that.

We are after all human, with all our frailties, and our vulnerabilities.

Our behaviour is often flawed, we do not behave like saints all the time, even the very best of us. And sometimes, perhaps often, this may be traced back to our own wounds:

wounds we have inherited and those from our own suffering; wounds from the personal experiences that life has thrown at us;

for example, our insecurities and fears, our feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Surely such wounds are reflected in our greed and envy, in our over consumption, in violence and in our addictions to work or harmful substances.

And these wounds, left unhealed, not only affect our own mental and physical well-being.

I believe that they must also be seen within the context of the wider world fellowship of which we are such an integral part. We must understand the significance of our own healing in addressing the wider social issues and the often seemingly intractable problems of our fractured world. I would go so far as to suggest that this healing is a fundamental directional force in our own evolutionary progress as we become catalysts for our own social change.

And to find real, meaningful healing of these wounds then I believe we now have an urgent need to rediscover our spirituality and the spiritual element in all our material experiences, to reconnect with our roots and our souls.

In the latter half of the 21st century we seem to have lost sight of this essential truth. 

Materialism, observes Satish Kumar, now rules economy, politics and business. There is nothing wrong with having material or bodily needs of food, water, shelter, for example, but we need to have the wisdom to know when we have enough and to be satisfied with that. Instead, we are pressured into striving to have more and more beyond our needs. Spirituality rather than materialism is something that should infuse our lives at all times.

This is where the Cultural Creatives come into the picture. It is estimated that there are 50 million adults in the United States and about 80-90 million in Europe who have the worldview, values and lifestyle of the Cultural Creatives. Are you one of them? And what are they?

If you are a Cultural Creative you “hunger for a deep change in your life that moves you in the direction of less stress and more health, lower consumption, more spirituality, more respect for the earth and the diversity within and among the species that inhabit her…"
You are one of a growing number of people who want to see deep, integral change in the cultures that have evolved in industrialized nations.” (Paul Ray)

The term was coined by Paul Ray who with Sherry Anderson wrote a book; The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World

“to help make cultural creatives visible to each other… to find new ways to work and learn together…in service to the world, in service to this emergence of a new, integral culture.”

Are you a cultural creative? Are we doing all we can? How much time do we have?
We all need to start our own Ripples of Hope for a better world.

Hope, Optimism, Change and a Fresh Start

Yesterday David Cameron, launching the Tory election campaign in the UK, claimed that his party offers hope, optimism, change and a fresh start. 

Hope and optimism: don't they mean pretty much the same? I think not. We must not confuse hope with optimism. Optimism is passive. We believe that something better will happen. Hope is far more than that. It is a firmly held conviction that it is worth taking action to improve something; and for me it is grounded in spirituality and faith.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells us: “I've never been an optimist. I've always been a man of hope - I am a prisoner of hope…hope holds on even when things are seemingly doomed and dark.” “We must,” said Martin Luther King, “accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

In Christianity hope is one of the three great spiritual virtues or God given graces, of faith, hope and love. These form the foundation stones of the spiritual wisdoms that have served us well for 2000 years. For the sake of the world, as well as for UK society, the need to return to them is urgent!
And David Cameron surely understands that.

Barack Obama has a prayer he says for America today. It is for

“ hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all.” 


Amen

social psychology and the mess we are in

For four years I have been pursuing the idea that we need to look at our individual behaviours to sort out the messes of the current world - not just leaning increasingly on ever more rules and regulations brought on by knee jerk reaction from succesive governments. This is the theme of my book in progress Ripples of Hope, based on those 4 years of research. I was therefore thrilled to read Daniel Finkelstein's article in The Times this week. Integration of work on human behaviour into politics, he says, is in its infancy but represents an important intellectual sea-change. But the most important step forward, and I quote from his article: "has come with David Cameron's correct insistence that social change is as likely, or more likely, to come through influencing behaviour as it is through regulation."

How do we influence behaviour? We need to look at our own wounds, of nature and nurture, and to find healing. We need to get back to basic spirituality, to rediscover our souls, to slow down, to restore relationships in family and community, and to bring these principles into the work place as well as our leisure activities. This is the thesis behind my own book.

How long is it going to take for common sense to prevail and for vital changes to be made. Hugh Montefiore, one time Bishop of Birmingham and Chairman of Friends of the Earth, wrote Time to Change - Challenge for an Endangered Planet - more than ten years ago - but this was a culmination of his 30 years interest and concern for environmental matters. The world, and the human race, he said, was under threat because we had broken the fundamental laws of nature and of God.

How right he was - how sad that it takes so long for such messages to get through to an increasingly materialistic and selfish world. At last there is some glimmer of understanding amongst pockets of mankind. How vital it is to keep on pressing home these vital truths! Ripples of Hope is my contribution to that understanding.