Ihave just read an excellent piece by the BBC’s Robert Peston about the need for a new form of capitalism and an end to greed and hyper-consumerism.
Although he doesn’t touch on issues such as Wellbeing and Climate Change, we see the twin crises of the nosedive into climate chaos and the nosedive into deep recession as more than linked – they have the same cause. Both are predicated on resources on which we demand impossible rates of return and debts that can never be repaid. In both cases we have denied the consequences.
Peston is right to partly point the finger at the media – and this is even more the case in terms of things like Climate Change – though the BBC is finally starting to help the public understand the peril we face if we do not make radical change fast. Sadly most of the advertising-driven media are still helping lock us into hyper-consumerism which both blocks moves to Wellbeing and speeds up the twin crises.
I have contacted Robert Peston and hope he might consider sharing some of his thoughts in the next iteration of Citizen Renaissance.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting site and approach. You might perhaps focus more on what is IMHO the most important trend in the last 200, if not 2,000 years.
This is the pervasive spread of the “Peer to Peer” direct connection of the Internet. I call this trend “Napster-isation” after the music sharing software that saw a 19 year old single-handedly make the business model of the global music industry redundant.
I wrote about Peer to Peeer markets more than seven years ago re “Market 3.0″ here…
http://www.exchange-handbook.co.uk/index.cfm?section=articles&action=detail&id=38754
and it has recently been picked up by the P2P Foundation.
Post Credit Crunch, there has been huge interest in the partnership-based enterprise model I observe emerging, and the new possibilities for “Peer to Peer Credit” and “Peer to Peer Investment” through “unitisation” of productive assets..
This recent lecture
http://www.feasta-multimedia.org/2008/Chris_Cook.mov
describes how such Unitisation may yet rescue us from unsustainable secured debt.
Absolutely agree on the rise of Peer to Peer communicatons. It is something that – wearing my Edelman hat – we have been both preaching and practising for years. It has fundamentally changed the dynamics of Trust (as we mention in the book), with old pyramids of authority collapsing and new spheres of cross-influnece emerging in their stead. A ‘person like me’ is increasingly a more trusted figure of authority than a business leader or politician – and no doubt this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer findings will have something significant to say in this space after the Trust fiascos of the past year.