Gordon Brown’s surprise descent into the world of TED Global was a clear coup for the Curators but left the audience – sceptical Brits at least – with a sense that this was more a pitch for life after the Premiership than it was a genuine strategy for wellbeing reform.
Certainly, the words were right and the sentiment passionately expressed. The over-arching point – the rise of global citizenship mirrored by the failure of global institutions and accelerated by the immediacy and power of the digital revolution – chimes with many of the themes articulated in Citizen Renaissance. He spoke powerfully at times about the connection between global ethics and global communications and received genuine applause at the first mention of Climate Change as the greatest challenge of our times. His portrayal of a dying eleven year old girl, crushed by poverty and war in Africa, was a certain tear-jerker (“Don’t worry, the United Nations are coming… and they never did”), but what started out as a promising call for citizens of the world to find our collective voice to fight poverty and climate change, soon descended into a piece of political polemic about the failings of the UN. We all sensed that here was Gordon saying he could sort it all out, once his job saving Britain/ the world was eventually done.
His call for modernised global institutions, moreover, felt a little misguided – a wish to rely too heavily on twentieth century socialist institutions and bureaucracy to deliver twenty-first century, citizen-led solutions. Earlier in the day, Alain de Botton had spoken of the haphazard nature of justice and liberty and how the spirit of equality is born out of the prevalence of deep inequality among us all. He mourned the passing of transcendental worship (not my God, any God) – “our heroes are human heroes” he commented … and here, of course, was Gordon trying to humanise the solution through physical institution and , quite possibly, his physical leadership . We maybe need to look instead to the spirit of the global citizenship and what collective will, powered by collective access, can properly demand and eventually deliver.
Stephen Fry spoke eloquently, as ever, on the rainbow bridge between art and science – the future as envisioned by CP Snow and chronicled by Douglas Adams. Like de Botton, he connected passion and intellect – two characteristics which the Prime Minister then displayed in abundance, but who still left a hollow and somewhat unconvincing feeling among us all. Is this a man of deeply-held ethical beliefs and principles disguised beneath a shallow veneer of politics – or instead a man of deeply-felt politics disguised by a shallow veneer of ethics and principles? The audience reaction spoke silent volumes.
As Machiavelli once famously wrote: “while the action accuses him, the result excuses him” and maybe history will judge Gordon Brown more kindly than we judge him now. The action today is of failing institutions increasingly bereft of citizen trust – and yet his proposed solution is to ossify citizen ethics still further within an institutional framework, driven by a contradictory growth fetish that, in itself, is probably the single greatest threat to planetary survival. It just makes no sense. Gordon is right when he says that the world needs and wants to come together – just probably not his way.
We have posted before about how we can serve a transformational purpose in initiating radical change. The Prime Minister’s sentiment should be rightly captured by the 700+ of the apparently-wise TEDsters gathered in Oxford this week. Their/ our collective brainpower should figure out how to build a better, more realistic and workable rainbow bridge to a better world. The energy for change is most certainly there.
