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In the summer of 1914 most of Europe plunged into a war so catastrophic that it unhinged the continent’s politics and beliefs in a way that took generations to recover from. The disaster terrified its survivors, shocked that a civilization that had blandly assumed itself to be a model for the rest of the world…
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Why am I so prone to bending covers? As the former CEO of Oxfam, the venerable charity for global poverty relief, Danny Sriskandarajah has met with many well-known figures. Among them was Prince Philip: As I began to reply that I had been drawn to an association built on shared values like democracy, Prince Philip…
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Roger Hallam is not known for optimism. The co-founder of Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil is quite the fire-and-brimstone preacher when it comes to climate change. But when I heard him a few weeks ago on a call with Assemble and like-minded activists, he sounded genuinely hopeful about the assemblies that they were about…
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The Power of Us: Harnessing Our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony is an excellent guide to humans’ powerful group instincts, written by psychologists Jay Van Bavel and Dominic J. Packer. Our group instincts drive us to work together in groups and have underpinned all of our greatest achievements, from…
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Steven Pinker has written some cracking books on how the human mind works, as well as in defence of liberal democratic and progressive values. The most recent is titled Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters (2021). What is rationality? Pinker defines it as “the ability to use knowledge to attain…
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In an earlier post, I reviewed a book about Independents for Frome (IfF), who in 2011 took control of the Somerset town’s parish council and showed that a lot more can be done at this often neglected level of government. I’ve rather liked the story, because it challenges people’s assumptions about how politics should work.…
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If future governments fail in the way that recent ones have, we will hit a point where the public’s patience snaps altogether and they try more radical alternatives on offer from extremists and charlatans. […] And when it does, politicians will find themselves asking: why didn’t we do things differently when we had the chance?…
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For the past eight years, “Google Murray Bookchin!” has been a slow-burning internet meme. When you google Murray Bookchin, you come across one of the most underrated philosophers of the 20th century, an eco-minded anarchist who eventually drifted onto his own path. But if you want a more detailed introduction to Bookchin, his ideas and…
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A recent poll from Ipsos sheds some light on the attitudes that underpin the rise of the far right. It found that across 31 countries surveyed, respondents by a 47%-27% margin were more likely to agree that their country needs “a strong leader willing to break the rules”. This included a 53%-22% margin here in…
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All In: A Revolutionary Theory to Stop Climate Collapse is a book by two activists connected with the Portuguese climate campaign Climáximo, Mariana Rodrigues and Sinan Eden. I heard about All In during a Rev21 webinar with Alice Gato, another Climáximo activist, and gave it a read. All In begins with the argument that the…
Assembly Project 