Podcast Ep 6 – How to improve old age – with Prof Tom Kirkwood

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In the new episode of my podcast (out today), I talk to Professor Tom Kirkwood, a biologist who for several decades has been a leading figure in the study of aging – how and why we age.

He has published several books, including Time of Our Lives: The Science of Human Aging and The End of Age: Why Everything About Aging Is Changing. In 2001 he gave the annual Reith Lectures.

I asked Tom to be a guest on the podcast because I’d read some of his papers and books about the science of aging, and found them completely fascinating. They made me look at ageing in a completely different way. Most people think that our bodies are somehow ‘programmed to decline and die’, and that this is why we age, but as you’ll hear Tom explain, it’s actually the opposite – our bodies are programmed to survive. This has some amazing consequences for aging and how we might look to improve the quality of people’s lives in the future.

Our increasing life spans also raises some fundamental ethical, cultural and political questions about the attitudes we should have towards old age and old people.

I hope you enjoy our conversation. Listen to it here.

Please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and share it with everyone!

Podcast Ep 5 – How to raise funds and campaign – with Tim Walker

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In the new episode of my podcast ‘Making the world better’ – out today – I speak to Tim Walker. Tim is a direct response copy writer and campaigner.

Tim’s been a colleague and friend of mine for many years, and is the founder of the fundraising agency TWCAT, now On agency, and is a member of my team at ChangeStar. He has had decades of success in helping charities and other good causes to raise more funds and build stronger campaigns by communicating better with the public and their supporters.

This is an aspect of the work of charities and political causes that is often not seen by the public yet it can be critical to how well they are able to achieve the change they are seeking. A lot of people work in the social change sector simply to help charities get their message across to people, and Tim is one of the most knowledgeable people doing this.

In this chat, I talk to Tim about the work he does, why it matters and some of his biggest successes.

The new episode is here – I hope you enjoy it! Please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and share it with everyone!

Podcast Ep 4 – How to make politics better – with Neal Lawson

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A new episode of my podcast is out today – and my conversation in this one is with Neal Lawson. I’ve been looking forward to sharing this one with you, as it’s important and fascinating!

Neal is a political commentator and a director of the centre-left pressure group Compass. He was an adviser to Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, is the editor of the political journal Renewal and has regularly appeared on TV and in newspapers to talk politics.

Neal, like many people, feels that traditional politics is broken, and that to get a better, fairer and more sustainable future for everyone, we need to build a new vision of politics that is rooted in people’s lives, relationships and communities. A ‘bottom-up’ approach, where politicians listen to people, give them more power and shape policy based on their needs, rather than the current ‘top-down’ approach where ‘politicians know best’ and impose policies on the population.

In this conversation we explore the work Neal does and why it matters – as well as how we can all have hope and work towards a better future, even in difficult times.

The new episode is here – I hope you enjoy it! Please subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and share it with everyone!

New podcast – Making the world better

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I’m very excited to announce that my new #podcast ‘Making the world better’ is now live!

In the podcast, I talk to people who are making the world better – not just those tackling big issues at a global scale but also those working at a local level or in less obvious areas too. I want to find out more about what these people do, the issues they’re working on and why they matter. In the end, I want to pay tribute to everyone who’s trying to make things better.

Each fortnightly episode has a different guest – and we’ve got some brilliant people lined up in the first few shows including CEOs of leading charities, political advisors, academics, fundraisers – and people who are working to help others in their local communities.

The podcast is available from all the usual providers, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts (coming soon) and Google Podcast (coming soon), as well as hosted here on https://richarddocwra.com/making-the-world-better/.

Please check out the podcast! I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with as many people as you can, and of course follow it on Spotify if you like it. And if you can take one further amazing step, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts (when it’s live there) would be extra helpful and much appreciated.

New podcast launching 20th Jan 2020!

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I’m very excited to announce that my new #podcast ‘Making the world better’ will be launching on 20th January 2020!

In the podcast, I talk to people who are making the world better – not just those tackling big issues at a global scale but also those working at a local level or in less obvious areas too. I want to find out more about what these people do, the issues they’re working on and why they matter. In the end, I want to pay tribute to everyone who’s trying to make things better.

Each fortnightly episode has a different guest – and we’ve got some brilliant people lined up in the first few shows including CEOs of leading charities, political advisors, academics, fundraisers – and people who are working to help others in their local communities.

The podcast will be available from all the usual providers, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcast, as well as hosted here on docwra.sladedesign.co.uk/.

More details to come on the 20th January!

Carbon disarmament – a new solution to climate change?

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Decades on from my first involvement in the fight against climate change, we have still not found a way to get the change we need on this issue, and the urgency of the crisis is becoming greater every day. I was recently at a talk at the Hay literature festival by a leading environmentalist who trotted out the same old facts about climate change – shocking facts that are only denied by the most ignorant or deluded – yet failed to offer any new solutions on how we go about getting the change we need.

This has been a pattern that most well-meaning people have fallen into on climate change – including experts. There is ample analysis of how bad the situation is, but precious little innovation or creativity in proposing solutions that are big and ambitious enough to tackle such an unprecedented global issue.

So, I’d like to offer one!

First, let us note what any solution needs to achieve. It needs to:

  • Be applied on an international, global scale, but also be an idea that can transfer to the micro-scale of our individual lives
  • Be something that can achieve significant change within a short-term window
  • Go beyond the vagaries and short termism of modern democratic politics
  • Be something that reflects the severity of the problem we face
  • And finally, if we are to implement it in the short term (which we must, given the latest projections of the impact of climate change), it must be something that isn’t seen to threaten people’s freedoms or modern lifestyles.

The last point is probably the most controversial of the lot, and, as an environmentalist and proponent of what is termed ‘new economics’, it is something I have struggled to come to terms with.

Ultimately I would like to see a complete recalibration of our economic system into one that doesn’t promote economic growth for the sake of it, regulates consumption within the limits of one planet and promotes lifestyles that recognise that having more material goods is not the route to happiness. However, in the west we currently live in a culture that is so dominated by the idea of freedom and the philosophy of neoliberal economics and consequently so unwilling to make perceived downgrades in lifestyles that it will take decades before we can achieve such a cultural shift in the political class and the broader population.

And the need to address climate change is so urgent that we simply don’t have the time to wait for these shifts in culture to occur before we try to resolve the climate issue. So how can we do it quicker?

Like many things in the modern world, I suggest the answer lies in how we frame the issue – and then how we communicate it to people. Here are some thoughts.

Stopping disaster

First, we should not present the solution to climate change as imposing limits on people or their lifestyles, however much we may think this is the right long-term approach, as they (and the politicians that represent them) simply won’t go for this in the short term. Instead, we should present it as stopping a catastrophic event from happening.

As we will see this approach has a number of advantages, and has been successful in achieving large-scale change on other issues, from nuclear disarmament through to smoking.

Global politics – the carbon arms race

One way to achieve this at a national level is to reframe carbon – from its current frame as a vital source of energy and an enabler of lifestyles, and into a new one – as a deadly weapon and an immediate, destructive threat to the entire global community.

In this way of framing the debate, a country’s use of carbon can be likened to its supply of nuclear weapons – a threat to the global community, and something to be reduced as soon as possible.

We are therefore looking for an end to the global carbon arms race – and seeking global de-carbonisation.

Like nuclear weapons, carbon can be seen as a means of gaining competitive advantage on other countries, so the process of global de-carbonisation should take place through a global treaty that enables countries to reach a negotiated reduction without individual actors feeling they are losing out or becoming more vulnerable in relation to others as part of the settlement.

The carbon left in the ground, like the uranium used for nuclear weapons, would be seen as a potentially harmful substance that should remain in the ground.

Individual level – carbon as a health threat

We can carry this analogy of carbon as a toxic threat down to an individual level, where we want to frame high carbon usage as highly antisocial and damaging – a source of shame, with low usage a sign of virtue.

At an individual level this framing therefore has a parallel with the campaign against smoking – an antisocial habit to be shunned. Or, for a more current example, the use of unnecessary plastics in daily life. Something to be ashamed of.

This would make the threat of climate change much more immediate and urgent on a personal level, and enable the campaign to target a range of areas of people’s lives that are contributing to their carbon output and climate change, and directly challenge people to stop them as they are antisocial health threats to other people and the planet.  These areas would need to be prioritised carefully for the impact they have, and could include:

  • Driving petrol cars
  • Flying
  • Eating meat
  • Not saving energy at home
  • Over-consuming material goods and services

The detail of the campaign messaging can be agreed at a later date, but one approach could be ‘Do you really need to take this flight/eat this burger/drive this car?’ and show the potential impact of each flight/burger/journey on the world and other people. Not by using statistics about usage – eg ‘each flight uses 1 ton of CO2’ – as this is like saying ‘smoking a cigarette uses one cigarette’. Instead we need to show the potential impact of this action – and focus this on things people care about – such as their lives, loved ones and other people. We have seen this work with some success in the current campaigning on the use of plastics, and showing pictures where plastics are causing suffering to animals we care about – such as sea turtles. We need to tell stories that resonate with people.

To date, there has been very little campaigning that criticises people for carbon-heavy aspects of their modern lives. A carbon reduction campaign needs to do this, in order to challenge people directly about the impact they are having on the world. This unwillingness to challenge people in their daily lives has been one of the great failures of the climate change movement to date – it has tried to make people feel good about making very minor changes without criticising them for what they’re already doing – for example, flying and eating red meat. We need a much greater sense of urgency.

This will be a significant change of direction, and could be controversial and a jolt to many people. But this is precisely what we need – a sense of urgency and passion.

Conclusions

The above ideas are simply examples of the ways we could reframe the issue of climate change, and there may well be other more effective ideas out there. But we urgently need to consider not the problem (as this is established), but how we will go about solving it – and do so  from the position we’re at now as a global society and culture, and our knowledge of how to influence people.

How British politics is changing – for the better

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Many of us with pro-environmental and liberal values have been feeling battered and under threat over the last three or four years as we’ve watched the rise of right-wing populism in our own country, in the US and around Europe.

The evidence suggests however that this is not the whole picture – and in fact, there are other trends taking place that provide hope to the liberal world view.

For example, as campaigner and values expert Chris Rose notes, “Since July 2017 a majority of the country have swung (increasingly) to be pro-Remain (analysis by the UK’s leading pollster here).”

In fact, there continues to be an underlying increase in the number of ‘Pioneers’ – essentially people with liberal, progressive values – and this is being driven by the emergence of a younger generation with a greater tendency towards these values. So, there is perhaps hope for the future.

There is also a change emerging in the historically binary nature of UK politics, as a new ‘values’ dimension is arising in our system, acting as a new ‘top-down’ axis cutting down the middle of the current horizontal ‘left-right’ axis. At the top of this new axis are values like gender equality and environmental sustainability (essentially ‘Pioneer’ traits) and at the bottom are values like stopping immigration (common ‘Settler’ traits).

This change is causing fractures in the main two political parties, built as they were many years ago on the basis of social class politics. In the last week we have seen departures from both the Conservative and Labour parties of politicians who found their parties weren’t able to adequately represent their progressive values. We have seen the same thing at the other end of the values spectrum, with the ERG wing of the Conservatives straining at the edges of the party and just managing to remain within its outer lining rather than tearing out of it. Sadly for progressives, these pro-Brexit traditional values still seem to be holding sway over the leadership of the two main political parties, even if they do not represent the majority of their MPs, or indeed the population as a whole now.

As Chris Rose argues, “the slow but powerful current of values change will sooner or later prove an irresistible force. The most dynamic expression of this in the UK right now is support for the school and student strikes over climate change, led almost entirely by young women, most too young to vote.”

But we need to make the most of this underlying trend towards progressivism – and do so now. Rather than feeling ashamed that young people have proved more dynamic than anyone else in taking action on these issues, the rest of us need to take immediate action too, and show the establishment parties that we want policies and country that reflects our values.  This applies to a range of issues, including climate change, but in the next few days and weeks it should start with progressive political action to seek a second referendum or a more measured approach to Brexit. There is an opportunity – and we need to take it.

It’s important for anyone seeking progressive change to understand how these forces are working to shape the political landscape, and to consider how they can be harnessed more effectively for campaigns and social change.

To read more about this fascinating issue, read Chris Rose’s blog.

 

The event that changed my world

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I’ve been thinking recently about my emotional reaction to a particular event in human history. I’ve felt it chipping away at me in recent years as I’ve continued to research it, and realised recently that it has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. I’d like to share it here – not, I hope, out of self-indulgence, but to show where it has led me.

Throughout history there have been countless examples of human beings being cruel or unkind to each other. Some have been at a small scale, such as the minor, everyday ways that people can overlook each other’s needs, and others have been at an industrial scale of pre-planned cruelty.

The event that affected me for life and changed my thinking was The Holocaust.

This event has broken my heart about human beings. It shows that the worst things you can ever imagine (or, worse than you can ever imagine) do happen and have happened. The emotional hammer blow is not just the fear that it’s within the capacity of human beings for it to happen again, but also the fact that it happened at all.

The possibility that human beings could do this to each other – in broad daylight, in a planned, sustained way and in front of each other – just shattered my trust in human beings and society. It’s changed my view of the world, life and human beings.

All the stuff above is simply my emotional reaction of course, and in itself may not seem particularly useful.

I’m well aware in theoretical terms about the factors that led to The Holocaust and other human tragedies – including how we think and behave as human beings, how circumstances and power can influence behaviour and how societies can change. But an emotional reaction can be a useful spark to set someone into action or down a different path in life, and I think it’s done that for me.

My emotional reaction to The Holocaust doesn’t reduce my love and concern for human beings, or my desire to help and look after other people. In fact, it strengthens my resolve to protect people and ensure things like this do not happen again. I feel as if my life should be devoted to this, in whatever ways I can achieve it.

The Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel put it far better than I ever could in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1986, explaining how after his experience:

“…I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human being endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered and when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the centre of the universe.”

My initial effort at taking some action on this was in the Life Squared publication ‘How to be civilised’ – available to download here for free. But I must – and we all must – do so much more, not just as projects we work on, but as a commitment on how to live our daily lives. I am determined that there will be more work and action from me on this in the years ahead.

Influence – a problem that goes beyond obesity

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An article has appeared today in The Guardian which talks about the many ways in which our everyday environments have been built to encourage us to consume fatty, sugary, junk food, and that we need to see some policy interventions from the government to change aspects of our daily environment in order to address the current obesity epidemic. Possible steps suggested in the article include “tighter controls on the advertising and promotion of junk food, and the closing of loopholes that allow social media to bypass regulations imposed on other media.”

Unfortunately, the issue of obesity is only one small part of a much bigger problem, which commentators and policy makers still don’t seem to have woken up to. The problem is this – the latest psychological research shows that human beings are not as rational as we think we are. We can be strongly influenced by the environment and other people around us, and we live in a complex world with more influences acting upon us than ever before – including politics, the media, advertising and many others.

As a result, many of us end up being moulded by these influences, leading to us getting trapped within restricted worldviews, lives and behaviours that simply follow the dominant ideas of the people and society that surround us – often for the worse. This includes the example of obesity but could equally apply to consumerism, greed, the rise of the far right or religious fanaticism.

This can not only be harmful to our own lives, but can also have serious implications for society, as it leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by others – including materialism, the press and the influence of political demagogues. At a time of political upheaval and rising populism, this is clearly an urgent issue.

Given this picture of non-rational human beings and the complex, pressurised world we live in, we need to be given the skills to live our own well-informed lives and not simply be moulded by other people – including the wealthy and powerful. We also need a society that helps to protect our mental freedom and provides the conditions for us to think for ourselves.

Sadly, the society we currently live in and the institutions that surround us – including our children’s education system – don’t recognise the importance of these skills and don’t equip us with them to anywhere near the level we need. In fact, we live at a time where the external conditions in society actually militate against us developing them.

We need to do two key things to deal with this:

a) We need to build a society and environment around people to help them flourish, and this has to include providing the conditions in which people can think for themselves without undue influence from other people, companies or anyone else with the power to manipulate them. A good example of this is when the food and retail industry spends millions of pounds trying to influence us to make unhealthy food choices, which damage our health and ruin our lives, but increase their profits. But it extends to many other areas of life – from advertisers trying to manipulate people, through to politicians trying to influence people into particular political decisions. Essentially, we need to help people build and protect their ‘mental freedom’.

b) We need to equip people with the information and mental tools to understand how they can be manipulated like this, and be able to resist it and truly think for themselves about what they want from every aspect of their lives (as far as it is possible to do this).

The new book I have written for Life Squared, called ‘The Life Trap – and how to escape it‘, explores this issue in more depth and argues for it to be taken much more seriously as a policy priority. We are actively allowing ourselves to be manipulated, trapped and damaged by other people – especially those with the wealth and power to influence us – and we need to stop this, and build a society where the welfare of people comes before profit or any other priority.

The Life Trap – and how to escape it will be published as a free book and audiobook on 24th May 2018 at www.lifesquared.org.uk. To get an exclusive advance copy a week before its launch date, sign up to Life Squared’s newsletter here.

How to stop the rise of manipulation

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Communication is power.

In the modern world, one of the most effective tools used by the powerful to build and exercise their power is communication. More specifically, it’s the ability to understand how human beings think and behave and then use this knowledge to influence people – both individually and in massive numbers.

This power is exercised through a wide range of channels – from advertising to social media – and surrounds each of us on a daily basis. It can be harnessed by anyone with the desire and necessary resources to influence other people – from politicians to companies to campaigning groups – regardless of whether their intentions are good or bad.

There are now plenty of agencies and consultancies helping the powerful to influence (or manipulate) people as effectively as possible  – and yet there is no-one helping to protect the public from the exploitation at the hands of this influential power.

In an information age, where the world has become more complex and information and communication have become weapons that can be used against people, the time has come for an organisation to help the public navigate this complexity and defend themselves against these weapons.

My not-for-profit organisation, Life Squared, has been helping people think about this issue for several years – through publications like ‘The problem with consumerism‘ and our forthcoming book ‘The Life Trap – and how to escape it’ – but we need more support to raise awareness of it. This is a critical issue affecting a range of areas of modern society, including mental health, climate change and the rising influence of populism, and politicians and policy makers need to take notice of it – for the sake of our own lives, as well as a better society.