Alternative Editorial: Wicked Problems

Igor Kozlovsky & Marina Sharapova, "The illusion of freedom" (2019)

How do you lift a table while you are standing on it? In Week 161 of The Shift, we experienced a number of seemingly intractable problems. In each case, the dilemma presenting arose from the socio-economic-political system as we found it. Therefore it cannot not be easily addressed by that same system. 

The first was the conundrum known as ‘freedom’. It has been a recurring call over the past year in response to the restrictions caused by lock-down. While at first - in societies the world over - citizens seemed very keen to know what they had to do to avoid catching Covid, as time wore on many resisted the advice of governments.

For some this was a natural resistance, exacerbated by the news that the UK government cabinet advisor Dominic Cummings had broken the strict rules set by those like himself. For others, the desire for freedom has been more like an epidemic itself, picked up from the internet as a meme. These calls are often attached to unproven theories about global level conspiracies, conducted by business men – in cahoots with government – to control our every move.

On the one hand, those who find it acceptable to live with strict rules to keep themselves and others as safe as possible from the virus, find it hard to empathise with the freedom seekers. What’s the big deal in wearing a face mask, if it keeps you free from illness and those more vulnerable less at risk of calamity?

Yet the desire for freedom is not unreasonable from the bigger perspective of wanting to escape the life too many people have settled for in the 21st century. A life dominated by work, often boring or stressful, with too little reward. When Scotland played England in the European Cup this week, 22,000 Scottish fans journeyed to London against the explicit request of Mayor Sadiq Khan. 

Their determination to have a good time as the Covid rules relax was hard to condemn, especially as they prioritized ‘boogeying’ over marauding. When many showed up to help council workers clean up the next morning, they were met with warmth more than resentment.

But what kind of freedom can citizens in general be granted, in this moment of extremis for global societies? The pandemic we are experiencing is only a symptom of a much deeper crisis of the environment that will require us to become more disciplined, not less, about our lifestyles. See our blog this week about the Freedom Tour that has just kicked off, initiated by a group of RegenA. They want to kick-start a conversation around the country about what freedom means when the human race is facing extinction.

At the same time, keeping people under tight control is just as (if not more) likely to keep us moving in the same trajectory towards the cliff. When the government itself is still led by the need for economic growth, to win against other countries in the ‘global battle’ for status, we end up trapped - using the same transport, shops and energy. 

Of course, there is also the option of jumping off the hamster wheel and adopting a more sustainable lifestyle yourself, irrespective of the dominant culture. Will that be the ‘freedom’ more and more people choose, as the frustrations of their personal lives meet the growing evidence that we’ve invested in the wrong future?

The second intractable situation we saw in the spotlight this week was the news that money earmarked specifically for the ‘levelling-up’ promises made in the election manifesto - which played its part in winning this government an 80 seat majority – was being funnelled disproportinately to Tory councils. 

When our electoral system is first-past-the-post and the party-political culture is mutually assured destruction, it’s hard for citizens to win. In this case, many Labour voters chose the Conservative Party for the first time in the belief that they would benefit directly. But they could not have predicted that the money would be spent so unfairly.

The news this week that Chesham and Amersham, a long-held Tory seat, was won in a by-election by the Liberal Democrat party, was a shock to that system and flagged up as “a warning shot” to the government. Some might say: what will the loss of one seat do to redress the imbalance? At the same time, the inside story of how that seat was won and its possible ramifications bears looking at more closely.

Winning MP Layla Moran described how she could not have won the seat without thousands of voters – including some Conservatives - going against the party system and voting for her instead of their own candidate. This was not simply on the strength of her personality, but in a deliberate attempt to from an alliance against the incumbent – a strategy long championed by the Compass campaigning group. It’s Compass’s hope that they can perfect this move before the next election and break the old system.

It’s also interesting to hear what issues united so many against the Conservatives, overturning their dominance for the first time since 1974. According to party chairman Ed Davey, these were principally planning and the building of the trainline HS2, both of which threaten the green belt in this semi-rural seat. Ironically, despite the government seeking to enable house building in this relatively wealthy area, the people living there don’t want them.

Will this result in more of the ‘encouragement’ to build going where people are acutely in dire need of housing? It’s highly that the Conservatives will now do more to protect the wealthy, not-in-my-back-yard shires, while also doing more to shore up the ‘Red Wall’ constituencies as originally promised. With Compass’s progressive alliance threatening, we may find ourselves more often in what is described (notably by Johan Galtung) as ‘altruistic competition’ between parties: a race to look the most generous to those most in need.

More examples of that would be the competition between the Scottish and British governments to be the most ambitious around climate goals. Or in a more awkward appeal to women voters, Boris Johnson’s recent promise to move into a more feminine future. Simon Anholt has spent much of his career encouraging exactly this kind of competition in the Good Country project which uses massive amounts of data to illustrate which country does the most, not for its own citizens, but for the whole world.

At the same time, the government has a strategy problem of its own. When it does so much to manipulate the media narrative and even directly shape people’s personal choices, how can it genuinely discover what it is that people want? Especially now that its data maestro, Dominic Cummings – often credited with the success of Brexit - has left the building?

From that perspective, it’s in the interest of political parties that people power gets more sophisticated. Not simply in the form of better polling: too often the questions put to the public echo the establishment position too much. But in the form of more authentic, autonomous community structures to capture the wants and needs of people on the ground as they arise. Peter Anderson’s work with VocalEyes and also LocalEyes are great tools in the citizen action networks (CANs) forming everywhere.

In the possibility of people from across the political divides being able to meet each other and deliberate the future together, the ‘intractable problems’ begin to look less so. Not as a method of protest against the status quo, but as a means for the community to reach into itself for truth and wisdom that it can present to the government with confidence.