Until 2019 I never thought of myself as being radical. All things considered, I thought the world would slowly continue getting better. I thought the best path forward was incremental progress.
I had belatedly learned how serious the global warming problem was and why solving it was so difficult. I realized that the situation was highly systemic and that the economic system built for endless growth was very resistant to meaningful change. I concluded that to save the planet would mean killing the economy. To save the economy would mean killing the planet. And this insight was only a small fraction of the whole predicament facing the human race.
I learned that our civilization is best viewed as a number of intertwined complex systems populated by humans also best understood as themselves being complex systems, albeit with a tiny bit of free will. For example, the education system generates certain types of people who build political systems which develop educational systems which generate certain types of people. Everything depends on everything else, a tangled mess of loops much like a ball of yarn.
And I realized that these systems were fragile, particularly the economic system. And if one system breaks down a cascade could ensue bringing down other systems. OMG, a metacrisis, civilization could collapse! The only solution seemed to be changing everything at once and that seemed impossible. I gave up on the myth of progress driven by incremental change and I embraced radical change.
The scope of the solution exceeded my capacity to even imagine. Fortunately, in 2019, I discovered a group of thinkers up to the task, the Game B movement, people who want to build a radically better world. A more fitting name for this initiative recently proposed by one of the players, Joe Lightfoot, is the Liminal Movement.
A couple of years ago after I became a patron of The Stoa, Peter Limberg asked me why I had signed up. The answer popped into my mind, because of your radical personal transparency I trust you, I replied. I too practice radical personal transparency as evidenced by publishing my life story on my website. For reasons I do not fully understand and cannot explain, my sense is that this approach is a small part of the big solutions needed to solve big problems. Perhaps this was an important step in my journey of becoming radical.
The word radical has now become a useful adjective that I can attach to several nouns.
A part of me has long been attracted to avoiding extremes and finding common ground. The Third Way and The Middle Way appeal to me. Years ago I discovered a wonderful website with a name that still resonates today, the Radical Middle Newsletter.
Inspired by the often quoted phrase from a W. B. Yeats poem, “the centre cannot hold”, I now often observe this phenomenon. As polarization continues to intensify and more and more people gather into tribes defined by who and what they oppose, or hate, it is becoming increasingly difficult to resist being swept up by these forces. And many of those not caught up in culture wars are apathetic, willingly oblivious to what is going on around them. Only a tiny percentage remain who constitute what truly is now the radical middle and this is where I want to be.
I am inspired by Zachary Stein who writes, “I argue that there is no viable future for civilisation that does not include a radical change in the nature of our educational systems.” Zak Stein contributes to the Transformative Education Alliance, a project of Perspectiva. The vision of the TEA is to “reach beyond our current cultural and institutional grasp.”
A radically changed education system would help young students find Radical Purpose as expressed on this wonderful website. My education helped me prepare for a career and for chasing the myth of progress. And I initially found my purpose by joining a benign Christian cult. Looking back, it is easy for me to imagine much better preparation for a life of thriving than what I was given. Now at age 70, I am still calmly wondering what my purpose is, if any, beyond having the best possible retirement for my wife and I.
Back in 2014 Massimo Pigliucci wrote about The return of radical empiricism in which he warned against scientism and reductionism. Sadly, matters have not gotten better. During the past two years of the pandemic, we were often told to “Follow the science”. I felt like screaming in response that we must not only follow the science. I am not a radical empiricist.
Recently Otto Scharmer wrote about Radical Realism. Most of this article resonates with me. I feel what he feels.
We know that this profound transformation of our civilization is not going to be easy. It’s not going to happen overnight. And it will require all of us to show up with our best Selves, time and again. But for the first time in my life, I feel that it’s actually within reach. It’s why we are here. And all these transformations, large and small, are already being seeded and prototyped around the world.
Scharmer understands that the outer change we seek must start with our own inner change. And that is no easy path and there are many blind alleys. I have been trying to change my whole life and I am not getting very far. The spiritual journey is one of transformation, radical transformation. For me personally, this remains mostly a dream as the gap between my aspirational self and actual self has not narrowed very much. Transformed individuals can emerge anywhere at anytime. But transformed masses of people can only emerge from a transformed world and it takes transformed people to build a transformed world. Hopefully these will co-evolve, but evolution is a painfully slow process.
To build a radically better world first requires a radical vision and a new radical paradigm. I stumbled upon a great phrase in an article entitled Imaginaries and Social Change by Sam Earle on Medium. She was a PhD student under Rupert Read.
…if we truly seek viable, equitable and sustainable solutions to these problems, they will have to be conceived and designed within a radical new imaginary. We need a new imaginary because the one we have at the moment, what I call the liberal imaginary, is inadequate, and it needs to be radical…
Rupert Read has some interesting things to say in his essay, What next on climate? The need for a new moderate flank, posted on the Perspectiva website.
Those uncomfortable with radical flanks cannot just preach and criticise. They – we all – need to step up. To form something more massive, more…inclusive, in the space created by the radicals.
But let me step back from the big picture and again make this personal. I have been thinking about radical honesty lately and I have mixed feelings about it. I have looked at The Core Principles of Radical Honesty which has some good ideas. But the tone is too dogmatic for my taste. “Lying is the primary cause of suffering” Buddhists would disagree. Suffering has many causes and consequently there are many ways to reduce suffering. There is no formula.
The Radical Honesty initiative feels very Game A to me. I looked at the courses offered at very high prices, no thank you. I can find better information and better experiences for free.
Radical honesty could as easily increase conflict as reduce it. It seems to me that radical honesty would not be wise unless there is a shared sense of reality. And there cannot be a universal shared sense of reality. We all have public and private selves. I do not think it is possible nor wise to be radically honest about every aspect of our private selves.
What appeals to me more than radical honesty is radical acceptance. The question What Is Radical Acceptance? is comprehensively answered on the excellent website verywellmind where good information is offered for free. We can personally accept that there can be no universal shared sense of reality but we need not be radically honest about this insight. Many people are very resistant to this idea and are on a futile quest to find the truth about reality.
Although the idea is new to me, radical acceptance has been around for quite a while. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha by Tara Brach was published in 2003. My sense is that this approach to life is even more important in 2022 than it was in 2003.
Another idea that resonates strongly with me, particularly now in the days shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, comes from Jamie Wheal in his article How To Find Radical Hope.
As we become increasingly aware of the meta-crisis we're in, there's simply no way to maintain Hope for ourselves… But there is another option––a way for us to go from personal hope to a radical hope that is more robust and a little less fragile.
Radical hope gives us perspective beyond the false certainties and certain vulnerabilities of our own lifetimes. We may not get to the Promised Land ourselves, but we keep on walking in the conviction that our children, or their children, might.
The state of politics almost everywhere today is very discouraging. Yet I see glimmers of hope and even some reasons for radical hope. As a fun little exercise, I went to The Alternative website and I entered the word radical in the search field. Below are some selected quotes.
Indra’s faith in the future is rooted in her vision of human beings as ‘radical animals’ …Under the right conditions, Indra dares to believe that ‘radical animals’ might be capable of achieving far more on a shorter timeframe than many people might assume.
Here's some radical children - agents of a better future, one way or another
Jamie Bartlett's Radicals: Outsiders Changing The World…In the last few years the world has changed in unexpected ways. The power of radical ideas and groups is growing. What was once considered extreme is now the mainstream. But what is life like on the political fringes? What is the real power of radicals?
"When did the world become this loveless?” Turkey's republicans see electoral and mayoral success, using a strategy of "Radical Love"
Hi-tech innovation isn’t coming along with a magic wand to sort out our range of crises - environment, jobs, health, migration, democracy - but we should always keep an eye on what efficiencies, transformations and connections it can do for us. What kind of civic spaces could we open up that could connect citizens directly to radical innovation - guiding it in their direction, binding it to their well-formulated values and interests?