[Laughs]. Actually the whole mission of Small Giants is to move our communities towards empathy and the new economy. So we’ve designed our entire little empire around the two of you.
Ha! [Laughs]. But it does show actually that so many of us are thinking alike. There’s a convergence and emergence happening around some powerful core ideas. I like that combination of empathy and the new economy in your work because one seems very much intimate to human nature and the skill to empathise. And the other initially sounds quite technical and abstract. Different people will be drawn to different aspects. Some no doubt say, “I like the human bit” and “Oh, economics, that sounds far too big and institutional to me!” And others will be the other way around. But you’d find through conversation that actually these issues touch. They tuch.
And one of the things that I’ve learned from your work is that the core of humanity and the macro economy deeply influence each other. I think if we start re-engaging with that sense of empathy at the core of who we are then we will deeply affect the economy around us. And it’s happening already, as you’ve described.
Yes absolutely. I think that in evolutionary and complexity economics, when we begin to recognise each of us is a little node within an incredible complex network of interactions, we start to see that how we each behave can actually have butterfly effects, repercussions that influence others. In evolution the really interesting stuff is what’s going on at the fringes. When we bring that back to economics, we can say, “Oh hang on, that means the really quirky stuff that seems fringe activity or marginal, that may well be the evolution of the economy!” So it’s easy to be dismissive and say that the new economy is niche, but perhaps that’s what evolution looks like. The question is how do we scale this up?
So changing tack a little bit. I’ve heard that you’re a sculptor.
You’ve been digging around!
[Laughs]. And you play saxophone, you sing jazz. I think this is so interesting, the worlds you move between, the arts and economics. I studied arts and engineering as my undergraduate and have always had this strange interplay between the idealism of the humanities and the extreme practicalities of designing bolts and bridges. I’m really curious as to how that plays out in your life.
[Laughs]. So I was lucky enough to start doing sculpture when I was at school. And I suppose I’ve brought that into my work because when I worked at the UN and Oxfam I would always be doodling images of the themes and campaigns we were working on, searching for images that encapsulate the concepts. Roman was the one in our household who wrote paragraph after paragraph and loved words. I was the one who drew pictures or took photos. When I started writing my book, and got really lost and couldn’t see my way through, it was the day that I realised that I could represent each of the seven ways of thinking in pictures that it all came together. It was a really powerful moment for me. And from there I thought, So what other ways could you represent new economics in art and performance? When I teach students about systems thinking, one of the first things I do is show them a video of a murmuration of starlings flying in their incredible patterns in the sky. And I watch the students as they’re watching the video because there’s this wonderful look of awe and amazement and beauty in their faces. That response comes down from the brain and moves into the heart and the belly with a “wow!” And that’s a very different way to learn about the patterns of the world. So I realised that actually we can use art and image and movement and performance to learn about the new economy.
That’s so wonderful. I just have a few more questions here around the future.
Yeah, go on.
I guess you quote Buckminster Fuller quite a lot, that you don’t change things by fighting the existing reality, you create a new model to replace the old one. You’ve kind of done that now. I’m really interested in where is it being manifested in the world? Like what examples are you seeing of people using Doughnut Economics as a theory of doing real work in the world?
So just on the Buckminster Fuller point, if I could tweak his quote I would say, “You don’t change things only by fighting existing reality.” Of course we need people fighting the existing reality.
Plenty of room for that.
But you have to build the new too. So where do I see the new model manifest in the world? One example really delighted me last December. I teach at the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford and one of my former students wrote to me from China saying, “I’m sitting in a conference in Beijing. The deputy director of China’s renewable energy centre is launching the report that sets out what the government plans to do in terms of transitioning from today’s fossil fuel based economy to a renewable energy system. And the second slide that he’s showing is your doughnut!” He’s put it up on the screen next to a quote from President Xi saying, “Man must learn to live in harmony with nature.”
Wow. How extraordinary.
Yeah. That really struck me—that in presenting the report the professor had chosen to use the doughnut as a symbol for the energy transition needed. Another example is teachers. There are many teachers in schools and universities who contact me saying, “We’re desperate to teach these new ideas to students.” And so I want to work with them, give great material that they can bring into the classroom and help have dialogues. I was recently contacted by a teacher in Sweden who said, “I’ve just spent a whole week teaching every subject in my classroom through the lens of the doughnut, inviting students to bring all sorts of thinking, whether it’s from biology or chemistry or maths or geography, to ask how we meet the needs of all within the needs of the planet?” So school teachers are seeing this opportunity. And there are also a good number of university economics professors who want to open up questions around the growth paradigm.
Mm. It’s so wonderful to hear. You know, we find with Dumbo Feather that when you’re looking clear-eyed at the significance of the issues that we face, either on the social or environmental front, and see that they are getting worse, that can sometimes lead to despair and despondency more regularly than in previous times. Do you go through those moments yourself?
Mm. Yes I do, I do go through those moments. I drew the doughnut as a vision of a world that is safe and prosperous for all. That doesn’t mean I think it’s easy to achieve. I’ve set out the economic mindset I think will be the best way of equipping today’s students with having even half a chance of bringing this about. But sometimes people say to me, “Oh I love your optimism!” And I say, “Hang on, I didn’t say I was optimistic.” In fact I’ve come to put it like this. Don’t be an optimist if it makes you relax. You know, “Technology will sort things out! We always figure out new ways!” Don’t be an optimist if it makes you think like that because it’s very dangerous to sit back on your heels right now. There’s absolutely no evidence that this thing is going to sort itself out. But also don’t be a pessimist if it makes you give up, if it means you feel overwhelmed and you turn your back and you just don’t want to be part of this because it’s too overwhelming. I say, “Don’t be an optimist or a pessimist, be an activist.” And ask, what can I do? From who I am, from where I sit, as a parent or a neighbour or a voter or a member of the local council or an entrepreneur or an employee. If I’m a student, I can put up my hand and ask new questions. Or if I’m a professor, I can bring different materials and concepts to class. If I’m a financier, I can change the kind of finance I offer. We actually all have many different avenues of influence and networks that we’re embedded in.
And yet still one can just feel downhearted when you look at how much Trump is dismantling in America, or how I feel debate about Brexit is distracting from the much more fundamental transition conversation that we should be having in the UK right now. So I get energy from finding like-minded people who want to collaborate or who are taking an idea and running with it. Because actually I do think the seeds of this new economy are visible in the present if we look for them. And even though it’s not mainstream enough—it’s not predominant in the news, it’s still seen as marginal or fringe—but that’s exactly where the action is, that’s where change is coming from. I want to be part of amplifying that. One of the most lovely things that happened to me was when a young woman came up to me at a festival I was talking at and asked me to sign her copy of my book. She said, “My father gave me this book. He read it himself, then gave it to me saying ‘I think I finally understand what it is that you’re doing.’” Imagine her father, perhaps coming from mainstream business, worrying, What is my daughter doing? She’s off wasting her time in some small obscure startup. And then seeing her work through this new lens, “Oh, she’s actually powerfully involved in creating something new that needs to exist” Which gave him a respect for what his daughter was doing. I loved that. I never imagined that the doughnut could be part of family therapy.
[Laughs].
But if we stop and say, “Are we out of time?” Or, “Will this not work?” That could become self-fulfilling. If we sit around and ask ourselves if this is no longer possible, well we will make it no longer possible just by doing so. And I do get a lot of energy from so many people who are asking themselves, “What can I do? How can I be part of this?” I’m struck by the number of people who really want to hear this alternative articulation of the world, want to turn it into a conversation, a movement. That certainly gives me energy to keep going.
Photography by Siddharth Khajuria
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