Matthew's RSA blog

Thinking about brains

Over the next few days and weeks I am planning to use my blog to outline the argument I intend to make in my second annual chief executive’s lecture to the RSA.

Last year my subject was ‘pro-social behaviour’. The argument, in a nutshell, was that we will not be able successfully to respond to future challenges and opportunities unless we recognise that we as citizens need to change our attitudes and behaviours. I argued for a political discourse that was less ‘Government-centric’ - what should those in power be doing for us - and more ‘citizen-centric’ - what do we have to do to achieve the things that we want.

Since last year there have been a number of further contributions to thinking about citizen behaviour. The most recent is a short pamphlet from DEMOS featuring essays about public behaviour from leading politicians. The pamphlet is edited by Duncan O’Leary, who also pens an interesting concluding chapter. O’Leary argues that the utilitarian argument for intervening to change behaviours (in areas from parenting to public health) should be supplemented (and in same cases tempered) by an account of how we enhance the capacity of all citizens to feel in control of their lives as individuals and members of communities.       

O’Leary is right. For my lecture I chose the unwieldy phrase ‘pro-social behaviour’ to signal that thinking about future citizenship should start from a positive question about human capacity. This is the idea I want to build on in this year’s lecture.

I am interested in two dimensions of human development. The first element concerns individual human capacity and, in particular, what we beginning to understand about the content, adaptability and idiosyncrasies of our cognitive processes.

I will argue that we are entering ‘an era of neurological reflexivity’, by which I mean a time when we can begin to adapt behaviours and policies to a richer understanding of how our brains (and not just our conscious minds) work.

Observer readers will have seen a major article yesterday about IQ and whether and how it can be enhanced. This is just part of a bigger debate about how we can shape our brains to better adapt us to today and tomorrow’s world.

I want to link this idea to a theme I have explored in blogs and articles earlier this year; new collectivism. The claim here is that people are willing – are indeed enthusiastic – about working with others to create a better future but that they want to do this ways which fit with modern lifestyles and expectations.

I am not as clear as I need to be about how to link these two ideas but that’s one of the things I hope to work through in coming blogs.

Free as ...

This week I’ve been recalling the iconic line from Withnail and I, “Free to those that can afford it, but very expensive to those that can’t”.

This sprang to mind while reading in the Guardian about Freeconomics – Chris Anderson’s idea that companies are giving away many of their goods for free, and opening up new revenue streams elsewhere. For example, a colleague recently upgraded her phone with a particular network, and in return received not only a free new phone, but also an i-pod nano.

The business model here is based on the assumption that since i-pod will only play i-tunes formatted songs, Apple is broadening its consumer base. Given how cheap manufacturing has become, thanks to globalisation, it is actually a cost effective way of distributing goods and then making people pay for the services later.

In large part major corporates are responding to the rise of what Matt Mason (who spoke here yesterday) calls The Pirates Dilemma – which is about how corporations can compete / collaborate with the people who distribute their intellectual property without paying royalties or receiving consent.

The new economics of the internet is part of a more general reappraisal both of the ‘big’ economics of markets, risk and regulation but also the day to day economics of our own consumption patterns. Things can change quickly.

Twenty years ago the value of a family house in the London suburbs was equivalent to the cost of about 400 good quality video players. Now, even with the housing market slowdown, you could buy 16,000 multi functional DVD players for the price of the same house. In the 1980s we would have expected to pay a lot more for an item of clothing than a basic foodstuff but now you can get a perfectly serviceable t- shirt for less than a good loaf of bread. It’s easy to get disorientated about the real costs and value of stuff.

With food and raw material shortages, and climate change, a key issue in the politics of consumption is waste. Whether its white goods with built in obsolescence or the tons of good food we chuck into dustbins every day I wonder whether we are approaching the end of the disposable society.

We have no idea how much producing a kilo of meat costs in environmental or economic terms, we have no idea what the real costs of making our i-pod are in labour or any other sense. We suspect corporations of overcharging for cheap goods – and they may well be in some cases. But what we must do is regain some perspective on consumption, for the good of our planet, or even just for our own peace of mind.

Come on(line) everybody!

In a world that is increasingly digitally enhanced, how do we ensure that people can be included in the conversations that are happening on the internet – or even at a more basic level can take advantage of cheaper car insurance (which seem to be available through internet only deals)?

This is true not only for society as a whole, but closer to home, as part of this society.

Roughly a third of Britons are considered ‘digitally excluded’. I’m chairing a conference on this tomorrow which will be looking at how we can reach this final third. No doubt I’ll be sharing my thoughts on this later in the week. But it made me think about what we’re trying to do here with the RSA Networks.

Tonight there will be an RSA Networks Exchange event here at JAS. The event is designed to mirror the experience Fellows have at our growing (and under construction) online platform. They can propose, discuss and support innovative projects. In essence it’s the physical manifestation of the virtual experience.

The idea is that not all the projects discussed tonight will be taken forward, indeed, not all the projects should be taken forward.

In our society we have an aversion to failure. This makes a lot of sense, failing makes us feel bad. But one of the capacities we need to be promoting is that of resilience. The ability to say ‘ok, this idea wasn’t so great, but I’m glad I put it out there, now I can move on and do something else.’

The other point of putting your ideas out there is that you can link to other people who are interested in similar things, and then together you can have even better ideas.

The beauty of the internet is that it creates a place for iterative project development. To borrow from recent speaker, Jonathan Zittrain, it’s a generative process. Together we can create something that is better than any of our individual ideas.

As I’ve said many times, our Networks project is about bringing together Fellows, so that they  can work together on projects which will support social change. But it occurs to me that not all our fellows are part of the ‘digitally included’. Of course with this blog I’m preaching to the converted, but it’s worth thinking about. How do we engage more Fellows in the online debate?

Have a look at this from Clay Shirky, who seeks to answer the question non-digital people always ask which is ‘Where do you find the time’.

Money, money, money

Investment and the sub-prime crisis aren’t normally topics for my blog – but recently two pieces, one in the Times and the other in the FT caught my eye.

On the one hand you have the always entertaining Jonathan Guthrie in the FT. He points out that the sub prime crisis is leading to an inevitable bonanza for litigators. In the US this has already begun in earnest, and Guthrie suggests it will soon start in the UK.

As he memorably puts it ‘Rating agencies must feel as vulnerable as a nude gymnast performing squat jumps in a porcupine farm’. If the US model is anything to go by they have reason to be nervous, as pension firms sue ratings agencies for diminution of share value.

In the Times Jamie Whyte, author of Bad Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking, says that the idea that, in the light of the sub-prime experience, we should regulate to protect investors from bad advice and bad investment is tantamount to arguing that because we should regulate romantic relationships to reduce the possibility of people being jilted.

For Whyte the very idea of regulation in an area of free choice is problematic; ‘Once risks are known, regulating them is worse than useless. It can only move the price of risk away from, and usually above, the market price. It encourages financiers and investors to seek profit in areas where the regulators are not imposing their burdens – namely those where the risk are poorly understood’ 

Now, Guthrie is not advocating litigation merely predicting it, and litigation is not exactly the same as regulation (although if successful litigation establishes case law it will tend to have a similar impact to liability imposed by regulation). But these articles point to two different views of the rights of the consumer or investor.

Whyte relies on the principle of caveat emptor, while Guthrie suggests that people who have taken bad advice will naturally seek redress against those who gave them the advice.

The RSA’s Tomorrow’s Investor will be exploring just this dilemma. We will expose a selected group of small and ‘indirect’ investors to a comprehensive picture of how decisions are made about ‘their’ money. We will explore how sound are these decisions and also their ethical dimension.

At the end of the forum the question is whether, when the investors have these insights, it makes them want be more active, to have better protecting or more effective intermediaries. I’ll make sure we send Jonathan and Jamie our findings.       

Food fight

We are facing a ‘silent tsunami’, according to the head of the World Food Programme, the Economist, and many of the broadsheets this morning. Indeed, our most recent RSA Journal featured an article on food security which argued that we need a new politics of food in Britain. One which ‘integrates individual behaviour within the planet’s needs and capacities.’

The debate on food security strikes me as emblematic of our agenda at the RSA in terms of promoting sustainable, pro-social behaviour, and local solutions for a globalised world. This is because food cuts to the very core of our society at every level.

The newspapers today have been preoccupied with the rising costs of staple foods, a situation caused by a confluence of global issues ranging from bio-fuel production to draughts in Australia to Westernising diets in Asia. But food occupies a much deeper psychological space in our life; we are defined by what we eat. To a certain extent this has always been true, but the issue is ever more acute as we see the impact of our food choices on the environment, and vice versa.

So for example, the environmental lobby, were (and are) particularly concerned about the introduction of GM crops. The media responded with a flurry of headlines about ‘franken-food’ and ‘jumping genes’ and as a result most people would now refuse to eat ‘GM’ products. However, with a basic understanding of science, and a rational response to risk analysis, most people would come to the conclusion that the benefits of increased supply, not to mention draught and pest resistance, outweigh the concerns. Obviously there are larger issues around patents for seeds etc but this can’t be properly discussed until we re-open the GM debate. 

A debate is currently emerging on the RSA Networks Platform on sustainable food supplies – should we be returning to increased self sufficiency (yesterday there were reports that people are buying more vegetable seeds in a time of economic crisis and Jamie Oliver induced gardening)?

In an increasingly urbanised world, how do we reconcile where our food comes from, and how can we as individuals make choices which are best for us (in terms of health) and sustainable for the world? What is clear is that we need an open and rational debate which puts reason and sustainable development at the centre of our food policies, and I’m sure many of the Fellows will have important contributions to make on this issue.

Purchases before principles?

There was a great cartoon in yesterday’s FT. A middle aged couple are speaking to another couple visiting them at home. They are in a totally empty room with bare floorboards and a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. The caption is one of the hosts saying ‘we’re boycotting Chinese goods’.

This time last year in my speech on pro-social behaviour I made the point about how people tend to fall into a model of social change that is Government centric (‘what are they going to do for us?’) when instead we should start from a position that is more citizen centric (‘what are we going to do for each other?’). The cartoon captures this. Many of us support the protests of supporters of Tibetan rights and freedoms, which are aimed at those who govern the Olympic Movement and at governments themselves. Yet, we quite happily continue to go to the computer, electronics or clothes store and splash out on goods made in China.

I am not sure I have the strength of conviction to stop buying Chinese goods myself but it is worth noticing that we find it much easier to attack the ‘condoning’ of China by those in authority than we do to question our own retail collaboration.

'The centre cannot hold'?

I know, I know, everyone tells me to write shorter blogs…maybe next time

Looking forward to Jack Straw’s speech here tomorrow. The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (as is his title) will be officially launching our Prison Learning Network. I understand that Jack plans to say some very interesting things about how to embed the criminal justice system more concretely in local communities.

I’m sure there will be a couple of new announcements in Jack’s speech. These will add to the seemingly unstoppable tide of policy ideas, proposals and commitments emerging every day from Government. Although I find myself agreeing with a lot of what I hear, I can’t help wondering about the sheer scale of the Government’s objectives.

The scope of central Government is subject to continuous and sometimes substantial change. In the 1980s the privatisation of utilities meant Government went from running industries to providing a framework of regulation. More recently, Labour’s alleged ‘control freak’ tendencies have been somewhat belied by two massive transfers of power away from Whitehall: the independence of the Bank of England and devolution to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But the extra items coming onto the Cabinet agenda dwarf even these shifts away from the centre. As well as all the responsibilities Labour inherited in 1997 has been added the whole slew of law and order, security and identity management issues, responding to climate change, and a growing set of complex ‘behaviour change’ challenges like obesity, poor parenting and binge drinking. Gordon Brown is also seen to be prioritising international development and national values and identity. Yesterday it was briefed that the Government plans major reforms on Party funding, the House of Lords, a Bill of Rights and the voting system.

I am all for constitutional modernisation and – recalling how difficult it was to get senior Cabinet ministers to sign up to this kind of thing when I worked for Tony Blair – I envy the political authority Number Ten has to drive radical change. The question is whether any corporate centre, even one as full of clever people as Downing Street and the Cabinet Office, can manage this scale of external challenge and internally generated initiatives. 

There are libraries of research and recommendation about modernising public services and the civil service but in a brief internet search ahead of writing this piece I couldn’t find anything that spoke directly to the sheer scale of central Government’s task. Among some of the more thoughtful newspaper columnists there is a growing critique of Labour’s competence in governing, but while some ministers may be overactive, terrorism, climate change and binge drinking weren’t problems made up by Whitehall.

The obvious strategy to deal with central overload is devolution, and as I have said before, the Government really does seem to be trying to hand more power to local authorities. But is this enough, especially when central Government will still be held accountable for overall public service performance and if things go badly wrong? I have spoken about the need to move from a ‘government centric’ to a ’citizen centric’ way of thinking about social change but can Government itself facilitate this?   

This is a very broad brush attempt to open a debate. Another way of kick starting it is a proposal of my own. How about Government transferring responsibility for major areas of constitutional and democratic reform (like voting system, Lords and party funding) to Parliament? Parties would still have their own policies to which they would be accountable at election time, but the task of policy development, consensus building, as well as the detailed drafting of legislation would move from Downing Street, the Cabinet and Whitehall to MPs backed by a beefed up Parliamentary secretariat. This would arguably be in line with Gordon Brown’s commitment to enhance the status and powers of Parliament. It would certainly take some tricky items off the Cabinet table.

Pro-social initiatives - they do work

In Manchester on Monday to talk about our project on pro-social behaviour. We are getting a good response as we go around the city and in the evening I was asked to speak to local government officers and members from the greater Manchester area. I began my talk by referring to two articles in Monday’s Manchester Evening News.

The page one lead was about the impeccable behaviour of Manchester City fans in the one minute’s silence to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Munich disaster. Six thousand, predominantly young, men had put aside a lifetime of hostility to United and not one of them had broken the pledge of City fans to respect the silence. Contrast this with the story on page two reporting that the North West is the worst region in the UK for attacks by gangs on fire crews attending emergency call outs.

The success of the minute’s silence was based on a sophisticated and concerted campaign. The way Manchester had responded as a city united in grief fifty years ago was constantly emphasised. There were many reminders that City had lost a former great – Frank Swift – in the crash so they could mourn for their own and not just United’s loss. City fans' websites hosted long debates and agreed amongst themselves that it would be letting City down not to respect the 'minute'. On the day United gave every fan a free scarf – with sky-blue scarves for the City fans. There was an iron fist inside the velvet glove: a proclamation from City that any fan seen disrupting the minute would get a life ban, but everyone knew this threat would have been unworkable if thousands had ignored it.

So it is possible to persuade people – even people resistant to authority – to do the right thing but it takes thought and effort. The day after the talk, the Head of Public Affairs at Canary Wharf, Howard Dawber, told me about an initiative in a nearby area, the Isle of Dogs. Fire crews facing false call outs and attacks on a local estate had explored the reasons for the problem. They had come to the conclusion that it was because the youngsters found fire engines and fire crews exciting. So they put together a set of activities which brought the fire engine into the community and provided youngsters with opportunities to ride in the engine, undertake an adapted form of the fire crew training and even wear an adapted uniform. The effect of all this was that not only did the false alarms and attacks virtually dry up but that the fire service had an unprecedented level of applications to join from youngsters on the area.

It takes effort, innovation, commitment but pro-social initiatives do work and the results can be spectacular.      

A (not very) funny thing happened on the way to John Adam Street...

Are jokes pro-social acts? I guess it depends on their content and the context of their telling. It is as hard to make up jokes as design pro-social experiments. Although I love hearing and telling jokes I have only ever made up three, and one of those was this morning. Here they are:

‘Why do rabbits care about the Government’s finances?

Because they are worried about the size of the public sector burrowing requirement’

(This joke is losing its already limited appeal as HMG long since stopped using PSBR as a measure.)    

Man: Doctor, doctor I am invisible until I eat my lunch

Doctor: I’m sorry, I can’t see you until this afternoon’

And this morning’s joke:

‘I have made friends with an amoeba who is into boxing and martial arts. I am trying to get him to buy my car.

It’s proving to be a hard cell’.

I know these aren’t very good but they are mine. I am intrigued as to how many other people can claim to have actually invented (rather than just rediscovered or retold) a joke. 

Challenges of the modern world

The RSA has been assisting the Joseph Rowntree Foundation with its fascinating project to identify 'new social evils'. We held a launch event here in July and our Fellows were invited to contribute to JRF's online consultation.

This week, I attended a day long discussion exploring the outcomes of that consultation and implications for the next stage of the project. A stage which we hope will involve further JRF/RSA events at John Adam Street.

I won't steal JRF's thunder by revealing the list of social evils that emerged from the over 3,000 online submissions and more in-depth focus groups.

Maybe it's the wisdom of crowds, or maybe a failure of popular insight, but the list reveals a pretty strong consensus around the kinds of 'evils' discussed at the lecture here, with materialism, poverty, and the breakdown of family and community featuring highly.

The extended seminar this week was an opportunity to look behind the list and explore connections and deeper underlying trends. There was much of interest here, but, for me, three related points stood out:

• It is not useful to try to explain the widespread pessimism about the state and direction of society by saying lives are getting worse. Indeed many things, for example social tolerance, affluence, educational attainment are getting better. Our unease may instead reflect the sense that we are not equipped to deal with the kinds of new challenges presented to us by the modern world.

• In physiological terms human evolution is a slow process (although rising life spans and evidence of substantial increases in average IQs suggest it is possible to get much better use out of the equipment we inherit). Thus far, human history comprises a very long period of very limited change, followed by a much shorter period of much more profound change. Is the tragic paradox of modernity that we are able to unleash powerful, unstoppable, processes - most obviously scientific and technological change, and modern globalisation - but we do not have the tools (as individuals, communities or nations) to direct those processes to the achievement of a better human condition.

• Returning to the RSA theme of the social aspiration gap (between the future we say we want and the future we are likely to create with current modes of thought and behaviour), should we understand this gap less as a failure of will or leadership, but instead as a sign that we need to develop a new collective consciousness? It is only this new consciousness (what our trustee Sean Blair refers to as 'post-enlightenment thinking') that will enable us to thrive in the world we have created, or, as it increasingly feels, the world that is creating us.

In case this all feels a bit abstract let me offer one observation which connects a major social phenomena with the ways our minds work.

We know from the research of Richard Layard and others that economic progress and rising affluence have not been associated with higher levels of life satisfaction. This insight has given rise to the development of new policy priorities designed to increase happiness levels.

The impact of Layard's work was seen most recently when the Government announced substantial extra funding for cognitive and behavioural therapy.  Studies of individual behaviour and brain processes suggests one reason for the social phenomenon of progress without happiness may lie in our individual mental processes (for a brilliant exposition of this and other research I can strongly recommend 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Dan Gilbert).

It seems that we are all very bad at predicting the impact of events on our levels of contentment (systematically exaggerating the bad impact of what we fear and the good impact of what we desire).  So, how are we to create a more contented society when we are so bad at predicting what make us contented individuals?   

As is the style of my blogs, I am skimming the surface of a deep and complex set of subjects. The idea of a new collective consciousness requires us to bring together insights from areas as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, social psychology and brain science. Unless debate is grounded in robust research and engages with concrete issues there is a danger of falling into a kind of new age mysticism.

But this feels to me like it could be a central project for the RSA, shaping both our thought and organisation for years to come.

Any other views?

P.S.

This week the Trustees approved a set of interesting new research projects on: learning in prisons; attitudes and behaviours among small investors; social care innovation; and pro-social behaviour.

I'll ask Jonathan Carr-West to summarise these on the programme pages of the RSA site.

Thanks to Christine Richard and Liz Sewell for interesting responses to last week's blog.