Anthea Lawson - should we be trying to save the world?

[00:00:00]Adeyela Lawson, it is such a pleasure to have you on the examined life today.

[00:00:04]Thank you very much for joining me.

[00:00:06]>> Oh, thanks very much for the opportunity to have a conversation.

[00:00:09]>> Yeah, absolute pleasure.

[00:00:10]So, there's lots of things that I want to talk about with you today and you've a fascinating history. You've written a book called the Entangled Activist. As this is being broadcast, you've got another one coming out and I think that's largely going to be the focus of our conversation.

[00:00:25]But as a way of kind of distilling some of your preoccupations and your experience into something we can explore, what is the question that you think we should be asking ourselves today?

[00:00:37]>> My question is, should I be trying to save the world?

[00:00:43]Which is quite a large one, isn't it?

[00:00:45]>> Where where where to begin? There's so many places we could begin with that.

[00:00:49]>> Let's just backtrack for a second though. I've been a campaigner for a long time.

[00:00:53]I'm interested in how we can do it better. The work I've done includes working for human rights organizations like Amnesty and Global Witness. I've campaigned against the arms trade. I've campaigned to try and shut down tax havens. I've managed to get laws changed in dozens of countries on a specific legal detail that's about how tax havens work. I've also been part of climate protesting with Extinction Rebellion.

[00:01:16]I'm currently involved in local democracy initiatives. That's one bit of me. I'm also a mom of two kids and I'm looking at the state of the world.

[00:01:24]War, climate breakdown, sewage being put into the rivers, like really strange things going on with democracy in a lot of countries. What on earth is the algorithm going to serve up to our kids next? You know, like it goes on, doesn't it? We we we all know about these things.

[00:01:38]And I'm looking at this and thinking, what you know, this is huge, right? And so what happens in that moment when it's so huge is I think we can fall into two extremes and people can go one way or the other.

[00:01:50]And one is that we sort of like this is a minority of people.

[00:01:54]I'm one of them. We we launch into action. It's like, "Oh, my goodness, I must I must do something about this.

[00:02:00]It's a compulsion." And the feeling that we have is that I must do this myself. I must take the world on my shoulders, and I must try and save it. Now, we can break this down in a minute and go into where that comes from, cuz I think that's very interesting where that feeling comes from. But then the other side of the extreme is we fall into despair and think, "Well, this is far too big.

[00:02:20]This is far too big for me to do anything on my own. What on earth could I possibly do?" And so we sort of put our head in the sand or kind of carry on in an uncomfortable sense of disavowal, where we half know it and half don't.

[00:02:32]And we just sort of go to work and try and muddle along. I'm interested in what happens if we break down that stereotype of I must save the world.

[00:02:42]Where does it come from? You know, I've been a journalist, that's how I started out. I was originally a news reporter, and it is true that it's certainly a headline writer's shorthand. Saving the world is, you know, like all these clichés. But I think it's also I'm also struck by how often people used to say it to me. Like, "Oh, right, you're off saving the world, aren't you?" Or "What are you going to do to save the world next?" It's It's a phrase that rattles around. Even Even if we break it down, it doesn't seem to have any logic. I think it has got a hold of us.

[00:03:07]So, yeah, that's why the new book is called How Not to Save the World, cuz I'm interested in dismantling that stereotype. And I think that might benefit both the minority of people who self-identify as campaigners or activists, but also might help everyone else to see that actually there might be something they can do, and it might be quite close to home, and something quite manageable as part of their life.

[00:03:28]>> Okay, great. I mean, there's a lot in what you've just said. I would justice seems to have propelled you, the desire to make the world a better place. And indeed, it sounds like you have, if you've had laws changed in certain countries, exposed bits of injustice. Has it been this message of I must try and save the world, I've got to do something about it, that has propelled you?

[00:03:50]>> Do you know that it wasn't a literal thing that was in my mind. No, it was once I started thinking about the script that drives us that I started thinking about it in those terms. So, what was driving me was a really strong sense that the world is run by and for a really small proportion of its population.

[00:04:14]I graduated in the mid to late '90s and did a few years work as a journalist, but I was going out much as at the weekends as part of the movement of people thinking about the effects of globalization of the economy on the poorest countries and how the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were setting up economic systems and putting pressure on the poorest countries. It was about debt burdens and things like that. They were creating poverty in a sense. Well, very practically, they were creating poverty with these debt repayments and the the pressure to alter national policies because of the debt it was being used as a lever. So, that's what it looked like then, and now we have much greater inequality 25 years on, and it looks much more obvious. And so, that has always motivated me. That sense that this isn't right, you know, and the details of it have changed. But, this thing about noticing the script came about in a slightly different way, which was noticing through years of practical campaigning efforts, the ways in which we often did the same things. And some of them seemed to be And by the same things, what I mean is the same underlying behaviors or choice of tactics or ways of speaking would occur even if they contradicted what we were saying we wanted in the world.

[00:05:30]That's when I started noticing, "Oh, hang on. Is there some kind of unconscious script here that's driving us?"

[00:05:36]>> [laughter] >> This stuff is it's unconscious.

[00:05:38]>> Yeah, that that's really helpful. So, let let's kind of bring that to light a bit because it's not intuitively obvious what a script message is. I I I know what you're talking about, but can you explain what a script message is in psychology? This kind of underlying propulsion we might have to behave in to a certain pattern or in a certain way.

[00:05:57]>> Yeah, that's right. And psychology is the right word though. It's I think they work in both psychology and in culture and and specifically they're quite helpful in psychosocial thinking which is where you try and bring those two ways of looking at the world together. So, you know, it's always hard conceptually like finding ways to describe what goes on in our inner world and how ultimate cuz this is true. What goes on in our inner world individually and relationally between us ends up creating the world that we have that we see that we perceive materially out there and vice versa. The world has an impact on our psychology. So, scripts are helpful way to bridge that. So, in terms of psychology, I'm interested in what goes on in the depths. One way of describing that is that it's a psychoanalytic or psychodynamic way of thinking about it, but we don't have to use those words. It's the stuff that we don't think about that drives us. Where scripts might be affecting how we do things. It's a useful metaphor. Another way of thinking about it might be, you know, it's a patterning.

[00:06:56]It's the patterns that we get into which until we become conscious of them have a bit of a hold of us. But the great news is they're not inevitable because when we do become conscious of them we can try and you know, put something else in their place.

[00:07:12]>> Yeah, there was that line from Jung. I think he said until we make the unconscious conscious, we're going to be subject to it.

[00:07:17]>> Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. That has has been part of how I think about this, definitely.

[00:07:22]>> And that word shoot, that's a very script word, isn't it? I think of it as quite a bullying word.

[00:07:28]And the way it's kind of shown up in my own life.

[00:07:31]>> of people are doing when they go to therapy of whatever kind is trying to track those words. They're trying to start to notice and being given support to notice. Oh, I'm giving myself a load of should or should have done this or ought to do this. You know, and of course, you know, that stuff's not just in us randomly. It is occurred because of what has put it there, you know, the culture around us does that. Our families do that and the culture does that in varying quantities and in different ways depending on who we are.

[00:08:00]>> So, what are the constellation of traits that you see showing up as part of this should I save the world script, whether it's, you know, cultural or personal, individual?

[00:08:12]>> So, I'll talk you through the script.

[00:08:14]So, I think the first thing it says is I'm good.

[00:08:18]And all sorts of things come from that because I think if we're trying to make the world better and I should say there's there's a positive and a negative to all of these, right? It gives us the energy to do it.

[00:08:28]But I'm looking at the flip side that causes problems for us when we're doing it or that serves to effectively repel other people. So, you know, the being good, it's like great. Yes, we want to do something good. We can see that there's a better world possible.

[00:08:43]That's what defines someone who wants to try and change the world is we can see that this is not inevitable.

[00:08:49]We do not accept that it has to be like this. We do not accept that I the economy has to be run only on the basis of capital, which is only for the few.

[00:09:02]We don't accept that it has to be that way or we don't accept that things have to be unjust. We don't accept that we have to run an economy that will extract from nature and from the natural world and from our ability to live on this planet until there is nothing left. We don't accept that. It doesn't have to be like that.

[00:09:18]Now, we can get into all the politics of that. So, that's the good. The flip side of wanting something better and saying I'm good is that we can assume we're better than everyone else and that's where the moralizing and the righteousness comes in, which is deeply off-putting.

[00:09:32]And so, how this works in its inverse to keep people away is you see the smug activist being righteous and you're like, "Oh, I don't want to be like that.

[00:09:40]I don't want to do that." So, I'm good is one thing. The next one is, as I see it, look, this is just my view of it, right, is I protest. Now, again, protesting, really important. Protesting has won us all of the rights that we have.

[00:09:55]We wouldn't have the vote. We wouldn't have the working hours that we do. We wouldn't have a weekend. Like, let's let's be completely clear, of course it is part of it.

[00:10:06]In its inverse, I think we take on, I'm thinking of it as a protest voice.

[00:10:10]That voice, we use it. It's fine to use it out on a protest. I'll be going out on a protest in 5 days time, next Saturday. There's a big anti-far-right march in London, which will have happened by the time this podcast goes out, you know? But, when you use the protest voice in your interpersonal communications with people in your life, is that an effective way to communicate?

[00:10:31]>> Say something more about that.

[00:10:32]>> No, it's not. Right?

[00:10:35]>> Right, because it's because it's kind of judgy?

[00:10:38]>> Who likes being lectured? Who likes being told what to do?

[00:10:40]>> Nobody's ever changed their mind by being told they're an idiot or wrong or >> We have to, you know, we have to find and there are other ways to have those conversations. But, we do have to get off our high horse in in those moments.

[00:10:53]So, that's part of the script.

[00:10:55]>> So, we got protest and goodness. Good.

[00:10:58]>> Right, purity is another one.

[00:11:00]>> I'm Related to kind of goodness in some sense?

[00:11:03]>> that one is related and it and it has some But, it has some specific effects.

[00:11:07]So, in in its effect of of righteousness, I I think it's a Let me just step back a sec. It's coming from the same thing of wanting to make things better. That's the entire basis of the progressive in the very broadest sense mindset as opposed to the conservative mindset. So, it says, "Right, okay, we can make things better." But, we you can get into wanting to make them absolutely perfect.

[00:11:28]Now, the other flip side of it, I think, is again in keeping people away because when we see activists you know, the media doesn't help here. I should say that all of these things are weaponized by culture warriors and critics of activism, those who would like things to stay as they are, those who are financially invested in not having climate action, those who are financially invested in destroying the idea of net zero, etc. etc. and are seeking to discredit the messenger or use all this stuff against us. So, that's that's a really big part of this to remember. And so when you know, I've been interviewed after going on climate protest, you know, it's this classic question of like, well, how did you get to the protest? You know, >> [laughter] >> did you get on public transport? You know, I sometimes think we have to we should have crawled on our knees and you know, prostrated our foreheads to the ground, you know, like pilgrims in in in order to be like taken seriously as turning up to a protest, you know, like sometimes you have to use fossil fuel powered public transport and the whole thing is absolute nonsense, right?

[00:12:28]Seeking to discredit. But this trope, this idea that we have to be be green in order to take part. What a great way to keep people away.

[00:12:38]>> Yeah, I I recall there's this house at university where five or six students lived in it and I used to go around sometimes and you weren't allowed to walk on the grass. They had this long list of shops you weren't allowed to shop from if you were going to live there, products you were not and it felt religious. It was pure satanical and it was the bar was just so high that I thought even if I was behind them ideologically, I just don't think I could do it. So, yeah, I'll end up in the kind of you know, you said at the beginning those people who are like, this is just too much. I can't manage life if I do that and so I just have to keep my head down and >> Okay, you know, each of those things on their own in the right way really strategically is useful. Boycotts are ultimately very very powerful if used well. That's what worked with apartheid South Africa and that's what people are trying to do with Israel and Palestine now. Like there are reasons to do specific boycotts if they're targeted well, but if you create a culture out of all of these things, if you end up creating so many rules that people can't live and be with you, that that's going to turn people away.

[00:13:46]But I suppose, you know, am I really thinking that I'm going to stop people doing that? No. I think almost the bigger message here really is I'm interested in talking to people who are not doing it and saying, "You don't have to be like that in order to take part.

[00:14:00]You don't have to be like that in order to get together with some people in your community and work out how you're going to, you know, like put pressure on locally to make the place more resilient next time there are floods."

[00:14:13]>> I think I'm your target audience and think >> I really? Well, that's >> I think so. I mean, I this is I'm ideally situated. So, I do do bits of things, you know, like planting wildflowers and the odd bit of protesting, but I do feel totally overwhelmed by the state of the news, the state of the world. And so, I do kind of bury my head to an extent because it's overwhelming and I don't want to be in that kind of constant state of urgent alarm cuz I've got to manage being a, you know, a father and an employee and >> Right, we've all got like jobs and families and caring responsibilities and all the things we've got to do. And let's remember also that this is the far right's playbook. You remember Steve Bannon, you know, Trump's advisor in his first term. His Am I Am I allowed to use cussing words? His methodology, he said, is flood the zone with Now, that's very deliberate because it's doing something to our nervous systems. It's keeping us in a state of panic. It's keeping us in a state of overwhelm.

[00:15:06]Some of what's happening is happening and some of it is really really deliberate that it's coming us so fast now that we feel we can't process it and the best thing to do is turn away.

[00:15:14]Actually, you know, the far right is on the rise everywhere. It's certainly happening in the UK and I don't know if this is listened to elsewhere. Let's assume it is. We've got to kind of keep thinking clearly, right?

[00:15:25]Which is why I think it's important to break down some of these stereotypes around it cuz we are going to have to get together in our communities. And that's where we resist the far right, you know, both electorally and practically.

[00:15:38]And it's where we make things better at a time of decline and a lot of agency and power has been taken away from communities. That was part of the neoliberal project that Thatcherism started that. And so, we've got quite a steep slope in front of us in terms of local resilience. But actually, that is the place to start. And none of these stereotypes help, which is why it's useful to break them down.

[00:15:59]>> Yeah, but I'm breaking down it is is the term, isn't it? Cuz these these build walls, right? Between you and the people you live around. And purity builds a wall.

[00:16:08]>> That's right. That's right. I think these these elements of the script that we're talking through here are they absolutely predate what's going on now. I think, you know, actually these first three ones that we've just looked at, the goodness and the the protesting of the purity, they they're as old as time.

[00:16:25]The human relations that are behind these and the human psychology that is behind these is as old as time. And all of our wisdom traditions have perfectly good advice, excellent advice from much more >> [laughter] >> famous voices than just some activist on a podcast, right? There's plenty in both the old and the new testament about this, which is the tradition I know. So, this is very old and it is being used against us right now by this terrible confluence of far right and the super wealth power.

[00:16:58]So, the flooding the zone with is being used against us, you know, to get us what to want to turn away. And the purity stuff is used against us cuz it's like, oh, activist culture, you don't want to take part in that. And I think just more generally, and what you just pointed to there, which made me we to say, is the division.

[00:17:17]The The basic The really, really basic tactic here, it says this tactic is very old as well, is divide divide and rule.

[00:17:26]>> Mhm.

[00:17:26]>> They're seeking to divide working people from each other. They're seeking to separate a quotes white working class close quotes from quotes immigrants, people of color. The working class has always been made up of a really diverse group of people of all sorts of colors.

[00:17:43]It It It's just not reality that you can divide it like that, but that's is what they do. They're dividing men from women.

[00:17:52]They're turning young boys, you know, through the manosphere. Anyway, all of this is to say there's a big, big, big picture here that is the context in which this discussion sits in.

[00:18:00]And so at every stage of this, I'm interested in how do we dismantle this script so that we can be more effective against this division? Cuz for all of it, we have to come together.

[00:18:11]>> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I'm interested in why Yeah, why the far right is growing so rapidly among like what is the payoff people are getting when they join the far right movement? It's Is it the How would you seek to connect with the far right who you seek so earnestly to kind of combat? How do you win them over who will vote for that?

[00:18:43]>> Right, so >> [laughter] >> There's a few questions in there.

[00:18:46]>> Take one.

[00:18:47]>> Well, let's break it down. I propose not to go now into all of why this is happening cuz I'd really like to focus on the what we can do.

[00:18:56]Though, suffice to say that they are weaponizing the economic consequences of late stage neoliberal capitalism. For four decades wealth has been transferred from ordinary people upwards. When we have these The Green Party are doing some quite interesting things at the moment. There's lots of talk of starting to tax the super wealthy and tax billionaires, and that is absolutely part of it. But what that message I think doesn't fully Hopefully they I think they're going to get onto this.

[00:19:29]Is a whole load of other things have happened as well. Corporate power much more widely has been allowed to increase hugely by defanging regulation, changing audit rules, changing how boards work.

[00:19:43]Right across the board, corporate power has changed, and that means the power of those who have assets has increased relative to those who have assets. That's what's being weaponized.

[00:19:53]I also think that the My view is the far right won the internet in its first iteration. We've had 25-30 years of the internet. They've won the first round, and the left and everyone else is trying to catch up, and it will happen, and there will be a rebalancing at some point. It is not inevitable that we have to have an internet that is owned by these companies that have thrown themselves in with authoritarian power.

[00:20:14]I don't want to go there too much cuz look, that opens up I don't want I don't want to answer the question about what we do, but did you want to say something there before I >> Well, no. I mean, the thing that came to mind and maybe maybe we could maybe if we've got time we can come back to this.

[00:20:28]You speak about grief and grief rituals in your book, and it's something that's been on my mind a lot. I'm just recorded a series on grief and mourning, and uh I'm Have you read the Grief to Grievance Pipeline, Alex Evans's essay on it?

[00:20:42]>> Yes, I have.

[00:20:43]>> I thought it was very good, and it does make me think absolutely of part of the part of the weaponizing is that there is this anxiety, this unspent energy, this devastating sadness that people carry that needs to be projected somewhere if there's not a good kind of a catharsis for it or route for it to be expressed. Let's go back to you've got goodness, purity, protest.

[00:21:13]Is there anything else that that you think these are, you know, >> That is those are the very psychological ones. And then And then the next two I'm going to do are they do have some psychology in them for sure, but they also have some some culture and the some social history in them. So, the next one is I know better than you, which is just really annoying when you're on the receiving end of it, isn't [laughter] it?

[00:21:38]But, what I wanted to look at here there are a number of things which come into this. One of them is just the sheer annoyance of being lectured by somebody who is claiming to know more than you.

[00:21:46]But, this also is about the politics of lived experience and who's speaking about what.

[00:21:53]Because the examples I look at the book are in the charity sector and the sort of funded organizations that work for change. Because they're often full of middle-class people. I'm one of them.

[00:22:04]I've worked in these organizations. I've seen what that is. And they are they're there to help other people.

[00:22:10]And the the last few years have seen some receptivity to the outrage and complaints of those who are being helped or spoken for.

[00:22:24]They should be part of the process.

[00:22:26]So, that's absolutely [clears throat] part of it.

[00:22:29]>> So, what you just referring to there was scandals that have occurred in Oxfam or Amnesty or whatever. Is that right?

[00:22:35]>> Yeah, that's Actually, those scandals, I mean those scandals That that that is part of it. Yes, that is part of it.

[00:22:43]And there was a whole spate of them several years of racism, discrimination.

[00:22:49]And I think they come from the same, you know, the headline writers always make a lot of them. News makes a lot of them because we're back to the I'm good bit of the script. It's like I want to be good.

[00:22:58]And they're doing these awful things.

[00:22:59]What's that about?

[00:23:00]>> kind of contaminate them, then their whole message is >> Well, yes yes that but but also there is a fundamental that underneath that there's also a more fundamental shock and it's shocking to those working in those organizations as well and I find it shocking talking about this. I've had people reading early drafts of the book who had a really strong reactions that we setting out all of those scandals at once. It's like, oh god, what is going on? Well, what's going on? Well, one thing is we've got humans here. We're dealing with humans, right? And this shows the limit of setting yourself up above other people. But I think the the I know better thing it gets in the way of communicating.

[00:23:35]It gets in the way of forming coalitions. It gets in the way of working with people from different backgrounds to your own. You've basically got to show up if you're going to work with someone who does not come from the same situation as you and not know better.

[00:23:50]You've got to show up with I suppose you could call it some kind of beginner's mind. You've got to show up with a kind of okay, I'm I'm I'm I have got some time and I've got some capacity and some resources perhaps because of my circumstance I do have that time to give a couple of hours a week to do something. But what I mustn't bring with that is my assumption that because I've got a professional job or a certain level of education or whatever it is that I know better.

[00:24:15]And so often that is what happens.

[00:24:18]>> And kind of I was going to carry on.

[00:24:20]>> No, no, you go.

[00:24:21]>> I was just thinking implicit in the idea of the script of should I save the world is the idea of a savior. Like I I I'm which which has a power dynamic in it.

[00:24:30]>> I think what's the next layer of the script which is I save people.

[00:24:32]>> Okay.

[00:24:33]>> Those two go together. So this is where we get into the the great British class and imperial hangover.

[00:24:43]They haven't gone away.

[00:24:45]>> Okay, white savior thing.

[00:24:46]>> Yes. Yes and and white savior that that that phrase like brings to mind the imperial component of it.

[00:24:56]It brings to mind the fact that the international aid agencies grew out of the institutions of empire.

[00:25:03]And that in a world in which way higher financial flows are moving out of the poorest countries into the rich world still than the aid that goes the other way, even before the aid was cut in the last 2 years.

[00:25:19]Those financial flows are massive. We are still running neo-colonial economies in, you know, like looking at the global picture. In In that context, you know, that's where the white savior this is, but I think it works in class way. I think what that phrase sort of obscures, Lonnie, is the way it still works in class ways within these islands, which is that often middle class people can have, I say this having been there and learned to see it, can have a whole load of unspoken assumptions about knowing best of what's needed in a situation.

[00:25:53]And we can want to help. And then we can kind of get in a mess when we get there.

[00:25:57]And actually, what's the consequence of that is that people just turn away. And so we don't build the bridges. And that's all part of the situation in we which we find ourselves where there can be a receptive audience to the message of, say, Reform UK. It's part of what has you know, this isn't about blaming the activists for what's happening.

[00:26:17]The far right has risen.

[00:26:19]Of It has its own energy, right? And it has money.

[00:26:23]It has its money.

[00:26:26]Business of of some some some business people have always been very happy to to align with that, and that's what's happening. And we can see that happening.

[00:26:33]But but is this part of it?

[00:26:37]Is Is the Is the knowing better and and the sort of the middle class ways of being, is that part of what helps to create a little a crack here that can be exploited? I think it is part of it.

[00:26:49]Then there's also the way that I know better works again in its inverse to keep people away. So this might look like, "Oh, I don't know enough about that. Who am I to speak about it?"

[00:27:01]And this is where it lands for a lot of people because we're worried about all these things in the world, but oh, I don't know enough.

[00:27:08]I'd better not speak. Or, "Oh, I've seen all this talk about lived experience.

[00:27:13]I've seen people chatting about that on social media. I don't want to be a white savior turning up and embarrassing myself saying things. You need to stay away."

[00:27:24]And that's not inevitable, either.

[00:27:26]If we don't show up with the We don't have to know everything. We can speak out not knowing everything.

[00:27:31]And we can show up with an attitude of humility and a long-sidedness and we're in this together, which we all are, rather than, "Hey, I've got the answers."

[00:27:40]>> It seems like the virtue that you most want to cultivate in your book is humility and self-awareness, I might add to that, in the activist mindset. Would that be accurate?

[00:27:50]>> Yeah, I think so. It was funny, I wasn't quite Yeah, I hadn't thought about it like literally like that. I hadn't thought about it like really specifically. What I want I suppose I saw all of these problems, and when I wrote The Entangled Activist, that was about me realizing the extent of our entanglement in the problems that we're trying to change.

[00:28:11]And then I wanted to write How Not to Save the World because I was starting to see that there were people doing change-making work of all kinds.

[00:28:21]I'm not even going to call them activists. They might just be in the way that they have the conversations in their work. Uh they were embodying and practicing the antidotes to this script.

[00:28:33]And so I really wanted to try and set out. But what I discovered once I, you know, was like quite a long way into these conversations were that that there were patterns to what was coming out. And humility and looking at yourself are one of them. And the other one is relationship and connection.

[00:28:50]Because what goes wrong with each of these, and this is where we get to the big picture really, because what goes wrong with each of these bits of the script is where we are trying to do it on ourselves.

[00:28:59]>> So, I I'd really like to get into these antidotes of connection and relationship and things we can do. But it's lurking behind all of these besides like pathologies is individualism. Is the individualism that the water that we're swimming in, right? That seems to be responsible in no small way. I'd be interested to know whether these same things show up in a more collectivist society. Do you know?

[00:29:28]>> I mean, give give me an example of where you're thinking.

[00:29:30]>> Like what is a collectivist society? I don't know. I mean, I suppose indigenous groups, if you spend any time with them, do you have people who are activists within those groups who have a kind of a savior complex for one of a better term? I mean, the nations far east are much more collectivist and less individual, although I think that's changing as capitalism changes these things.

[00:29:53]>> That's what I wanted to ask you about where we're talking about. I have not interviewed indigenous people for this project, and I've been because it's such a big topic, I've been I really was interested in the British savior complex. I've been focusing here.

[00:30:04]But guess what? We live in a multicultural society, so a lot of the people I've interviewed come from other faiths and other cultures, and have a foot in both worlds. And so, I found it incredibly striking that people from other faiths did not have the saving thing.

[00:30:22]>> Mhm.

[00:30:23]>> They might have done other things on the script. I've had brilliant conversations with Muslim campaigners about heroism, thinking that I have to be a hero. You know, like heroism, ego, all of purity, all of that can definitely happen. But this very specific thing about the saving, I think is is it's a Christian artifact and I had some really interesting conversations with theologians cuz I was like, really?

[00:30:48]Could Christianity, especially when so many of us, you know, we're in a secular culture and so many of us are not Christian even if we might be culturally Christian, let's say, like in the background, could that really be having an effect on this subconscious script?

[00:31:04]And they think, yes.

[00:31:06]Because of structure, it's a structure of thinking with the God taken out. You know, I'm interested in intergenerational patterns and how insistent culture is over generations and also how it shifts over generations.

[00:31:20]And it's not many generations that we've been secular.

[00:31:24]And what happens is it's >> I yeah, I could totally get on board with that. There is a really nice essay by John Gray called Sex, Atheism, and Piano Legs. And in it he And it's a What a brilliant title, eh? In it he says, you know, we've all been drawn in by piano legs before, haven't we? They're very sexy. So, in the Victorian era they covered them up and you cover up this natural human urge and it comes out in perverted forms like the perversions of Victorian sex life is the point there.

[00:31:53]And he said he's writing in the heyday of new atheism, but in fact he was writing about communism. That's what he was doing. He was writing about communism and you suppress the religious urge and it comes out in the form of communism. So, trying to create heaven now rather than later or whatever. And yeah, these structures are stubborn.

[00:32:11]These messages do get passed down.

[00:32:15]>> But that In fact, one of my interviewees actually specifically talked about that, that urge to create heaven. We're getting confused between creating heaven here on earth and afterwards versus later on, let's say. Which at first to me sounds like, oh well, activists The activist in me would react very strongly to that and say, but of course we've Of course we've got to make it better now.

[00:32:32]But it's subtle. It's the underlying pattern. But I think what's very interesting is the specifics of Protestant Christianity.

[00:32:39]>> Mhm.

[00:32:40]>> Because that's where the individualism really kicked in.

[00:32:45]And there's obviously a lot of sociological and historical thought looking at the influence of that on capitalism.

[00:32:51]>> Well, you're right. You've got [clears throat] a kind of reformation into the enlightenment into kind of individualism, right?

[00:32:56]>> Yes.

[00:32:56]>> That we have today.

[00:32:57]>> this idea that, you know, it's on us individually, this feeling that it's on me to carry it individually. I think that's where the real burden is. And that's what I'm really keen in unpacking. And and of course, you know, other social factors and political factors have contributed to that because look what's happened over the four four and a half now neoliberal decades, union membership has collapsed compared to what it was. The very The very idea that you would try and change things on your own would be com- completely bonkers to lots of people before. And it's only And it's only bonkers to a smaller number of people now because, you know, union membership is still there in the public sector to some extent, but in the private sector it's it's almost nothing. And so And so the very idea that you could get together to try and get what you need is is out of view for a lot of people.

[00:33:56]>> Interestingly enough, the trade union movement came out of kind of Methodism and things like that. So you have these kind of collectivist movements that are also from religion.

[00:34:06]>> I think this [clears throat] is why I want to be really careful in talking about the religious roots of this saving idea because, you know, it's not Nothing here is like all one thing.

[00:34:14]>> And this is exactly what you're fighting against, right? The re- re- of >> But we do have to save this at the moment because people are getting really, you know, as as I think the capacity for like broad thought is being eroded by, you know, populist messages, you know, which is all zero sum, and by what goes on on social media. We lose this capacity. So, look, Christianity, and including specific Protestant forms of Christianity, have been absolutely part of the most powerful and most effective social movements of our time. That is true. And the other thing that's true is that this this specific kind of feeling of burden also, I think, is part of this script.

[00:34:54]It's worth looking at.

[00:34:55]>> I've got one more question on this, Anthea, that just occurred to me when I was reading your book, and it's whether this kind of conversation, with these ideas that you've got in your book, would have occurred to you in your 20s. So, if you, I think of Richard Rohr's written a good book called Falling Upwards, about the two halves of life, or David Brooks as well. And you move from building a container and something fairly ego-driven, and that stops delivering for you kind of around midlife, perhaps.

[00:35:26]And you start thinking about serving something bigger than yourself, you know, planting trees in the shade of which you'll never see.

[00:35:33]Sit. And I I just wonder if activism tends to be younger people, it tends to be people who have time, right? Cuz they're often students and things like that. And they've got the hero complex in in more kind of vigorous form because of their psychological stage in life.

[00:35:53]Do you think that's a factor in this?

[00:35:56]>> Yeah, that's a really good question, and I really wondered about this when I was writing the book. And it was when I was thinking it specifically about the hero idea. I was looking at how deep they go in our psyche, as well as in the culture. And I was like, well, I can't try and stop people being heroes. And so, I asked myself, am I being unreasonable in asking younger people to do this thing that I wasn't thinking about it then.

[00:36:18]I was like, I must save the world. I must do something huge.

[00:36:21]>> [laughter] >> I've got to make an impact. I've got to make my mark on the things that I care about, which is justice. The two come together.

[00:36:28]But actually, I've met so many younger activists who are thinking about this stuff. I think to some extent it is true, and to some extent it is absolutely inevitable that when you're seeking to find your thing, and as you say, it's kind of a more ego-driven process. You want to make your mark, you want to find your delivery mechanism of your skills to the task in the world that you want to do. Changing the world and activism is a great vehicle for that. You know, it's really meaningful. It's really great for all of that. So, that's true.

[00:36:59]And I think it's true that with some awareness, many aspects of these script elements that I've been talking about, we can temper them because there are alternatives to them. And that's what these people I've been meeting and I wanted to write about have been practicing. To come back to your question of could I have done it? Like psychologically, no.

[00:37:18]Definitely not. I was not I was not ready for that in my 20s, no way. But also, I think it's about the time. I came of age in the early to mid-90s. I started work in the mid to late 90s.

[00:37:32]I was working for NGOs from the turn of the century up until about 2015, kind of full-time.

[00:37:39]And by 2015, it was becoming obvious what was happening. But certainly until the my first 10 years of work from '98 to 2008, we were in New Labour.

[00:37:49]And it was possible to affect change using the methods that we were trying, which was policy advocacy. I trained as a journalist and then left the newspaper and went to work for human rights organizations. So, I was doing investigations into the arms trade or the funding of illegal logging or British banks taking dictators' loot and thus facilitating their activities, et cetera. And we'd put the information in front of policy makers. And sometimes we could get stuff done.

[00:38:20]So, there wasn't the external pressure to review the way that I was going about it. Now, this is also not just about the political context of what's going on, but my situation within it.

[00:38:35]I was educated and white and middle class and had a degree and so I could go into those jobs in those organizations and do this.

[00:38:45]Once that stopped working with the Brexit and Trump elections of 2016, and it was getting much harder once the conservative coalition came in and implemented austerity from 2010.

[00:39:00]Once that became harder, I started being in the position that a lot of people have been in just because of their positionality and who they are always, which is to realize the limitations of power. So, for a while I was mistaking access to power for actual power.

[00:39:16]Because in those years it did actually work.

[00:39:19]It now doesn't work and the people like me are realizing the things that a lot of other people have always known, which is the only thing that you can do when you don't have access to power and when power is being extremely naked and obvious in its pursuit of its own interests and wealth, which is we have to build people power, which means getting together with people, which means we have to be able to relate to them, which means we have to stop doing all of these things on the script. And it's a part of that's about who I am and the timing of it as well.

[00:39:49]>> I would also actually like to say that in this kind of psychology of building, you know, an ego container and then the second half of life stuff, people like Richard Rohr or David Brooks are really clear that this can happen when you're much younger, right? You don't have to be a slave to you know, building a brand or whatever.

[00:40:07]And so it isn't a kind of second half of life, this is what you're going to do. What I find really hopeful in what you just said, Anthea, is that although those people with the levers of power can make us feel like we lack agency because the former ways of doing things didn't work any longer, everybody now has a lot of agency in the neighborhoods they live in to build relationships, to actually have grassroots movements, which is where, if I understand you right, that's where change can occur.

[00:40:39]>> Yeah, and that's where change is available to all of us.

[00:40:42]>> Mhm.

[00:40:42]>> And it's not that there's some great sort of dividing line between small levels of change that happen locally and the big things that happen elsewhere. I think we often have stick to this myth that it has to be at a certain level for it to count.

[00:40:57]And this is where the save the world kind of feeling causes some damage because it it works we think it has to be about scale.

[00:41:05]Like, oh, well, I have to do something big and if it's not going to be big then it's not going to be worth it.

[00:41:10]But look at what happens when people just do things locally. I just watched that Channel 4 dramatization of the investigations of the water industry. It's called Dirty Business. Have you seen it?

[00:41:22]>> No, not yet.

[00:41:23]>> Yeah, I really recommend it but definitely not while you're eating dinner. It's really distressing about what the water companies have been doing. But this started with two guys, one of whom had the ability to run some computer programming and one of whom was an ex-copper and then they were fishermen and they were furious that the river going brown in their area in Oxfordshire.

[00:41:43]And so they just started and it started from there, you know? So it can start at any scale and it won't necessarily be limited to that.

[00:41:50]>> The the quote that comes to mind is the oft-quoted Margaret Mead quote that a small group of committed individuals can change the world because it's the only thing that ever has.

[00:41:59]>> That's true. But I would add to it, and we might need to get over ourselves as well.

[00:42:03]>> [laughter] >> Remove the savior complex. So let's say we feel the desire to do good, to make the world a better place. We're appalled at how things are going for this generation and those to come and we have all these kind of pitfalls of those impulses. How do we temper them?

[00:42:23]>> Well, you know, as we've been talking about like the underlying things here are about humility and you know, to use a more colloquial phrase, I think getting over ourselves is quite a big one actually. With each of them, there is an antidote. So, the antidote to the saving thing is service.

[00:42:40]Can I show up in service? The antidote to knowing better is relationship and listening.

[00:42:46]The antidote to the purity one is can I build a bridge? Can I find enough in common with these people that even if we don't agree on everything cuz we're not going to cuz we're humans.

[00:42:57]Can we do some stuff together on the stuff that matters even if we don't agree on everything else?

[00:43:02]So, there there are things that we can do against each of them. They're they're not inevitable and there are people practicing these and doing great stuff up and down the country.

[00:43:13]>> Really helpful. That's that's a really helpful summary. I'd also love to pick up on you mentioned it in several parts of your book just the lizard brain that's activated, you know, our fight flight response and like we're embodied creatures. Our bodies have wisdom in them we can tune into and I I've often found that you know, my jangling nerves are not going to be solved by thinking new thoughts or reading another book. I actually need to do something embodied to change my mind. It's easier to change the mind through the body than the other way around. I wonder if you could say something about perhaps for you like what is the question I'm trying to ask.

[00:43:58]To what extent is the wisdom of the body important here and how do you attend to it?

[00:44:03]>> Right. It's really important, isn't it?

[00:44:05]Again, this is one of the things that's being used against us. You know, when we're getting messages from those who seek to divide us, that there's a lot to be fearful of.

[00:44:14]That gets us in a state where we can't You literally can't think straight. You know, your thinking brain goes offline when you're frightened. So, I think it's really important. Some of it is about the things that we can do ourselves to recognize that and learn what each of us can do to settle ourselves. I think you're right. Like, words don't work for me. Um and it's not just cuz I'm dealing with words in writing all the time. It's going and digging in the garden and attempting to grow tomatoes.

[00:44:39]And it's playing music. You know, well, everyone's got their things that get them in a state, but I think more important for what we're talking or equally important for what we're talking about is co-regulation. We as humans, we regulate each other.

[00:44:53]That's why individualism is such a nightmare in so many ways because it's not really how we're meant to be.

[00:44:59]We settle each other by being with each other.

[00:45:02]And so, doing things with common purpose with others is it's not just good for the mood and it's not just good because it's sort of politically good and sort of like meets our needs to be doing something to counter what's going on.

[00:45:17]It just genuinely makes us feel better.

[00:45:19]I've got a friend called Sarah Stein Lebrono who's written a great book called Don't Talk About Politics. And she's always talking about how it's about how debating with each other doesn't work. And she points out that there's loads of She's a social researcher. There's loads of research showing that left-wing people often are more depressed than other people because they know more about what's going on in the world and because of their their view on it.

[00:45:41]But the people who take action are not.

[00:45:46]When you're doing something with other people, and it's not about the taking action on your own, it's about doing it with others.

[00:45:52]Fascinating. It genuinely makes you feel better.

[00:45:55]>> Yeah, I'm sure anyone listening to this podcast will have experienced That's how you regulate, you feel better. It seems like an inherently hopeful thing to be doing.

[00:46:04]>> Yeah, and like I'm taking part in conversations across South Devon with a bunch of other women. We're calling ourselves common ground, and we go out on the high streets with a flip chart and a sticker poll, a bunch of questions, and people put a little round dot sticker in yes or no. And it's not really about the answers, and when we put them on social media, we're trying to model that it is possible to have political conversations, including when we disagree, that are civil, and where we can find common ground.

[00:46:31]And I feel better every time I do it, even if I have some slightly fractious conversations, because just the very act of getting out there and meeting people and doing it with other people means I realize that it is actually true that we do have more in common ultimately, despite all the differences.

[00:46:45]>> So, it kind of breaks down the us and them binary.

[00:46:49]>> yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, and without flattening it, right? You know, the conversation sometimes get tricky cuz people are like, "Well, you know, you can afford to be out here, and I'm working class, and you're not, and so, you know, what have we got in common?"

[00:46:59]And what And, you know, and I have to acknowledge, "Yeah, you're absolutely right. There are some things we've not got in common, but actually on the big picture, there is still more in common." And, you know, and that's But that comes out of the conversation. Like I I can't sort of announce it. It has It has to emerge.

[00:47:14]>> I say it's Yeah, like I I like that activity a lot. I might even try it sometime. The sense I get in this conversation and in your book is you're just trying to create a bit more space.

[00:47:25]There's a lack of kind of spaciousness that could be in our relationships, in our thinking, in our I I don't know. That's a That's a felt sense rather than anything else.

[00:47:36]>> I quite like that. I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah, thanks.

[00:47:40]That is That is Yeah, that is what I'm trying to do. It's to kind of create a bit of breathing space cuz so much of the discourse around what we What's wrong with the world, and B, what do we do to do about it? It does feel really fraught and pressured, and it feels like there's not much >> urgent.

[00:47:54]>> Which is very much the sense of being in fight or flight, right? That that spacious state to be in.

[00:48:00]>> That's right. And that's where this question about grief comes in in relation to the question about embodiment. Because I think that allowing ourselves to feel some grief for what's going on if we're worried about it can also open up that space.

[00:48:17]And that's well founded by lots of practitioners over a long time.

[00:48:20]>> It's huge. One of the the conversations that I will have released by the time this is released is with BJ Miller, the palliative care kind of thinker, speaker, doctor. And his question is, "How are you grieving?"

[00:48:34]Which presupposes that we're all grieving all the time. Cuz life the wiring around grief is really loss, right? Whether it's the loss of our children's childhoods as they're growing up or things in the planet or whatever.

[00:48:46]And if we have no way to express that, it sits in us in really unhealthy ways.

[00:48:50]So, yeah, we need to think about how we're processing grief.

[00:48:53]>> And particularly processing it together.

[00:48:56]So, there's a shared thing because that's a much it's a much more powerful process to go through than doing it on our own.

[00:49:04]>> Yeah. And it's kind of the rituals have been lost as we've secularized, right?

[00:49:10]>> Yeah. Oh, I totally agree with that.

[00:49:12]>> Um Anthony, I want to be respectful of your time, but let's return to this question. Let me ask you the question you're posing to our listeners, should we want to save the world?

[00:49:25]>> Should we be wanting to save the world or should we worry I didn't quite get that.

[00:49:28]>> Oh, okay. So, actually let's get the wording of that. What I've written down is, "Should I be trying to save the world?"

[00:49:35]>> And this is you asking it or you >> I'm asking Oh, yeah. Uh Yeah, do you think I should be trying to save the world? There we go.

[00:49:43]>> Well, so as we've been discussing, I don't think you should be trying to save the world. And I'm not going to say should about anyone, right? Because I think the should is part of the problem.

[00:49:53]But can you Can you be Could you be doing something that contributes and that makes you feel better about the state of the world in?

[00:50:03]Yeah, 100%.

[00:50:05]>> Good. Good. That's a lovely reframe of the impulse to do good and to try and save the world. I I can't do everything.

[00:50:13]But I can do something, right?

[00:50:15]Anthea, thank you so much. Tell us Where can listeners find out about your work, your books?

[00:50:21]>> So the new book is called How Not to Save the World and the subtitle is, this is cheeky, Doing Good Without Annoying Everyone. Well, anyone, but yes, Doing Good Without Annoying Everyone. And I am on Substack as Anthea Lawson and you can sign up for my mailing list and keep in touch that way.

[00:50:38]>> Excellent. Thank you. And also author, as you mentioned earlier, of The Entangled Bank Activist, right? By Perspectiva. Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time, for coming to to speak to people about how to examine life better and what we do with our impulses to save the world.

[00:50:53]>> Oh, thank you. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Great questions.

[00:50:56]>> Oh, thank you.