The new political story that could change everything
-
0:01 - 0:03Do you feel trapped
-
0:03 - 0:05in a broken economic model?
-
0:05 - 0:08A model that's trashing the living world
-
0:08 - 0:12and threatens the lives
of our descendants? -
0:12 - 0:16A model that excludes billions of people
-
0:16 - 0:20while making a handful unimaginably rich?
-
0:20 - 0:23That sorts us into winners and losers,
-
0:23 - 0:27and then blames the losers
for their misfortune? -
0:27 - 0:30Welcome to neoliberalism,
-
0:30 - 0:33the zombie doctrine
that never seems to die, -
0:34 - 0:37however comprehensively it is discredited.
-
0:37 - 0:43Now you might have imagined
that the financial crisis of 2008 -
0:43 - 0:46would have led to the collapse
of neoliberalism. -
0:46 - 0:50After all, it exposed
its central features, -
0:50 - 0:54which were deregulating
business and finance, -
0:54 - 0:57tearing down public protections,
-
0:57 - 1:00throwing us into extreme
competition with each other, -
1:00 - 1:04as, well, just a little bit flawed.
-
1:04 - 1:07And intellectually, it did collapse.
-
1:08 - 1:12But still, it dominates our lives.
-
1:12 - 1:14Why?
-
1:14 - 1:18Well, I believe the answer
is that we have not yet produced -
1:18 - 1:22a new story with which to replace it.
-
1:23 - 1:27Stories are the means
by which we navigate the world. -
1:27 - 1:32They allow us to interpret
its complex and contradictory signals. -
1:32 - 1:36When we want to make sense of something,
-
1:36 - 1:40the sense we seek is not scientific sense
-
1:40 - 1:43but narrative fidelity.
-
1:43 - 1:46Does what we are hearing reflect the way
-
1:46 - 1:50that we expect humans
and the world to behave? -
1:50 - 1:52Does it hang together?
-
1:52 - 1:54Does it progress
-
1:54 - 1:57as a story should progress?
-
1:58 - 2:02Now, we are creatures of narrative,
-
2:02 - 2:08and a string of facts and figures,
however important facts and figures are -- -
2:08 - 2:11and, you know, I'm an empiricist,
I believe in facts and figures -- -
2:11 - 2:17but those facts and figures have no power
to displace a persuasive story. -
2:18 - 2:21The only thing that can replace a story
-
2:23 - 2:24is a story.
-
2:24 - 2:27You cannot take away someone's story
-
2:27 - 2:30without giving them a new one.
-
2:30 - 2:34And it's not just stories in general
that we are attuned to, -
2:34 - 2:38but particular narrative structures.
-
2:38 - 2:43There are a number of basic plots
that we use again and again, -
2:43 - 2:48and in politics there is one basic plot
-
2:48 - 2:52which turns out to be
tremendously powerful, -
2:52 - 2:55and I call this "the restoration story."
-
2:56 - 2:57It goes as follows.
-
2:59 - 3:02Disorder afflicts the land,
-
3:02 - 3:05caused by powerful and nefarious forces
-
3:05 - 3:08working against the interests of humanity.
-
3:08 - 3:12But the hero will revolt
against this disorder, -
3:12 - 3:14fight those powerful forces,
-
3:14 - 3:17against the odds overthrow them
-
3:17 - 3:20and restore harmony to the land.
-
3:21 - 3:23You've heard this story before.
-
3:24 - 3:25It's the Bible story.
-
3:25 - 3:27It's the "Harry Potter" story.
-
3:28 - 3:30It's the "Lord of the Rings" story.
-
3:30 - 3:32It's the "Narnia" story.
-
3:33 - 3:35But it's also the story
-
3:35 - 3:40that has accompanied almost every
political and religious transformation -
3:40 - 3:42going back millennia.
-
3:42 - 3:45In fact, we could go as far as to say
-
3:45 - 3:50that without a powerful
new restoration story, -
3:50 - 3:53a political and religious transformation
-
3:53 - 3:55might not be able to happen.
-
3:56 - 3:57It's that important.
-
3:58 - 4:03After laissez-faire economics
triggered the Great Depression, -
4:03 - 4:09John Maynard Keynes
sat down to write a new economics, -
4:09 - 4:13and what he did was to tell
a restoration story, -
4:13 - 4:14and it went something like this.
-
4:16 - 4:18Disorder afflicts the land!
-
4:18 - 4:19(Laughter)
-
4:20 - 4:24Caused by the powerful and nefarious
forces of the economic elite, -
4:24 - 4:27which have captured the world's wealth.
-
4:28 - 4:30But the hero of the story,
-
4:30 - 4:36the enabling state, supported
by working class and middle class people, -
4:36 - 4:38will contest that disorder,
-
4:38 - 4:43will fight those powerful forces
by redistributing wealth, -
4:43 - 4:46and through spending
public money on public goods -
4:46 - 4:49will generate income and jobs,
-
4:49 - 4:53restoring harmony to the land.
-
4:53 - 4:55Now like all good restoration stories,
-
4:56 - 4:59this one resonated
across the political spectrum. -
4:59 - 5:03Democrats and Republicans,
labor and conservatives, -
5:03 - 5:07left and right all became,
broadly, Keynesian. -
5:08 - 5:10Then, when Keynesianism ran into trouble
-
5:10 - 5:12in the 1970s,
-
5:12 - 5:17the neoliberals, people like
Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, -
5:17 - 5:20came forward with
their new restoration story, -
5:20 - 5:22and it went something like this.
-
5:23 - 5:25You'll never guess what's coming.
-
5:25 - 5:26(Laughter)
-
5:26 - 5:29Disorder afflicts the land!
-
5:29 - 5:33Caused by the powerful
and nefarious forces -
5:33 - 5:36of the overmighty state,
-
5:36 - 5:40whose collectivizing tendencies
crush freedom and individualism -
5:40 - 5:42and opportunity.
-
5:42 - 5:45But the hero of the story,
the entrepreneur, -
5:45 - 5:49will fight those powerful forces,
-
5:49 - 5:50roll back the state,
-
5:50 - 5:54and through creating
wealth and opportunity, -
5:54 - 5:57restore harmony to the land.
-
5:57 - 6:02And that story also resonated
across the political spectrum. -
6:02 - 6:05Republicans and Democrats,
conservatives and labor, -
6:05 - 6:08they all became, broadly, neoliberal.
-
6:11 - 6:12Opposite stories
-
6:13 - 6:17with an identical narrative structure.
-
6:18 - 6:21Then, in 2008,
-
6:21 - 6:23the neoliberal story fell apart,
-
6:23 - 6:26and its opponents came forward with ...
-
6:29 - 6:31nothing.
-
6:31 - 6:33No new restoration story!
-
6:33 - 6:37The best they had to offer
was a watered-down neoliberalism -
6:37 - 6:40or a microwaved Keynesianism.
-
6:41 - 6:45And that is why we're stuck.
-
6:45 - 6:47Without that new story,
-
6:47 - 6:50we are stuck with the old failed story
-
6:50 - 6:52that keeps on failing.
-
6:53 - 6:56Despair is the state we fall into
-
6:56 - 6:59when our imagination fails.
-
7:00 - 7:04When we have no story
that explains the present -
7:04 - 7:06and describes the future,
-
7:06 - 7:09hope evaporates.
-
7:09 - 7:12Political failure is at heart
-
7:12 - 7:15a failure of imagination.
-
7:16 - 7:19Without a restoration story
-
7:19 - 7:22that can tell us where we need to go,
-
7:22 - 7:24nothing is going to change,
-
7:24 - 7:27but with such a restoration story,
-
7:27 - 7:30almost everything can change.
-
7:31 - 7:34The story we need to tell
-
7:34 - 7:37is a story which will appeal
to as wide a range of people as possible, -
7:37 - 7:40crossing political fault lines.
-
7:40 - 7:43It should resonate
with deep needs and desires. -
7:43 - 7:47It should be simple and intelligible,
-
7:47 - 7:49and it should be grounded in reality.
-
7:49 - 7:54Now, I admit that all of this sounds
like a bit of a tall order. -
7:55 - 7:56But I believe that in Western nations,
-
7:56 - 8:00there is actually a story like this
-
8:00 - 8:01waiting to be told.
-
8:03 - 8:04Over the past few years,
-
8:04 - 8:08there's been a fascinating
convergence of findings -
8:08 - 8:09in several different sciences,
-
8:09 - 8:14in psychology and anthropology
and neuroscience and evolutionary biology, -
8:14 - 8:18and they all tell us
something pretty amazing: -
8:18 - 8:23that human beings have got
this massive capacity for altruism. -
8:23 - 8:27Sure, we all have a bit of selfishness
and greed inside us, -
8:27 - 8:32but in most people,
those are not our dominant values. -
8:32 - 8:37And we also turn out to be
the supreme cooperators. -
8:37 - 8:39We survived the African savannas,
-
8:39 - 8:44despite being weaker and slower
than our predators and most of our prey, -
8:44 - 8:50by an amazing ability
to engage in mutual aid, -
8:50 - 8:55and that urge to cooperate
has been hardwired into our minds -
8:55 - 8:57through natural selection.
-
8:57 - 9:02These are the central,
crucial facts about humankind: -
9:02 - 9:06our amazing altruism and cooperation.
-
9:07 - 9:10But something has gone horribly wrong.
-
9:10 - 9:13Disorder afflicts the land.
-
9:13 - 9:15(Laughter)
-
9:15 - 9:18Our good nature has been thwarted
by several forces, -
9:18 - 9:23but I think the most powerful of them
is the dominant political narrative -
9:23 - 9:24of our times,
-
9:24 - 9:31which tells us that we should live
in extreme individualism -
9:31 - 9:33and competition with each other.
-
9:33 - 9:39It pushes us to fight each other,
to fear and mistrust each other. -
9:39 - 9:41It atomizes society.
-
9:41 - 9:46It weakens the social bonds
that make our lives worth living. -
9:46 - 9:49And into that vacuum
-
9:49 - 9:54grow these violent, intolerant forces.
-
9:54 - 9:56We are a society of altruists,
-
9:58 - 10:00but we are governed by psychopaths.
-
10:00 - 10:05(Applause)
-
10:09 - 10:11But it doesn't have to be like this.
-
10:11 - 10:12It really doesn't,
-
10:12 - 10:17because we have this incredible capacity
for togetherness and belonging, -
10:17 - 10:19and by invoking that capacity,
-
10:19 - 10:24we can recover those amazing
components of our humanity: -
10:24 - 10:27our altruism and cooperation.
-
10:27 - 10:32Where there is atomization,
we can build a thriving civic life -
10:32 - 10:35with a rich participatory culture.
-
10:35 - 10:39Where we find ourselves crushed
between market and state, -
10:39 - 10:45we can build an economics
that respects both people and planet. -
10:45 - 10:51And we can create this economics
around that great neglected sphere, -
10:51 - 10:52the commons.
-
10:52 - 10:56The commons is neither market nor state,
capitalism nor communism, -
10:56 - 10:59but it consists of three main elements:
-
10:59 - 11:01a particular resource;
-
11:01 - 11:04a particular community
that manages that resource; -
11:04 - 11:09and the rules and negotiations
the community develops to manage it. -
11:09 - 11:13Think of community broadband
or community energy cooperatives -
11:13 - 11:17or the shared land
for growing fruit and vegetables -
11:17 - 11:19that in Britain we call allotments.
-
11:19 - 11:22A common can't be sold,
it can't be given away, -
11:22 - 11:27and its benefits are shared equally
among the members of the community. -
11:28 - 11:32Where we have been ignored and exploited,
-
11:32 - 11:34we can revive our politics.
-
11:34 - 11:38We can recover democracy
from the people who have captured it. -
11:38 - 11:42We can use new rules
and methods of elections -
11:42 - 11:48to ensure that financial power
never trumps democratic power again. -
11:48 - 11:51(Applause)
-
11:54 - 11:59Representative democracy should
be tempered by participatory democracy -
11:59 - 12:02so that we can refine
our political choices, -
12:02 - 12:07and that choice should be exercised
as much as possible at the local level. -
12:07 - 12:13If something can be decided locally,
it shouldn't be determined nationally. -
12:14 - 12:19And I call all this
the politics of belonging. -
12:19 - 12:23Now, I think this has got
the potential to appeal -
12:23 - 12:26across quite a wide range of people,
-
12:26 - 12:29and the reason for this
is that among the very few values -
12:29 - 12:32that both left and right share
-
12:32 - 12:36are belonging and community.
-
12:36 - 12:38And we might mean
slightly different things by them, -
12:38 - 12:41but at least we start
with some language in common. -
12:41 - 12:46In fact, you can see a lot of politics
as being a search for belonging. -
12:46 - 12:50Even fascists seek community,
-
12:50 - 12:53albeit a frighteningly
homogenous community -
12:53 - 12:55where everyone looks the same
and wears the same uniform -
12:55 - 12:58and chants the same slogans.
-
12:58 - 13:02What we need to create
is a community based on bridging networks, -
13:02 - 13:04not bonding networks.
-
13:04 - 13:08Now a bonding network brings together
people from a homogenous group, -
13:08 - 13:13whereas a bridging network brings together
people from different groups. -
13:13 - 13:15And my belief is that if we create
-
13:15 - 13:20sufficiently rich and vibrant
bridging communities, -
13:20 - 13:24we can thwart the urge
for people to burrow into the security -
13:24 - 13:27of a homogenous bonding community
-
13:27 - 13:29defending themselves against the other.
-
13:32 - 13:34So in summary,
-
13:34 - 13:37our new story could go
something like this. -
13:39 - 13:41Disorder afflicts the land!
-
13:41 - 13:42(Laughter)
-
13:42 - 13:44Caused by the powerful
and nefarious forces -
13:44 - 13:49of people who say
there's no such thing as society, -
13:49 - 13:52who tell us that
our highest purpose in life -
13:52 - 13:55is to fight like stray dogs
over a dustbin. -
13:57 - 14:00But the heroes of the story, us,
-
14:00 - 14:02we'll revolt against this disorder.
-
14:02 - 14:08We will fight those nefarious forces
by building rich, engaging, -
14:08 - 14:11inclusive and generous communities,
-
14:11 - 14:12and, in doing so,
-
14:12 - 14:15we will restore harmony to the land.
-
14:15 - 14:19(Applause)
-
14:23 - 14:26Now whether or not
you feel this is the right story, -
14:26 - 14:29I hope you'll agree that we need one.
-
14:29 - 14:31We need a new restoration story,
-
14:31 - 14:35which is going to guide us
out of the mess we're in, -
14:35 - 14:40which tells us why we're in the mess
and tells us how to get out of that mess. -
14:41 - 14:44And that story, if we tell it right,
-
14:44 - 14:48will infect the minds of people
across the political spectrum. -
14:49 - 14:54Our task is to tell the story
that lights the path to a better world. -
14:54 - 14:56Thank you.
-
14:56 - 14:59(Applause)
- Title:
- The new political story that could change everything
- Speaker:
- George Monbiot
- Description:
-
To get out of the mess we're in, we need a new story that explains the present and guides the future, says author George Monbiot. Drawing on findings from psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary biology, he offers a new vision for society built around our fundamental capacity for altruism and cooperation. This contagiously optimistic talk will make you rethink the possibilities for our shared future.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 15:15
Natsuhiko Mizutani commented on English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Oliver Friedman approved English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Oliver Friedman edited English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz accepted English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for The new political story that could change everything |
Natsuhiko Mizutani
at 4:59 :
"labor and conservatives" may be "Labour and Conservatives", refering to two political parties in UK.