Brainfood appropriate to age and circumstance.

Old, yes, circumstance, a World ever on the edge of wild. There are several questions to preoccupy the mind in this time of ecological collapse, global heating, ‘a time more dangerous than any since WW2’.? Where is it all going? What collective strategies could/should be pursued to take humankind to a better place? ?What can a mere individual – and that an ancient one - do?[1] Very recently I celebrated my birthday.? Thoughtful relatives gave me books to read. They thought them appropriate, and I do too.? I added one of my own.

No.2 Son, an AI professional, fed my assumed interests into a search engine and came up with Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World.? The AI was right. I am happy upon the ocean wave and, although mostly taken there via an armchair, I still find both hope and solace in distant horizons.? This edition of Slocum’s late C19 account is A4 sized but the thumb-nail illustrations are as I remember in the edition that I had picked up from my mother’s bookshelves sometime in the 1950’s.? [Mother was the sailor in that generation.] ?Slocum is a mesmeric tale teller. I find myself re-reading. The world had obvious elements of ‘wild’ in those days, particularly around the tip of South America. Subsequent circumnavigators – often Slocum inspired - have been less troubled by unfriendly men in dugout canoes (or by pirates -although the latter still exist).? Today, the world has gone wild in a different sense.? The world-wide-web is now shelter for many of today’s anti-social agents; evidence those that stirred the discontent that erupted in the UK this August [2024].? A boil in the body politic. ??The ‘Web’ has escaped most forms of social control and is difficult to police.? But underlying discontent is, in any case, not removed by policemen.

No.1 Son and family, and “Kid” Brother [being only 75] and his Wife, both chose walking themes, perhaps knowing that only by regular perambulation does my brain keep going. Tristan Gooley’s the Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs is a 400+ page volume that will take me off in the direction of my [our] mother’s detailed attention to the wonders of wayside fauna and flora on the Glengarriff ‘boreen’ in the West of Ireland, that graced her early retirement years.? ?Goodley will have me looking at fungi, stars, cloud formations and more. This is a ‘dip in’ volume. Good so. With a bit of luck there will be future occasions for investigating such clues and signs, grandchildren and others, sometime companions on the way. ??Walking in the woods, subtitled Go back to nature with the Japanese way of shinrin-yoku, by Professor Yoshifumi Miyazaki is a deeply reflective essay on ‘forest bathing’ and other ways of reconnecting with the healing powers of nature[2].? I am hooked.? Yesterday a lovely oak tree on one of my rounds got a hug from me, its bark wonderfully affirming[3].?

Both these ‘walking books’ imply that ‘back to nature’ is not a celebration of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. The are about humankind’s necessarily complex relationship to nature.? For me they point to the steps that people need to take to get to a liveable, sustainable, planetary future.? The book that I chose for myself looks at the social organisational side of the equation.? Where should we expect initiative to come from?? Citizens, by Jon Alexander with Ariene Conrad provides an answer in the subtitle. ?WHY THE KEY TO FIXING EVERYTHING IS ALL OF US.? ?I link this book to the ‘walking in nature books’ by quoting from Brian Eno’s Forward. “All life on Earth is an ecosystem, and it could be an ecosystem of generosity, a virtuous circle.”

“To be a citizen is to care, to take responsibility, to acknowledge one’s inherent power. To be a citizen is to cultivate meaningful connection to a web of relationships and institutions. Citizenship benefits from a free and expansive imagination, the ability to see things as they could be, not just as they currently are. To be a citizen implies engagement, contribution and action, rather than a passive state of being and receiving.” [ibid. p95] I take that as ‘world citizen’, connected world-wide.

Citizen, the book, can be absorbed like an Impressionist painting, full of colour and surprising intensity of observation.? It is not an essay in social science. It is a personal account by Jon Alexander of his emotional as well as intellectual journey from ‘advertising man’, agent of ‘consumer society’, to activist agent in civil society looking for and supporting - through The New Citizenship Project - examples of people-led social transformation. His focus is on the kinds of transformation that can be achieved when individuals, in collaboration with others, decide to make constructive changes in the life-situations they encounter.

For Jon Alexander ‘state’ implies ‘subject’, deprived of personal initiative, ‘market’ reduces people to ‘consumers’, while desirable social change is to be achieved by ‘citizen’ action. Virtuous activism, be it in the cause of world peace, greening the planet, or making a bit of government work better, is achieved through civic engagement. There is lots of good ‘how to do’ active citizenship - citizens assemblies, participatory budgeting, etc., but - perhaps intentionally – he writes nothing about the ‘left behind’, those alienated civic beings, whose dissatisfaction with their life situation allows them to become agents of destruction for populist leaders who thrive in uncertainty[4].?

To aim to change the World, as was the intent to span the World singlehanded in Joshua Slocum’s time, calls for pioneering spirits and probably a dose of rugged individualism.? World War 1 was on the political horizon when Slocum, an experienced Sea Captain, out of work, rebuilt a thirty-six foot sailing sloop by hand, to navigate the known and unknown on a three year voyage around the world. ?WW3 is now a definite prospect. ?Pioneering spirit committed to finding and promoting common purpose is the Citizen Project approach, as I understand it.? There is a lot to do[5].? ?

[1] I sometimes advertise myself as ‘pre-war’, reference WW2.? I am, by about a month.

[2] I am not new into trees. The theme of my project paper on a three month stay as a visiting scholar in Nagoya University in 2005-6, was about forests, their social functions and how they are supported in UK and in Japan.? ‘Active Citizenship, Forest Governance Institutions and the Public or Common Good’, GSID website, University of Nagoya (2007). https://www.gsid.nagoya-u.ac.jp/bpub/research/public/paper/index-en.html??

[3] My LinkedIn post of April 4th, [2024] refers to a tree planting project initiated by my No 1 Son and friends. Hope, the recipe. Participate in change for the better.

[4] A framework I have used elsewhere is a matrix with boxes that identify ‘state’, ‘market’, ‘civil society’ [or community]. It has a fourth for ‘the excluded or alienated’ [derived from Hierarchies, Sects, Markets and Isolates; Mary Douglas Risk and Blame 1992].? The Citizen Project would steer the good citizen away from alienation and from the false promises of today’s surrounding demagogues, [MAGA, Hindutva,…] towards virtuous, thoughtful, engagement with the many issues that need sorting.

[5] As Gordon Brown reminds us in Seven Ways to Change the World (2021, Simon and Schuster, London, NY, Sydney, Toronto, New Delhi)