Little Britain: The Serpent and the Cleft stick

I choose this metaphor to illustrate my sense of the UK and the majority of democratic political systems over the last few hundred years. It seems to me that the serpent represents both individual politicians and their parties, desire to gain and wield power and a belief at all levels, that the arms of the cleft stick which will help them rise still further in power are, competition and growth.

Competition narrows the field as the spoils go to the victor who is then better resourced to compete again. This imbalance in the field leads to an impoverishment of diversity and true innovation, merely propagating improvement in efficiencies and rigour which may yield benefit in the management of a production line but not in the development of a society or the release of human potential.

The pursuit of endless growth, strives for increased consumption, GDP and market share bringing with it economic clout but this in turn leads to exploitation of those on whose toil, lands or resources that growth depends. This focus on growth and accumulation rather than development and sustainability leads to widening social inequalities within and between nations and citizens, resulting in distrust, resentment and general discord.

All the above is set in the context of a world of finite and reducing natural capital on which not only our entire global economic system but our very existence as a species depends.

Perhaps the most disturbing consequence of this kind of politics is the impact it has on the attitudes and behaviours of the individual citizen. We are driven to express our identities through growth in our consumption and competition in our status. This is no worse, than in the home of competitive individualism namely America, if every person on the planet lived as they do, we would need 4 planet Earth’s to sustain today’s population, the figure for Europeans is around 2.5 and growing. The global over consumption is only moderated, in part, by the more populous developing nations such as China and India who average consumption approximates to the Earth’s capacity, however the rate of increase in these nations is growing more rapidly than anywhere else. As a global aggregate we are currently running about 20% above anything that is sustainable.

Life has existed on Earth for some 4 Billion years and Homo sapiens arrived about 40,000 years ago. If we translate life on Earth into one year, we arrived 30 seconds before midnight on the 31st of December and our population took 29.5 of those seconds to reach 1 billion and has increased to almost 7 Billion in the last 0.5 of a second. It is estimated that by 2050 our population will grow by a further 50%. One doesn’t have to be very adept at mathematics to realise that if global consumption per capita continues to increase and we add another 3.5 Billion consumers, then the cupboard will rapidly become bare.

In my next blog I will be putting forward ideas that we in the UK could start implementing to bring about a change in our approach, as we seek longer term solutions to transition away from this wholly unsustainable model. Suffice to say here that I believe that Politicians, as our elected representatives and governors of our society, must take the lead. They must set aside their competitive, party based combative dogma and work together to address the needs of our time.

Returning to the original metaphor, I would hope that sooner rather than later the Serpent will represent our ability to develop political influence and that the cleft stick will illustrate how genuine collaboration and meaningful contribution might raise our politicians up to a vantage point which would increase the scope and quality of their vision, insight, leadership and consequent governance.