A 21st Century Renaissance

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Proposal for a new Course to help lay the foundations of a People-led Global Renaissance

My grand ambition is to provide an outline of a Life Strategy – actions, ideas, and attitudes – that would, if acted upon, enable human beings and our fellow creatures to live agreeably on this planet for aeons to come. We should be planning at least in broad outline for the next million years (for starters). As things are, though, we seem to be staring Armageddon in the face: wondering whether we, humanity, can get to the end of this century in a tolerable state. For billions of people, life is already intolerable, if not impossible; and up to half our fellow creatures are in imminent danger of extinction. This, I suggest, is not only tragic – what could be more so? It is absurd. It didn’t have to be like this. 

If we are to turn things around, we — humanity — would need to do things differently, and think differently, and generally to adopt a different worldview; a different attitude to life and to the arts of living. It is not quite true to say that “attitude is all”. But it is certainly a sine qua non. 

The change that’s now needed amounts to nothing less than a Global Renaissance – which literally means “Re-birth”. Furthermore, the Renaissance we need now must be even broader in scope than the European Renaissance of the 13^th–14^th century onwards which eventually brought the Middle Ages to a close (at least in Europe, at least in part, for better or worse). 

It all sounds very grand, and is – yet nothing outlandish is required; nothing that is outside our compass, or that most people would not welcome, if it was a serious option. Truly radical thinking is required to make the new Renaissance happen. “Radical” should simply mean “getting down to the roots”. It does not or need not imply gratuitous violence, as seems commonly to be supposed. 

And yet, although we should never stop trying to improve, I suggest that most of what we really need to know is known already, and most of what we really need to do has already been well tried, and practiced, by some people somewhere, even if they are not the people that most modern societies take most notice of.  To pull us out of the mire we really do need very big ideas of the kind that Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn called “high-fallutin’”, including excellent science and some of the high tech to which it gives rise; and, crucially, including the much neglected discipline of metaphysics. But most of all we just need to do conceptually simple things well. The high-fallutin’ and the day-to-day have become separated, and must as far as possible be re-united, to work in harmony.  (St Benedict had roughly the same idea. Indeed there is no new thing under the sun.) 

The Renaissance of yesteryear that ushered in what’s now regarded as modernity was brought about by an elite of intellectuals, artists, and bankers. But the people who now have the most influence in the world — the “powers-that-be”: a de facto oligarchy of big governments, corporates, banks and other financiers, and the disparate assemblage of the super-rich, all supported by their chosen and increasingly dependent and compliant entourage of intellectuals and experts – are doing very well, and would far rather keep things as they are, only more so, for as long as possible. They are not at all interested in radical transformation, however necessary. The powers-that-be are a fractious lot, at war with each other, but their ambition in essence is the same – to compete for material wealth and domination. They have no desire to change the status quo, or not at least in the ways that are required. Rather, the most powerful among the present-day oligarchs seek primarily to swell the coffers (“economic growth”) by whatever means come to hand, and to claim a bigger share of what’s going.  That is absolutely not what’s needed. 

It follows that if we, the bulk of humanity, want the Renaissance to happen, then we, people-at-large, ordinary Joes and Jos, must bring it about. In short, the Renaissance must be People-led. We should be well up to the task. An ordinary human being, at least when uncorrupted, is a good thing to be. We should trust ourselves more. (Democracy is not the same as populism!)

But the status quo with all its underlying assumptions and its long, diverse, and painful history is very deeply entrenched. The present-day powers-that-be have shaped the Zeitgeist in their own image: materialistic, ultra-competitive, neoliberal. So before the Renaissance can happen, we need to prepare the ground – to shift the Zeitgeist. We need first to establish a Global Movement to develop and disseminate new ideas that are more fruitful than those now bruited from on high, and to act upon those ideas, and show that they work. 

The good news is that the Global Movement the world now requires is already happening. Many thousands of NGOs, many millions of small enterprises and billions of individuals from all over the world are already thinking the kind of thoughts and doing the kinds of things that are needed. Radical change must spring from the grassroots and the individual enterprises are the green shoots. There are easily enough people out there to form a critical mass, and bring about the necessary transformation. 

But the multitudes that are already onside are very diverse, each with their own agendas. What’s lacking, I suggest, is a coherent philosophy to hold the whole endeavour together. And this is what I am seeking to provide (no doubt very presumptuously), or at least am hoping to contribute to. I first tried to spell out all that’s needed in my book, The Great Re-Think, published by Pari Publishing in 2021. On the back of this, my wife, Ruth, and I (with considerable help from friends) set up this website, to develop the ideas further, and to bring other people into the fold. Now I want to develop a course, to help develop and spread the necessary ideas more quickly (for the clock is ticking). 

A Course in Six Themes 

To put the Renaissance on a firm footing we need to re-think everything we do and take for granted from first principles. More: we need to re-think everything in the light of everything else – an approach that might properly be called holistic. 

But for practical purposes, to keep the thinking tidy, we need to approach the overall task systematically; and this requires us in the first instance, in a fairly conventional fashion, to divide the whole thesis into six main Themes. Thus: 

Theme I: The GOAL. We first need to decide what it is that we, humanity, want to achieve and why. 

I have oftentimes suggested that our Goal should be to create –

“Convivial Societies with Personal Fulfilment in a Flourishing Biosphere”

All three are important: society, the individual, and the biosphere, aka the natural world. They are like the legs of a tripod or a three-legged stool – if any one of the three is deficient the whole thing collapses. Political systems traditionally have tended to focus only on one part of the whole, or two at most. In particular, those properly known as “socialist”, or “the Left”, have emphasised the needs and wellbeing of the society – sometimes very much to the benefit of the individuals within it, but sometimes with little or no regard for the wellbeing of individuals. Others, sometimes called “individualist”, who broadly speaking are the “Right”, emphasise the interests of the individual – sometimes, though by no means always, to the detriment of society as a whole.  In reality, both Left and Right are very mixed bags. 

But it surely is fair to say that no modern society (as opposed to some tribal societies) has ever taken proper account of the biosphere. Almost all modern governments whether Left or Right are inveterately anthropocentric, and see the natural world as a resource, a cornucopia, and at best as an add-on to be attended to only when defence, say, or whatever else they choose to prioritise, has been taken care of. Global warming and mass extinction are the result. 

To be sure, the chances of success in this grand enterprise are slight. But the price of failure is absolute – a rapid descent from the catastrophe that is already upon us, into meltdown. Commensurately, the prize is very great. It is for us and our descendants to dwell harmoniously in what Winston Churchill and others before him called “The Sunlit Uplands” potentially for millions of years to come, at peace with other human beings and enjoying the company of our fellow creatures, including at least the bulk of those that are with us now, and whatever evolves from them. 

If we do manage to squeeze through the next few anxious decades this is still possible. There isn’t much scope for optimism – the feeling that things will turn out well. But we must never give up hope: never losing sight of the possibilitythat even at this late hour, all could yet be well.  

Theme II: At the same time we need to spell out the PRINCIPLES by which we choose to live. What are our values, and why? As the Cambridge literary critic F R Leavis put the matter in Two Cultures in the early 1960s: 

“What for — what ultimately for? What, ultimately, do men live by?

I suggest that the “Bedrock Principles” by which all humanity could live are those of Morality and Ecology. The study of morality – Moral Philosophy – aspires to tell us what it is right to do. The science of ecology among much else offers valuable insights into what it is necessary to do in order to achieve the Goal (convivial societies, personal fulfilment, and a flourishing biosphere) and what it is possible to do within the limits of this all-too-obviously finite planet Earth. 

Yet the disciplines of moral philosophy and ecology tend to be treated perfunctorily if at all in most conventional curricula – and the relative neglect of one or both is a prime cause of all the world’s ills. The individuals and institutions on whom the world relies for leadership typically take little or no account of either — and their solutions, accordingly, always fall short of what is required. Indeed, the strategies and policies of the world’s most influential states are pulling us in the opposite direction to where we need to go (if, that is, we really care about the future of humanity and our fellow creatures).   

Many of course have doubted whether we can identify “bedrock principles” of morality. After all, the doubters say, different societies and different individuals have different moral standards – and who can see which is the best? Morality therefore must always be “relative”. There can be no universal morality.

Perhaps. But it at least seems reasonable to argue, as an “absolute presupposition”, that moral principles worthy of the name should seek to enhance the viability of the world and the wellbeing of its inhabitants. And to cut a very long story short, the principles that seem best equipped to do this are the virtues of Compassion, Humility, and a sense of Oneness. “Oneness” implies a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood within all humanity: and between humanity and all the other life forms with whom we share this world. The African concept of ubuntu seems to encapsulate the idea beautifully. 

The moral teaching of all the world’s great religions, and of many indigenous traditions, are rooted primarily in these three virtues – attitudes of mind – albeit with different degrees of emphasis. Alas, in everyday life and everyday politics these virtues all too often go missing. Who with an ounce of compassion would drop bombs on schools or hospitals on the grounds that they might be harbouring people who are deemed to be “terrorists”? Who with an ounce of humility would think they had a “right” to do so? Who with any sense of oneness would obliterate rainforest with all its myriad inhabitants just to grow feed for livestock? Yet all of this is now the norm. 

Also of key importance I suggest is Immanuel Kant’s concept of the “categorical imperative”. In his own words: 

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” 

This, as many have pointed out, is a variation of the “golden rule” which appears in various forms in both testaments of the Bible: “treat others as you would want to be treated yourself”. 

Morality in the end is rooted in feelings. As David Hume pointed out, he the arch-rationalist in the ultra-rationalist 18^th century, we cannot arrive at moral principles through rationality alone; and we cannot teach people to be compassionate. But we can seek to cultivate the appropriate feelings. 

Theme III: Devise appropriate ACTION: develop the kind of practices and technologies that would help us to achieve our Goal. 

We need particular emphasis on The Philosophy of Technology (Phil of Tech); and on Food and Farming – especially the concept of Enlightened Agriculture, aka Real Farming. I like to say indeed the Goal and the Principles of the Renaissance are as stated above – but the Focus of the whole endeavour must be on Enlightened Agriculture. 

“Enlightened Agriculture” – EA — may usefully be defined as: 

“Farming that is expressly designed to provide everyone, everywhere, with food of the highest quality, nutritionally and gastronomically, without exploitation, without cruelty, and without wrecking the natural world”

In practice, EA combines the ideas of Agroecology (treat all farms as ecosystems) and Food Sovereignty(every society should have control of its own food supply). 

Though the ambition – “good food for everyone forever” – may seem vaunting, it should be eminently achievable. But the kind of agriculture that the oligarchy has favoured these past few decades is of the “Neoliberal-Industrial” type, (NI), designed not to provide good food for everyone but to maximise material wealth and to concentrate that wealth in fewer and fewer hands; and this, in practice, is the antithesis of what we really need. Indeed: inappropriate, NI agriculture is at the root of all the world’s principal ills. Because of its obvious importance agriculture is the thing we absolutely have to get right, and in practice are getting most wrong. 

In truth, we can never hope to achieve the Goal (convivial societies, personal fulfilment, a flourishing biosphere) unless we practice appropriate agriculture – which I suggest means EA.  Directly or indirectly agriculture affects everything else that we may aspire to do. But we can never put agriculture to rights – which means replacing NI farming with EA – unless we adjust everything else accordingly – including, or especially, the economy. In other words, if we think the Goal as suggested here is worth achieving, and if we acknowledge as many in high places refuse to acknowledge, that the world really is on the wrong track, then farming, and in particular EA, should be the principal concern of all governments. We should build our lives around it. Instead, in societies like ours, which consider themselves “advanced”, agriculture is a political also-ran. Ministers put in charge of it typically make a virtue of knowing nothing about it, but seek simply, “loyally”, to impose the dogma of their own political party – which right now at least for the mainstream parties is the global battle for wealth known as neoliberalism. It won’t do.

However: no form of agriculture is of any use unless the people for whom it is intended appreciate what it produces. So Enlightened Agriculture must be complemented by an appropriate Food Culture. And here we encounter marvellous serendipities — for agroecology is perfectly compatible with sound nutrition and the world’s best cooking. Thus everyone who is seriously interested in food, whether as producers, cooks, or just as consumers can easily find common cause; and in seeking to introduce the essential ideas on what’s best to eat we should find ourselves pushing against an open door. 

In fact all we really need to know about food and farming may be summarised in an irreducibly simple nine-word adage — 

“Plenty of plants, not much meat, and maximum variety”

In short, there is a near-perfect one-to-one correspondence between sound nutrition, good farming, and the world’s greatest cooking. Enlightened Agriculture and cookery can both be enhanced by science of course, but both are rooted in traditional practices. Indeed, in essence, we just need to do simple things well. All the rest – especially the politics and economics that are the chief obsession of modern societies – should be designed expressly to make that possible. And of course they are not. As usual, the actuality is the opposite of what is really needed, and of what would truly be agreeable. 

Theme IV: Create an appropriate INFRASTRUCTURE: ways of organising our affairs so as to encourage appropriate action and ideas. 

The infrastructure can be discussed under three headings: Governance, the Economy, and the Law. 

Of particular importance under the heading of Governance is the concept of Democracy. Democracy comes in many forms and for various mostly obvious reasons, it is immensely difficult to put into practice and is usually deeply flawed. True democracy requires everyone to take a serious interest in what’s going on, and some appreciation of what is possible and what is not, and this, as Oscar Wilde commented, “takes up too many evenings”. Most people just want to get on with their own lives. But unless people at large are well-informed, and give a damn, democracy degenerates into populism, which is not the same thing at all. Indeed as Donald Trump et al are currently demonstrating (March 2025) the most populist governments may in practice be the most autocratic.

Democracy also requires people to be “nice”; in particular to be compassionate, and truly prepared to expend some effort and resource on the wellbeing of others. Alas! Prophets, philosophers, and some biologists have queued up these past few thousand years and centuries to tell us that we, human beings, are basically a bad lot: irredeemably self-centred, venal, treacherous and potentially vicious. Yet as discussed elsewhere on this website (and in my book of 2012, Why Genes are Not Selfish and People are Nice) there are very good reasons, including reasons of biology, to suppose that the opposite is the case. We should have far more faith in ourselves, and in others!

In short, people at large do have the moral wherewithal to make democracy work – and indeed this is essential. To be truly functional and robust the much-needed Renaissance must be people led.

Economics needs re-thinking from first principles. We need an Economy that is designed specifically to enable and encourage ways of life that are compatible with our Goal and with the Principles. This should not be beyond human wit, but no existing economic model that has any large-scale impact even attempts this. 

The trouble is that although economics is of crucial importance, very few economists have proved up to the task, and we, both governments and people at large, put far too much store by their theories, and tend to treat them as gurus. In particular, as the Cambridge economist Joan Robinson put the matter in the early 1960s: 

 “All along [economics] has been striving to escape from sentiment and to win for itself the status of a science … [but] … lacking the experimental method, economists are not strictly enough compelled to reduce metaphysical concepts to falsifiable terms and cannot compel each other to agree as to what has been falsified. So economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans”

And as another, great Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes said in 1930 in an essay entitled “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” 

“If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid”

In our own times, Kate Raworth has made similar points in Doughnut Economics (2017).  

Theme V:  Seeks to outline the kind of MINDSET – the ideas and feelings – that are needed to underpin all of the above. It seems convenient to consider discuss this under four main headings: Moral Philosophy, Science, Metaphysics,and the Arts. 

As outlined above, I see Morality primarily as an exercise in virtue ethics. 

Science, I suggest, should be seen as a cultural pursuit and not, as now is all too often the case, simply as the source of new, “high” technologies of a kind that are designed primarily to increase and concentrate material wealth (which in practice means making rich people richer). 

Metaphysics also demands special emphasis. Metaphysics is much neglected as an independent discipline – yet all the big ideas by which we live our lives, including those of moral philosophy and science, are rooted in ideas of a metaphysical nature, and so too, of course, is all religion. In short, metaphysics needs to be restored to centre-stage. 

The Arts, among much else, to a large extent shape attitudes, and attitude is the motivation of everything we do (or don’t do). For this reason alone (and there are others) the Arts are of fundamental importance. The tendency of governments to cut arts funding whenever the books need re-balancing is very destructive.  

Overall I also like the idea of The Perennial Wisdom: the sum and the amalgam of the best of humanity’s ideas and insights over the past N thousand years — although it’s a pity we know so little of what people thought and felt before the invention of writing, which in the long history of humanity was a very recent refinement. More:  “ancestors” should be defined broadly. Beyond doubt, our human conceits and attitudes were to a large extent pre-formed – evolved – in our pre-human ancestors, all the way back to the beginnings of life on Earth. Wisdom requires self-knowledge and that must include knowledge of our own evolutionary biology. (What kind of creatures are we? What are the common threads of all creatures?)

Theme VI: Discusses possible FUTURES. It’s an attempt to get some handle on the likely consequences of any proposed or actual course of action, and what our and the world’s prospects are of long-term survival in an agreeable or at least tolerable state. 

A Christmas Tree of Ideas

Although all this seems simple enough in outline the conversations that each theme should give rise to are potentially infinite – constantly being added too, or simplified, and generally refined. Thus, somehow or other, the conversation/course needs on the one hand to be coherent and on the other to be infinitely flexible. In practice, this could be a lot simpler than it sounds. Thus:

Overall, the course – or the global conversation that gives rise to the necessary courses — is modelled like a Christmas Tree. The GOAL– to create Convivial Societies that offer Personal Fulfilment within a Flourishing Biosphere – is the fairy at the top. The BEDROCK PRINCIPLES of Morality and Ecology are the roots. The trunk takes us from the roots to the Goal. 

The branches represent the six Themes. Each branch may then subdivide into Subjects – as the Theme of Infrastructure divides into Governance, the Economy, and the Law. Then from the branches we can hang a potentially infinite number of parcels, containing anything from a toddler’s tricycle to matching Rolexes, and baubles and trinkets just to lighten the mood, each of which represents a Topic. 

The Christmas tree model has great advantages. For a Christmas tree can be any size we like – a sprig in a pot to stand on the piano, or a Giant Redwood (for although the standard tree in Britain is some kind of spruce, the species is not specified).  Whatever the size, we can load the tree with any amount of parcels and baubles. But however big and complex the laden tree becomes in detail, it will always preserve its fundamentally simple form. Thus, although the details may be infinite in number and in scope, and ever-expanding, the overall structure can be taken in at a glance. It always retains its coherence.

Overall it seems to me that my suggested agenda is the same in essence as is found in all the world’s great religions, although without their particular mythologies and theological adornments: to devise ways of life and ways of thinking and feeling that would enable us to live in harmony with other human beings and with the natural world, in effect forever (or as much of “forever” as need concern us). Indeed the above attempts to do what all the great religions aspire to do, and sometimes succeed in doing, which is to relate the minutiae of life — especially those of food and farming – to the grandest of grand ideas, as exemplified by science and metaphysics (as indeed in the style of St Benedict). Conventional education typically neglects both – both ends of what might be called the intellectual spectrum. Mainstream education in Britain is urban-based, and makes little or no mention of agriculture (which in some influential circles is seen as an anachronism!), or of horticulture; science is commonly taught primarily or purely as a utilitarian pursuit (intended to provide lucrative and evermore powerful high-technologies); and metaphysics is reduced to often perfunctory religious studies, which sometimes (especially in faith schools) are heavily biased towards particular theologies and cultures. There is little or no sense of what religion really is, and what it can and should do; or indeed of the true meaning of “spirituality”, and why it is of absolute importance. 

So it is that most people who pass through conventional courses of education, as most people do, at least in rich countries, finish up with a very narrow view of what’s what and what really matters. The fault lies not with the teachers – a group to be cherished alongside farmers and healthcare workers — but with the curriculum, with the way education is conceived by those with power. So it is that most politicians, often educated up to the hilt in the world’s most prestigious centres of learning, tend to be versed in the details of Infrastructure (Theme IV in the suggested agenda) but have no serious knowledge of the realities of farming or growing, or the importance thereof; or of ecology; or of moral philosophy.  

The course as outlined above could be presented to any audience from primary school to post-grad, and at any length from a 90-minute intro (as I have essayed in many a venue), to a residential hands-on weekend at some cooperating farm, to a full-blown university degree course, either undergrad or post-grad, in all cases either face-to-face or online.   

The role of this website in this grand endeavour is to provide an online forum for everyone who cares to take an interest to float, share, extend, refine, and promulgate the ideas needed to shift the Zeitgeist and prepare the ground for the people-led Renaissance that it surely needed. 

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