Reflections 1 Jan 2023

A thought for 2023. Move slowly, and Grow Things.

And here we go, across the threshold into a New Year. I wish us all well.

Last year was extraordinary. Memory plays tricks, but I don’t think I can remember a year, in now over seventy of them, that felt as incoherent, dissonant, or discordant. A time, as a country, when we seemed so adrift, leaderless and disconnected from those in power. I am particularly bemused right now by the idea of Exxon/Mobil suing the EU, as though a shareholder-owned company can adopt the status of a nation-state. It seems reminiscent of the days of privateers and the East India Company but at the opposite end of the industrial era cycle; collapse rather than birth.

Making sense of it requires reframing our relationships; with work, communities, environment and individual ambitions. We cannot extract more from the planet than it has to give. The paradox is that I think it has plenty to give, but we need to measure it differently. GDP and its economic relations were recognised as flawed measures from the outs…