Reflections 20th June

On my mind this week.

The nature of growth has been on my mind this week as I've sensed small, but I think important levels of discomfort in many people I've talked to and in the media. It isn't easy to pin it down to any one thing, but the theme has been around growth. As Bobby Kennedy said over fifty years ago, GDP measures everything except what is worthwhile.

We seem to have many schools of thought - those focused on wellbeing, on the environment, biodiversity, technology and a host of varied others. All are important, some critical, yet a sterile and outmoded view of growth seems to override them all. It operates in the same way as to how we used to deal with other languages by speaking slowly and loudly in English in the belief they would understand. 

It is over sixty years since C.P. Snow caused a storm when he wrote about "The Two Cultures", in which he lamented the gap between scientists and artists and their seeming inability to communicate. It seems that whilst that gap has be…