The Hungry Spirit: New Thinking for a New World Read online

  With the exception of the two unemployed men, for whom life seemed pointless and hopeless, they had all taken the changes in their stride and were, it seemed to me, relieved that the responsibility for their futures was now so clearly in their own hands. ‘I’m pleased to say that I’m unemployable now!’ one man said, meaning that he would never want to work inside an organization again. Similarly, the children seemed to be under no illusions about the world that awaited them outside the school gates and were quite determined that they would be in charge of their own lives, even if they contracted some part of those lives, for a time, to an organization.

  7.Success has many faces. Asked how they defined success, none of that group, not even the unemployed, spoke of money. They talked of doing something they felt good about, of their families and their hopes for them, which were not particularly monetary, of being able to make the most of their own potential. Of course, although they were intended to be representative of our new society, they may not have been, and they may not have told me the whole truth, but what they did say, all of them, was that the world they saw made up in its opportunities for all its extra problems. They had not fallen victim to the fallacy of the single criterion, the idea that there is only one measuring stick for a life. Each one of us can be successful in a different way.

  Those seven trends and indicators suggest that we now have the chance to achieve what Adam Smith, in pessimistic mood, thought impossible, to enjoy both growth and cultivation. Shopping malls will, no doubt, remain the favourite congregating places for a while and our roads will still be crowded, but the malls may have more spaces for eating, meeting and greeting than just for shopping and the roads more tracks for cyclists and walkers as well as cars. The gym looks set to replace the church as the centre of the community, although worshipping the body, not the deity. Who knows, in fact, what may happen when more of us need fewer things, when there is more time to sit and think, more chance to be something other than just an ‘employee’ or ‘customer’, the only words that used to matter in yesterday’s economics.

  THE ENTREPRENEURIAL IMPERATIVE

  If we want to see more of the good news than the bad we will have to do it for ourselves. It is no good waiting for some unidentified ‘they’ to fix our world for us. Thomas Jefferson argued that good economics should promote good citizenship. He was worried, then, about the drift away from agriculture and the care of one’s own plot, into impersonal businesses. No longer, he feared, would we take responsibility for ourselves and those around us once we were cogs in someone else’s machine. Maybe economics is once again forcing us back into the care of our own plot, although it is often now a ‘virtual’ plot, consisting of resources within oneself rather than outside the window. One British study records that 40% of those leaving the welfare registers are starting their own business. Whether this is led by desperation or by a new entrepreneurial urge in society, it is one sign of a growing realization that things start with us.

  Others are increasingly turning their entrepreneurial skills to help the less fortunate. Take the story of Helen Taylor-Thompson and the Mildmay Mission Hospital in Shoreditch, east London. In 1982 the Mildmay, a district general hospital, was due to close. Helen Taylor-Thompson, who had been involved with the hospital for thirty years, was determined that it would not shut. After a long campaign she persuaded the government to allow the hospital to reopen by leaving the National Health Service and leasing the buildings on a peppercorn rent.

  Before long the Mildmay had become one of the leading centres for AIDS care, with an international reputation for innovation. In 1988 it became the first AIDS hospice in Europe. It has thirty-two suites for the terminal care of people with AIDS, housed in the old Victorian hospital. In addition it has a purpose-built facility to treat parents with AIDS, without separating them from their children. This year it plans to open a treatment centre in Kampala, Uganda. Mildmay is a world class institution created from a hospital that was regarded as worthless fifteen years ago, born out of the entrepreneurial energy of one woman.

  This story is one of a number recounted by Charles Leadbetter in The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur. He argues that the British tradition of welfare must not be abandoned, but it must be changed. Social entrepreneurs are the harbingers of that change, devising new ways to provide support and development for those excluded from the opportunities of the new society. A project to create 2,000 social entrepreneurs before the year 2000 (‘2,000 for 2000’) is planned in Britain, as is a School of Social Entrepreneuring, which would have to be as unlike a traditional school as possible, because no one ever learned to be an entrepreneur in a classroom.

  In Britain, in 1996, two women, uninvited, captured the emotions of the people and forced a government to change the law. Frances Lawrence, the widow of a schoolteacher knifed to death by a teenager in the street outside his school, launched an appeal for a moral revival and a ban on knives. Similarly, Ann Pearston, a member of the Dunblane community where sixteen small children and their teacher were gunned down in their school by a man with a handgun, launched a campaign to have handguns banned, an appeal which found universal approval and brought about a change in the law. Asked to vote for their Personality of the Year in 1996, the listeners of the BBC’s ‘Today’ Programme voted these two women onto their short list, along with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese dissident – three women who have each changed the world a bit, on their own initiative.

  Entrepreneurs, whether social or commercial, often discover aspects of themselves in the pursuit of something beyond themselves. Such people are not content to let the status quo be the way forward. They itch to make a difference. We should encourage them. More than half of the new start-ups in the service sector businesses in both Europe and America are the work of women. Often these women have honed their skills in the larger corporations only to find their ambitions checked by the so-called ‘glass ceiling’. Almost accidentally, the corporations have become the nurseries for frustrated entrepreneurs. They should turn this to positive account and do it more deliberately, in the hope that they can retain some of the best for themselves, including some women, while seeding the community with the others. The workplace has always been the real school for life. Perhaps it just needs to change its curriculum a little to tune in with the new age of personal initiative.

  THE GREATEST PAINTING IN THE WORLD

  I have no hesitation in naming what is for me the greatest painting in the world. It is the Resurrection by Piero della Francesca. It is still where it was painted more than 500 years ago, on the wall in the town hall of Borgo San Sepolcro, a small Tuscan town. We should be thankful that frescoes are so very difficult to move, because it remains a thrill to make the journey across the Italian hills to that small town, to walk into the room where Piero painted and to see before you what he did there for his fellow citizens.

  The painting is large, it fills the wall. It depicts Christ rising from the tomb, while the soldiers, who were supposed to be guarding it, sleep on, slumped against the side of the stone tomb. The figure of Christ is noble, imposing, set against the grey light of early morning in an Umbrian setting of hills and cypresses. It is the eyes that strike you first, piercing, bold, purposeful, hard to escape from. This is the face of a man who sees life whole and knows his place in it. I have stood and watched that painting for long, long spells and have always come away disturbed and yet invigorated.

  Everyone draws their own message from great art. For me the Resurrection carries a metaphorical meaning rather than a conventional religious one. I am free, goes that message, to break free from my past and to recreate myself. If I do so, I will be stronger and more sure. Even if my life up to now is counted a failure by many, as was the life of the man in that painting, the best is yet to come. I do not have to stay slumped and sleeping like those soldiers, waiting for my orders. It may be that I shall not see the full results of my efforts, but I should so strive that others may profit, even if it be after my death. That is the s
ort of immortality that I can understand. It is a message that applies to all people, and to all businesses and institutions. The best is always yet to come if we can rise from our past.

  It is that hope which sustains me, that and the certainty that we are most fully ourselves when we lose ourselves in our concern for others, or in a cause that is greater than we are. We were wrong to have put our faith in an undiluted ideology of self-interest when we should have trusted our humanity more than the system. We can override that system, just as we can override the programming of nature. We should trust ourselves to be both great and good, and if sometimes that trust is misplaced, more often it will be merited, for there is that within all of us which cries out for a better and a fairer world. Where better to start than where we are?

  In his poem Autumn Journal Louis MacNeice wonders what it is we want:

  If it is something feasible, obtainable,

  Let us dream it now

  And pray for a possible land . . .

  Where the altars of sheer power

  and mere profit

  Have fallen to disuse,

  Where nobody sees the use

  of buying money and blood

  at the cost of blood and money,

  Where the individual, no longer squandered

  in self-assertion, works with the rest . . .

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Listed below are the principal authors to whom I refer in the text, along with others who, although not directly mentioned, have been an important influence on my thinking.

  d’Ancona, Matthew, The Ties that Bind Us, London, The Social Market Foundation, 1996

  Bauman, Zygmunt, Alone Again, London, Demos, 1994

  Bennis, Warren and Biederman, Patricia Ward, Organizing Genius, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1997

  Branden, Nathaniel, Taking Responsibility, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996

  Case, John, Open Book Management, New York, Harper Collins, 1995

  Collins, James C. and Porras, Jerry L., Built to Last, New York, Harper Business, 1994

  Damasio, A. Descartes’ Error, London, Picador, 1995

  Davidson, James Dale and Rees-Mogg, William, The Sovereign Individual, London, Macmillan, 1997

  Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker, London, Penguin, 1993

  Drucker, Peter, Post-Capitalist Society, Oxford, Butterworth Heinemann, 1993

  Fukuyama, Francis, Trust, New York, The Free Press, 1995

  Gardner, Howard, Frames of Mind, London, Heinemann, 1983

  Goleman, Daniel, Emotional Intelligence, London, Bloomsbury, 1996

  Goyder, George, The Just Enterprise, London, The Adamantine Press, 1993

  Hampden-Turner, Charles, The Seven Cultures of Capitalism, New York, Currency Doubleday, 1993

  Hillman, James, The Soul’s Code, New York, Random House, 1996

  Hirsch, Fred, The Social Limits to Growth, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1997

  Huntington, Samuel, The Clash of Civilizations, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1996

  Jones, Barry, Sleepers, Wake! Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1996

  Kay, John, in Prospect, London, May 1996

  Kinsman, Francis, Millennium, London, W.H. Allen, 1989

  Korten, David C., When Corporations Rule the World, San Francisco, Brett-Koehler, 1995

  Kuttner, Robert, Everything for Sale, New York, Knopf, 1997

  Leadbetter, Charles, The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, London, Demos, 1997

  Mohn, Reinhard, Success Through Partnership, New York, Doubleday, 1986

  Moore, Thomas, Care of the Soul, New York, Harper Collins, 1992

  Mulgan, Geoff, Connexity, London, Chatto and Windus, 1997

  Ormerod, Paul, The Death of Economics, London, Faber, 1994

  Orwell, George, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, London, Penguin 1936

  Plender, John, A Stake in the Future, London, Nicholas Brealey, 1997

  Puttnam, Robert, Making Democracy Work, Princeton University Press, 1993

  Ridley, Matt, The Origins of Virtue, London, Viking, 1996

  Secretan, Lance H.K., Reclaiming Higher Ground, Toronto, Macmillan, 1996

  Singer, Peter, How Are We to Live?, Melbourne, Mandarin, 1995

  Thuillier, P. The Great Implosion, quoted by Julia Rosetti in Resurgence, No. 180, Jan/Feb 1997

  Thurow, Lester, The Future of Capitalism, London, Nicholas Brealey, 1996

  Wheatley, Margaret J. and Kellner-Rogers, Myron, A Simpler Way, San Francisco, Brett-Koehler, 1996

  Whyte, David, The Heart Aroused, New York, Currency Doubleday, 1994

  Zeldin, Theodore, An Intimate History of Humanity, London, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994

  INDEX

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  American society, 146

  Aristotle, 15, 131, 212

  Arts Business Forum, 196

  Ascherson, Neal, 56

  Asea Brown Boveri (ABB), 188, 202

  assets, new kinds of, 160–70

  AT&T corporation, 177

  Aung San Suu Kyi, 262

  Bacon, Francis, 229

  Ball, Sir Christopher, 214

  Bauman, Zygmunt, 71, 72

  Bennett, Alan, 126

  Bennis, Warren: Organizing Genius, 203

  Bentley, Tom, 242

  Berry, Dean, 157

  Bertelsmann AG, 173–5

  Bevin, Ernest, 121

  Bill of Rights, need for, 251–2

  Bode, Karl, 56–7

  Body Shop, 170, 192

  Borgo San Sepolcro, 262–3

  Bredfeld, Denise, 201

  Brighouse, Tim, 216

  Brooks-Kastel, Anna, 68–9

  Burke, Edmund, 103, 107, 116

  Business in the Community, 167, 227

  Camellia plc, philosophy of, 171–3

  capitalism, a better, 153–78

  creaking, 11–61

  proper place of, 59–61

  Cargill corporation, 76

  Catholic Church, 156, 157

  China, growth rate in, 54, 55

  chindogu world, 45–8

  Christian Aid, 169

  citizen company, 179–204

  juries, 248–9

  Citizens’ Charter, 181

  Clinton, Bill, 26, 58, 203

  collapse of the West, 49–51

  Collins, James, 78

  community relationships, 145–50

  competition, the trouble with, 25–31

  Confucius, 131

  Connolly, Cyril, 7

  Cook, Philip, 22

  corporate sovereignty, 74–9

  corporation as citizen, 166–70

  Country Life, 253

  creative factory, 55–8

  Daimler-Benz company, 164

  Damasio, Antonio: Descartes’ Error, 104

  d’Ancona, Matthew, 147

  Darwin, Charles, 105

  Dawkins, Richard, 79, 82

  de Bono, Edward, 224

  Degas, 128

  democracy, re-inventing, 243–5

  devolution, 249

  dignity in work, 246–7

  D.I.Y. economy, 43–5

  doctrine of enough, 113–20

  Dunblane killings, 261

  Economist, The, 53

  education, a proper, 205–28

  efficiency, ineffective, 32–51

  Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 111

  employment trends, 69–71

  entrepreneurial imperative, 260–2

  Erhard, Ludwig, 56, 57

  Estonian Case, 41–2

  European Convention on Human Rights, 252

  exploitation of third world, 169

  families, importance of, 134–9

  federalism, 183

  Fleming, David, 253

  Fortune 500 businesses, 158

  Fox, Gordon, 171–3

  Frank, Robert
, 22, 105

  French economy, 51

  Frisch, Max, 72, 73

  Fukuyama, Francis, 145

  The End of History, 41, 145, 249

  Gardner, Howard, 211, 214

  Gates, Bill, 52–3

  General Motors, 176, 177

  geranium theory, 79–83

  Germany, control of businesses, 164

  economic miracle, 56–7

  resistance to price competition, 35

  Goleman, Daniel, 208–9, 211, 212, 214, 218

  Gorbachev, Mikhail, 20

  Gorringe, Timothy, 88

  Grand Metropolitan, 166, 168

  Hampden-Turner, Charles, 168–9

  Havel, Vaclav, 61

  Hillman, James, 90

  Hirsch, Fred, 47

  Hobbes, Thomas, 131, 132

  Hobsbawm, Eric: The Age of Extremes, 7

  Ibsen, Henrik: The Doll’s House, 96–7

  identity, the puzzle of, 92–9

  individual responsibility, government role in promotion of, 229–54

  intelligence, categories of, 211–14

  Internet, 182, 256

  Japan, horizontal fast track, 97–8

  price competition, 35–6

  price control, 115–16

  solution to employment, 240–1

  Jefferson, Thomas, 260

  John Lewis Partnership, 171

  Julian of Norwich, Dame, 121

  Jung, 100, 130

  Kant, Immanuel, 73, 103–4, 121

  Kay, John, 166

  Kennedy, John F., 39

  Keynes, John Maynard (1st Baron), 31, 34, 59–60

  Kinsman, Francis: Millennium, Towards Tomorrow’s Society, 99–101

  Kirov Ballet, 123, 125

  Korten, David: When Corporations Rule the World, 40

  Kuttner, Robert: Everything for Sale: the Virtues and Limits of Markets, 34, 37

  labour market, 69–71

  Law, Andy, 194, 195

  Lawrence, Frances, 261, 262

  Leadbetter, Charles: The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur, 261

  Lindsey, Rachel, 96

  London Benchmarking Group, 168

  London Business School, 20

  London International Theatre Festival, 196