Tim Jackson

Prof Tim Jackson is a British ecological economist and professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey (personal website, twitter, wikipedia). He is the director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), a multi-disciplinary, international research consortium which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. He is also a successful playwright.

It was an extraordinarily rich and honest conversation, covering (and this is just a taste): 

• Moving from playwright to accidental economist because of the Chernobyl disaster.
• Allowing the playwright aspect to explore the conflicts within himself on the economics of prosperity.
• The struggles of being an outsider pushing at the mainstream.
• Trying to create a society based on the vastness of meaningful relationships and purposeful lives, rather than the flat, narrowness of economic growth.
• The need for partnership culture, rather than a domination one, though still with some role for competition that encourages us all to raise our game, without fearing we'll lose everything.
• Providing capability to the next generation, so voices of today have the space to speak, while having respect for how the past generations helped created that space. 
• The importance of following your north star, and treating challenges to you from the status quo as the crucible that forms you.

I make an quotation error. it was Max Plank (not Thomas Khun) who said that scientific revolutions proceed one funeral at a time. Towards the end, Tim makes a similar error: Ode: Intimations of Immortality was Wordsworth, not Tennyson.

Tim uses one swear word (f*ck) as part of a story about being rejected by mainstream economists.

Links

Latest book: Post-Growth -- Life After Capitalism

Previous book: Prosperity Without Growth (must read, by the way).

Riane Eisler

Herman Daly

Mary Douglas

Timings

0:55 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?

9:37 - BONUS QUESTION: Do you feel that you've combined that storytelling of being a playwright into the analytics of being an economist? 

21:00 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?

27:27 - BONUS QUESTION: The future Tim is trying to create, inspired by past thinking, is a society based on meaningful relationships. But has it existed in practice? And is there a practical way of getting from where we are now?

43:04 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?

51:14 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?

54:50 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

57:26 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?

58:40 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Twitter: Powerful_Times

Website hub: here.

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Thank you for listening! -- David

Transcript

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:07

Welcome to What can we do in these powerful times. I'm your host, David bent. And I've been working in the field of sustainability and climate change for some 20 years. Because the need for change is growing faster than the impact we're delivering. So I'm wondering what I can do next that is useful. Speaking with others, others, I know they've had that same challenge, which is why I'm doing this interview series in 30 minute bites, ask some brilliant people what they're doing now and why, or to inspire and enable the audience which may just turn out to be me through stories grounded in experience. And today, I'm delighted to say we're joined by Professor Tim Jackson, who's the Director for of CUSP, the centre of understanding sustainable prosperity is a world leading ecological economist and author. Hello, Tim. So first question is, what are you doing now? And how did you get here?

Tim Jackson: 0:59

Well, as you said, I leading a research centre, Centre for the understanding of sustainable prosperity, cusp. And I've been doing that for probably six or seven years now that particular configuration of researchers were asking, basically, from all sorts of points of view, what can prosperity possibly mean on a finite planet? Which is one of those questions that seems, you know, at first sight, blindingly simple, and the more you think about it incredibly complex, and so we have a very interdisciplinary team here psychologists, sociologists, economists, anthropologists, political scientists, thinking about that question and thinking about it in a particularly in terms of the sort of enormous environmental challenges that we face at the moment climate change and the loss of biodiversity, but also thinking about it in human terms, and in social terms, what kind of society that we want to live in. And that I mean, that reflects, how did I get here? I mean, it reflects in a way it reflects things that I accidentally did when I was younger, I didn't know that there would be useful, such as you know, studying philosophy, because actually, ultimately, that is a philosophy, philosophical question. How should we live, but also studying science and mathematics in particular, that gave me some sort of analytical skills? Because there are, there's obviously analytical questions there about how the economy works, how you kind of balance the public in the private sector. What's happened historically, and the statistical implications of what's happened historically, and how you could change that, all of those questions which have both the philosophical content and analytic concept, and, and I mean, I always think of myself. You describe me as an ecological economist. And that's, that is how I describe myself. But I do think of myself in some ways as a kind of accidental, economist, I ended up working in economics, largely because I was driven by, you know, one particular fairly passionate moment, I suppose, in 1986, when I watched the impact of, of the meltdown in Chernobyl, the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl and thought about the implications of that and thought about the implications for the planet for humanity for our sense of our own technology, if you like now, how, how we relied on that technology, but we sometimes victims have an enormous kind of hubris, our sense of almost arrogance that we can solve our problems with technology, and then we ended up with a technology that's painful and dangerous and potentially, you know, devastating for all of its implications, civil and of course, military when it comes to nuclear power. And like my parents were one state I don't really remember while what for but they take me on the CND March Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Back when I was a kind of young teenager, and it very definitely, you know, hit home for me that nuclear power was a kind of dangerous thing, potentially world ending in some of its configurations and that trauma in a way of living in a world as a teenager in which you kind of felt as though at any point in time it could all play in because of our own stupidity. You know, that kind of also stuck with me. So that when when Chernobyl happened, and I at that point, I was actually living in London, thinking that I would make my way as a playwright, I'd sold a couple of places the BBC at that point in time. It didn't bring in masses of money but they It definitely was very much along the lines of what I wanted to be doing. And I'd almost kicked academia into the dust behind me saying, I didn't want any more of that. I don't want any more mathematics, I don't want any more philosophy. I don't need any more universities, I'm very happy in his creative life. And Chernobyl really dragged me back to my sense that actually, accidentally or not, I had developed some skills that were relevant to the challenge of a sustainable energy system for a society that actually needed desperately to wean itself off dangerous tech technologies and, and environmentally damaging energy systems. And so I walked to the next day, actually, I walked into the offices for Greenpeace and ice in London. And I said, you know, this is what I am, I'm someone who is sitting here writing plays, but I've got a degree in mathematics and other one in philosophy and other one in physics, and I kind of want to do something, and they set me to work on. And they'd heard, of course, about solar power, wind power, and knew about renewable energy. And, and so they kind of said, well, you know, if you're not using nuclear, then maybe we could be using renewables. And they were practically the only people in the country at that point saying that. And they certainly to work on the economics of renewable energy. And that was it basically, overnight. I was an accidental economist. And the more I thought about, of course, all of these decisions that we make, the more I realised how grounded they are, in economics, and how important economics is in our lives. But because up to that point, I hadn't really even thought very much about economics, I was also struck by the fact that most people don't, that those decisions, fly over our heads that economics isn't accessible to people, it's kind of game played by people in power to make decisions, which were not taking any part that have an enormous impact on our lives. And so I was very struck by actually, the importance of the role of economics. And the more I learned about economics, I was also struck by how narrow it is as a discipline. Because I had come to it in a very unconventional way, I guess, I was open to the possibility that it could be very differently construed as an ecological, Ecological Economics, I found a kind of intellectual home.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 7:31

So that that me also then intrigued about how you get from Greenpeace to being a world leading ecological economists, then I mean, you've already got the three degrees. And so where did you stay Greenpeace for a long time? Or how how did he wasn't? It wasn't?

Tim Jackson: 7:50

Yeah, I mean, it was really weird decision. Because, you know, maybe we can come back and talk about the place thing, because I did continue writing that idea of writing plays, but that was in a very, very different place. I didn't want it I literally didn't want anything to do with universities. And I, because I found them dry. You know? Yes, some intellectual interest there. But for the most part, even things like philosophy, which I felt should be asking really interesting questions about the world. We're mostly asking questions about dead philosophers and trying to, you know, pick apart various arguments from the philosophers, rather than really relating that to the context of the world. So I was not, you know, I was not enamoured of universities at all. And in no configuration did I ever imagined that I would end up if I have ended up in one. And actually, I have now almost to the date been at Surrey University for 28 years. So you are talking to someone who's kind of been around a long time in universities. But that beginning motivation was very, very different. It was like saying, Well, I really would like to be sitting in like Garret writing plays. And I think there's something here that could lead me. But for some reason, whatever it is, I've got, I've developed these skills, and I think they should probably be put to use because I don't really want to sit around watching the planet being trashed. They wouldn't watch humanity going in these directions. And Greenpeace. Were the only people that I knew about the station with. So I did.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 9:27

And, I mean, now 28 years, sorry, and how long it is, since that moment with Chernobyl and the next day walking into Greenpeace. Do you feel that you've combined that storytelling of being a playwright into the analytics of being an economist? Is there a way in which you not just that they're two separate strands of your life, but they're now woven together in your practice?

Unknown: 9:49

They were for a long time, very separate strands. I mean, the interesting thing about that decision as soon as I made it, it was like the world came to me and said, yes, now you're going to be work with Greenpeace now you're going to be working for a consultancy that helps Friends of the US with their research site. Now you're going to apply for a post, which someone recommends to you in Southbank University, and now you're going to get that post and then and then now you're going to work for Stockholm Environment Institute. And now you're going to work for the University. Sorry. And that, you know, literally, that just almost happened in the background. And what I was doing was, if you like, you know, following the money, I was following the question, yes, follow up from that moment of having been woken up by what happened at Chernobyl, the memories of mice end past thinking about how, as you know, as a species, we can, we can do well without trashing the planet on which we live. And that, you know, that quest really was the central quest. And I also, I suppose, you know, when I was in the early days spending, not, not half and half, but I was still spending quite a lot of time writing, I was writing about that same quest way, as a playwright, but in a very different way. I wasn't, you know, it wasn't about analysis. It wasn't about philosophy. It wasn't about intellect. It was about the humanity and story and narrative, and conflict and tension, and exploring that sense of what it means to be human, in the middle of all these contradictions and challenges and dangers. And so that, and I didn't, really, I don't think I really brought it together. For quite a long time, I was more it was more in a sense that the playwriting gave me a space to explore the emotion to explore the depths, to explore the some of the intellectual ideas in a very, very different way. It gave me freedom, actually, because that's when you're an academic, you have to kind of, you know, make your case you have to write your book, you have to stand by your book, you have to be the person who argues such and such about prosperity and growth. And of course, we you can become that person, you can become that idea. But actually, we really as in the debt, in our depths, as human beings are never just one idea was always the kind of conflict and the playwriting allowed me to explore that conflict, it allowed me to, you know, to talk to my own dark side, to understand who the people were within me, who were actually the, you know, rampaging anti environmental protagonists, that I would meeting in daily life as the opposite to me, but actually, I could discover them in me as the playwright. And some, I think some of my best characters as a playwright, actually, were the people who espouse the completely opposite view to one, my, my intellectual life was following. So it's a real kind of carbon road. Who, who actually, you know, interestingly, came out with their own philosophy about why they were living that way, and what it meant to live that way. And one of the themes that really came out very strongly for me through my playwriting, which kind of evolutionary theory and Darwinism and social Darwinism in the sense of how deep that's woven into our society, and by exploring people who were not me, but somehow whose voices came from my own experience of that society was a very powerful way of thinking about and exploring how that sort of sense of almost a deterministic Darwinism has inhabited our economics. Politics and has some sub has not sure what the word I'm looking for subverted, yes.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 13:53

But the narrative which goes with the mainstream economics is, we are in a society is made up of competition, rather than society is made up of competition and collaboration and sometimes the foreign versus Yeah,

Tim Jackson: 14:07

exactly. And if you don't compete, and if you don't, you know, lift yourself above others, continually, then you're the one who is left in the gutter. And obviously, you know, that's when we quite often leave that out of our environmental dialogue with critical of selfish competencies. Idea of society, but we're not. I think we're not understanding enough sometimes. The reality of that for ordinary people in the society driven by competition is a deep seated anxiety about being left in the gutter. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's something which has human dimensions, which I

David Bent-Hazelwood: 14:46

won. And there's a historical trend of the last decades of putting more and more risk onto the individual, I would say, as well, which

Tim Jackson: 14:55

it's exactly, exactly so I mean, those are all very good arguments for doing society differently. But in order to really understand our past towards that, and our path away from it, you know, those human stories are ones that really speak. They speak in a different language,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 15:17

I wanted to pick up on one of the things you said there about was your opposites who you were meeting. And I can imagine many of those opposites were in the discipline of economics, where there was a very strong, mainstream voice, which is, doesn't ask the question, how can we have a good life on a finite planet barely, acknowledges defined finiteness of the planet. And you as an outsider, without an economics degree, it must have been very difficult to establish a sort of credibility for yourself, and, I mean, there must have been a lot of opposition, I guess I'm thinking,

Tim Jackson: 15:58

Yeah, I mean, in mainstream economics, I don't think they have, you know, 30 something years later. I, I have, you know, been to mainstream economic conferences, I've spoken with Chief Economist at company. And as I've spoken with economics and finance ministers, and I've done it, you know, with a sense of, Well, you know, a sense of necessity, but also a sense of, of, yeah, that kind of opposition that that you're facing. And, and I've also struggled at certain points. But you know, I'd say this very honestly, struggled with what inevitably you carry with you when you wander into somebody's territory, which is that you are an outsider. And you are, and that is a disadvantage. So there's, you know, that, and you have to somehow navigate that sense of what can be quite debilitating inferiority complex. If you it was certainly when you start, you know, I remember going into particular events that I remember going to that kind of international meeting where we were, you know, talking about, I can't remember a particular technology, I think it might have been fusion technology at the time and coming up against the giants of the fusion technology industry, with all of their powerful economic arguments in favour of what they were doing, and be absolutely lambasted, like, you know, personal ad hominem attacks on me as a person. And, you know, it was a very interest. And I was at that point I was representing. I think I was representing Greenpeace in that debate, and that at that particular point in time, maybe at one remove, and I remember, you know, they were very, very formative examples, they would like you go into thinking, and at that point, I was, I was quite naive about it, I would think, well, you know, I know the arguments I've been through the arguments are pretty sure the logic, I think I've got this right, I've checked it out with a few people, I'll just present the arguments. And this attack that came back at me was so almost rabid. And I think it was partly that the arguments were right. It was also that I was an outsider. And then I had no, I had formally speaking, I had no credentials to be in that arena, saying what I was saying, and so you know, those that that was a, that was tricky, or something that navigate I remember walking around from where it was Dubrovnik or somewhere after this meeting, where I've just been attacked by these people. And I was walking at that time, I don't know, if you can still do it, you can kind of walk around the walls of the old town, out of by the harbour. And as I've done before, keep round. I remember seeing the same giants who had just attacked me walking towards me in the other direction those things, but do I do that one out? You know, I and I was half tended to turn and run. And I thought, No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm a human being. They're human beings just kind of walk by. I wave at them. And of course, they looks you know, they look daggers a couple of them did respond. But it was a it was an object lesson in learning how I didn't know. I mean, I was arrogant. You know, I was, I was naive. There was an arrogance there that I thought if I had the right argument, I could go into that arena and I could and and I think that sort of experience very quickly knocked that out of me, but it also to some extent, hardened me and made me realise that there are times at which it is a struggle. It is a fight that you are in there, be being attacked, and all intents and purposes also attacking people because their beliefs are at stake as well. What so you have to kind of come you have to learn to be put had for that. And I think, you know, my sense is that the younger generations, people go through that today. I mean, I look at the school strikes and Greta Thun Berg and those people, they have such courage and they have such kind of authority and authority that I did not have in that way at that age and learnt through that sort of bloodying in in those kinds of processes. I've just had huge respect for it really.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 20:26

Yes. And I think those people also benefit from the speed work of people from the generations before. So there's, they're standing on a body of work, and a wider acceptance of the science of climate change and other things as well. So they, they get to start from slightly further ahead. But nevertheless, they're still acting in opposition to the mainstream authorities, which feel extremely threatened by the depth of change that is needed, and therefore resort to any tactics they can find to protect the status quo. And I wanted to move on to the second formal question, which is, what's the future you're trying to create? And why?

Tim Jackson: 21:14

Yeah. I mean, I think I think in the place where to come back to your earlier question related to one of the places where, you know, I brought together my playwriting and my, uh, my ecological economics work most was in the book that I published last year, post growth, life after capitalism. And really, I think, in a way, what I was trying to do, there was to sketch that elements of that future and have a different kind of world, a world built around relationship rather than profit, a world built around cooperation, as much as competition, a world built around a kind of sense of our own humanity, more than a sense of the kind of statistical logic of economic growth. And, and, and I think, you know, I think to me, that's a very deep rooted part of my own emotional and intellectual development that there will, there was, as, as I worked my way from being a kind of, impressionable kid who was interested in poetry, fascinated by religion couldn't ever quite find their place in those religious structures, but nevertheless came to came to the world almost, with a sense of there being more of being something Fuller, something different, something deeper, and then watching as the world gradually kind of cracked away at that, and made it less tangible as a proposition. And, and, and looking at looking at the way that industry work, that technology work, that the pattern of consumption work that the world that we were supposed to live in, worked and thinking, that does not capture that essence that I had as a kid, about this deeper and the deeper to me, had something had a lot to do with the relationship to the Earth itself to nature, it had a lot to do with relationships with other people with the depth of those relationships with, with the emotions that came with them, it had a lot to do with a sense of, kind of vastness of the cosmos. And it had a lot to do with poetry, which I think is what drove me towards the writing thing. In the beginning, I kind of felt as though it was in writing that I could find this essence that seemed to have been lost, outside of that sort of young experience. And I think what I've tried to do, you know, what I've tried to do in, in post growth and what I feel, in a sense, the vision that cast is holding is exactly that sort of, vision for a world which is rich in relationship, which is deep in terms of human flourishing, which is connected in terms of not just us with each other as human beings, but also us as a part of a creation, if you like a sense of, of creation that exists in nature, without that ever being, in any sense narrowly religious, but that power that that of other human experience that transcends consumer capitalism, I think that's a guiding light. It's not it doesn't say it doesn't tell you exactly what the world is going to look like in the future. But it tells you there's something to follow something to strive for something that is deeper and more meaningful than the kind of vision of the mantra of more.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 25:18

Yeah. So, I mean, that's a future where they have it's not a detailed model blueprint, it's more a set of qualities that you're trying to describe, which are a richer and deeper experience in the world supported by all the different infrastructures, and all the ways in which we live. That is more than just creating meaning through consumption alone, which is often feels like the mainstream push at us is that we should live through what we buy, rather than live through how we experience other people in the relationships we have with them, relationships we have with nature, with the sense of deeper purpose, those things

Tim Jackson: 26:03

that describes it really well. And and I was, I think, in what I would post great did as a book was partly to draw on, people, you know, inspiring figures from history who had had and who had articulated that same sense of humanity, and of human progress and vision for social progress. And realising that actually, although I'd held it myself as a kind of vision, in a countercultural way to the society I found myself in, I wasn't alone, that vision actually permeates human history. And the people that I cite in, in Post-Growth go back to, I think the earliest is probably loud serve as a Chinese sage from three and a half, 1000 years before the Christian era. And so realising actually, that from them right through to, if you like, to Greta Thun Berg, that vision is actually intact, it's solid, it's connected, and it moves in a subterranean way, below human history. But it's a very powerful resource for thinking about the future.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:15

And I suppose the question is, it can be there as an expression as a hope? Has it existed in practice? And is there a practical way of getting from where we are now? To where that is more of a lived experience for billions of people?

Tim Jackson: 27:34

I would say, and I know she's, you know, I'm not sure if your answer asking the question this way, but I would say yes, but it absolutely has existed in practice. It's existed in, in human example, that has existed in human experience, it's, it's possible to identify people in times and places, and that means that it has existed in practice. Has it at anytime been a dominant worldview? I think it's a trickier question to answer. And I, I'm, I'm not sure that it's been a dominant worldview, in our time and experience, and then collating your experience with mine in a very unfair way. But I think, you know, even for broadly of the 20th century, 21st century, you know, modernity, it's not easy to find it as a dominant worldview, in modernity. But I was, you know, I have become very fascinated in the idea, the ideas of Riane Eisler, who is a social, social, think of social philosopher, who was born with us escaped from the Nazis during the Second World War and brought up in, in the US, and, you know, having seen almost firsthand the evil side of human existence, wanted to understand where the good was, and how it's emerged in society. And she has, you know, she has this fascinating body of work, which looks actually interestingly looks at gender, and looks at the relationship between the genders. And she says something very, very simple, which is that when you have two genders, and let's leave aside for the moment, the complexities of gender identity, but when you have, broadly speaking, two genders, their relationship to each other, can take one of two forms, either one dominates the other, or they work in partnership with each other. And she spent a lot of time actually looking at societies and looking anthropologically at societies. And particularly, obviously, the anthropology of the modern era and anything possibly from even the last 2000 years, is wrought with domination is what domination Men, over women and the subjugation of women, by men and the abuse of women by men. And of course, you know, that's as a man, that's a really difficult thing, to kind of take on board and to accept that you are part of a domination culture that has led to particular forms of society. And this is Riane Eisler's, this argument is led to forms of society, that are equal, that are worn like that are competitive, that are insecure. So in other words, all of the things that appear to flow out of that very Darwinian view of the world, where might is right, and, and the sense that sense of that essence of, of a kind of human reality, that transcends that, that physical domination disappears. And then she contrasts that, actually, with historical societies where the partnership model was more prevalent. So her argument, you know, her argument is that this is contrast between a dominator society and the partnership, society really, really matters to historical evolution. And it matters to the kinds of crises that we are now addressing. And even the history of that has been rewritten to write out the existence of those partnerships societies to cast some of them as matriarchal rather than patriarchal whereas when you look at the reality of what happened in that societies, they weren't they were partnership societies, and then to point to the places where that partnership model can begin to inform how how this society might move into the future. It's a I mean, it's, that's in a way, that's a part of an intellectual journey that I'm sort of still on. But it's also interestingly, a part of that emotional journey, because that sense of who we are as men, and how we relate, as men to women, and the way that society codes, those relationships, I, I believe is central to what we're looking at at the moment. And the challenges that we're looking at at the moment. And I think, you know, part of I mean, a part of my job as a man, let me just put it that way is to, you know, figure out in myself what my relationship to that Dominator role in society is, and, and to work in whatever way is necessary to transform that, because that's, that is a part of it, it's a part of the matrix of, of different challenges that sits at the at the heart of where we are, we live in a competitive dominated society, in which care is massively undervalued, in which women are still undervalued, in which the world of the heart is undervalued. And our sense of progress is dominated by, by conflict, by territory, by status. And by and by our sense of grabbing more of that in the future.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 33:46

Yeah. And I think there's an awful lot in there, which we're not going to unpack fully. But one of the things which occurs to me about all of that is almost an irony that in order to deliver practically and implement practically the best of what competition can bring, because it does bring good things. It is that in the way you're talking about, it sounds like the best of competition can only really happen when it is in partnership with partnership as it were. So if so, do you need to have to have the partnership as the umbrella because that allows the competition to flourish. But if the competition is of is the umbrella, then there the partnership angle, partnership aspects are squashed out. And so there's really interesting

Tim Jackson: 34:40

I don't know that I have fully worked out worked through in my mind where, you know, that competitive thing meets the collaborative thing. And so what you're suggesting that there are you know, that When partnership is the is the structure rather than domination, and perhaps that competition can work in positive ways. I mean, it's interesting because I I was I was at one point very taken by, you know, the martial arts, in particular, I mean, I'm still I still do. Tai Chi, which has its roots in the martial arts. At one point was doing, learning different different martial arts and learning about the philosophy, the martial arts, and the philosophy of the martial arts, at least as it has been handed down, is partly that when you're in competition, particularly when you're in fierce, mortal competition, which is what the martial arts originally were, then you can reach states of mind states of being that you cannot reach when you're not in that competition. And it's like, when you watch, you know, when you watch, like the World Cup final the other day, France and Argentina, you know, ones, I didn't know whether you're into football or not, sometimes into it, kind of what I like is the concept of football as the beautiful game. And the beautiful game is a place where people can come into competition with each other. And sometimes, in the presence of that competition, achieve extraordinary skills and extraordinary teamwork and extra ordinary outcome. And in some sense that you saw a little bit of that in the second half of that match against between France and Argentina, because he said, You saw them the competition, each raising the level of the other team, to the point where at the end of the day, you know, the winner or loser was kind of irrelevant, because the level of skill had already transported you as the viewer to a place of kind of marvelling at what's possible when, when you're in that, and that's very much the kind of that was always the logic that attracted me to the idea of martial arts is that in competition, you push each other to a different place, and that you also achieve respect for each other as, as, as opponents. And, you know, I think that's, I got a long way down a

David Bent-Hazelwood: 37:27

very specific track, but it's a very, it's a fundamental thing. Sorry, go finish your thought, yeah,

Tim Jackson: 37:31

no, I mean, I'm just not sure where I come out on that, you know, I can see that. But I can also see the damage that competition and relentless competition in society and creates an insecurity, which is drive, which just drives more competition, so that that vicious cycle of competition drives insecurity drives competition, you know, that has really undermined our possibilities to think about and to deliver that partnership society.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 37:59

Yes, I mean, I think the framing conditions in which to competition happens become really pivotal. And I guess when I, when I was thinking about what we might talk about, I thought we might talk a lot about growth, because that's possibly what your position on growth is what you're maybe more famous for, but that's not where I got. But that same sort of thing about, maybe there's the conditions in which some growths happen, that matters more, that's a tremendously important thing. And actually, partly because I came across it in your book, and a few other people recommended it to me, too. There's a book called The inner game of tennis, which I had read off, and it talks about competition. And I'm just looking at a quote here, in true competition, no person is defeated, both players benefit by their own efforts to overcome the obstacles presented by the other. And in that sense of competition, it's a generative activity.

Tim Jackson: 38:49

Yeah, that was a was a really, I mean, I again, I played tennis when I was younger, and the inner game was like, the one of the things that sort of, you know, that went along with that sort of martial art, philosophy and, and in some sense, I think Timothy Galway got it from an Eastern perspective and imported it into the inner game of tennis. And, and it's very much that that idea that we can, we can become better in competition with each other, if that competition is kind of respectful in particular. And within the context, that doesn't simply reward winning for the sake of winning, because I think in the sense that that, to me is exactly what I have against the mantra of growth. And in fact, you know, when I've talked about growth to politicians, it is that competitive aspect of growth that they revert to in defence of growth almost before anything else. We've got to show that we're bigger than everyone else. Otherwise, we'll just be minnows in a tie that sweeps us away within you know, the swathe of history and we've got nothing unless we

David Bent-Hazelwood: 39:59

could And the individuals won't be motivated to work unless they feel the downside of not working. And therefore there's this sort of aspect of we need growth and competition to keep pushing us forward. Yeah. And that, and therefore, that there is a downside to losing is a necessary feature, rather than

Tim Jackson: 40:19

motivation question is absolutely fascinating one because, you know, in a system in which all your incentives are material, and economic and financial, and otherwise, you're punished, it's quite possible that we have actually manipulated human motivation in exactly the direction that we're being told it exists, which is that, you know, unless you are, given those incentives for financial wealth, and punished for not being doing well, in that system, we're not going to go anywhere, there's never going to no one's going to go forward. And I think, you know, psychology doesn't really bear that out very well, because it misses out. And I'm sure you and many other people listening will be aware of that kind of distinction between extrinsic motivations, those motivations, which are either the carrot or the stick, and intrinsic motivations, the motivation to be an agent in the world, and, and to be an agent of good in the world. And to have that sense in you of, of working for something, even if it's, you know, a vision that you may never see, that sense of intrinsic motivation is well documented in psychology. It's a very powerful internal motivator. And, and it's, and it does tend, and there is some interesting psychological evidence on this, it tends to be diminished and overridden by in a system, which is too much focused on extrinsic motivations on these status, symbolism, competition, gain, material possession, that tends to undermine those intrinsic motivations, but it doesn't interestingly, ever, entirely make it go away. We did a study a few years ago with, with the CEOs of small and medium sized enterprises, and you can expect, you know, these are people who are inside industry and driven to some extent by what's happening in the market, expect to find them. Yeah, we want to get rich, we want to grow, we want to be out there, we want to be, you know, we've got this vision for our company. And of course, that doesn't exist in some places. But actually, what we found, fascinatingly was that most of them, were driven by this intrinsic motivation, doing something useful in the world, bringing something to the world being purposeful.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 42:52

So let's move on into our next question, which is, so given that you're trying to create a future which is richer in experience richer in connection in relationships with all kinds of things? What are your priorities for the next few years?

Tim Jackson: 43:12

Well, I in it is, my, my, if you like my, my work priorities, I think are very much about providing the capability for a next generation. You know, I here I play a leadership role in CUSP. And that's an enormous privilege. But part of that leadership role is about capabilities and about facilitation. And some of that is as bland as fundraising to, you know, to be able to keep a climate in which a group of young researchers can work together a group of highly motivated, intrinsically motivated, researchers can work together and can continue to work for the kinds of changes that, you know, that we've been talking about, in a way and, and so, and it's an interesting point for me personally, because I'm, you know, part of me actually wants to, not retire, but move in a slightly different direction and focus more on my writing and perhaps even go back to my, my playwriting, and to spend more time on that and that and the demands of that task are actually quite, you know, they're quite imposing, you have to have a certain kind of space in order to be able to do that kind of work. You have to basically take yourself out of the mele of everyday demands, and you need that creative space to be in it. So, so all that and I feel as though both within both within my ecological economics work and indeed within my playwriting that there are there are things there that I that needs to be said that I have not said that I want to say that are asking for me to get to dedicate that time to them. And yes, at the same time, I'm also, you know, in this leadership role with this young group of researchers who, who are working on complex projects working with each other, we were trying to, you know, find the funding to make that work properly, to give them the support to continue that much more worldly work, if you like, of creating a different vision for the future and creating the, the, the academic and the intellectual foundations for that, really, for the future. And so, so I find myself sort of torn between those two things at the moment. And I know, you know, I want there to be a time at which, and there has to be a time at which those young researchers are no longer young researchers dependent on me, in which my own leadership actually begins to either move away from that task or begins to become less important generally, in the world. And that and that sense of the turning over of the old in favour of the new, which actually, interestingly, goes back to the very fundamental economics idea from Joseph Schumpeter, the

David Bent-Hazelwood: 46:19

creative destruction,

Tim Jackson: 46:20

creative destruction. Thank you. And, and it's not entirely, I don't think it's entirely the same in academia. But there is that sense, nonetheless, you know, that the voices who have been there for 30 something years as I have, and not the voices of today, and the voices of today have to have the space to speak, and actually stepping back and allowing those people into that space is a part of my task at this point in my life. And, and, you know, so I'm sort of really, to answer your question, juggling those sort of slightly complex and slightly incompatible aspects of my own working life.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 47:06

And I was thinking earlier when you're describing the opposition from mainstream economics as well. Just that there's a different quote, I think it's Thomas Kuhn about scientific revolutions proceed. One funeral at a time, that sense of the old guard has to go away in order for the job to come through slightly more extreme version talking about but

Tim Jackson: 47:32

yeah, I think, as a logic, it definitely has a logic. And I mean, I'm, you know, in the sense that I even I mean, it's really interesting. And I do think it goes back to 20, maybe four, which I think is really is really important. And I hope that can be held on to by a younger generation, because I think we have a younger generation now that is, for lots of very good reasons, much more impatient for change. And in that impatience for change, we tend to sometimes, you know, demonise the people who have created the space in which it's possible to change. And I've watched that happen, I watched it happen, you know, rather actually, quite frustratingly, with Herman Daly, and the, there was a point at which Herman Daly kind of came into conflict with the younger generation who had not really an understanding of how much Herman Daly had created the space into which we were all working. And well, then nonetheless, kind of critiquing him for being still too economistic, or still too much based around the capitalist vision or too critical of socialism. And of course, you know, Herman's ideas were always changing, and always nuanced and always fantastically insightful. And to watch him being the subject of that kind of critique from a younger guard, if you like the old guard and the young guard, there's a wonderful quote, actually, from current numbers from a sociologist who talks about how the each generation accuses, the older generation, you know, that sense of a kind of generational conflict, because in the same, what the younger generation sees is not the space that the older generation has created. They see the structures that still remain within that, that vision of the world. And so they inevitably have to resist that and they inevitably in the face of resisting it, they see that older generation as being somehow responsible for the strictures that they now want to break down. And so it's a very understandable kind of Mary Douglas is the name of the sociologist I was trying to think of. And, and, and it's a very understandable relationship and that energy of use that wants to See change and is desperate for change and has has, has a sort of force behind it towards change is a very, very powerful force in the world. But I always feel a little distressed when I see it, I'm anchored from the respect for that older generations. And I think that's, and that's what, that's what that sense I was trying to describe in post both of how, actually, when you tap into it, there's a history from ancestors, that is still informing all of our thoughts, and all of our sense of ourselves and all of our beings today. And so and then respect for that respect for our ancestors respect for, for those the way that thought developed, and for that, particularly the power of change, that exercise itself through that thought, can actually be a very powerful resource. It's not something that we should, you know, it's not something we should ever, I think, resigned to or accept without critique, but it's always something that we should find some respect for, and think about as a resource for our own journey into the future.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 51:14

Great well, and in that mode, then. So if someone is was inspired by the priorities, you've outlined, a world rich in experience and relationship, and particularly the priorities of growing the capabilities for the next generation, and also, that creative expression that you're trying to find space for, they have those priorities, watch in the air inspired by them, what should they do next?

Tim Jackson: 51:40

You know, I never know how to answer that question. Because myself in it, there was no rational point at which I made a career decision. So in a sense, I mean, I think it is kind of, in some ways, it's harder, in some ways, it's easier for younger people today, but I think, to me, there's still that idea of, you know, that, that we have we each have different kinds of Northstar, you know, sort of guiding light. And we quite often, you know, education does a really good job of covering that up. Yes, socialising it in certain specific ways. And I think, you know, if there's one thing that I want to say to people who, who are struggling with that process now is that is, is to just keep that idea of that Northstar, keep that idea of that of a light that you are following, because everything in the world will try to obscure it from you. And it's probably the only guidance worth having. And that's, you know, I think, but once once you've done that, then it means that every individual path is going to be different. It's not like I'm sitting here, as Tim Jackson saying, the thing that we really have to fix is finance. So I want all of you with ecological fences in the world to go and train as financial engineers and get the cells inserted in the financial sector so that we can overthrow it. Because actually, what will happen along the way of that, you know, might be quite a good strategy. Actually, if you could do it sort of Trojan horse, you know, we're going to fill finance with a Trojan horse of tree hugging environmentalists, and then the world will be different. And it will, if we could do that, but actually, you know, not everybody is a financial engineer, if not everybody wants to work in that way, not everybody has the strength to resist the lure of money that will come along. And you know, the path towards that strategy actually is, is deficient. It's not something that really has any meaning. So, you know, when I talk to my own students, or my own researchers about where they're going, you know, I'm always very explicit that it is it is a constant sort of struggle that they will, you know, they have to be, if they really want to make this progress, they have to be recognised in their discipline, if they want to be recognised in the discipline, they've got to fulfil certain criteria, and they've got to publish in, you know, peer reviewed journals, they've got to do this, they gotta, that's always going to be a part of this process of obscuring the pure light of their own vision and their own intellect. And they have to they have to navigate that for themselves, and the way that they go, the journey that goes through life, you know, can be in all sorts of directions.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 54:50

And then you may feel that you've just answered this question, but it's a slightly different one, you may have a different answer. If your younger staff self was starting their career now. What advice would you give them? Would it be Know thyself and keep that that Northstar? Or is there something more? Or different? You'd say to your younger self?

Tim Jackson: 55:15

Yeah, I? I don't? Honestly, no, I think the one thing I would say is write more plays. I kind of feel there were more plays there. And I, and that's, you know, one of the things I don't want to give up on the idea that I will, I will write them. But I do think there is also something about that process of trusting in yourself, because I think, you know, those, that incident that I described to you, you know, I at that point, I kind of thought my career was over, I had been trashed in public by people, you were superior, older, had more que das more status, more significance than I did? And I thought, you know, what, what have I done? What am I done here, this wasn't meant to go this way. Yeah. And there's been quite a lot of those incidents for me in my life, partly because of the nature of the work that I've chosen as being very much against the grain of a prevailing economic. So I've had plenty of those moments. And I suppose the other thing I would probably tell that younger self is that they don't actually matter. In the end, they are the crucible in which you forge your own experience and your strength in the future. And that sometimes, actually, you know, it's the successes that you have to be slightly more wary about. Yeah. Because they will caricature you, they will make you feel comfortable, they will distract you from the challenges that you should be facing. And, and so, you know, that, that that sense, you know, a sense of, of courage that you that eluded me quite often when I was younger, is something that I wish I could sort of bottle and instil and give those to my younger self, and to my younger researchers, and to me right now, because you'd never, ever stop needing it.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 57:26

So the last few questions, who would you nominate to answer these questions because you admire their approach?

Tim Jackson: 57:35

living or dead?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 57:37

Well, if they're gonna answer, they have to be living. Unfortunate.

Tim Jackson: 57:39

Okay. I still would still like to call back a few people. And have them in a room. Yeah, actually, the characters that I chose and postcode that quite like to have all of them in a room, and just, you know, looking at the world now, well, that's

David Bent-Hazelwood: 57:54

a play to write.

Tim Jackson: 57:56

That's a play to write. That's, that's true. Thank you for that. Would I have to, I mean, I think it would be interesting. Rianne would be one person, she's 94. So you're gonna have to move fast together on your podcast. But she is great. And, you know, the fact that she has the sort of dynamism that she has and the work that she's done, and I think she's created a, for me a very, very, from a very simple, simplified way of looking at the world. She's created enormous sense of the possibility of change, and also the direction of change. And I think that very advice, I'd be fascinated to hear what she said.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 58:40

Cool, thank you. And then the last question is, is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Tim Jackson: 58:47

No, thank you, David, for for giving me an update. I'd quite often my podcasts are more.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 58:58

Yeah. Technical,

Tim Jackson: 59:00

superficial, I think I would say you're able to plumb the depths,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 59:05

yes. Why it's been great to hear the depths, and to hear all those different perspectives, the bring, which has been very inspirational, and especially think that I think I'm building the capability of the next generation. Bring a richer world, a world richer in connections and experiences. Fantastic. So thank you very much, Tim, and everybody, everybody for listening. And we'll see you next time.