Alex Evans

Alex Evans is Founder and Executive Director of Larger Us, a "community of change-makers who share the aim of using psychology for good – to bridge divides, build broader coalitions and bring people together" (Alex's Twitter).

Alex set up Larger Us to flip society from a breakdown dynamic and into a breakthrough dynamic. That means paying attention to hwo the state of world impacts our state of mind, how our state of mind how we show up, and how we affect others through our behaviour, especially in a primed and fast-hyper-connected world.

We were speaking a month on from Hamas attacking Isreal, adn the Isreali response. Alex had written a fantastic blog post on how to make sense and respond without just accelerating the conflict.

He says the real tussle of our times is between those two perspectives : zero-sum  ('for me to win, you must lose) or nonzero sum ('for me to win, you must win also'). If we want contribute to towards nonzero sum outcomes, and avoid feeding conflict, then it starts with managing our own mental and emotional states."

For Alex this part of a wider sense that the kind of moment humankind is now living through it is a sort of initiation threshold. We need a deep story that's capable of holding the immense difficulty and intensity and all the contradictions of this moment that we're living through.

Links

Alex's book: The Myth Gap

Rupert Read's Climate Majority Project

Larger Us: Climate Conversations

Deep Canvassing (on Wikipedia)

The Larger Us Podcast: How to change people's minds - with Dave Fleischer

Radical Love campaign in The Atlantic and The Alternative (I couldn't find the Book of Radical Love on the Larger Us website).

Confronting the Long Crisis of Globalization (2010)

The Long Crisis COVID scenarios

Alex's blog post on the Middle East.

Ways to Get Involved with Larger Us

The Age of Endarkenment essay by Michael Ventura

Timings

0:50 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?

23:35 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?

32:18 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?

38:40 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?

42:15 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

46:43 Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?

51:11 Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Twitter: Powerful_Times

Website hub: here.

Please do like and subscribe, to help others find the podcast.

Thank you for listening! -- David

Transcript

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:08

Welcome to What can we do in these powerful times, I'm your host, David Bennett, I've been working in the field of sustainability and climate change for some 20 years, feels that 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, they have that same challenge, which is why I'm doing this interview series, the 30 Minute bites, I asked 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's guest is Alex Evans, who is the founder and director of large dress. Hello, Alex.

Alex Evans: 0:46

Thanks for Thanks for the invitation.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:49

My pleasure. My pleasure. So what are you doing now? And how did you get here?

Alex Evans: 0:54

So I've been running a little nonprofits, which I started five years ago, almost to the day, which is called larger US started out as the collective psychology project. And what larger us is really about in a nutshell, is we work with changemakers, to draw on psychology as a source of inspiration for ways that we can bridge divides, build broader coalitions, and bring people together.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 1:23

Which is quite a lot to unpack in all of that, but and how did you reverse but how did you get there? So you got to that point for a long.

Alex Evans: 1:33

So my background is I started out in life as a kind of policy wonk worked in the government here in the UK, and the United Nations, lots of different Think Tank II sorts of jobs, mostly on international issues, lots of climate change, lots of International Development, humanitarian assistance, things like that was really interested in how you manage elective risks in a kind of globalised age. And up until I suppose, about 2012, or thereabout. My idea of how change happens was that, you know, as a researcher, you would put together some evidence, then you get it in front of some policymakers, and they do something about it. And it was only after a really disillusioning experience at the United Nations where I was the writer for one of these high level panels they loved doing at the UN, this one was on global sustainability. It was very dispiriting it was a right old reality check for me about the limits to getting evidence in front of policymakers. So from that experience, I started to get really interested in what opens up or closes down the political space for really deep transformational change. The first thing I did on that was I wrote a book called The myth gap, which came out in 2017, which was all about the power of collective stories in making sense of where we are and where we're trying to get to and who we are. And also what happens when we don't have those big shared stories and how that can create all sorts of openings for populists like Donald Trump or Nigel Farage. And then after that book came out, I wanted to do something more applied. And I did a stint at Avaaz, which you may know is this big kind of global, online Citizens Movement. And as a campaign director there, I ran all sorts of different campaigns, but the one I spent most time on was Brexit. This was a very remain leaning campaign. And we were working in partnership with lots of the other big remain leaning campaigning orgs. And I guess two things happen there that really sowed the seeds of larger us. One was reflecting on obviously, the utter toxicity of the politics of Brexit, this crazy polarisation and just reflecting that the work I was doing certainly wasn't healing that and might in some ways be contributing to it. So that was quite a sort of uncomfortable thing to sit with. Yeah. The other thing was that through the work I was doing there on Brexit, I was really following the whole story of Cambridge Analytica, you remember them and how they have this concept of mashing up, basically psychological profiling and social media microtargeting. And I think in retrospect, people feel they oversold their capabilities. But the prospectus that they touted to the world was that they could use this mashup of social media and psychology, in effect, to kind of weaponize people's own anxieties against them in ways that could affect election outcomes. And I thought this was fascinating, and became very intrigued in what it would look like to try and inoculate people against that kind of deliberate trolling to build resilience to this, as I say weaponization of our own anxieties against us, whether that's at individual level or community level or even at the level of a hostess. IoT. So then those are really the kind of questions and interests that I took away with me when I went on sabbatical in 2018. And I came back with, essentially the germ of the idea of what became larger us.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 5:14

And to, which is amazing. And the person I have interviewed immediately before you for this podcast is Ella saltmarshe. also interested in the power of narratives and stories. So the theme there very much. So talk to us a little bit about larger, so started off with a slightly different name. But now has the specific specificity of Lidar is I'm trying remember, my dress was part of a, was it three or four aspects of a narrative that you had developed, which was right at the end of the myth gap? So that's right, to I can't for the life of me remember, the specifics there. So firstly, can you just remind us of that wider narrative? Yeah, and then back into what is larger eyes.

Alex Evans: 5:56

So in the myth gap, after this long discussion of what happens when the wrong kinds of stories take hold stories about them and us or the story that you are what you buy all of these kind of bad stories that don't make us happy, or bring us together, which flourish in the absence of deep collective stories? Where the last part of that book was asking, Well, what do we need from the rockright kind of myths and the argument and it was that we need myths that help us that nudge us to change our perspective in three ways First, to think of ourselves as part of a larger us rather than a them and us or rather, also than an atomized AI. And ultimately, to identify within us that includes all 7.8 billion humans and other species as well, because increasingly, that's the level of group identity that we need in these times. So that was one aspect of it. The other two were to situate ourselves in a longer now, when now is something we think of as happening over generations rather than milliseconds, so that we're taking a longer term perspective. And then the third thing was stories that help us to think of a different idea of the good life of what we value. So that growth, for example, might be something we measure less in terms of how much stuff we consume, and more at the level of our kind of maturity as a species, because that, again, is something that's super pertinent in this moment. So those were the three ideas at the end of the myth gap. But as you as you touched on, I mean, the larger OS one was especially interesting to me, particularly after that Brexit experience. And I think when we, when I started, larger us as precursor, the collective psychology project, I was really thinking about it specifically in this context of depolarization, of how we overcome these very deep political divides. But I think since then, I've come to think of it in other ways as well. And one of those is expanding what Einstein used to call our circles of compassion. This is the sort of thing of like identifying not just with people like me, or people where I live or people in my country, but more broadly. But then I think there's also a much more kind of tangible political aspect of this, which is about building broader coalitions. Because I mean, I'm really interested in activism and movements and things that create political change. But on a lot of issues, certainly on climate, but many others as well. If you look around, I think there's lots of activism which is great at firing up the base, it energises the people who already agree. But it's actually much less effective at reaching and engaging with people who are in the middle. So if you take climate, and look at the tactics used by I just stopped oil or Insulate Britain or extinction rebellion, if you're an activist, you will love this stuff. It presses all the right buttons. I mean, I've been involved in extinction rebellion myself, I was one of the people who occupied the bridge in Leeds back in 2019. But it, you know, people glueing themselves to the road doesn't actually win over the persuadable. It's in the middle of a 70% of people who are neither activists nor are they climate sceptics or deniers, but they're just people for whom, you know, if you ask them in an opinion poll, they probably say climate important, but it doesn't mean it's that top of mind for them. And that kind of activism is not that effective, as engaging with an if anything, turns them off. Yeah. So I think that aspect of larger asks about of working with changemakers on approaches to our work that are effective at bridging divides and reaching people outside of our traditional audiences is a really, really central preoccupation and everything that we do. Cool

David Bent-Hazelwood: 9:54

and that reminds me that somebody who I have lined up to speak to In the new year when their new book comes out is Rupert Read, who has his new project called the climate majority project, exactly trying to reach the majority having been himself, green counsellor and extinction, rebellion, spokesperson and quite a radical voice in many ways he sees that need to expand and to appeal to that middle 70%. Because without the majority, we're not going to get the lasting action that we need.

Alex Evans: 10:29

Yeah, I mean, I certainly lots and lots of commonality between what we're doing Rupert's analysis with the climate majority project. And it's worth mentioning, we're also running a project ourselves at larger OS on the theme of climate conversations, because which is all about reaching this 70% of people who are persuadable. There's two sort of factoids that we find endlessly fascinating. One is the one that 57% of people in the UK, talk about climate change infrequently, rarely, or never, which is kind of astonishing when you think about the scale of the issue. And then you think about it some more, you think it's not surprising at all, because it's this subject where, you know, there's so many good reasons for being a bit shy of raising, you worry about bringing this massive downer into the conversation, you worry about appearing, hypocritical, preachy, self righteous. And so people are a bit shy of raising it. But that does affect the politics of the issue. When we talk about things a lot, they go up the political agenda. So that's one thing. And then the other thing that fascinates me is that we found this number from more in common, who looked at all across Europe and found that in the UK, it's the single country in Europe, where most people agree with the statement that the climate movement is not welcoming to people like me, right. And so that, that those two statistics seems to us really interesting. And in our work at Larger Us, we've done lots of work with people in the US who've pioneered approaches like deep canvassing where you're using conversations as a way of engaging with people who might have really quite different values, or experiences to your own. It's been used, particularly on issues like building support for equal marriage, during the 2010s. And then more recently with trans rights. And it's a really, really effective approach. I mean, it takes a long time to do to have the conversations and to train activists to do it. But there's lots of evidence to show it works. And something that we're fascinated by is that talking to some of those partners, in the US deep canvassing been has been used very little on climate change. Right. So we were kind of curious about what might it look like if we were training up members, supporters, volunteers from big organisations, to have great conversations about climate change. So we're actually doing some prototyping right now, working with members from UNICEF and the trade union, parents for future and NGO church groups who are reaching through tier funds, and then community organisers that we're working with through grapevine in Coventry. And it's really interesting doing these trainings. And I think there's one of the things we're seeing is there's a lot of appetite out there, for different kinds of activism that are kind of hopeful, positive, don't involve doing is off the road or getting arrested. And that can reach that broader spectrum of opinion that we really need to engage with. So it's early days on that project, but we're really excited about it. Cool.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 13:34

And I haven't heard of deep canvassing before, but my guess would be that part of its magic of how it works is that the other party feels like they're really being listened to. Is that is

Alex Evans: 13:47

that? Yes, absolutely nailed it. So lots of listening, lots of showing respect, absolutely no shaming or calling out or just telling people that they're wrong. Lots of open ended questions. And I think, you know, talking to for example, Dave Fleischer, who we've had on the larger us podcast, one of the things he emphasises is that you're trying to create a bit of emotional common ground for you get into the kind of potentially divisive issues. Because once you have that in place, you've just got much more bandwidth to work with. Yeah, in terms of finding things that you agree on, or where both sides might be willing to kind of reconsider their opinion of each other. It's, there's lots of evidence now about deep canvassing, and it is it's a really rich seam. I think, for campaigners, who,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 14:38

and could you just give us one other kind of example of bridging those divides and making those connections that you talked about? The canvassing method? Is there another project or another method that you just like people to know about so they can really understand what you're up to?

Alex Evans: 14:52

Well, I think, you know, one of the examples that we constantly point back to is a campaign that happened in Istanbul, march 2019, called Radical Love. have such an interesting story. This was the campaign for the Istanbul mayoralty. And it was narrowly won first time round by the CHP, which is a kind of moderate secular party. But then what happened was that President Erdogan used his influence over the courts to have a result an old and lots of CHP activists were absolutely furious wanted to go out and express their rage but their leader, a man called Ekrem, imamoglu, saw the track that was being laid for them by either one or the AKP party that, you know, it was a sort of invitation to polarise to just fire up the base because I knew he would thrive in high polarisation conditions. So what in my mind was said was, you know, essentially, this is the trap and we're not going to fall for it. Instead, we're going to show love to everybody in particularly people who are supporters of the AKP party. So the messaging of that campaign very much emphasised things that people had in common, rather than their differences. But what was most interesting was this extraordinary playbook that they put together for their campaigners all about how to bridge divides, and do this kind of really quite emotionally demanding work, which starts with staying cool. You know, there's lots of kind of little role plays are examples of Imagine you're at a kind of campaigns kiosk on the street, and someone comes up to you and gets right in your face and stuff. If you trigger and start shouting back, you've lost that encounter, your whole job is to stay cool and stay centred, which is really interesting kind of emphasis on inner work, if you like, yeah. But then from that, lots of emphasis on sort of how to have empathetic conversations, do the listening, that kind of thing. So when the rerun election took place, I think it was three months later, the CHP won that won in a landslide. So it was a really effective campaign so much so interesting kind of CODA that, subsequently, no one had ever mcglue imprisoned on the charges. But I think it's sort of testament to everyone must have had him as a kind of political contender. And it's

David Bent-Hazelwood: 17:17

interesting, I mean, he talked about how the, their party there is a secular party, but their notion of radical love. And that really reminds me of this Christ's son of like, two commandments is loved by God and love thy neighbour. So there is and not in a flimsy, Obi nice to people kind of way but in, as you say, doing the difficult inner work of loving the people who perhaps are annoying you or attacking you, or others, like this is not simple. This is not new age hippie just being nice. There's something quite mentally difficult with with that party. Were they conscious that they may be channelling another religion? Or is it just like an overlap of method that there's a reason why that's something which lasts and transcends cultures is because it speaks deeply to our psychology.

Alex Evans: 18:19

I was proud to go back and look at the playbook. They didn't I should mention produce an English translation, which I don't think is available on the CHP website anymore, but we couldn't help on our website. Right? Everyone's curious, they'd go to larger.us. And it's there somewhere if you route around for it. But as far as I can recall, I don't think there was any kind of overtly religious foundation for it in the playbook. But I think as you touch on there, it's sort of like a political version of the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have unto you. And I mean, where that takes me as I think. So Indra, Adnan, who's one of the cofounders of the alternative UK has this nice formulation of how we need action at three levels, I, we and worlds the kind of personal level, there's the relational level in terms of your actual relationships with colleagues, with friends with neighbours, etc. And then kind of world level which might be you know, your community, it doesn't have to be global. It's the sort of political rather than relational level. And I think it's really interesting to reflect on the idea that maybe the kinds of activism we need right now involve all three of those levels simultaneously. I remember while I was on that sabbatical in 2018, something that really impressed me at that point was hearing Adam Curtis, you know, the great filmmaker, he did the century of the self and stuff. And he had this really interesting reflection on this podcast about how, up until maybe the mid 1960s, it was much more normal for inner change and outer change to go hand in And because so much activism was rooted in faith communities. So think, for example, about the civil rights movement in America or Gandhi's satyagraha movement or going further back the abolition of slavery movement in the 19th century, all grounded in faith communities, you know, even up to our own times, I do believe 2000, the great Third World debt cancellation campaign, also largely grounded and faith communities. But where Adam Curtis goes in this riff is observing that something changed in the late 60s, he thinks maybe it was to do with the anti Vietnam War protests and how they just really didn't achieve their own at all. And so maybe a whole lot of activists, a generation really, of activists took away the conclusion, well, I can't change the world, I can't defeat the man to use that kind of 60s very, but I can change or save myself. Yeah. And so what what perhaps we saw was a big disengagement from activism. And instead, people heading off to the Esalen Institute, or doing kind of yoga really takes off at this point therapy, ditto, mindfulness, psychedelics, all of these forms of inner practice, were 50 years later, I mean, they're very much embedded in our societies. But I've also often been accused of being kind of a bit, you know, self obsessed, a bit narcissistic, not really focused on social change in the same way. And then, so that's just been sort of interchange without outer change. And then meanwhile, you've had lots of activist cultures since then, that have been very focused on outer change. But without that, you know, emphasis on interchange on personal humility on respecting the other and so forth. And that arguably has left our activism prior to where it is now, not just kind of furiously othering. its political opponents a lot of the time, but also often bedevilled by really toxic cultures. I mean, it's amazing how much of a problem that is across the nonprofit sector, so many social movements, and just, you know, burnout and toxic relationships. That's sort of the legacy of not doing inner and outer together. So one of the questions we sit with a lot at Madras is, you know, what could it look like if those two streams of inner and outer flowed back together? Because, you know, now it feels like a good moment for that to happen. Yes.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 22:24

I mean, it's, since they I mean, I'm, I'm slightly to one side of the those campaigning cultures, but often there's a, a requirement for purity. And if you, if you don't fit with that purity, then you're almost as bad if not worse than the opposition. And that leads to all kinds of splitter kind dynamics.

Alex Evans: 22:45

So Right. I always think of that guy from Patta People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who was stood outside the Glasgow climate summit with this big sign saying, shut up about climate change, if you meet you just total purity tests, like you're saying, and also the last thing you would do if you're trying to win people over from that 70% of people who are persuaded? Yes,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 23:05

exactly. And you also reminded me of a different powerful Times interview I did with Claire Farrell, one of the cofounders of extinction rebellion, where for her nicely for all of the co founders of that movement, but for her, it was really important that it came from a place of love, and of compassion, and helping people to process what climate change meant to them. I want to move on now, onto our second question after 23 and a half minutes, and what is the future you're trying to create with all of this activity? What's the direction you're trying to go in? For the world?

Alex Evans: 23:43

Yeah, so I mean, the short version is a breakthrough, rather than a breakdown future, which sounds a bit vague. So just to sort of be a little bit more specific. I thought for a long time, that we're sort of living through this period, that my friend David, Stephen, and I have called the long crisis. We first wrote about that in I think, 2009, as the financial crisis was really gathering pace. And it was this idea that we're living through an age of uncertainty where lots of the kind of internal contradictions and vulnerabilities of this age of globalisation and interdependence are really coming to the fore. And it's an enormous collective action challenge on lots of different fronts at once we've sort of got to, we have this metaphor, it's a bit like shooting the rapids on a stretch of river. The river not you dictates the speed and direction of travel, there's no opportunity to hit pause and stop for a rethink. There is very much the risk of hitting a rock so that the boat capsizes and everyone's tipped out into the torrent. But there's also the possibility of making it through to the shady pool at the other end, as long as everyone paddles together. It's a collective action challenge. And I think I still you know, believe all of that, but I think What I've been most preoccupied with in the last five years is how to pick up what we were just talking about. That's as much to do with our inner states as what's happening out there in the world. And when we're teaching our kind of larger us programme, which is the sort of training course for changemakers, that we do, we talk about three particular aspects of that there's first how the state of the world impacts our states of mind. lots of examples, we can all think of that if you're living in poverty, of course, that's going to affect your state of mind. If you are constantly on the receiving end of racist or homophobic abuse, that's going to affect your state of mind, climate change is going to affect your state of mind. Second dynamic is that all of that's true the other way around our states of mind collectively affect the state of the world because they determine how we show up as citizens if we feel hopeless, or furious, for example, and that affects how we show up as citizens how we vote, etc, that colours, our whole politics, if we feel empowered and hopeful, on the other hand, then we show up in a very different way, as citizens. So that's the second dynamic that our state of mind affect the state of the world. And then thirdly, there's all the ways that our states of mind affect everybody else's state of mind, in an age of social media, our emotional states are more contagious than ever before. And some psychologists call social media, a kind of collective central nervous system, emotions, like kind of fear, and outrage ripple out really, really fast. But that, that dynamic between our state of mind on one hand, and the state of the world on the other with, you know, there's two feedback loops in each direction, can lead you towards a breakdown outcome, where you know, the state of the world is getting worse. So we're feeling worse, and we're acting worse as citizens, which reduces phase for solving the problems out there in the world, you know, real vicious circle. But if we can flip that dynamic to the other way around, then you get a breakthrough dynamic, where we're kind of making progress on the state of the world, that makes us feel more united, purposeful, hopeful, empowered, which in turn opens up more political space for collective action to solve these problems, and so on. So what larger us is most about in a nutshell is how do we flip that breakdown dynamic and turn it into a breakthrough dynamic?

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:24

Right, and we're talking now it's about four weeks spent one month on since Hamas, to introduce atrocities in Israel. And we are in the midst of a very strong negative dynamic, a breakdown dynamic where the political space is ever narrower, really. It's not, it's really okay to not have a particular answer to this question. But given that you've raised this flipping the dynamic, what could people do? I mean, when this goes out, which won't be until I guess, the end of November? I mean, it's not like that conflict is going to be solved. It's been going for many decades, if not centuries, what are some things people might be able to do, which can help them to flip the dynamic, at least in their own self and in their own relationships, if not necessarily in the wider

Alex Evans: 28:15

Well, I think one of the really interesting things in world? the situation in the Middle East is that we're all involved, all of us. It's not just about Israelis and Palestinians, because all of us, every time we post on social media, we are part of the global kind of conversation about this, we are helping to define the stories that make that everyone's using to make sense of what's happening. They define the space, the pressure on policymakers, including, you know, the pressure on policymakers outside the region. I mean, so much, you know, this is a one level of conflict between Israel and Hamas. And another level, each of those parties has very powerful state backers. And so what the citizenry is of those states are demanding that those states do has an effect on the region. So, you know, we I wrote a blog post about this a couple of weeks ago, which was really about, you know, starting with this idea that you may not realise it, but you are one of many participants can creating the story and the political context that's kind of unfolding here. And I think that, at this point, what we really need are people who are not just pro Israeli or just pro Palestinian, but are pro peace, pro children, pro civilians, and pro, you know, a political settlement that moves everybody forward from this situation. I mean, one of the ways go back to the long crisis stuff again, I mean, you get lots of them and us dynamics on lots of different issues like Brexit, like this one in the Middle East, many others He's besides, but I think in a way, the real choices is not so much for one side or the other. It's are you going to take a zero sum perspective? Well, you know, for one side to win, the other side has to lose, or a nonzero sum perspective where you recognise that only through both sides winning, is there any lasting victory for anybody. And when David and I, David, Stephen and I were writing about the long crisis, first, we used to sort of reflect on how looking in different capitals around the world have sort of major powers, you could see different camps, some people in each capitals saw the world very much in zero sum terms as a competition, great power rivalries, and so forth. But equally, there were also people in capitals, and I used to see lots of them, lots of both camps in the British government, there are people in capitals, who see the world in nonzero sum terms, who think this is an aid of shared challenges. And we really need to ramp up, our ability to cooperate. And the real kind of tussle of our times is between those two ways of looking at the world. And so each of us again, just as a, as an ordinary citizen, has choices to make every day about, are we nudging things towards nonzero sum outcomes, or zeros on outcomes. And if we want to nudge things towards nonzero sum outcomes, then it goes straight back to what we were talking about with the Radical Love campaign, it starts with managing our own mental and emotional states. If we are in a furious kind of fight flight freeze state, we are much less likely to be kind of building peace in what we're doing. Whereas if we, you know, take a conscious decision about how to react to something that's threatening something that takes work and practice, we're much more likely to be optimistic or helpful contribution. And then it goes from there to kind of being able to have those empathetic conversations with people like with deep canvassing where we're turning and showing respect and having a genuine encounter, where both sides are maybe willing to change some of their preconceptions about the other. And then maybe from there, we start to build political space for kind of shared approaches. That kind of benefits both sides. But if we're showing up just pro one side or pro the other, very hard to see how we can do that.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 32:18

Thank you for all of that, and not a straightforward question to throw you from the middle of nowhere. But anyway, original topic. Onto our next question, to break through nor break down and larger, within all of that, what are your priorities for the next few years? What are you working on specifically?

Alex Evans: 32:38

Well, one thing we're working on is this climate conversations project that I already mentioned, we're just doing the first round of prototypes right now, we will evaluate that around the turn of the year. But the plan is then to really scale that up over the next couple of years, we're still going to be prototyping and learning mode. But we want to start doing that with bigger reach. And also, it's worth mentioning on other issues, although we're starting with climate change, we really want this to be an approach that can be used on issues like migration, like international development, other issues, which are, if you like about international solidarity, to put it like that. But that have also been really bedevilled by culture war dynamics, where you have two very kind of entrenched, engaged bases squaring off against each other a lot of the time. And then a sort of, you know, mass of people in the middle who, you know, may have more fluid views and probably a bit put off by the kind of intensity of disagreement between the two bases on either side. So we're really interested in whether conversations could help to build broader consensus in a progressive way on those issues as well. But I think beyond that, the question I'm really holding is about especially, it's about the kind of deeper areas that we're interested in, in larger Austin that we get into in the larger us programme, the thing that I mentioned before, where it's not just about how we bridge divides, but also about how we manage our mental and emotional state and ashdon. About the stories we use to make sense of the world. I've touched on that as well. But you know, one of the ways I think about this is that it's a bit like, I think it's Emil Durkheim, use the phrase, the religion shaped hole. In modern life. Obviously, religious observance is declining really, really steeply in most developed countries at this point. And from a larger us point of view, one of the things that really interests about that us about that, is that historically and at their best, and of course, religions are not always at their best, but at their best religions have historically played certain roles that are really important politically, and for our mental health. So I think that their best religions give us tools for managing our mental and emotional state like meditation. Prayer, reflection, things like that. They create a longing that create congregational spaces in ways that show us some of the things that we share with each other in spite of all of our differences. They emphasise bridging divides, encountering the other forgiveness, things like that. There's certainly places where deep stuff incubated and are available to make sense of what what's going on. Who are we where are we trying to get to? And they've also, you know, as we touched on before, historically been great at incubating movements for change. So now, if religious observances tanking, whose job is that stuff? I think it's a such a fascinating question. I mean, is it politicians? Is it changemakers? Is it all of us? You know, these things? We don't really debate that much. And I think that, you know, we've started to get into some of that, with larger OS and some of the research that we've published in this course that I've mentioned, but it feels like there's a lot further to go. One of the things we figured with the larger OS programme was, what are people supposed to do at the end of it? I mean, you know, to use the game, that analogy of the religion shaped hole. You know, if you, if you sort of are in a religion, then that's something that you stay with for life, I suppose, recognising that these sorts of things are a life's work, they're not something you just do on a six week course. And then that's it, I am now able to manage my own mental and emotional state or I'm able to empathise with find difficult right job done. It's not like that you need a support infrastructure that's ongoing. So offering a six week course is great, but I don't think we've cracked it all this question of, well, what would it look like to have ongoing, self organised small groups to sort of support people in this lifelong work? So you know, I've really curious about that. I don't really have an answer to it. But I'm very interested. And it's interesting,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 36:56

you're the second person to mention that to me. Not on the podcast, but when but dougald Hine, who took

Alex Evans: 37:04

his big fan of his, his his book

David Bent-Hazelwood: 37:07

earlier in the year was at work in the ruins. And when he took it on a book tour as one does. And he said, one of the interesting things he heard on that book tour was how many how much people were now turning to either religions or religion like organisations, because they felt the need for all of those functions, which you described. I'm putting it quite callously not in a very spiritual way, but they felt the need for those functions in their lives and therefore either return to the old or creating new things, which were very religion like, and I think, earlier this year, I gave a talk at UCL about transformation. And it seems to me one of the things we need to create are many emotion communities for intertwines a sense making a meaning making and belonging, which could either be a return of the things which are familiar from the past, or could be new kind of new forms, but nevertheless, will need to be there. So yeah, if we saw your priorities, just to rehearse them, this the specific of the climate conversations with your prototyping, there's more conversations around issues on international solidarity, which is a range of different topics. And then there's this deeper area of ensuring people have the belonging and the peers, and all of those other things that they need, which in the past have been provided by religious institutions, to live a good life in the face of all the challenges to get in the way of a good life. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?

Alex Evans: 38:48

Well, that's a really good question. I don't think I have a good answer to it. Honestly, because I think a lot of this is a bit terra incognita. I suppose, you know, the dilemma. I really sit with her. So I mean, you mentioned talking to people who are coming to religion as a way of doing this, and I guess I'm one of them, because slightly to my own surprise, I now find myself age 48. A Christian, I sort of go to church regularly. And I'm sort of, I guess I'm a particular kind of Christian, I suppose. You know, I like people like Richard Rohr, okay, with emphasis on kind of both social justice but also contemplation as a really important set of practices. And that really works for me, but I would really hesitate to prescribe that to anybody else. Yeah. Because I think it is. It's very personal and idiosyncratic and I I don't feel like I want to be an evangelist is that Word. But it's, you know, I remember when I worked at defer to the Department for International Development years ago. So I was wasn't still great friends with Richard charters, who at that stage was the Bishop of London. And he used to tease me about defence approach to working with faith communities saying, Well, you, you guys love working with faith communities, but you basically see them as social service providers who also happen to have some really weird metaphysical views, which was absolutely spot on. And he said, The problem with your perspective is you don't get that it's that it's that stuff that enables them to do the social service provision that you value. The sort of, you know, service provision is the kind of, you know, it's a spin off from having a wellspring of whether it's theology or encounter with the divine or whatever. And I think that I'm really interested in the question of what it we'd like to offer ways of filling this religion shaped hole for people who don't want to affiliate to religions, who are spiritual, but not religious. You know, they're a huge cohort. Now, sociologically, but I think there's a really interesting question of well, can you offer all these things like deep stories and building belonging and tools for mental and emotional states without having a wellspring? And I'm still hoping that the answer to that is yes, yes. If you do have to insist on a theology that really reduces its attractiveness. But it's a really interesting, rich question.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 41:29

Yes. And I think I mean, the other thing to say is that people can sign up for the newsletter, like there are specific things you can do to be in touch with the work of larger us in all of that. And it's a really interesting answer about how to enact if it's possible to enact all of those, that engagement with spirituality and put it into practice in the real world. And it really reminds me of what you're saying about what Adam Curtis, it's almost reversing the process. And Curtis described you described him describing earlier of that split between inner and outer. are they hearing what you're saying? Yeah, wanting to recombine those, that there is the inner work and the outer work, and that they they go in lockstep with each other? If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

Alex Evans: 42:24

Yeah, it's such a difficult question, partly because I think people are starting out on their careers now. And it's so much harder than we did when we were setting out on our careers. I mean, you know, you hear this kind of fruit repeated of how like baby boomers had, it's so easy, you know, growing up with a kind of postwar consensus and final salary, pensions, and affordable housing, and all of that kind of stuff. I've certainly repeated those trips in the past, but it was funny with the passing of Matthew Perry, you know, the friends actor, I mean, that's obviously sort of reminded me of what it was like to be in your early 20s, in the kind of late 90s. And I sort of look back at that and think, gosh, you know what a Halcyon period, we were in, during, you know, when we first went onto the job market, I mean, it was completely normal for people to be able to sort of rent houses in parts of London that, you know, you wouldn't be able to dream of living on these days living in these days, or, you know, you weren't living under the cloud of kind of global apocalypse, issues like climate change, or AI and so forth. So, you know, and we weren't emerging with anywhere near as much student debt if we went to university that there's today's young people, so I mean, I think Gen. Zed gets a lot of kind of heat, you know, people sort of slayed them off his generation, I have deep respect for how they're kind of coping with the challenges. Slightly

David Bent-Hazelwood: 43:49

less avocado, that's the main thing, but that seems to be the

Alex Evans: 43:54

Netflix subscriptions. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that. If I were, if I, if I saw a younger me in Gen Zed emerging into, you know, the situation, I suppose. I would give younger me an essay called the age of endarkenment to read, which I think may also be on the larger US website. But it's available on the internet, if not a great essay, by a guy called Michael Ventura writing it for whole earth review Stuart brands magazine back on the very eve of the millennium, in 1999. And it's all about just living through this age where things were, you know, storm clouds are gathering, and really goes deep on the idea of this age as a sort of initiator a moment for us at species level. I mean, he unpacks the idea that, you know, in lots of indigenous societies, you have initiation as a kind of core threshold for people in their adolescence where they're confronted with very extreme stuff, maybe even the past ability of death, certainly the probability of of wounding in some way literal or metaphorical. But if you manage to make it through that initiator II test then emerging into kind of adulthood with co creation capacities and the responsibilities of adulthood. And his argument in this essay is that, you know, at species level, that's the kind of moment we are now living through it is a sort of initiator threshold. And I think that that's always felt to me, like a very deep story that's capable of holding the immense difficulty and intensity and all the contradictions of this moment that we're living through. And I think that, you know, we need stories that deep, to stay sane in this moment. I mean, when I see people who work on sustainability, trying to engage with storytelling and their idea of stories, it's like, well, I'm gonna tell a story of a hopeful future with green jobs and free public transport, that sort of thing. Like, that's all great, but we need to go deeper, we need some a story that can hold the kind of the grief and the loss and the struggle. And that also has some accounts, not just of what changed out there in the world, you know, we all have solar panels or whatever. But what changed inside us? How did we rise to this moment if it's a story of how we navigated the rapids successfully? So I think that you know, that story about as an initiator, you threshold global level? Is it one story myth, really, that approaches that level of depth for me? And that's,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 46:35

yeah, so anybody looking for career advice from Alex first read that essay, and then you'll be and respond? Who would you nominate to answer these questions because you admire their

Alex Evans: 46:46

approach. And I have three people for this. Well, you can have three

David Bent-Hazelwood: 46:50

people. Somebody else had three people all day. So if you could have three people who are alive, that'd be great.

Alex Evans: 46:57

Yeah, no, I do. I do have three people that I know them all. So one is an amazing woman called some chips, a getter. sanchita is a kind of a systemic coach, which means I sort of a coach who is really good at understanding relationships, systems, and kind of constellations and stuff like that. I first met some shitter at the retreat at a place called the quadrangle, which I know we both know, back in 2018, which was the place where larger US law dresses precursor sort of came into being. And some chairs came along with someone else who had invited and blew me away at this retreat. And I remember looking at her thinking, I basically I would like to be like some chips and when I grow up, very, very wise, and embedded at that interface of kind of inner and outer. And now I am lucky to work with her. She she's a coach whom I work with. I think she's just as deeply brilliant, insightful human being. So she I think, is a fantastically good person to talk to. Second person I think of is my friend Casper to Kyle. Casper is former campaigner now lives in the US, wrote an amazing report some years back called how we gather, which was all about this was when he did well. So Casper story, as he was doing campaigning then went off to do a master's in Divinity at Harvard, to general astonishment of like his friends, because religious leanings as such among Casper in Casper, at that point, but I think he was really interested in you know, I suppose in the religion shaped hole. And one of the things he noticed, among other millennial leaders himself a millennial was how Boston weren't affiliating to religions. They were finding and creating religion like ways of gathering and belonging, he wrote a brilliant report about that, looking at really interesting examples of sort of, almost religiosity, but not in religion. And now runs this fascinating thing called the nearness which is a sort of an attempt, a secular attempt to fill the religion checked. I think he's a deeply interesting thinker. He's written a wonderful rebuttal. I would definitely have a chat with him. And then the last person is either Williams either Casper and I actually wrote a report together all about collective loss during the COVID lockdowns was originally going to be a report on collective loss to do with climate change, but we adapted it to do with COVID Ivers experience is fascinating. He's a designer by trade and what He specialises in is end of life care. He's worked for a long time at the helix Centre, which is a sort of part of Imperial College works with the NHS, and he's done lots of advice for the NHS on how to do end of life care well, but it's just sort of deeply equally thoughtful about death and dying. And obviously, you know, reflective about how our society struggles with its big taboo about endings, it's not something we really kind of talk about. And he's now actually running a course. Well, a first round prototype called mortals, which is all about creating a space for people that a small group to think about being mortal, and confront some of our kind of fears in some of our hopes, not just about the process and the moment of dark, but also what it means to have finite life before that moment. And I've been part of his first kind of cohort of guinea pigs during that course. And it's really been a kind of such an interesting experience, just intentionally create time to reflect on those questions and to do it in a small group. So I think, yeah, he would be my suggestion for a person to have on the podcast. I think all three of those are people that I think, deeply interesting work and all of whom I just learned such a lot from. Wonderful.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 51:12

Thank you. And then there's the last question is, is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Alex Evans: 51:20

I don't think so. I think we've covered the whole waterfront. But it's been a lot of fun talking. I'm sorry, my answers must have been a bit lengthy. I think what we're supposed to be a half hour chat has ended up a bit longer. But it's been really inspiring. Thank you again, for my pleasure.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 51:33

Well, I mean, it has gone on longer than the promise 30 minutes. But that's because we have covered a lot of ground from the current conflict in Gaza and Israel through to the religion shaped hole in our lives, particularly in the West, through how do we get depolarization? How do we build build bridges? How do we create international solidarity? How do we deal with the long crisis? How do we deal with the rapids and all of this, the connections between the inner work and the outer work? So it's been rich, and it's been wonderful. Thank you very much to Alex, for joining us, and thank you to everybody for listening. We'll be along with a new episode very soon. Thank you.