Anthea Lawson - Should we be trying to save the world?

What does it mean to try to change the world — without losing yourself, or everyone else, in the process?

This week I'm joined by Anthea Lawson: activist, writer, former journalist, and campaigner who has spent three decades working on issues from the arms trade to financial secrecy. Her new book, How Not to Save the World: Doing Good Without Annoying Everyone (Oneworld, 2026), is a candid and hopeful look at the traps that well-meaning people fall into — and how to find a better way through.

We explore the hidden "save the world" script that pushes so many of us toward either frantic overwork or numb despair, and why both tend to backfire. Anthea maps out a third path — grounded in humility, relationship, and local people power — that turns out to be more effective, and more sustaining, than heroic effort alone.

We talk about:

• The two default responses when the world feels overwhelming: compulsion and shutdown
• What "script messages" are, and how unconscious patterns quietly drive activism culture
• How a genuine commitment to good can tip into righteousness that pushes people away
• Why the protest voice often fails in everyday relationships — and what listening can do instead
• How purity tests and perfectionism raise the barrier to entry and shrink movements
• Overwhelm as a structural tactic that keeps communities divided and reactive
• "I know better" dynamics, lived experience, and the legacy of class and white saviour thinking
• Why meaningful change now requires people power over individual heroics
• Antidotes: service, bridge-building, showing up without ego, and the value of genuine relationship
• Regulating the nervous system through embodiment and co-regulation
• Making space for grief — not as defeat, but as something shared that creates breathing room

How Not to Save the World is available from independent bookshops — you can order it through Bookshop.org, which supports independent booksellers directly.

Follow Anthea's writing and thinking on Substack at anthealawson.substack.com.

If you enjoyed this episode, a rating or review goes a long way — and do sign up on Substack for This Examined Life, where you'll find updates, newsletters, and reflections between episodes.

Transcript

The Two Traps Of Caring

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm looking at this and thinking, this is huge. And so what happens in that moment when it's so huge is I think we can fall into two extremes, and people can go one way or the other. Um, and one is that we we launch into action, it's like, oh my goodness, I must do something about this. It's a compulsion. And the feeling that we have is that I must do this myself. I must take the world on my shoulders and I must try and save it. But then the other side of the extreme is we fall into despair and think, well, this is far too big. This is far too big for me to do anything on my own. What on earth could I possibly do?

Kenny Primrose 0:35

Most of us at some level feel the weight of the world. The news is apocalyptic, and many of us fear the current trajectory we're on. For some, this is a call to action. To become an activist. For others, it's overwhelming. Life is busy enough already. Who has the mental and emotional bandwidth to actually save the world when your own life is barely holding it together? In today's episode, my guest, Anthea Lawson, explores the problems with both approaches, saving the world and burying your head, and what a third way might look like. Anthea has spent decades as a writer and activist campaigning against the arms trade, exposing tax havens, getting laws changed in dozens of countries. But her new book, How Not to Save the World, explores the troubling script messages behind activism and how to temper them, and what the antidotes to feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the task are. Spoiler alert here. It isn't better tactics or a cleaner conscience. It's relationship. It is showing up. It is, as she puts it, getting over ourselves. This is an episode that sits a bit outside the arc of the series, which has focused on death and grief and loss. I'm publishing it now because it coincides with Anthea's book launch. And while the themes are a bit different, there are connections to recent episodes which we'll hopefully pick up on. Consider this a companion piece or simply a good conversation worth having. I hope you enjoy listening to it. I found it timely, relevant, and beautifully practical.

Anthea Lawson And The Big Question

Kenny Primrose 2:01

Anthea Lawson, it is such a pleasure to have you on the Exam of Life today. Thank you very much for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

Oh, thanks very much for the opportunity to have a conversation.

Kenny Primrose 2:10

Absolute pleasure. There's lots of things that I want to talk about with you today. And you have a you have a fascinating history. You've written a book called The Entangled Activists. As this is being broadcast, you've got another one coming out, and I think that's largely going to be the focus of our conversation. But as a way of kind of distilling some of your preoccupations and your experience into something we can explore, what is the question that you think we should be asking ourselves today?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Uh my question is should I be trying to save the world? Which is quite a large one, isn't it?

Kenny Primrose 2:48

Um it is like yeah, where where to begin? There's so many, so many places we could begin with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Let's just backtrack for a second there. I've been a campaigner for a long time, and I'm interested in how we can do it better. So that's one thing. You know, the work I've done includes working for human rights organizations like Amnesty and Global Witness. I've campaigned against the arms trade, I've campaigned to try and shut down tax havens, I've managed to get laws changed in dozens of countries on a sort of like a specific legal detail that's about how tax havens work. I've also been part of climate protesting with extinction rebellion. I'm currently involved in local democracy initiatives. That's one bit of me. I'm also a mum of two kids, and I'm looking at the state of the world: war, climate breakdown, sewage being put into the rivers, like really strange things going on with democracy in a lot of countries. What on earth is the algorithm going to set up for our kids next? You know? And I'm looking at this and thinking, what this is huge. And so what happens in that moment when it's so huge is I think we can fall into two extremes and people can go one way or the other. Um, and one is that we sort of like this is a minority of people. I'm one of them. We we launch into action. It's like, oh my goodness, I must, I must do something about this. It's a compulsion. And the feeling that we have is that I must do this myself. I must take the world on my shoulders and I must try and save it. But then the other side of the extreme is we fall into despair and think, well, this is far too big. This is far too big for me to do anything on my own. What on earth could I possibly do? And so we sort of put our head in the sand or kind of carry on in an uncomfortable sense of disavowal where we half know it and half don't. And we just sort of go to work and try and muddle along. I'm interested in what happens if we break down that stereotype of I must save the world. Where does it come from? You know, I've been a journalist, that's how I started out. I was originally a news reporter, and it is true that it's certainly a headline writer's shorthand. Saving the world is like all these cliches. But I think it's also I'm also struck by how often people used to say it to me, like, oh, right, you're all saving the world, are you? Or what are you going to do to save the world next? It's a phrase that rattles around. If we break it down, it doesn't, you know, seem to have any logic. I think it has got a hold of us. So yeah, that's why the new book is called How Not to Save the World. Because I'm interested in dismantling white stereotype. And I think that might benefit both the minority of people who self-identify as campaigners or activists, but also might help everyone else to see that actually there might be something they can do, and it might be quite close to home and something quite manageable as part of their lives.

From Campaign Wins To Script Doubts

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Okay, great.

Kenny Primrose 5:31

I mean, that's it's it's there's a lot in what you just said. Justice seems to have propelled you, the desire to make the world a better place. And indeed it sounds like you have, if you've had laws changed in certain countries, exposed bits of injustice. Has it been this message of I must try and save the world? I've got to do something about it that has propelled you.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Do you know that it it wasn't a it wasn't a literal thing that was in my mind? No, it was once I started thinking about the the script that that drives us that I started thinking about it in those terms. So what was driving me was a really strong sense that the world is run by and for a really small proportion of its population. I graduated in mid to late 90s and did a few years' work as a journalist, but I was going out on marches at the weekends as part of the movement of people thinking about the effects of globalization of the economy on the poorest countries and how the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were setting up economic systems and putting pressure on the poorest countries. It was about debt burdens and things like that. They were creating poverty in a sense, or very practically them creating poverty with these debt repayments and the the pressure to alter national policies because of the debt, it was being used as a lever. So that was what it looked like then. And now we have much greater inequality 25 years on, and it looked much more obvious. And so and so that has always motivated me, that sense that that this isn't right, you know, and the details of it have changed. But this thing about noticing the script came about in a slightly different way, which was noticing through years of practical campaigning efforts the ways in which we often did the same things. And some of them seemed to be, and by the same things, what I mean is the same underlying behaviors or choice of tactics or way ways of speaking would occur, even if they contradicted what we were saying we wanted in the world. That's when I started noticing, oh, hang on, is there some kind of unconscious script here that's

What Script Messages Really Mean

SPEAKER_00 7:43

driving us?

Kenny Primrose 7:43

So let's let's kind of bring that to light a bit because I I it's not intuitively obvious what a script message is. I think I know what you're talking about, but can you explain what a script message is in psychology, this kind of underlying propulsion we might have to behave to a certain pattern or in a certain way?

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah, that's right. And psychology is the right word. Though it's I think they work in in both psychology and and in culture, and and specifically they're quite helpful in psychosocial thinking, which is where you try and bring those two ways of looking at the world together. So you know, it's always hard conceptually, like finding ways to describe what goes on in our inner world and how ultimate what goes on in our inner worlds, individually and relationally between us, ends up creating the world that we have, that you know, that we see, that we perceive materially out there, and vice versa. The world hasn't has an impact on our psychology. So scripts are a helpful way to bridge that. But in terms of psychology, I'm interested in what goes on in the debt. One way of describing that is that it's a psychoanalytic or a psychodynamic way of thinking about it, but we don't have to use those words. It's the stuff that we don't think about that drives us. And so a script might be affecting how how we do things. You know, it's it's it's a useful metaphor, another way of thinking about it. It might be, you know, it's a patterning. It's the patterns that we get into, which until we become conscious of them, have a bit of a hold of us. But the great news is they're not inevitable, because when we do become conscious of them, we can try and you know put something else in their place.

Kenny Primrose 9:17

Yeah, there's that line from Jung, I think he said, until we make the unconscious conscious, we're going to be subject to it.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

That's exactly part of how I think about this, definitely.

Kenny Primrose 9:26

And that word should, that's a very script word, isn't it? I think of it as quite a bullying word. Yes in the way it's kind of shown up in my own life.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

What a lot of people are doing when they go to therapy of of whatever kind is trying to track those words. You know, they're they're trying to start to notice and being given support to notice. Oh, I'm, you know, I'm giving myself a load of should or should have done this or ought to do this. You know, that's stuff's not just in us randomly. It it has occurred because of what has split it there, you know, the culture around us does that, our families do that, and the culture does that in varying quantities and in different ways depending on who we are.

Kenny Primrose 10:06

So, what are the the constellation of traits that you see showing up as part of this should I save the world script, whether it's you know cultural or personal, individual.

Goodness Protest Purity And Their Shadows

SPEAKER_00 10:20

So I'll I'll talk you through the script. So I think the first thing it says is I'm good. And all sorts of things come from that, because I think if we're trying to make the world better, the stuff that and I should say there's there's a positive and a negative to all of these, right? It's what it gives us the energy to do it, but I'm looking at the flip side that causes problems for us when we're doing it, or that deep that serves to effectively repel other people. So, you know, the being good, it's like great, yes, we want to do something good, we can see that there's a better world possible. That's what defines someone who wants to try and change the world, is we can see that this is not inevitable. We do not accept that it has to be like this. We do not accept that a the economy has to be run only on the basis of capital, which is, you know, only for the few. We don't accept that it has to be that way. Or we don't accept that things have to be in jars, we don't accept that we have to run an economy that is that will extract from nature and from the natural world and from our ability to to live on this planet until there is nothing left. We don't we don't accept that. It doesn't have to be like that. The flip side of wanting something better and saying, I am good, is that we can assume we're better than everyone else. That's where the moralizing and the righteousness comes in, which is deeply off-putting. And so how this worked in its inverse to keep people away is you see the snug activist being righteous, and you're like, oh, I don't want to be like that. I don't want to do that. So I'm good is one thing. The next one is look, this is just my view of it, right? Is I protest. Now again, protesting, really important. Protesting has won us all of the rights that we have. We wouldn't have the vote, we wouldn't have the working hours that we do, we wouldn't have a weekend, you know. Like, let's be completely clear. Of course it is part of it. In its inverse, I think we take on, I'm thinking of it as a protest voice. That voice, we use it. It's fine to use it out on a protest. You know, I'll be going out on a protest in five days' time next Saturday. There's a there's a big anti-fault right march in London, which will happen by the time that you that this podcast goes out, you know. But when you use the protest voice in your interpersonal communications with people in your life, is that an effective way to communicate?

Kenny Primrose 12:42

Say something more about that.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

No, that's not. Right?

Kenny Primrose 12:46

R because it's because it's kind of judgy.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

Because we have to nobody's ever changed their mind by being told they're an idiot or wrong or we we have to find you know, we have to find, and there are other ways to to have those conversations, but we do have to get off our high horse in in those moments. So that's part of the script.

Kenny Primrose 13:06

So we got protest and goodness. Good.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Right, purity is is another one.

Kenny Primrose 13:11

I'm related to kind of goodness in some sense.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yes, yes, when it's that is related in it, and it has some but it has it has some specific effects. So in in its effect of of righteousness, I I think sorry, let me just step back a sec, sorry. It's coming from the same thing of like wanting to make things better. You know, that's the entire basis of the progressive in the very broadest sense mindset as opposed to the conservative mindset. So it says, right, okay, we can we can make things better, but you can get into wanting to make them like absolutely perfect. Now, the other flip side of it, I think, is again in keeping people away. Because when when we see activists, you know, the media doesn't help here. I I should say that all of these things are weaponized by culture warriors and critics of activism. Those those who would like things to stay as they are, those who are financially invested in not having climate action, those who are financially invested in destroying the idea of net zero, et cetera, et cetera, and are seeking to discredit the messenger, will use all this stuff against us. So that's that's a that's a really big part of this to remember. And so when, you know, I've been on, you know, I've been interviewed after going on climate protests, you know, it's this classic question of like, well, how did you get to the protest? You know, did you get on public transport? You know, I sometimes think we have to, we should have crawled on our knees and, you know, prostrated our foreheads to the ground, you know, like pilgrims, in in in order to be like taken seriously as turning up to a protest, you know, like sometimes you have to use fossil fuel-powered public transport. And the whole thing is absolute nonsense, right? It's it's seeking to discredit. But this this trope, this idea that we have to be like perfectly green in order to take part. What a great way to keep people away. It's yeah.

Kenny Primrose 14:59

I I I recall like there's this there's this house at university where it was it was, you know, what five or six students lived in it. And I used to go around sometimes and you weren't allowed to walk on the grass. They had this long list of shops you weren't allowed to shop from if you were going to live there, products you weren't, and it was, I mean, it felt like religious. It was puritanical. And it was it the bar was just so high that I thought, even if I was behind them ideologically, I just don't think I could do it. You know, you said at the beginning, those people who were like, This is this is just too much. I can't I I can't kind of manage life if I do that.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

And so I just have to keep my head down and again, you know, e each of those things on their own, in the right way, really strategically, is useful. Boycotts are ultimately very, very powerful if used well. You know, that's what worked with apartheid South Africa, and that's what people are trying to do with Israel and Palestine now, you know, like there are reasons to do specific boycotts if they're targeted well. But if you create a culture out of all of these things, if you end up creating so many rules that people can't live and be with you, that that's gonna turn people away. I suppose my, you know, can I change activists who are trying to do that? No, you know, am I really thinking that I'm gonna stop people doing that? No. I think almost the bigger message here, really, is I'm interested in talking to people who are not doing it and saying you don't have to be like that in order to take part. You don't have to be like that in order to get together with some people in your community and work out how you're gonna, you know, like put pressure on locally to make the place more resilient next time there are floods.

Kenny Primrose 16:42

I think I'm your target audience and think about it.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Oh, really?

Kenny Primrose 16:44

Well, that's I think so. I really I'm ideally situated. So I do do bits of things, you know, like planting wildflowers and the odd bit of protesting, but I do feel totally overwhelmed by the state of the news, the state of the world. And so I do kind of bury my head to an extent because it's overwhelming, and I don't want to be in that kind of constant state of urgent alarm because I've got to manage being uh, you know, a father and an employee and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

We've all got like jobs and families and caring responsibilities and all the things we've got to do.

Overwhelm Division And The Far Right

SPEAKER_00 17:15

And let's remember also that this is this is the far right's playbook. You remember Steve Bannon, you know, Trump's advisor in his first term. His am I am I allowed to use cussing words? Go for it. And you know, his his methodology, he said, is flood the zone with shit. Now that that's very deliberate because it's doing something to our nervous systems. It's keeping us in a state of panic, it's keeping us in a state of overwhelm. And so, you know, it's you know, some of what's happening is is happening, and some of it is really, really deliberate, but it's coming us so fast now that we feel we can't process it, and the best thing to do is turn away. Actually, you know, the far right is on the rise everywhere. It's certainly happening in the UK, and I don't know if you're listening if this is listened to elsewhere, let's assume it is. We've got to kind of keep thinking clearly, right? Which is why I think it's important to break down some of these stereotypes around it. Because we are like going to have to get together in our communities. That that's where it's going to happen. That's where we resist the far right, you know, both electorally and practically. And it's where we make things better in a time of you know, I I think we are in a time of decline, you know, people aren't there yet with recognizing that. And a lot of agency and power has been taken away from communities. That was part of the neoliberal project that's started that. And so there's, you know, we've got quite a steep slope in front of us in terms of local resilience. But actually, that isn't a place to start, and none of these stereotypes help, which is why it's useful to break them down.

Kenny Primrose 18:42

Yeah. But and breaking down is is the term, isn't it? Because these these build walls, right, between you and the people you live around. And purity builds a wall.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

That's right. That's right. They they I I I I think these these uh elements of the script that we're talking through here are they absolutely predate what's going on now. I think I think, you know, actually these first three ones that we've just looked at, the goodness and the persisting and the purity, they're they're as old as time. The human relations that are behind these and the human psychology that is behind these is as old as time. And all of our wisdom traditions have perfectly good advice, excellent advice from much more fabulous voices than just some activists on a podcast, right? There's there's plenty in both the old and the new testament about this, which is the tradition I know. So so this is very old, and it is being used against us right now by this terrible confluence of far right and the super wealth power. So the the the flooding the zone with shit is being used against us, you know, to get us want to want to turn away, and the purity stuff is used against us because it's like, oh, activist culture, you don't want to take part in that, they're all weird. I think more generally, and what you just pointed to there is the division. The really basic tactic here is divide and rule. They're seeking to divide uh working people from each other, they're seeking to separate a quotes white working class close quotes from quotes immigrants, people of colour. The working class has always been made up of a really diverse group of people of all sorts of colours. It's just not reality that you can divide it like that. But this is what they do. They're dividing men from women. They're turning young boys, you know, through the manosphere. Anyway, all of this is to say there's a there's a big, big, big picture here that is the context in which this discussion sits in. And so at every stage of this, I'm interested in how do we how do we dismantle this script so that we can be more effective against this division? Because for all of it, we have to come together.

Kenny Primrose 20:50

Great, that's really helpful. So far, you have described goodness, purity, and protest voice as these kind of parts of the script that can be troubling or problematic. Are there other things that you know we need to dismantle in order to come together that are part of this script?

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Those are the very psychological ones. And then and then the next two I'm gonna do are they do have some psychology in them for sure, but they also have some some culture and some social history in them.

Knowing Better White Savior Class Blind Spots

SPEAKER_00 21:20

So the next one is I know better than you, which is just really annoying when you're on the receiving end of the bit, isn't it? But what I wanted to look at here, that there are a number of things which come into this. You know, one of them is just the sheer annoyance of being lectured by somebody who, you know, is claiming to know more than you. But this also is about the let's call it the politics of lived experience and and who's speaking about what. Because like the example like the examples I look at the book are in the the fund, you know, the charity sector and and the sort of funded organisations that work for change because they're often full of middle class people. Um I'm one of them. I've worked in these organizations, I've seen what that is. And they are they're there to help other people. And the the last few years have seen some finally some receptivity to the outrage and complaint of those who are being helped or spoken for. They should be part of the process. So that's that's absolutely part of it.

Kenny Primrose 22:30

So what you're just referring to there was scandals that have occurred in Oxfam or amnesty or whatever. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah, that's that's actually those scandals. I mean, those scandals that that that is part of it. Yes, that is part of it. This was um all sorts of I mean, there was a whole space of over several years of racism, discrimination. And I think they come they come from the same, you know, then and you know, the headline writers always make a lot of them, news makes a lot of them because you know, we're back to the I'm good bit of the script. It's like it's supposed to be good, and they're doing these awful things. What's what's the contaminate them, then their whole message is well yes, yes, that, but all but also there is a fundamental that underneath that there's also a more fundamental shock, and it's shocking to those working in those organizations as well. And I find it shocking talking about this. I've had people reading early drafts of the book who had like really strong reactions at me setting out of those scandals at once. And it's like, oh God, what is going on? Well, what's going on? Well, one thing is we've got humans here, we're dealing we're dealing with humans, right? And this shows the limit of setting yourself up above other people. But I think the the I knowing better that you know, the I know better thing, it gets in the way of communicating. It gets in the way of forming coalitions, it gets in the way of working with people from different backgrounds to your own. You've basically got to show up if you're gonna work with someone who does not come from the same situation as you and not know better. You've got to show up with, you know, I suppose you could call it some kind of beginner's mind. You've got to show up with a kind of, okay, I have got some time and I've got some capacity and some resources. Perhaps, you know, perhaps because of my circumstance, I do have that time to give a couple of hours a week to do something. But what I mustn't bring with that is my assumption that because I've got a professional job or a certain level of education or whatever it is, that I know better. And so often that is what happens.

Kenny Primrose 24:28

And kind of Oh, Sarah, carry on. No, no, you don't. I was just thinking, it's implicit in the idea of the script of should I save the world is the idea of a saviour.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

So this is where we get into the the great British class and imperial hangover. They haven't gone away. Okay, a white saviour thing. Yes, yes, and and white saviour, that that that phrase like brings to mind the imperial component of it. It brings to mind the fact that the international aid agencies grew out of the institutions of empire, and that in a world in which way higher financial flows are moving out of the poorest countries into the rich world still than the aid that goes the other way, even before the aid was cut in the last two years. Those financial flows are massive. We are still running neocolonial economies in in, you know, like looking at the global picture. In that context, you know, that's where the white saviour mess is. But I think it works in classway. I think what that phrase sort of obscures Sliny is the way it still works in classways within these islands, which is that often middle class people can have, and I and I say this having been there and learnt to see it, can have a whole load of unspoken assumptions about knowing best of what's needed in a situation. And we can want to help, and then we can kind of get in a mess when we get there, and and actually, what's the consequence of that is that people just turn away, and so we don't build the bridges. And that's all part of the situation in which we find ourselves, where there can be a receptive audience to the message of say reform UK. I'm not gonna, you know, this isn't about blaming the activists for what's happening. The far right has risen of it had its own it had its own energy, right? And it has money. It has its money. Business of of some some some business people have always been very happy to to align with that, and that's what's happening, and we can see that happening. But but is this part of it? Is is the I is the knowing better and and the sort of the middle class ways of being, is that part of what helps to create a little crack here that can be exploited? I think it is part of it. Then there's also the way that I know better works again in its inverse to keep people away. So this might look like, oh, I don't know enough about that. Who am this is where it lands for a lot of people because we're worried about all these things in the world. But oh, I don't know enough, I'd better not speak. Or, oh, I've seen all this talk about lived experience, I've seen people chatting about that on social media. I don't want to be a white savior turning up and embarrassing myself, saying things. I it it all to stay away. And and and and that's not inevitable either. If if if we don't show up with the, you know, we don't have to know everything, we can speak out not knowing everything. And we can show up with with an attitude of humility and a long-sidedness, and we're in this together, which we all are, rather than hey, I've got the answers.

Kenny Primrose 27:46

It's yeah, it seems like the virtue that you most want to cultivate in your book is humility and self-awareness in the activist mindset. Would that be accurate?

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Yeah, I think so. I hadn't thought about it really specifically. Was I one I suppose I saw all of these problems, and when I wrote The Entangled Activist, that was about me realizing the extent of our entanglement in the problems that we're trying to change. And then I wanted to write How Not to Save the World because I was starting to see that there were people doing change-making work of all kinds, they were embodying and practicing the antidotes to this script. And so I really wanted to try and set it out. But what I discovered once I, you know, was like quite on all way into these conversations, was that that there were patterns to what was coming out. And humility and looking at yourself are one of them. And the other one is relationship and connection. Because what goes wrong with each of these, and this is where we get to the big picture, really, because what goes wrong with each of these bits of the script is where we are trying to do it on ourselves.

Kenny Primrose 28:53

But I'd really like to get into this these antidotes of connection and relationship and things we

Individualism Religion And Neoliberal Aftershocks

Kenny Primrose 28:59

can do. But it's lurking behind all of these like pathologies, is individualism. Is the individualism the the the water that we're swimming in, right? That seems to be responsible in no small way. And I I'd be interested to know whether these same things show up in a more collectivist society. Do you know?

SPEAKER_00 29:21

I mean, g give me an example of where you're thinking.

Kenny Primrose 29:23

Like what what Like what is a collectivist society? I don't know. I mean, look, I I suppose indigenous groups, if you spend any time with them, do you have people who are activists within those groups who have a kind of a savior complex, for want of a better term? I mean, many of the nations far east are are much more collectivist, although I think that's changing, you know, as capitalism changes these things.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Yeah, yeah. Hence my yeah, that's why I wanted to ask you about where where we're talking about. Do you know I I have not interviewed Indigenous people for this, for this project. And I've been, because it's such a big topic, I've been, and I really was interested in the British Saviour Complex, I've been focused in here. But guess what? We live in a multicultural society. So a lot of the people I've interviewed come from other faiths and other cultures, you know, and and you know, and have a foot in both worlds. And so I found it incredibly striking that people from other faiths did not have the saving thing. They might have done other things on the scripts, you know. I've had brilliant conversations with Muslim campaigners about, you know, the heroine. We haven't got to this yet. Heroism is one of the things on the on the script, of thinking that I have to be a hero, you know, like heroism, ego, you know, all of purity, all of that can definitely happen. But this very specific thing about the saving, I think is is it's a Christian artifact. And I had some really interesting conversations with theologians, because I was like, really? Could Christianity, especially when so many of us, you know, we're in a secular culture and so many of us are not Christian, even if we might be culturally Christian, let's say, like in the background, could that really be having an effect on this subconscious script? And they think yes, because structure, it's a structure of thinking with the God taken out. You know, I'm interested in intergenerational patterns and how consistent culture is over generations and also how it shifts over generations, and it's not many generations that we've been secular and I yeah, I could totally get on board with that.

Kenny Primrose 31:34

There is a really nice essay by John Gray called Sex, Atheism, and Piano Legs, and in it he Yeah, I know he's what a brilliant title, eh? So in the Victorian era, they covered them up, and you cover up this natural human urge, and it comes out in perverted forms, like so perversions of Victorian sex life was his point there. And he said, He's writing in the heyday of new atheism, but in fact, he was writing about communism. That's what he was doing. He was writing about communism, and you suppress the religious urge, and it comes out in the form of communism, so trying to create heaven now rather than later or whatever. And yeah, these structures are stubborn, these messages do get you know passed down.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

So I think that's in fact, one of my interviewees actually specifically talked about that urge to create heaven. We you know, we're getting confused between creating heaven here on earth and afterwards, you know, ver versus you know, later on, let's say, you know, which at first to me sounds like well, you know, activists, the activists in me would react very strongly to that and say, but of course you've of course we've got to make it better now. But there's it's again, it's this this is subtle. It's the it's the underlying pattern. But I think what's very interesting is the specifics of Protestant Christianity. Because that's where the individualism really kicks in. And there's obviously a lot of sociological and historical thought looking at the influence of that on capitalism.

Kenny Primrose 32:58

You're right, you've got kind of reformation into the Enlightenment into kind of individualism, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Yes. That we have to make so this idea that you know it's on us individually, this feeling that it's on me to carry it individually. I think that's where the real burden is. And that's what I'm really keen in unpacking. And and of course, you know, other other social factors and political factors have contributed to that. Because look what's happened over the four, four and a half now neoliberal decades. Union membership has collapsed compared to what it was. The very, the very idea that you would try and change things on your own would be completely bonkers to lots of people before. And it's and it's only bonkers to a smaller number of people now. Because you know, union membership is still there in the public sector to some extent, but in the private sector it's it's almost nothing. And so the very idea that you could get together to try and get what you need is in out of view for a lot of people.

Kenny Primrose 34:02

I mean, interestingly enough, that uh the trade union movement came out of kind of Methodism and things like that. So you you have these kind of collectivist movements that do that they're also from religion.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

This is why I want to be really careful in talking about the the the religious roots of this saving idea, because you know, it's not it n nothing here is like all one thing. We you have to save this at the moment because people are getting really, you know, as as I as I think the capacity for like broad thought is is being eroded by you know populist messages, you know, which is all zero sum, you know, and by what goes on on social media, you know, we lose this capacity. So look, Christianity and including specific Protestant forms of Christianity have been absolutely part of the most powerful social and most effective social movements of our time. That is true. And the other thing that's true is that this this specific kind of feeling of burden also, I think, is part of this script.

Kenny Primrose 35:03

Oh I've got one more question on this, Anthea, that that's just occurred to me when I was reading your book. And it's whether this kind of conversation with these ideas that you've got in your book would have occurred to you in your twenties. So if you I think of Richard Rohr's written a good book called Following Up, where it's about the two halves of life, or David Brooks as well. And you know, you move from building a container and something fairly ego-driven, and that stops delivering for you kind of around midlife, perhaps, and you start thinking about serving something bigger than yourself, you know, planting trees into the shade of which you'll never see sit. And I I just wonder if activism tends to be younger people, it tends to be people who have time, right? Because they're often students and things like that. And they're also they've got the hero complex in in more kind of vigorous form because of their psychological stage in life. Do you think that's a factor in this?

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I really wondered about this when I was writing the book, and it was when I was thinking specifically about the hero idea. I was looking at how deep they go in our psyche as well as in the culture, obviously. And I was like, well, the can't, you know, try and stop people being heroes. And so I asked myself, you know, am I being unreasonable in am I being unreasonable in asking younger people to do this thing that, you know, I wasn't thinking about it then. I was like, I must save the world, I must do something huge. I've already an impact, I'm gonna make my mark, you know, and on the things that I care about, which are justice, the two, you know, the two come together. Actually, I I've met so many younger activists who are thinking about this stuff. I think to some extent it is true, and to some extent it is absolutely inevitable that when you're, you know, you're seeking to find your thing, and as you say, it's kind of a more ego-driven process, you know, you want to make your mark, you want to find your, you know, your delivery mechanism, you know, aligning your skills to the, you know, the task in the world that you want to do. And changing the world and activism is a great vehicle for that, you know, it's really meaningful. So that's true, and I think it's true that with some awareness, many aspects of like these, these script elements that I've been talking about, we can temper them because you know, because there are alternatives to them. And that's what these people I've been meeting and I wanted to write about have been have been practicing. To come back to your question of could I have done it? Like psychologically, no, really not. I was not, I was not ready for that in my 20s, no way. But also I think it's about the time. So I came of age, you know, in the early to mid-90s. I started work in the mid to late 90s. I was working for NGOs kind of from the turn of the century up until about 2015, kind of full-time. And by 2015, it was becoming obvious what was happening. But certainly in the first, until let's say until 2008. So for my first 10 years of work from 98 to 2008, we were in New Labour, and it was possible to effect change using the methods that we were trying, which was policy advocacy. So I trained as a journalist and then left the newspaper and went to work for human rights organizations. So I was doing investigations into the arms trade or the funding of illegal logging or British banks taking dictators' loot and thus facilitating their activities, etc. And we put the information in front of policymakers. And sometimes we could get stuff done. Now, this is also not just about the political context of what's going on, but my situation within it. I was educated and white and middle class and had a degree, and so I could go into those jobs in those organizations and do this. Once that stopped working with the Brexit and Trump elections of 2016, and it was getting much harder once the Conservative Coalition came in and implemented austerity from 2010. Once that became harder, I started being in the position that a lot of people have been in, just because of their positionality and where they're where who they are, always, which is to realise the limitations of

People Power Local Action And Antidotes

SPEAKER_00 39:33

power. So for a while I was mistaking access to power for actual power, because in those years it did actually work. It now doesn't work. And the people like me are realizing the things that a lot of other people have always known, which is the only thing that you can do when you don't have access to power, and when power is being extremely naked and obvious in its pursuit of its own interests and wealth, which is we have to build people power, which means getting together with people, which means we have to be able to relate to them, which means we have to stop doing all of these things on the script. So that's the only bit that's a part, but that's that's about who I am and the timing of it as well.

Kenny Primrose 40:13

Yeah. What I find really hopeful in what you just said, Anthea, is that although those people with the levers of power can make us feel like we we lack agency because the normal ways, the the the former ways of doing things don't work any longer. Everybody now has a lot of agency in the neighborhoods they live in to to build relationships, to actually have grassroots movements, which is where, if I understand you right, that's that's where change can occur.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yeah, and that's where change is available to all of us. I think we often have stick to this this myth that it that it has to be at a certain level for it to count. And this and this is where the the save the world kind of feeling kind of causes some causes some damage. Because it it works. We think it has to be about scale. It's like, oh, well, I have to do something big, and if it's not going to be big, then it's not not it's not gonna be worth it. But look at what happens when people just do things locally. I just watched that Channel 4 sort of dramatization of the investigations of the water industry. It's called Dirty Business. Have you seen it?

Kenny Primrose 41:21

No, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, I really recommend it, but definitely not while you're eating dinner. It's it's I mean it's really distressing about what the water companies have been doing. But this started with two guys, one of whom had the ability to like, you know, run some computer programming, and one of whom was an ex-copper, and they were fishermen and they were furious at the river going brown in their area in Oxfordshire. And so they just started. And it started from there, you know? So it can start at any scale, and it won't necessarily be limited to that. So that's right.

Kenny Primrose 41:52

It's a quote that comes to mind is the off-quoted Margaret Mead quote Never doubt that a small group of committed individuals can change the world because it's the only thing that that ever has.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

But I would add to it, and we might need to get over ourselves as well. Yes, let remove the savior complex.

Kenny Primrose 42:07

So let's say we feel the feel the desire to do good, to make the world a better place. We're appalled at how things are going for this generation and those to come, and we have all these kind of pitfalls of those impulses. How do we temper them?

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Right. Well, you know, as we've been talking about, like the the the underlying the underlying things here are about humility. And, you know, I'll you know, to to use a more colloquial phrase, I think getting over ourselves is is quite a big one, actually. With with each of them, there's an antidote. So the antidote to the saving thing is service. Can I show up in service? The the antidote to knowing better is is relationship and listening. The antidote to the purity one is can I build a bridge? Can I find enough in common with these people that even if we don't agree on everything, because we're not going to, because we're humans, can we do some stuff together on the stuff that matters, even if we don't agree on everything else? So there are things that we can do against each of them that they're not inevitable, and there are people practicing these and doing great stuff up and down the country.

Kenny Primrose 43:21

Really helpful. I'd also love to pick up on you you mention it in several parts

Nervous Systems Co-Regulation And Shared Grief

Kenny Primrose 43:27

of your book. Just the the lizard brain that's activated, you know, our fight-flight response. Like we're embodied creatures, our bodies have wisdom in the w we can tune into. And I I've often found that you know, my jangling nerves uh are not going to be solved by thinking new thoughts or reading another book. I actually need to do something embodied to change my mind. It's easier to change the mind through the body than the other way around. I wonder if you could say. Something about perhaps for you, right? To what extent is the the wisdom of the body important here and how do you attend to it?

SPEAKER_00 44:07

Right. It's well, it's really important, isn't it? Again, this is one of the things that's being used against us, you know, when we're getting messages from those who seek to divide us, that there's a lot to be fearful of that get in a state where we can't you literally can't think straight. You know, you're your thinking brain goes offline when you're frightened. So I think it's really important. Some of it is about the things that we can do ourselves to recognise that and learn what each of us can do to settle ourselves. That again, I I think you're right. Like words don't work for me. Um, and it's not just because I'm dealing with words in writing all the time. For me, it's going and digging in the garden and attempting to grow tomatoes and it and it's playing music. You know, everyone everyone's got their things that get them in the state. But I think more important for what we're talking, or equally important for what we're talking about, is is co-regulation. As humans, we regulate each other. That's why individualism is such a nightmare in so many ways, because because it's not really how we're meant to be. We settle each other by being with each other. And so doing things with common purpose with others, it's not just good for the mood, and it's not just good, you know, because it's sort of politically good and sort of like our needs in our thinking brain to be like doing something to counter, you know, what's going on. It just genuinely makes us feel better. I've got a friend called Sarah Stein Lebrano who's written a great book called Don't Talk About Politics, and and she's always talking about how, you know, like try she it's about how debating with each other doesn't work. And she points out that you know, there's loads of she's a social researcher, there's loads of research showing that left-wing people often are more depressed than other people because they know more about what's going on in the world and because of their view on it. But the people who take action are not. When you're doing something with other people, it's not it's not about taking action on your own, it's about doing it with others. It genuinely makes you feel better.

Kenny Primrose 46:06

Yeah. We yeah, which I'm sure anyone listening to this podcast will have experienced. That is that's how you yeah, you regulate, you feel better. It seems like an inherently hopeful thing to be doing.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Yeah, and like I'm taking part in conversations across South Devon with a bunch of other women, we're calling ourselves common ground, and we just go out on the high streets with a flip chart and a sticker pole, a bunch of questions, and you know, people put a little round dot sticker in yes or no. And it's not really about the answers. We're trying to model that it is possible to have political conversations, including when we disagree, that are the civil and where we can find common ground. And I feel better every time I do it, you know, even if I have certainly fractious conversations, because just the very act of getting out there and meeting people and doing it with other people, you know, means means I realise that it is actually true, that we do have more in common, ultimately, despite all the differences.

Kenny Primrose 47:00

So it kind of breaks down the us and them binary yet.

SPEAKER_00 47:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and without flattening it, right? You know, the conversations sometimes get tricky because people are like, well, you know, you can afford to be out here and I'm working class and you're not. And so, you know, what have we got in common? And what and, you know, and I have to acknowledge, yeah, you're absolutely right. There are some things we've not got in common. But actually, on the big picture, there is still more in common. And, you know, and that's but that comes out of the conversation. Like, I I can't sort of announce it, it has it has to emerge.

Kenny Primrose 47:29

I I like that activity a lot. I might even try it sometime. The sense I get in this conversation and in your book is you're just trying to create a bit more space. There's a lack of kind of spaciousness, it could be in our relationships, in our thinking, in our I don't know. That's a felt sense rather than anything else.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

I quite like that. I hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah, thanks. That is that yeah, it that is what I'm trying to do. It's to kind of create a bit of breathing space because that's so much of the discourse around what we what A, what's wrong with the world, and B, what do we do to do about it? It it does feel really fraught and pressured, and it and it feels like there's not much It's claustrophobia, urgent, yeah, which is very much the the sense of being in fight or flight, right?

Kenny Primrose 48:14

That that is not a spacious state to be in.

SPEAKER_00 48:16

That's right, and that's where you know this this question about grief comes in in relation to the question about embodiment, because I think that allowing ourselves to feel some grief for what's going on, if we're worried about it, can also open up that space. And well founded by lots of practitioners over a long time.

Kenny Primrose 48:37

It's huge. One of the conversations that I will have released by the time this is released is with BJ Miller, the palliative care kind of thinker, speaker, doctor. And his question is, How are you grieving? Which presupposes is that we're all grieving all the time. Because the wiring around grief is really loss, right? It's we whether it's you know the loss of our children's childhood as they're growing up or things in the planet or whatever. And and if we have no way to express that, it sits in us in really unhealthy ways. So yeah, we need to think about how we are processing grief.

SPEAKER_00 49:12

And particularly processing it together, so then it's a shared thing, because that's a much it's a much more powerful process to go through than doing it on our own.

Kenny Primrose 49:23

Those rituals have been lost as we've secularized, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, put a clock into that. Um Anthony, I I want to be respectful of your time, but I let's return to this question. Let me ask you the question that you're posing to our listeners. Should we want to save the world?

SPEAKER_00 49:43

As in, should should we be wanting to save the world or should we Well no, as we've been discussing, I don't think you should be trying to save the world. And I'm and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say should about anyone, right? Because I think the should is part of the problem. But can you can you be could you be doing something that contributes and that makes you feel better about the state the world's in?

Kenny Primrose 50:06

Yeah, 100%. That's a that's a lovely reframe of the impulse to do good and to try and say, well, I I can't do everything, but I can do something, right?

Book Links And Final Takeaways

Kenny Primrose 50:16

Cool. Antheus, thank thank you so much. Tell tell us where can listeners find out about your work, your books.

SPEAKER_00 50:24

So the new book is called How Not to Save the World. And the subtitle is This is Cheeky, Doing Good Without Annoying Everyone. Annoy anyone. I don't promise you won't annoy anyone, but yes, doing good without annoying everyone. And you can get it from well, I'd love you to go to an independent bookshop and get it. And I am on Substack as Anthea Lawson, and you can sign up for my mailing list and keep in touch that way.

Kenny Primrose 50:45

Excellent. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time for coming to to speak to people about how to examine life better and what we do with our impulses to save the world.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Yeah, well, thank you. I've really enjoyed the conversation. Great questions.

Kenny Primrose 50:59

Should I be trying to save the world, is big and mini-sided. But I think what she's really asking here is something quite intimate. What is it that's actually driving me? And is it serving the people I want to serve? We each have script messages that we're responding to, and there is valuable work to do in recognising what those are. Getting over ourselves, it turns out, might be the most radical and helpful thing we can do. Anthea's new book, How Not to Save the World, is out now. I'd encourage you to find it at an independent bookshop if you can. You can also find her on Substack at Anthea Lawson, where she writes about activism, change making, and the inner life of trying to do good in a difficult world. If you've enjoyed the podcast, do please leave a rating. It's really helpful when people do that. Sign up on Substack, this examined live, where you receive updates, newsletters, reflections, that kind of thing. It'd be lovely to see you there.