Dr Rupy: One of the reasons we think we're these selfish and greedy people is that a very high proportion of those who govern us are psychologically atypical. Broadly speaking, we're a society of altruists governed by psychopaths. Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast with me Dr Rupy where we discuss food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. The title is creating accidental activists to improve health in a post-pandemic world and that might sound confusing but bear with me, you'll learn a lot more about accidental activism in this podcast episode. As we witness an improvement in the crisis, there I say, and anticipate the relaxation of social distancing, I wanted to talk about the opportunities to learn and to reform our political systems that globally have revealed themselves to be woefully unprepared and slow to respond. Now, instead of pointing the finger after the fact, I actually think we should use this as an opportunity to try and recuperate the losses both emotionally, physically and financially by trying to cultivate the opinions of thinkers from around the world who have long documented the unfolding crises in society that have now spectacularly revealed themselves to us. George Monbiot doesn't really need an introduction. He's an author, a Guardian columnist, an environmental campaigner. His books include Feral, Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life and Out of the Wreckage, a new politics for an age of crisis, which is his latest book and something that was written three years ago, but I can't think of any other book that has really touched me in this way for a long time. It is definitely a book I would recommend reading, particularly right now because I think it poses a lot of opportunity to rethink the narrative around our political landscape and what we can do to change our lives going forward post-pandemic. On this podcast, we talk about a whole bunch of different subjects, how to harness intrinsic human values of kindness to foster wellbeing in society, how the evolution of humans would have required community and kindness to survive rather than the prevailing narrative of individualism and inequality. We do talk about politics and neoliberalism and I don't regard myself as someone who's politically motivated or interested in politics, but this podcast actually made me realise just how politically active I am, and perhaps not in the sense that I thought I was before. We do address alienation, loneliness, which I think are the defining conditions of our time, as well as the rise of social initiatives and active accidental activism. What I think is an opportunity to build a different economy and big organisation in the wake of the pandemic. And big organisation will, we'll go into that in the podcast and you'll learn a lot more about how collective action can yield huge, huge benefits to us. I really hope you enjoy this conversation. It's a little bit different from what I'm used to doing, but I think it's definitely going to touch a nerve with you listeners who have followed me for a long time now and I think it's a really important discussion to be had right now as well. So if you want to learn more about my guest, please do check out the doctorskitchen.com/podcasts, check out his social links and the links to the book and all his articles that are on his website monbiot.com and sign up to the newsletter while you're there as well where we share recipes, lifestyle tips and how to help you live healthier, happier lives. On to the podcast. Before we start, I just thought maybe it would be best for you to introduce yourself. My podcast is largely about wellness, how to eat for health, and a whole bunch of topics, but we're really expanding the topic base because I think it's never been a more important time to think about systems change and how that has an impact on healthcare, which you go through in your book as well. So if I could ask you to introduce yourself to the audience, that would be great.
George Monbiot: I'm George Monbiot. I'm a writer, journalist, activist, professional troublemaker. I write about all sorts of things, mostly with an environmental slant, but a lot of social and political stuff too.
Dr Rupy: And your book, which is hopefully going to be the focus of our conversation, but I'm sure we're going to digress, you wrote this a couple of years ago, Out of the Wreckage. What was the impetus for the book and what kind of spurred you on to go in this kind of direction? Because a lot of your work I think has spanned around environmentalism, but you've you've done investigative journalism at the start of your career too.
George Monbiot: Yeah, so I'd written a book before, or it was a collection of essays called, How Did We Get Into This Mess? And a lot of people in reading it said, okay, you've shown us how we got into this mess. Now, how are we going to get out of it? So, so, so really that was the impetus that I had to answer the question. But also, I had become very interested in sort of breaking out of the standard political box. We see politics in very narrow terms in this country. Generally in party terms, you know, you're either Labour or Conservative or you might possibly be Lib Dem or Green or Brexit or something, but you're defined by your party and it's very much controlled from the centre. Here's the party structure, hoping to get into government, hoping to run the nation from the centre. And my feeling is, well, it's just not where people are at at all. The great majority of people, we don't want to be part of that incredibly simplified and top-down system. When you look at how people organize themselves, and boy, have we been seeing that during the pandemic, you know, this incredible flowering of mutual aid as people help each other get through this difficult time, you'll see that, you know, we're not just sitting there passively waiting for someone to tell us from on high what we ought to be doing and how we should be living our lives. And we can create a lot of the solutions ourselves. And my feeling is that what we urgently need in this country and elsewhere is a hybrid system where we need the representative politics because you do need government to run an NHS and to run pandemic responses and lots of other things like that that only governments really can do. But you also need much more participatory democracy, much more bottom-up, grassroots, deliberative democracy where we can sit down together and solve our common problems. And and it's sort of exploring that hybrid system and exploring how you can bring community together, make much richer community and use that community as a seedbed for a new politics to grow, a politics built by the people, for the people, rather than this top-down simplified thing controlled from the centre.
Dr Rupy: I'll be honest, my personal perspective as I've grown up, particularly over the last 10 years, is that I've been quite passive about politics. And I think that's reflected by quite a few of my colleagues as well. I.e. it's too far removed from me. My vote doesn't have or carry that much weight. And I'm sort of apathetic to any changes that I could be a party of when it comes to the political sphere. I've done some stuff within my locus of control, so trying to reform medical education to include nutrition and lifestyle medicine, which is one of the most powerful tools that we have. But when it comes to politics and fundamental changes that have an impact on our healthcare system, I felt quite removed from it, if I'm honest. What do you say to that sort of like apathetic response or, you know, people who become apolitical?
George Monbiot: I'd say, isn't it interesting how you put those in two different boxes? You know, you've done all that great work on nutrition and stuff, you know, which has been really positive work, which is political. You know, you were trying to create change among people. That's political. You know, all politics is is relations between people and you're trying to change those relations in a very positive way. And then you say, but I'm not into politics. And that's exactly the problem. That's exactly where we are, that we have this thing called politics, which is over there. It's not in our lives. It's it's in somebody else is doing that stuff and they're doing it to us. You know, and it's something which, well, you know, we might be, we might decide to participate in a sort of little way by running around stuffing envelopes for the party or voting every five years, but it's basically this thing being dumped on us from from above. Whereas what the first thing you were talking about, that is also politics. In fact, that to me is the lifeblood of politics is people taking action to improve stuff, even if it doesn't go through political parties. And and the fundamental problem, I think we've got here is that society is this incredibly complex system. I mean, fantastically complex. Even one person is an incredibly complex system. You know, we our physiology, as you well know, is highly complex. Our brains are highly complex. We behave in all sorts of unpredictable ways because we have these emergent and adaptive characteristics which complex systems have. Put two people together and and and you square the complexity. You put 65 million people together and you've got this phenomenally complex system. I mean, staggeringly, incomprehensibly complex system. But they try to govern us as if it is a simple system, as if you can say, right, here is a dictat which we as a legislature are going to pass down and we're going to make you do this, or we're going to respond to what we think the public will is and translate it into legislation this way. And it's this really crude, brutal, simplified way of handling a phenomenally complex society. Now, I happen to think that complexity is a good thing. And that the great diversity of people's engagement with each other, engagement with the systems that surround them, that's a really good thing, which we should be building on and working with and allowing to flourish and allowing its unpredictable, emergent, adaptive characteristics to come to the fore in lots of good, serendipitous ways, which they do when you let them, as we've been finding during the pandemic with all these incredible social movements just emerging, apparently out of nowhere, but actually emerging out of the community spirit that has long been there but bubbling under the surface. And so the politics we need is the politics that says to you, what you are doing is political. What you are doing is crucial to shaping the nature of this country and it should be embedded in a network where all those actions are recognized as being political and where we can all participate as equals in producing this better nation that we want. And that's where we can bring together the sort of actions that you and your colleagues have been taking, which we could broadly describe, I think, as community action in one way or another, with a community politics, which means a participatory politics, a deliberative politics, where we're sitting down, we're talking to each other, and then we're passing decisions up. We're sort of devolving them upwards, where we could almost say, right, the primary unit of political decision-making is the local community, and we devolve decisions upwards towards bigger and bigger political units, but basically they're ultimately responsible to us, ultimately responsible to that local primary unit. And I think that would much better reflect the complexities and diversities and wonderful abundance of our social lives.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's interesting you say that because I think it's the, and you talk about this at the start of the book, it's the narrative that we allow ourselves to believe or the dominant narrative that something is outside of our control and we don't have any influence over it. Whereas if you put it in terms of, okay, what kind of things can you get involved in at a local level or a systems level within your specialty or within your field or within your industry, you know, it it kind of politicizes or it kind of makes you understand just how much impact a single person or a group of people can have. And I suppose what how can we change that narrative apart from obviously, you know, listening to things that you do and and getting involved in social social initiatives. How do we actually change the narrative that actually empowers people and makes them realize just how much control that we we can have?
George Monbiot: Well, I'm really glad you introduced the issue of narrative because recognizing the importance of narrative in politics is almost half the battle. It's like because um it it's the person who who tells the story or the movement, the group that tells the story that captures other people's imagination is is the one that becomes a sort of sweeping force in in politics. And if we don't tell a good story, someone else is going to tell a good story and it might not be the story that is going to be useful to us. So if we look at the whole history of politics and indeed of religion, going back thousands of years, the movements that have succeeded are the ones that have a new narrative to tell. But it's a particular kind of narrative. What's very interesting to me about this is that when when you look at the narratives which have worked, even if they are completely different in terms of where they're trying to take us and what they want you to do, whether it's a sort of ultra-capitalist one or a communist one or a religious narrative or an atheist narrative, they they all have basically the same narrative structure. Now, you've probably heard the debate between how many basic plots there are, you know, some people say there's three and some people say there's five and some seven and some nine. It's always an odd number for some reason. But you know, there's meant to be a certain number of basic plots. And I think, you know, we can agree there are common narrative structures which are used again and again, where you get lots of different books and films and stories all using a basic structure even if they are used for to tell completely different stories. And the one which seems to work always in religion and politics is the restoration story. It's a narrative structure which goes as follows. It says, the land has been thrown into disorder by powerful and nefarious forces working against the interests of humanity, but the hero or heroes confront those powerful and nefarious forces, against the odds, overthrow them and restore harmony to the land. And and in its different forms, that restoration story has been told again and again and again, whether it's been told, for instance, in the Christian religion or the Muslim religion or been told by the Keynesians or the neoliberals or the Marxists or the Nazis or the Democrats or any movement at all which which has which has succeeded in politics or religion tells that story. And and while it's a a necessary condition, it might not be a sufficient one, but it has to be there. If you're going to succeed in politics, it seems that you can't get there unless you tell a convincing restoration narrative. And it's very interesting that people in the past seem to have been aware of this. So when laissez-faire economics completely fell apart with the great depression just under 100 years ago, causing appalling suffering and disruption, John Maynard Keynes sat down and he wrote his general theory, which is a very good restoration narrative. It says, it basically says the land has been thrown into disorder caused by the powerful and nefarious forces of laissez-faire politics, the economic elite, basically grabbing all the money for themselves, destroying effective demand, ensuring that there's no circulation within the economy. But the heroes of the story, the the working and middle classes, empowering a benign state will against the odds overthrow those economic elites and restore harmony to the land in in the form of money spent into the economy through public works, generating employment, which generates consumption, which generates growth. And and it was a very powerful and effective restoration story. Now, some people absolutely hated the Keynesian story, people who could best be described as the neoliberals, who basically wanted to restore a kind of laissez-faire economics, but in this case, empowered by the state with sort of various new features. So people like Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, later on Milton Friedman, and um and they sat down quite consciously and deliberately to write a restoration story of their own, which which said that the um the land has been thrown into disorder by the powerful and nefarious forces of the overmighty state, which by controlling our lives and taxing us and regulating us, crushes freedom, destroys human opportunity and potential. But the hero, the freedom-seeking entrepreneur will confront that disorder, overthrow those powerful and nefarious forces against the odds and restore order to the land in the form of liberty and opportunity. That was their story. It was a very overt and deliberate restoration story. And when Keynesianism ran into trouble in the 1970s, they were able to step forward and say, here's here's the new story. And politicians eventually across the political spectrum said, oh, thank God, there's a new story. We'll latch on to this. This is the story. And and then that completely and spectacularly fell apart in 2008. The whole neoliberal edifice just collapsed spectacularly. And so the opponents of neoliberalism came forward with nothing. We had no new story to tell. And so we had some people say, well, maybe we should go back to Keynesianism. And you just can't, you know, you can't go back in politics. You know, you don't inspire people by saying, we'll just we'll just do what they did 50 years ago. That that's that doesn't excite people. Also, you know, there's a fundamental flaw for the 21st century is that it depends on sustaining levels of consumption. And and you know, those levels of consumption are destroying our life support systems. Um but and other people said, well, maybe we should have a bit less neoliberalism, sort of neoliberalism light. Well, you know, it's just that doesn't inspire people either and that just creates an opening for neoliberalism to continue, which of course is what happened. And so we get stuck with the old discredited system even when it's fallen apart because there's no new story. So so our job really, part of our job, I feel is to tell that new restoration story. And I feel it is rooted in the sort of things that we're talking about. It's rooted in community. You know, it's you could tell it sort of roughly along these lines that, you know, the land has been thrown into disorder by the powerful and nefarious forces of neoliberalism, which by breaking society apart, atomizing and ruling, saying, you know, you're all individuals, there's no such thing as community and we're going to break apart the social fabric, privatize utilities, um deregulate, destroy trade unions, destroy social action to even say in Mrs. Thatcher's case, there is no such thing as society. Um they they have um really sort of destroyed our capacity to solve our problems. Um but we, the community, the heroes of the story, by coming together and and forming a grassroots solidarity, um this sort of social insurgency of the of exactly the kind we're seeing during this pandemic, and building that into participatory politics, um can against the odds overthrow those powerful and nefarious forces and restore harmony to the land. That's the basic idea.
Dr Rupy: It's it's really interesting with so many different things that that really do resonate with me there and I want to touch on. But prior to the pandemic, I would have thought that the the dominant theory is that the natural order of things is inequality. And and that's born out by perhaps the advent of social media where we prize those or we aspire to be like those who have the fame, who have the likes, who have the the status in society. Um but now, I think in a post-pandemic world, perhaps people will realign what our true values are and the values that actually benefit our overall wellbeing, not to mention our health as well. I mean, there's a lot of evidence that, you know, attachment and community and belonging and, you know, the opposite of alienation, which is a which is the dominant um illness of our society in the UK and and the US as well, um we've been suffering with. So, so now, I think it's even more of an opportunity to really change that that story that we tell ourselves in society and and re-establish what our values should be.
George Monbiot: Yeah, no, I I think it is. I mean, it's, you know, it's a terrible crisis and and you will have seen the most appalling suffering. You know, we we know that it's really, really hammering people this. And it has exposed many of the weaknesses of the system that we're in. You know, a government which didn't want to govern, which was basically tearing itself apart, the self-hating state saying the state shouldn't exist basically. And we suddenly discover, oh my God, we need the state. We desperately need the state. We need good government. We need competent government. We need people who actually care about others in government. Um, you know, which that would be a nice thing, wouldn't it? To have empathetic people in government. Um, who who don't just sort of dismiss it all as as, oh well, you know, we'll get herd immunity and if thousands of people die, yeah, thousands of people die. They're going to die anyway, eventually. So what's the problem? Which has unfortunately, you know, some people really literally been the attitude. I mean, the most extreme case being Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil who who literally said, so what? when he was confronted with with the numbers of dead. And and you know, it's a peculiar interesting thing that there's, as you probably know, there's a huge amount of psychological work, um also at anthropology, in in neuroscience, in um evolutionary science, showing that the old story we tell ourselves, the sort of Hobbesian story that we're fundamentally selfish and greedy, we're all at war with each other, just doesn't stack up at all. I mean, a lot of experimental work, masses of of science on this showing that, yeah, we've all got some selfishness and greed in us, but they are not our dominant values. Our dominant values are much more about togetherness, about cooperating, about creating a nice um social setting for ourselves and those around us, working together, um um kindness to others, family, community, these are our dominant values. And we've been told a lie on this. I mean, a total lie about who we are. But one of the reasons we think we're these selfish and greedy people is that a very high proportion of those who govern us are psychologically atypical. I mean, broadly speaking, we're a society of altruists governed by psychopaths. And and the question which keeps occurring to me is, why do we let this happen? Why does this keep happening? You know, you look around the world and you just see a whole load of really damaged and strange and wholly atypical people governing nations full of great people with tremendous potential and intelligence and empathy and kindness towards others who could do so much better job than they're doing. Why do we elect these buffoons constantly to govern us? And and that's, you know, a big question we we should all be asking ourselves at the moment.
Dr Rupy: It's it's interesting you you you say that because I think that's essentially why people have an apathy towards the political system, quote unquote. Um because we are governed by people who don't have the same perhaps altruistic values that we share as a community. We're sold this idea that we are competitive and we should be individualistic, even though, and I see this from an evolutionary perspective, it would have been absolutely impossible for the human race to exist if we were of that mindset because, you know, we're not incredible predators. We're not, you know, we don't have the attributes of a normal predator to survive in a in a wild environment. Um so we had to work together. And there's lots of neurobiological evidence to suggest that we work better um when we have attachment, when we have um connection, physical connection with our with our families and communities. So this I think uh this actually breeds a lot of apathy towards the political system because when you look at your ballot list and you look through the names and you look at their backgrounds, you don't resonate with them at all. And this is something I think needs to change going forward, but I just don't know how. And I think a lot of people listening to this will will will resonate with will echo that.
George Monbiot: Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's partly that the system almost inevitably produces candidates like that. You know, for a start, in in a lot of places, you need a lot of money if you're going to succeed, if you're going to get anywhere. And the people who are good at raising money are often the last possible people you would want representing you. Because either they're extremely rich already or all their friends are extremely rich or they're prepared to suck up to billionaires and corporations to get that money. And you think, no, that's exactly the opposite to who we need in charge. Because we need them, you know, representing the people, not the billionaires. And and so that's part of it. Um it's also, you know, it is this remote system. And a remote system, a system that's remote from our lives, that's not on a day-to-day basis controlled by us, is a system which is very easy to take over, to capture by by an elite of any kind. Um and and it it sort of is almost set up for ownership by elites. And so we yeah, end up alienated not just from the individual characters, but you know, from from the whole setup really. And when you look at how it could be done, like for instance, the participatory budgeting that was done on a on a big scale for about 15 years in Porto Alegre in Brazil, or like um the Better Reykjavik program in Iceland, a very similar thing, Desidi Madrid in in Spain, where um cities are basically run by the people. Um and with this really interesting, innovative, participatory ways of doing it, nowadays using um um um new communications technologies, you know, which really lend themselves very well to grassroots democracy. You just ask yourself, why the hell does it still have to be like this? Why do we have this sort of cobweb medieval system in this country with all the sort of black rods and the sergeants at arms, you know, and all this stupidity, all these people wandering around in gaiters with sort of frilly ruffs and gold braid. It's like, this is ridiculous. This is if if you designed something to be more alienating, you know, visually and in terms of its whole tenor and character, you could not do a better job than that. It says, they exist in this bubble which is totally impenetrable to the normal person. You know, we can't even understand what the hell's going on, let alone we can't physically get there, you know, you're barred. I mean, you know, one of the main parliamentary buildings is even called Portcullis House, you know, a Portcullis is what keeps you out. And and it's and and it and it just everything about it is wrong if you want buy-in, if you want people to actually feel this belongs to me. This is a system that I'm part of and that is part of me. And so, you know, and and I I I continue to think that we need representative democracy alongside participatory. I don't want a pure system of either kind. The representative side also needs massively to be reformed and changed. It needs to look like us. You know, to look like the diversity of society and the the not just all the different people, but all the different ways of living and ways of being. It looks like nothing that the rest of us have anything to do with. I mean, it literally is a culture of its own which which looks as far removed from our lives as it could possibly be, unless you're one of those people who do go around in fancy dress all the time with ruff and tights and and and gold braid, you know, carrying some massive fancy bit of gold hardware in your hand. It's so ridiculous. It makes me so angry. You just see this and you think, yeah, you know, you're saying it's tradition, you know, they say, oh, it's tradition. And you say, no, no, actually, that tradition has a purpose, which is to shut us out and to keep it within the sphere of the elites, to make sure that that that orbit is not something that we penetrate.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. And I see these sort of like, you know, and I'm glad you used the word tradition there because I think, you know, I see that on a micro level and a macro level. We see that within the healthcare system. We've always done this this this way and this is why we do it without really questioning why we do it that way. It's it's one of the reasons why we still use fax machines in the NHS, which is absolutely it drives me mad every time. And I work in like a a very good trust, a well-funded trust as well, that is averse to uh progress electronically that will have direct impact on on patient care. And I think, you know, we see this every step of the way within the NHS. Um but one of the things I wanted to talk about and and it was important there because you you mentioned how um the reason why we have these political figures um that carry the same characteristic because they suck up or they they come from wealth or or or, you know, they have links with wealth. But um what we saw in America with Bernie Sanders the first time around anyway, was this concept of big organizing. And it's the first time I've actually heard of this and it really got me excited because I think what we could witness in a post-pandemic era is the realization that big organization can have an impact across different uh industries and beyond politics in the way we currently see politics right now.
George Monbiot: Yeah, no, absolutely right. So big organizing is this idea that instead of professionalizing a political campaign or indeed any sort of campaign or any sort of movement where you have this sort of core of professionals who are going to do do the job for you and you hire them and you pay them to do it, you delegate the vast majority of tasks to volunteers who then delegate to more volunteers and create these sort of traveling waves of of of of activism and action. Um and um and basically you have this incredibly devolved system based on what the pioneers of it called radical trust. You know, the standard political model is you have this highly centralized political party which says, right, here are what here's what we're going to do. We're going to micromanage everything down to the nearest detail. If you want to volunteer, you can stuff envelopes or you can knock on doors. That's it. You know, and people still volunteer because, you know, people really do believe in politics, they want democratic change and that's a great thing. But it's very thin involvement. You know, it's it's it's quite insulting really to people's intelligence that this is all we're going to allow you to do. Whereas the Sanders campaign pioneered this thing which was actually picked up by the Corbin campaign also in 2017 and we saw two very near misses there starting from a position of real disadvantage. They very nearly scraped in both of them. It's all gone a bit wrong subsequently, but but we saw those two um campaigns using this extraordinary new method of basically saying, right, we're going to set the general tone and direction from the center, but um instead of raising huge amounts of money and hiring a huge staff, we're going to do it all on a shoestring budget. We're going to delegate really important tasks to volunteers, not being paid at all, to set up local networks, set up local meetings, um set up the whole sort of phone banking idea, um all of those sort of communications networks and stuff. And then they in turn delegate that to to smaller local more local bodies who in turn delegate it to others. People can just set up new parts of the system. And when it works, it works incredibly well. This was also incidentally the model that Extinction Rebellion has used to to great effect, very effectively indeed in becoming this very powerful force very quickly indeed from a standing start. Um and and and in theory at any rate, a sort of voluntary network like that can beat machine politics. It can beat billionaire politics, but they haven't quite got it right yet. Or we haven't quite got it right yet. You know, it needs refining. Um in Sanders's the Sanders campaign very nearly got there, but I think part of the problem and I think also with the Corbin campaign was that you had this sort of this real split between the traditionalists, the sort of, you know, traditional centrally organized socialist approach where this is the way we do it, this is the way we've always done it, not quite getting what the new people were doing, which was, you know, you get young, often very techy people saying, look, there's this great new app I've developed which can allow us to do this. I say, what's an app? You know, it's and and so there's a real sort of cultural chasm on within both of those campaigns. And you know, it was bridged to an extent, but it it wasn't like it wasn't as streamlined as it could have been. With Extinction Rebellion, we didn't see the cultural chasm. It was much more streamlined and and you know, much they really, really got big organizing. They really understood how it can work and and pioneered new aspects of it. So it's very much a model in in process which, you know, is it'll never be completed because society will never be completed. You just sort of keep experimenting, you keep pushing it forward. But I think it's got enormous potential and we're only just beginning to explore it.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. And I and I hopefully that will, you know, this, if there is going to be a positive that to come out of this pandemic will be a catalyst towards those ideas and actually how we can instigate social change on these different initiatives. Um and I also wanted to touch on this concept of the doughnut economy, which I believe you borrowed from another book that you mentioned in in the book you wrote. I've never I've never come across that before, but it really did appeal to me because I think, you know, I I've been sold this idea and I think we've all been sold this idea that for a society to function, we need to have a constant level of growth. And that doesn't really uh entertain the health of the environment, which therefore has a knock-on effect on the health of our society as well. Um so I I wanted to ask you a little bit about what a doughnut economy is and how you think we could do this in a in a uh post-crisis or post-pandemic world.
George Monbiot: Yeah. So, so this is um the work um of Kate Raworth, a a fantastic economist who um has really sort of pioneered this idea of um how to make sure that everyone's needs are met without bursting through planetary boundaries. And you know, there has, I mean, in in fairness, there's been quite a lot of work on this before, but she's pulled it together in a really beautiful way. Um and in a visual way. The reason it's called doughnut economics is that she she has a diagram which is like an American doughnut with a hole in the middle. And the hole is the social floor through which we shouldn't fall. Um set by the sustainable development goals, you know, everyone should have um good shelter, good food, good education, good health care, good sanitation, good um uh uh enough political power, good gender relations, you know, all of those basics of a good life. That no one should fall below that hole. And the outer ring of the doughnut is the planetary boundaries. How how much um greenhouse gases can we produce before we broach those boundaries? How how how much nitrogen can can we use? How how much uh biodiversity loss can the world stand? These things which have been set by scientists as a sort of outer limits we shouldn't breach. And unfortunately, you know, we're breaching them left, right and center. And she's saying, right, let's imagine an economics which lives within between those two boundaries. Um so between the inner ring and the outer ring. That's the the safe space in which we should be living, where we can have, you know, human wellbeing within a thriving web of life. And then she tries to build an economics around that notion of of that safe space. And and I just think the way she's pulled it together and presented it is is really compelling. And so do a lot of other people. There's a lot of cities now which are picking up doughnut economics. Amsterdam recently announced that um after the pandemic, that's going to be its economic direction. Um and and quite a few other cities around the world are are are now using it and developing it. So I think there'll be we'll see a lot more of it and that's a really positive thing.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, I'm I'm really excited to see and hopefully, hopeful that we we can have like a new era of progressive politics that really does recognize those social values that I think a lot of people are recognizing themselves. Um and maybe some more accidental activists as well. I mean, I I kind of regard myself after this conversation as an accidental activist without really realizing that I was instigating some change on perhaps a bigger level or inspiring other people. Um but, you know, with the rise of social initiatives and things that you mentioned in your book as well, um I think, you know, people will realize that actually they have a lot of um impetus and a lot of um power. Um one thing uh I wanted to ask you about is is uh how are you personally coping actually through this uh time period and what has uh what is in your suite of self-care tools to help you get through this time?
George Monbiot: Thank you, Rupy. Well, look, I'm massively luckier than most. I mean, I really am. You know, in one, um I've basically been self-isolating for 57 years, you know. I I I do my own thing. I work from home. Um I keep myself quite good company. Yeah. Um I'm very lucky in that um um you know, we all really get on with in my family, which also makes a huge difference. You know, I can't imagine what it would be like to be basically stuck indoors with people you don't get on with. Um we've got a small garden, which makes a difference. Most importantly for me at the moment, we've got an allotment, which years ago uh with friends, we planted up with fruit trees. So we've got like 40 mature fruit trees on this allotment. And getting down there to manage it, well, it's put it this way, it's going to be the best kept allotment in history by the time this lockdown is finished. Um one of my one of my allotment neighbors pointed out that actually working in your allotment is is exercise, uh work and obtaining food. So it ticks all three of the boxes for why you're allowed out. So technically, we could be there all day. And um and it's um and and so it's a bit of a lifeline for me. Uh I mean, I'm I'm finding the balancing difficult because um um I'm I'm teaching because the schools are closed. Um I've got an eight-year-old. Um uh we locked down together with um one of our neighbors, part of the whole community thing being developed around here. Um so from the very beginning, we said, right, we are an isolation unit, us two families, um because um their daughter is best friends with our daughter, and they would both go nuts, I think, without each other, but with each other, they're fine. They're really great. And we've got four parents to teach them. Um so we can split it up a bit. One of them is a professional teacher, which helps enormously. But we can all bring in something different. And so I've been teaching, I've been using the sort of sort of version of the Finnish model, teaching ecology, sort of project-based learning where you use it then, you use sort of ecological um experiments and and learning to go go into maths, to go into science, into geography, into literacy, into all sorts of things, painting, all sorts of other areas. Um and that's been working reasonably well. I mean, I it's challenging. What's challenging is sort of moving between being a parent and a teacher and saying, right, I'm a teacher now. So you've got to listen to me like you listen to a teacher and you can't treat me like like like you would treat me as a parent. And that's that's a struggle, you know. And sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong. Obviously, I've got a huge amount to learn about how to teach. Um but, you know, it's an education for all of us. Um so that's been that's been good mostly, frustrating occasionally. Um but at the same time, um I'm um I'm researching a book and part of what I wanted to do for the book is um learning soil ecology. I'm trying to get up pretty close to degree level on soil ecology. And it just happens that's the one kind of ecology you can do at home. You can get more or less a complete picture in your own garden or better still in in our allotment because there you've got a nicely structured soil. And I've just been spending hours at a time with my head in a hole basically. Yeah, yeah. And it is fascinating. I mean, it's really mind-blowing. I mean, the soil is like, you know, I thought I've I've got to my age and never done this properly before because once you're in it, it's like snorkeling. You're in this other world, this completely other world. You know, you have to learn about what all the different soil organisms, soil animals and things are, learn what you're seeing. And as soon as you do, it's like, this is just unbelievable. This is fantastic. I mean, it's really, really mind-blowing. So I've been, you know, that's been a good project to do. I've been enjoying that.
Dr Rupy: I I I'm I'm absolutely fascinated by that. I'm I'm getting a couple of guests on to talk about regenerative farming, the importance of the uh the the biome of the soil. Um and I know a couple of colleagues that I perhaps should introduce you to as well that have been studying um the ecology of the soil for for their entire life. So and I think hopefully that permeates into mainstream discussion because I think it's uh along with um viral pandemics, uh the the the literal threat of um microbial resistance that I think is going to be, and not to catastrophize, but I think it's going to be even worse over the next 5 to 10 years. And you know, as someone who's witnessed over the my short, relatively short medical career of just over 10 years, um the progress by which we've started using uh third or fourth line antibiotics in my short, it's it's that's really scary when you when you put it like when I was a junior doctor in 2009, um we would have to call the microbiology consultant and have another consultant confirm that they were going to use this agent. Now it's become first line in some hospitals, which is really blows my mind. But um the importance of the soil and how that provides nutrition to the plants, which therefore provides nutrition to us, that really needs a lot more attention. So I can't wait for that piece of work. I think that's uh very, very well well worth it and um a lot of people hopefully change their minds about the way they eat and and see the environment in that respect.
George Monbiot: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we we I'm very glad you raised the issue of antibiotic resistance because it keeps me awake at night as well. And and it is mind-blowing in the three quarters of the world's antibiotics are used on farms. You know, and and most of them not even to make animals better, but to stop them from getting ill, used prophylactically, put in their feed because when you cram so many animals together in a chicken farm or a pig farm or something, they're bound to get terrible plagues. And so it's just this is total madness. This is squandering this precious resource. And as you say, it's just, you know, I mean, I've had eight um lots of procedures over the last two years because I had cancer and then um that which has got sorted out thanks to the NHS, wonderful, amazing people. Um but then I had complications arising from the operation, so I had all sorts of stuff going on. And every time I had to take antibiotics. In in total in those two years, I've taken 13 courses of antibiotics. I would I would have died 13 times over, probably, or at least about 10 times over if it weren't for those courses of antibiotics. And and you know, as you know, you can't do surgery without antibiotics. You can't have chemotherapy without antibiotics. You can't have safe childbirth without antibiotics. And you know, we are totally stuffed if we lose our antibiotics. And yet, it's like everything else, we're just squandering it. This amazing resource. What what, you know, what I mean, collectively, you know, individually, we can be really intelligent, but when it comes to the systems under which we work, those systems are really stupid. Yeah. And and so this and it's again comes down to this sort of this sort of the wrong people being in charge and setting up the wrong institutions for us to work through, institutions which say, yeah, it's fine to just keep slapping antibiotics all over pigs. Yeah, yeah.
Dr Rupy: And on that positive note, uh I'm going to let you get back to teaching your uh your children uh using project work. Um it's been fascinating chatting to you, George, honestly. And uh I really do um commend you for your work and your continued activism and you know, it's been amazing to chat to you and I I can't wait for the next book. I think it's going to be brilliant.
George Monbiot: Thanks so much, Rupy. It's really lovely to talk and look, really good luck with all you're doing. I I'm I'm massively admire the the the way you're sort of, you know, doing what, you know, the rest of us probably wouldn't have the courage to do um in the NHS. So, thank you and keep up the great work.
Dr Rupy: Appreciate it, George. Thank you so much. I want to end this podcast with a question and it's one that I pose myself as well. What are we going to reward in a post-pandemic era? Is it those with material wealth, the loudest voice, social influence, or is it those who seek to build community and foster relationships? And this isn't just in political spheres, it's within our our own unique and direct communities. And this is an opportunity to build a future that I think that we all want to be part of. And I would encourage you to read some more articles on the subject and see and what social initiatives you can be part of because I think we can all be accidental activists, um whether we like it or not. Um please do check out monbiot.com. There's a whole bunch of articles that George has eloquently written. Not a word is wasted and uh I think uh he's one of the best writers of our time. Um his career that we didn't even get to explore, um covers undercover journalism, investigative journalism, as well as uh environmental activism. And he has a lot of opinions, I think, on the environment that I think are are well worth listening to. And uh like I said, I can't wait for his next book as well. It's going to be uh definitely um game-changing for a lot of people who aren't really considering uh the unfolding crises that again, not to catastrophize, um that could yield even worse issues going forward. So on that positive note, I hope uh you enjoyed this podcast and uh I will catch you next week.
