The Return of the City State (and the Slow Death of Nation States)

Living it up in 14th century Siena – Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government.

After a turbulent 2017 full of Trump’s tantrums and Britain’s shambolic lurch towards Brexit, what might 2018 bring us? In this article written for Wired magazine’s annual publication, The Wired World in 2018,  I argue that we may well see the return of the Renaissance city state…

THE RETURN OF THE CITY STATE

The 279 US city mayors who pledged to support the Paris Agreement on climate change in June 2017 are the latest sign of a trend that will crystallise in 2018: the growing prominence and autonomy of cities around the world, on a scale not seen since the age of Renaissance city-states such as Florence or Venice.

An increasing proportion of the world’s population is living in megacities, from the 12-million-population Greater Sao Paulo to the Taiheiyō Belt megalopolis in Japan, which is home to more than 80 million people. The United Nations predicts that by 2030 there will be 41 megacity clusters containing two-thirds of the world’s population.

These cities, which are the economic powerhouses of the countries in which they exist, are becoming political powerhouses too. They’ve been organising into interdependent networks, such as the Global Parliament of Mayors, the C40 global network of cities committed to acting on climate change, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities. These networks have accumulated enough organisational experience and influence to make a significant mark in 2018 in international arenas such as COP24, the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Poland in December 2018.

We may also see new initiatives of what the international-relations expert Parag Khanna calls “diplomacity”, where cities make independent trade agreements with one another, much like the cities of the Hanseatic League did in northern Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Megacities around the world. From Parag Khanna’s book Connectography.

The growing autonomy and influence of cities has risen due to several factors. One is the global trend towards devolution. In England and Wales, for instance, there were no directly elected mayors at the start of the millennium. Now there are 23 and their electoral contests are attracting an increasing number of high-profile candidates.

A second trend is that cities are leading tech innovation, such as the smart-bus network to be introduced in the Chinese smart city of Zhuzhou in 2018. They are also at the forefront of energy transitions from fossil fuels to renewables. For example, the Indian government has created a masterplan for establishing 50 solar cities and the state of Chhattisgarh is due to make huge investments in local solar generation in 2018 as part of its Development in Solar Cities Programme.

A final, overarching trend is a growing recognition that nation-states are – compared with cities – unfit for modern challenges. They have failed to deal effectively with issues arising from migration, climate change, wealth inequality and terrorism. This failure partly explains the declining faith in traditional political parties in many countries and in the value of democratic government itself. But it is also behind the rise of cities, which are much more effective at pragmatic problem-solving on issues ranging from flood management to dealing with increasing numbers of refugees.

It’s worth remembering that nation-states are a new historical invention and have only been the dominant form of political organisation for the past two centuries. Cities, in contrast, are the greatest and most enduring social technology ever invented by humankind. That is why cities such as Istanbul have lasted thousands of years, while empires and nations have risen and fallen around them.

It is true that nations will not disappear quickly or completely, but we may remember 2018 as the year of the return of the Renaissance city-state. Get ready for bold initiatives from cities and their mayors in areas such as global warming, while national political parties bicker with each other and intergovernmental conferences remain locked in stalemate. The ancient ideal of the polis is back.

Roman Krznaric is a social philosopher. His latest book is Carpe Diem Regained.

The article originally appeared in The Wired World in 2018

Welcome to the Empathy Wars (or Why Peter Singer is Wrong)

Peter Singer and Roman Krznaric at Blackwell's Bookshop Oxford June 2015The empathy critics are on the rampage. Led by the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, the anti-empathy brigade claim that empathy is a weak or even distorting force in moral life and public affairs. The most recent convert is Peter Singer, perhaps the world’s most influential moral philosopher and author of classic texts such as Animal Liberation. In a recent public conversation I had with him as part of the Empathy Festival at Blackwell’s Bookshop Oxford (see photo), he argued that ethics should be led by rational thinking rather than empathy (of course, I didn’t agree).

In response to Singer’s claims, I have written an article at Open Democracy, called Welcome to the Empathy Wars. It makes the case that critics like Bloom and Singer are fundamentally mistaken, particularly because they fail to recognise the crucial role that cognitive empathy plays in establishing human rights and social justice.

Do have a look at the article, which is based on my book Empathy, and make up your own mind. Whose side are you in the Empathy Wars?

 

Is Empathy the Cure for Our Consumer Addictions?

Empathy Effect cover

How can we harness the power of empathy to tackle the really big global problems like wealth inequality, ecological crisis and our addiction to consumer culture? You’ll find the answers in my new report for Friends of the Earth called The Empathy Effect: How Empathy Drives Common Values, Social Justice and Environmental Action.

The report, which builds on my book Empathy (but goes far beyond it) is part of Friends of the Earth’s exciting Big Ideas project that is drawing together the key ideas and insights we need to create a sustainable future for humankind. It challenges the belief that empathy is a fuzzy feel-good emotion and argues that with a bit of smart thinking it can be transformed into an innovative and powerful campaigning tool.

Here are four fascinating facts from the report, just to give you a taster:

  • The wealthier you are the less empathic you are likely to be, and people with psychopathic tendencies who lack empathy are four times more commonly found amongst senior executives than in the ordinary workforce.
  • Teaching empathy skills to school kids (yes, it can be done) not only makes them value relationships more, but increases their motivation to take action on environmental issues and immunises them against the lure of consumer culture.
  • A review of more than 500 studies showed that in 96% of cases, face-to-face contact between people of different ethnic and religious groups reduced prejudices and social divisions, and built community solidarity.
  • Over 7 million people have visited the empathy-based exhibit Dialogue in the Dark, which challenges assumptions and stereotypes around disability.

Overall, the report argues that building a world where we care more about the issues that matter to all of us – from grinding poverty to environmental collapse – requires using empathy to create a cultural shift from buying to belonging, where we jettison the hyperindividualism of the twentieth century and start to take collective values seriously. But there are no quick-fix solutions. We need to embark on a generational project of ‘deep lobbying’ that overhauls our education systems and sets us on course for a more empathic civilisation.

You can download the full report here.

Roman Krznaric is the author of Empathy, and founder of the Empathy Museum and Empathy Library.

Is global empathy in decline?

Syrian woman and children, Aleppo, 2013Is global empathy in decline? Are our societies becoming less caring and more narcissistic? Have we become numb to media images of human suffering, such as photos of children traumatised by air strikes in Syria? In this article in the Guardian, I explore the recent decline of empathy in Australia, as well as other countries such as the UK and USA – and try to offer some innovative solutions for reversing the trend.

The article is based on my new book, Empathy: A Handbook for Revolution.

You can find information about my upcoming book events here, including talks in London, Oxford, Amsterdam and Zagreb. Hope to see you at one of them – come and say hello!

Can empathy help resolve violent conflicts? Mr Blair thinks so

Empathy has a reputation as a fuzzy, feel-good emotion that many people associate in some vague way with everyday kindness. So it comes as something as a surprise when major political figures start talking about it as a key to resolving violent conflicts and peace building. This was exactly the point that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair made in a recent article in the Guardian. Continue reading

Four Ways to Rethink ‘Having It All’ (Without Leaning In)

sheryl-sandberg-time-magazine-coverHere’s an article I just wrote for the Wall Street Journal on the dilemmas of balancing work and family life. Is Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, author of Leaning In, right to think that women can ‘have it all’ if only they really believe in themselves? My approach is not to answer the question ‘Is it possible to have it all?’ but to put it under the microscope and rethink it. (And this is an issue for men too…)

Jubilee’ve the hype? One hundred years of royal PR

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession, 1897: a masterpiece of PR

Over a million rain-soaked loyal subjects watched the Queen’s barge and a thousand support vessels bobble along the Thames this weekend to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee. And around the country many more millions joined the festivities at street parties, country fairs, community dances and cake sales.

But now the Union Jacks have been put away, we can sit back calmly and consider the big question raised by this extraordinary spectacle: How is it possible, in a modern democratic age, that 80% of British people (I’m Australian, by the way) still support the institution of monarchy – an unelected, hereditary head of state? Continue reading

The Six Habits of Highly Empathic People

This is the video of a talk I gave at the Royal Society of the Arts, which describes six ways to expand our empathic potential, drawing on everything from the empathy experiments of George Orwell to developments in industrial design, from the struggle against slavery in the eighteenth century to the Middle East crisis today. Discover why the 21st century needs to become the Age of Outrospection.


The full version of this talk is available as a podcast.

The ideas in this talk are discussed in my new book Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It.

I published an article summarising some of these ideas at the Greater Good Science Center.

The greatest meeting of strangers in history

I am in the midst of a long-term project to document instances when empathy has flowered on a mass scale and shifted the course of human history. While empathy has periodically collapsed on a collective scale – just think of colonialism in Latin America or the Holocaust – there have also been moments when it has emerged as a force for positive and radical social change. If we want to tackle today’s global crises – from wealth inequality and armed conflict to climate change and food insecurity – we need to learn from the past and understand how empathy can be harnessed as a powerful tool to shift human behaviour and ignite social action. And one of the most interesting places to look is the evacuation of British children in World War Two. Continue reading