The Eagle flies!
What’s an eagle to do with an ethical economy?
An Eagle Economy involves 3 core concepts:
GREEN: ethics used to be solely about people but this has now changed: it includes the whole of the planet and its creatures.
LOCAL: economies desperately need relocalising. I am not against global trade but the balance has shifted far too far toward the global: and that has had many detrimental consequences in a host of ethical areas. We need to rebalance the wider Economy so that local economies can thrive once more.
EQUALITY: more equal societies do better. This has brilliantly been proved in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett who analyse societies across the world and show this to be a pretty well universal.
Why the eagle? I live and work in Scotland: the beautiful county of Argyll: and two species of eagle have come to symbolise a Scottish sense of renewal. Scotland is well known as a European stronghold of the Golden eagle and a couple of decades ago the magnificent White-tailed eagle started breeding again here after a gap of 70 years.
But remember: it’s not just a “green” thing! Eagle stands for Equality and equality is the foundational quality of an Ethical Economy.
I am a committed Transitioner and am trying to get my local community of North Kintyre to explore the Transition concept with me. But I am anxious to ensure that Transition is not seen as a comfortable middle class preserve. I see Transition as all about ethics and equality. So it is by its nature political. Rebuilding local economies must mean redistribution of income within communities as well as between communities. As well as improving the lot of those sweating away in other countries to provide us with cheap goods we also need to focus on our own communities and foster greater equality here, in our own back yard.
This sounds Socialist – and is – so I think that us Transitioners should not be afraid to use this word as it has a long history and has much to remind people of. I refer you to an excellent article in last Saturday’s Guardian review by the historian Tony Judt, who says:
“IF we had to identify just one general consequence of the intellectual shift that marked the last third of the 20th Century, it would surely be the worship of the private sector and, in particular, the cult of privatisation.” He goes on to show how this has resulted in far greater levels of inequality. The graphs shown in The Spirit Level prove this.
I believe we need a national sense of renewal which involves the state once again taking on its ethical obligations. We as Transitioners are all for empowering communities but this power must be clearly underpinned by ethical considerations. Unless we campaign for a reinvigorated, ethical state we will just be going it alone, and some middle class enclaves will thrive whilst the rest go under.
