Description

Prof Tim Jackson is a British ecological economist and professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey (personal website, twitter, wikipedia). He is the director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), a multi-disciplinary, international research consortium which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. He is also a successful playwright.

It was an extraordinarily rich and honest conversation, covering (and this is just a taste): 

• Moving from playwright to accidental economist because of the Chernobyl disaster.
• Allowing the playwright aspect to explore the conflicts within himself on the economics of prosperity.
• The struggles of being an outsider pushing at the mainstream.
• Trying to create a society based on the vastness of meaningful relationships and purposeful lives, rather than the flat, narrowness of economic growth.
• The need for partnership culture, rather than a domination one, though still with some role for competition that encourages us all to raise our game, without fearing we'll lose everything.
• Providing capability to the next generation, so voices of today have the space to speak, while having respect for how the past generations helped created that space. 
• The importance of following your north star, and treating challenges to you from the status quo as the crucible that forms you.

I make an quotation error. it was Max Plank (not Thomas Khun) who said that scientific revolutions proceed one funeral at a time. Towards the end, Tim makes a similar error: Ode: Intimations of Immortality was Wordsworth, not Tennyson.

Tim uses one swear word (f*ck) as part of a story about being rejected by mainstream economists.

Links

Latest book: Post-Growth -- Life After Capitalism

Previous book: Prosperity Without Growth (must read, by the way).

Riane Eisler

Herman Daly

Mary Douglas

Timings

0:55 - Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?

9:37 - BONUS QUESTION: Do you feel that you've combined that storytelling of being a playwright into the analytics of being an economist? 

21:00 - Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?

27:27 - BONUS QUESTION: The future Tim is trying to create, inspired by past thinking, is a society based on meaningful relationships. But has it existed in practice? And is there a practical way of getting from where we are now?

43:04 - Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?

51:14 - Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?

54:50 - Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?

57:26 - Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?

58:40 - Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?

Twitter: Powerful_Times

Website hub: here.

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Thank you for listening! -- David