Alternative Editorial: What Is A Good Country?
San Jose, Costa Rica
Watching the mainstream news can be entrancing. Less these days for the seductive nature of promised futures: Boris has lost his magicians hat, maybe permanently.
It’s more for the fascination of watching previously rigid structures now in freefall – not unlike a controlled explosion on a building site. Our own UK government has lost its authority regarding the pandemic. That same government is re-writing the basic rules of citizenshipwithout using the basic rules of democracy. Europe is losing its own certainty on human rights. Meantime USA’s waning soft powerthreatens the American Dreamitself.
These are indeed interesting times - yet breaking the trance of news is vital. Partly for our mental health. Only the most secure - even from the Oppostition benches- can watch such destruction with equanimity. Whether that is a physical security that can withstand instability in the material environment. Or the security of strong convictions, knowing already where alternative forms of structure can be found, ready to occupy them.
The trance should be broken for our spiritual health as well. Giving too much attention to collapse robs us of our resources to create. We get emotionally hijacked – trapped in the fight or flight loop, cheering or lamenting what is happening – which can be exhausting. We also find ourselves trapped in the Us v Them frame which contradicts any broader sense of our shared humanity.
How excruciating, at this charitable time of year, to hear demands for the right to have Christmas on the back of damning half the population for not sharing your views, whatever they are. Not very Jesus.
Tearing our attention away from that challenging confrontation, this week we alighted momentarily on the wonderful phenomenon of Costa Rica. The country is evolving what AUK founding member Simon Anholt would call ‘the Good Country’strategy. As regular readers will know, Costa Rica possesses abundant resources of regenerative practice in the face of climate crisis. For example, Eduard Muller’s Regenerativa (blogged here) links reclaiming the biodiversity of the soil to reclaiming the local economy, forging new kinds of tourism at the national level.
The energy of projects like these has made CR a strong attractor for creatives looking for enterpreneurial and developmentalpetri dishes. On the one hand, CR has won a reputation for being the ‘Silicon Valley’ of Latin America. On the other, it has become the new favourite retreat of the spiritual adventurists. Last year FemmeQ held its conference therehighlighting the centrality of feminine intelligencein the regenerative process, with current plans to hold it there again in 2022.
In recognition of this burgeoning planet-friendly industry, the Republic of Costa Rica became one of the first recipients of the ‘Earthshot Prize’– judged by David Attenborough and awarded by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge – for innovation in saving the environment and, by extension, the human race.
Last week we reportedon the founding of the Inner Development Goalsas a vital complement to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, widely accepted as the rubric for socio-planetary health. Now, through the wizardry of multiple actors working in concert – including our long term collaborators Tomas Bjorkmanand Simon Anholt– Costa Rica has got on board in a major way.
On Friday December 10, Maria del Pilar Garrido Gonzalo, CR’s Minster of Planning and Gustavo Segura, their Minister of Tourism, signed a pledge on behalf of the Republic of Costa Rica – committing to the development of the IDGs, to complement and help execute the SDGs, over the next ten years.
They were joined by Jose Vicente Troya, the CR representative of the UNDP, Jan Artem Erikkson CEO of the IDGs and a host of on-line speakers. These included UCLA’s Professor Dan Siegel, Executive Director of the Mindsight Instituteand MIT’s Peter Senge, the systems scientist and Founder of the Society for Organisational Learning. All important names from the last three decades of psycho-social learning.
By taking such a public step, CR has amplified and accelerated its soft power– becoming known internationally for its ‘Good’ intentions. There is no doubt that this will draw more people and investment their way. But more than that, it offers a new story of possibility at the national and international level that can be copied and replicated by others.
Remember how Bhutan’s decision to replace Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with the Gross National Happiness (GNH) made waves around the world? That was an earlier example of many described by Anholt in his book The Good Country Equation– initiatives for which he was often the instigator.
What we see taking shape in this small country is a whole-system, I-We-World approach to transformation. Linking the development of the whole human, internal and external, in relation to a wholistic concept of community and governance, which in turn connects to global dynamics and planetary impact. What we would call a recognisablefractal of regenerative agency.
Does that mean that Costa Rica will now sail into the sunset as a beautiful example for the rest to follow? That’s unlikely, because the context for its success is largely the world we described at the beginning of this editorial. One in which the largest global systems are in the process of deconstructing themselves—becoming, as Buckminster Fuller might describe, obsolete.
Because of the nature of our inter-connectedness in the network era, there are only very thin boundaries between what can be curated as an experimental space and everything else. Moreover, every element – from individuals to institutions – is deeply entangled in a past we are trying to leave behind.
Yet with the inner development goals, there is at least the intention of acceptance and humility on this point. Development includes consciousness of how we are all implied and still colluding in the toxic past. We are all embarking on a learning journey together: none are exempt from the need to ‘upgrade’ ourselves to be fit for a flourishing planet.
For example, at one point in Friday’s event, the meeting chair asked UNDP’s Ulrika Modeer how we might share the benefits of IDG’s with ‘those less privileged’ in less developed parts of the world. She was quick to respond: it is often those very places where people have more access to spiritual tools and more practices of inner resilience than in the over-developed world of the growth economy.
The chair took her correction with grace—and in that moment we could see the bigger potential of inner development goals. Rather than trying to lead the way from the North, this initiative has to (and will) be about the global leaders of the North (and the past) modelling much greater listening and learning from the South than ever before.
While this national-level experiment has the potential for unprecedented global impact, it is largely a reflection of smaller similar developments in CANs (community agency networks)everywhere at city, town, neighbourhood and group levels. The ways that Transition Towns or Ecovillages prioritise personal development, deep listening to each other, Open Space technology for planning—all of these are dependent upon the skills that IDG are offering.
Compare that to the rigidly bureaucratic, hierarchical, male-dominated spaces of decision making, designed for antagonistic competition, that comprise our governments today. Getting the job done – no matter how much riding roughshod over complex issues this entails – is the most attractive proposition they can offer.
Will you read about the Good Country experiment taking place in Costa Rica on the front pages of your newspaper? Not immediately: but if the soft power strategy works, you will hear it talked about on your social media, and shared as images all over the web. Eventually it will be picked up as a source of great practice by municipalities, local councils and bioregional networks everywhere. Give it a year and some smaller countries – maybe Scotland or Holland - will be trying to follow suit.
Before you know it, whoever is PM after Boris, will claim the idea as his (just maybe her) own.