Learning to speak and swim through our emotions

By Anupriya Dasgupta

For an organism to survive and grow, especially in an ecological crisis, it is imperative to understand its environment as well as it can. Our social environment is one such physical place. In its deeper parts, we communicate through something fluid, where our sophisticated intellectual apparatus turns to the superiority of the physical, embodied, and emotional senses. Here we find an emotional ecology, a natural ecosystem, which facilitates social life. Navigating this ecology requires a more sophisticated and sensitive system than the one easily described in words. It is easy to miss, because it resists being experienced in words. 

I grew up in an incredibly patriarchal social environment whose abrasion and violence did not allow for my girlhood to exist and grow safely. I could not say how I felt. Society relegated me to make myself alone, in the quietness of my mind, unknowingly subjecting my growing body, my growing senses, to social erasure. Emotionally, I stayed awake and alert as my body navigated its fluid depths and taught itself its intricacies through evolutionary attunement, need, and curiosity. Socially, I grew mute. The part of my body that needed to integrate my emotional learnings into my rational mind became inactive because I did not exercise it. I did not use my voice. I hardly even knew it.       

Socially, I started eroding, but emotionally, I was so alive. Emotionally, I experienced life like any other child, and eventually had no choice but to make room to express my feelings, which were too large for my small body to carry. When no one wanted to speak to me, I spoke through music. When no one understood my fear, I looked curiously towards my nightmares. When no one wanted to acknowledge my anger, I busied myself with books, so I could understand the world that was not being truthfully revealed to me. On my own, I started to discover feminist ideas, historical analyses, and I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a schooling that fed me good writing and teaching. Yet, emotionally, I was still alone. Learning appeased me for a time, but I did not know what to do with this education. 

Somehow, it felt like my education would free me, but it never did. I clung to systems analyses to help me figure out the causal relationships that make up my world. Why do men and women treat each other a certain way? Why is our social system so entrenched in our economic system, or is it the other way round? Why do I feel compelled to think about my own life and experiences as something to extract from so I can turn it into commercial art? Such questions invoke heavy realities, and to deal with their weight, systems thinking itself became a kind of god worship activity for me. As long as I had a way to analyse why something was happening, almost mathematically, I lived under the illusion that I was somehow safe from it. Yet, I still remained who I was, a hypersensitive, racialised, queer, young woman living in an abrasive social environment. I had the whole world at my feet, but I had no voice. I was alone and I was afraid. My emotional reality was obscured to me, because in my social reality it had found no place. I was erased.   

As I grew older, I discovered that there were other people like me. In moments of shared tenderness, I could feel myself. In moments where others revealed tender parts of themselves, I could recognise myself. Parts of me that had long felt vacant started to spark with the excitement of being met. I became aware that there were parts of me that were unknown to my conscious mind. I became aware that these parts could be shared. I discovered the meaning behind my emptiness – it was the embodied memory of something true that had come to life in the past, had a physical effect in my emotional ecology, but had disintegrated before I could make sense of it, before I could speak and sound it out so it could find resonance in the social environment. 

When I think about it like this, I feel like a whale. That to navigate our social environments, we use something akin to echolocation. You speak to me, in words or in action, and it has an effect on me through my emotional ecology, this fluid space we share. I pick this up through my emotional senses and integrate it into my conscious mind. Then I speak to you, in words or in action, perhaps I thoughtfully choose silence, and through my reaction and resonance you understand where I am and who I am, and you also understand where you are and who you are. Through emotional interaction, we learn what our environment feels like, where there is softness that can allow us to grow closer and be emotional together, and where there is hardness that tells us to stay tough and more alert. This way we discover if we are welcome in each other’s waters. This way we discover community. With community, we become cultured.

To Improve Wellbeing We Must Abandon Failed Economic Ideas

Do you recall this lot?

  • Margaret Thatcher,
  • John Major,
  • Tony Blair,
  • Gordon Brown,
  • David Cameron,
  • Theresa May,
  • Boris Johnson,
  • Liz Truss,
  • Rishi Sunak ,and
  • Keir Starmer.

You might be able to add Andy Burnham to that list very soon, and nothing about what I say here will change.

They all made big claims for themselves. They were:

  • Different people.
  • Different personalities.
  • Different political parties.
  • Different promises.

And yet, in one vital respect, they have all been very much the same.

Each arrived in Downing Street claiming that they could make Britain work better.

Each suggested that they had a solution to the country’s problems.

Each promised some version of renewal, reform or transformation.

And then each accepted the same economic constraints imposed by the Treasury, the Bank of England, the City of London and the neoliberal economics profession.

Those constraints are now so deeply embedded in our political culture that they are rarely recognised by most politicians, commentators or people beyond the Westminster bubble. As a result, they are almost never questioned.

They all told us that:

  • The government has no money of its own, when that is not true, as quantitative easing proved.
  • Public spending must be constrained by tax revenues, which is, again, not true, as quantitative easing has proved.
  • Deficits are dangerous, yet they all ran them over their time in office.
  • Debt, as they call savings lodged with the government, is a burden, but none of them repaid any in net terms over their time in Downing Street.
  • Financial markets must be appeased, and
  • Growth is the answer to almost every problem.

Their language changed a little, one from another.

The details were varied slightly.

Their political branding was different.

But the underlying economic story remained absolutely constant.

There was very little in most cases to choose these people, excepting maybe their relative competence in delivering the single agenda they all shared, and still share in the case of those still alive, and which they still demand be delivered.

Those outcomes they delivered were remarkably familiar:

  • Public services were allowed to deteriorate.
  • The NHS kept declining.
  • So, too, did education.
  • Infrastructure decayed.
  • Housing becomes less affordable or simply unavailable.
  • Insecurity increased.
  • Wealth accumulated at the top.
  • Communities were left behind.
  • Environmental obligations were deferred.
  • Social care was neglected.
  • Privatisation and asset sales to shrink the state continued.
  • People noticed the continuing decline in their absolute and relative well-being.

The result has been all too obvious.

The public has become frustrated.

We have blamed each of these prime ministers.

We blamed their governments.

We voted them out but replaced them with another set of politicians who promised that this time things would be different.

But why was that ever the case?

If the diagnosis remained the same, and the prescription was similar, and both were wrong, why should things have ever improved? And, they have not.

The problem facing the UK is not simply that we have had poor leaders, although that cannot be disputed, and some have been worse than others. The deeper problem is that all of them accepted an economic narrative that has repeatedly failed.

That narrative is neoliberalism. It is the belief that:

  • Markets know best.
  • Government is largely a problem.
  • Public provision is inherently inefficient,
  • Taxation is a burden, and
  • Economic success is best judged by the rate at which GDP grows.

Forty-five years on, the evidence is clear. Neoliberalism‘s promises have not been delivered. But despite that, much of the UK’s political debate is still about choosing between politicians who accept this story rather than asking whether the story itself is true.

Until we question the narrative, changing the politicians will change very little.

The issue is not who occupies Number 10.

The issue is whether we are finally prepared to abandon the failed economic ideas that have occupied Whitehall for more than four decades.

We need a new politics and a new economics. A politics of care and an economics of hope.

Those supporting Andy Burnham right now take note: he’s just the next link in this chain, destined to fail like all others of his kind.

POLITICS WITHOUT POLITICIANS BOOK REVIEW


Yale political theorist Hélène Landemore has a soft spot for shy people — the wallflowers least likely to seek or desire power. She believes shy people should play a bigger role in governing. In fact, she argues they might be key to fixing democracy.
In her new book, “Politics Without Politicians: The Case for Citizen Rule” (Thesis), Landemore makes the case that, under the right conditions, everyday people, even the shy, can govern more effectively than professional politicians.
“Modern electoral systems tend to produce a professional political class — often composed of wealthy, well-connected, and ambitious individuals — that is detached from the broader public,” said the Professor of Political Science in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “The book argues for returning to the basic ancient Greek assumptions that politics is an amateur sport, not a professional activity, in which ordinary citizens play a direct role in governing.”
Landemore advocates for citizens’ assemblies — bodies composed of randomly selected citizens who deliberate on public issues and make policy recommendations. These assemblies — examples of which have occurred in democracies across the globe — are designed to be deliberative and informed by expert testimony, she said, but ultimately guided by the citizens’ judgment

Revisiting the Challenges Facing Canadian Higher Education: The Limits of Crisis-Thinking

By Sharon Stein UBC

Are our individual and institutional responses appropriately calibrated to the scale and complexity of the moment we are actually in?

After all, we cannot “solve” planetary and geopolitical challenges at the level of curriculum, technology, or individual resilience. We cannot, and arguably should not, seek to extend an extractive system indefinitely. And when we try to do so and fail, we may erroneously conclude that we are just not trying hard enough, rather than re-evaluating our orienting premise.

Here is where the contrast between crisis-thinking and consequence-thinking can be instructive.

Crisis-thinking asks: How do we fix this system? Consequence-thinking asks: How do we live responsibly in the wake of the consequences of the system itself?

Crisis-thinking equates agency with certainty, control, and benevolence. Consequence-thinking reframes agency as our capacity to respond to uncertain, constrained, and ethically compromised conditions with discernment, reflexivity, and relational integrity, knowing we will likely make mistakes along the way and that outcomes are never guaranteed.

We are living in an in-between time. Old frameworks are still widely used, but increasingly fragile and distrusted, and new practices, possibilities, and points of intervention appear only in fragments. This is an uncomfortable place to be. It is also the most honest one available to us.

This piece has not offered a full reckoning with our contemporary moment, and with the colonial legacies that have shaped it. This is not because such a reckoning is unnecessary, but because it cannot be rushed.

However, my sense is that if higher education is to continue mattering in this transitional time, it will not be because we successfully restored what is ending, but because we learned, slowly, humbly, and imperfectly, how to reconstruct our research and teaching by asking what responsibility looks like when growth, continuity, and innocence can no longer be assumed.

View at Medium.com

JOHN RUSKIN and CLIMATE CHANGE

In 1884, John Ruskin delivered one of the first lectures to discuss climate change and make a link to industrial pollution.

Now, with the help of a group of 13- to 16-year-olds, a new exhibition Sheffield’s unrivalled Ruskin collection is taking place at the city’s Millennium Gallery.

Storm-Cloud brings together work from the Guild of St George’s Ruskin Collection and is curated by young people, and includes video work by Jake Goodall and research by the University of Sheffield to explore the legacy of Ruskin’s groundbreaking observations.

Ashley Gallant curator of the Ruskin Collection is pictured with selection of works by J.M.W Turner. Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

“Ruskin delivered his pioneering lecture, The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century, after closely observing the sky over many years and concluding that the weather was changing,” explains Ruskin curator Ashley Gallant.

“He argued that a cloud wind’ was making the weather meek and mild and unpredictable and that the filth and smoke from industry from chimneys in the north were part of the cause. It was a very, very early understanding of climate change.

“The exhibition, Storm-Cloud: The Look of the Sky, takes this lecture, which was quite controversial at the time, as a starting point to present artistic and scientific observations of our sky and climate.”

Ruskin was passionate about getting people to actually look at the world around them rather than romanticise it, as was the fashion at this time.

Ashley Gallant curator of the Ruskin Collection, Jake Goodall Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at Sheffield Hallam University and Dr Tom Payne senior lecturer in performance at Sheffield Hallam University are pictured looking at a Rain Gauge and Sunshine Recorder Card Picture taken by Yorkshire Post Photographer Simon Hulme

“Among other things he was an artist fascinated by nature and his landscapes were more like photographs than edited and beautified.”

The new display is curated by The National Saturday Club, a group of 13 to 16-year-olds who meet weekly at Millennium Gallery to enjoy creative activities.

In 2001 the Ruskin Collection moved to the Millennium Gallery. Its original home was in Walkley, created by Ruskin himself 150 years ago and curated by his friend Henry Swan.

“Our education teams feedback that young people have a lot of climate change anxiety. The Collection itself is Victorian teaching collection, and we thought this was a great opportunity to work with young people on something they really cared about,” says Gallant.

“We decided we wanted to illustrate the lectures through looking at the sky and pulled out around 300 works from the collection that had images of clouds in and then we took quotes from the lecture, and the young people organised the images into the quotes which formed the basis of the sections of the exhibition.

“We then kept going back and removing and removing until we had four really tight sections. They then came back a month later and helped decide how each section was going to look.”

The result, says Gallant, means it looks different to most museum shows.

“They’ve completely changed the way we hang things, and they’ve made some really great choices and while we were working with them we could see them making the connections.

“The lecture goes from light to dark as Ruskin sees the weather changing and the show goes from light to dark in the same way.”

It also includes a new video work by Jake Goodall will be updated regularly throughout the exhibition and will go on display alongside research from the University of Sheffield, highlighting their work towards reversing climate damage by attempting to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The display also forms part of an ongoing project which has been going for the last two years, Storm-Cloud, by Sheffield Hallam University’s Dr Tom Payne, who performs Ruskin’s lecture and invites artists to respond to the text by creating their own interpretations.

The project creates a growing collection of new art works or ‘notes and additions’, each responding directly to Ruskin and climate change.

Ruskin was a writer, art and social critic, artist and philanthropist. As an author he commanded international respect, attracting praise from figures as varied as Tolstoy, George Eliot, Proust and Gandhi and he was cited as an influence by Clement Attlee and the founders of the National Trust, among others.

He wrote on many things: art and architecture, nature and craftsmanship, literature and religion, political economy and social justice —a dizzying variety of subjects. He also worked tirelessly for a better society and his founding of the Guild of St George was one part of that endeavour.

The depth and range of his thinking, his often-fierce critique of industrial society and its impact on both people and their environment, and his passionate advocacy of a sustainable relationship between people, craft and nature, remain as pertinent today as they were in his own lifetime.

Simon Selligman of the Sheffield-based Guild of St George was created by Ruskin in the 1870s as a small educational arts and wellbeing charity.

“The Guild was very much inspired by the medieval Guilds across Europe of like-minded people coming together to make the world a happier healthier place.

“Ruskin came from a wealthy background so he never had to work for a living but rather than buy art for himself to fill a grand house his passion becomes how can art and access to nature and wellbeing help ordinary people who he felt were in danger of becoming machines due to the industrial revolution,” says Selligman.

“He had profound anxiety that this was not good for human beings and that human beings need access to beauty in nature and art inspired by nature.

“A lot of things in the Collection, that he created for the public good, are from him sending artists off across Europe, particularly to Venice which he loved, to draw or paint beautiful things and bring them back to Sheffield for working people to have direct access to them.”

Selligman says Ruskin’s plan had been for a number of similar museums and they would all be called St George’s Museums.

“He saw St George as symbolic figure, being brave, confronting the ills of society and Ruskin saw the dragon as industrialism.”

But in the end Walkley became the first and only museum.

“People had to walk through nature to get to the museum high up where the air was cleaner, to what was in essence a cottage he bought and extended which housed these extraordinary things form all over Europe which he hoped would inspire.

“He really admired the craftsmanship of the tool makers of Sheffield and he wanted them to see that they were artists too.”

And what does he think Ruskin would have made of today’s exhibition of his collection in the Millennium Gallery?

“I think he would have been very inspired by what Ash is doing.

“What the museum is now doing is say look we can break open this collection and get it into the dialogue of the issues of today and I hope Ruskin would have loved that. He was engaged with the issues of the day.

“I hope he would have been excited by it but one of the things about Ruskin was that you could never predict him.”

The Ruskin Collection: Storm-Cloud – The Look of the Sky is on at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield until Sunday November 29

Community Resilience

Battered by the storm, Cornwall was emblematic of our institutional systemic failure to confront a rapidly changing reality. In one of the richest countries in the world, entire communities lost power for weeks, and running water for days. Had the British government addressed climate change, and made contingency plans for these mega-storms, which will only become more frequent with time, the residents of Cornwall may not have faced such dangerous circumstances in the coldest month of the year. Yet, despite its great beauty, and the acute, localised housing crisis driven by the number of properties kept as second homes for wealthy Londoners, Cornwall is impoverished. This large county comprises of mostly rural communities who have been largely forgotten by a post-industrial economy which sees no value in that which cannot be scaled to maximise profit.

Cornwall enjoys an impressive network of self-organised resistance, from food co-ops and foraging workshops to marches and those willing to risk jail. It is interesting how varied and impressive this network is but seems to have very little to offer by way of suggestions for how to navigate the great eroding they are all living through. But is striking as it so often does in any discussions with locals how easy it is to veer into conversations about national or even international problems and potential actions to take. Probably the best path for all resistance is what has been called hyper-localised and intimate. Only when we know our neighbours and know what they need, what they seek, can we begin to generate the kind of common ground which becomes fertile soil for the common good. Only when we know our land and all the relationships that depend on it can we implement alternative systems which support one another and nurture life. These are the shelters which will see us through the storms. 

The deep tentacles of corruption spread over the political landscape, creating dark shadows on the surface of the Earth. We cannot combat like with like, not within a time of such huge inequality. Limiting our sphere of influence to our geography does not limit the kind of action we can take; these are the roots which hold the soils together, deepened by time and commitment. If every community in every place were to begin digging deep into themselves and one another to create the root system which will support them all through our dangerous future, this would change the very nature of our local and global problems. 

In an interconnected world, adaptation and resilience strategies must also be outward facing. This means recognising that risks are not evenly or justly distributed geographically, and accepting responsibility for helping the people and places that face the most acute threats. This imperative is all the stronger when looking at countries, including former British colonies such as Bangladesh, that are far poorer than the UK and for whom it is far harder to prepare and adapt.

Recalibration Climate Risk

This wide ranging and impressive report addresses two distinct but interconnected dimensions of climate impacts, each relevant to different decision-makers: (1) economic impacts affecting financial asset values and portfolio performance over investment horizons, and (2) broader social and human welfare impacts, including mortality, health burdens, inequality, ecosystem degradation, and quality of life. The first is directly relevant to pension funds, institutional investors, financial regulators, and central banks using climate scenarios for stress testing. These include GDP losses, capital destruction, productivity declines, and disruptions to revenue streams that translate into asset price changes.

 Specifically, this report addresses several shortcomings in current approaches to forecasting  economic impacts, which analysts at government treasuries and economic advisory agencies may find particularly constructive. The second point is the primary concern of policymakers, governments, and civil society, particularly regarding vulnerable populations and distributional justice.

While these audiences have distinct mandates, we argue they cannot be cleanly separated in climate risk assessment for three reasons: (1) social impacts become economic impacts, (2) fiduciary duty extends beyond pure returns – and increasingly so -, and (3) current models systematically miss material risks by excluding social dimensions. Ultimately, climate change carries systemic risks that – when taken together – threaten the long-term financial stability that supervisors and regulators across the globe have a mandate to protect.

Click to access Recalibrating-Climate-Risk-Report-Final.pdf

Planning and the Risk From Surface Water Flooding

The purpose of house building should be to increase the stock of homes for local people. If new developments cause flooding of existing housing stock, and this renders existing housing  uninhabitable and uninsurable there is no net increase in housing stock (What if floods left your home unsellable?  2 January Guardian).

 Matlock repeatedly suffers from surface water flooding, from the hills above the town. In the past six years  the centre of Matlock has been flooded each year: this never used to happen.  Climate change linked to more frequent and intense rainfall , coupled with new housing developments in the hills above  Matlock is causing a significant increase in surface water flooding in the town.

Planning  for new developments was simply not paying enough attention to the impact of flooding on building situated directly below them. A clear example of this was a proposed  new housing development for  430 homes on the hillside above Matlock. This area, called the Wolds, is greenfield agricultural land that  currently acts as a sponge to soak up water during heavy rainfall. To attenuate surface water flowing from adjacent tributaries and enhanced by the new houses the developers  proposed to build  large ponds(Sustainable Urban Drainage) which would sit directly above the town.

The plan, proposed by  the developer underwent five years of rigorous scrutiny by democratically elected Council and residents. It was rejected by the Council’s planning committee in March 2024, for several reasons, one being that they could not be confident that the public would be safeguarded from flooding from the proposed large drainage ponds. In addition, there was no affordable housing being provided and many rich biodiverse habitats would be removed.

However, the developer did not agree, and they  appealed against this decision. The Planning Inspectorate hearing  took place over 8 days from Tuesday 11th March 2025.  However, at a secret Council meeting in January 2025, District Councillors decided they were no longer able to defend their refusal of this development allegedly because they might incur huge costs.

A handful of residents formed the Matlock Wolds Action group(WAG) just over a decade ago with the purpose of protecting this unique place. Some of the tributaries from the Wolds serving as the hydraulic engine of Richard Arkwright’s Industrial Revolution, and Matlock, then a small market town, became more prosperous and famed as one of the largest Hydrotherapy centres in the UK.

Over time, the WAG group grew stronger, in response to the intense and unacceptable pressures from both the council and the developer. WAG’s members and supporters, people from all walks of life, knew that the well- being of Matlock was under threat from yet more concrete and tarmac. The bond of a common goal, together with a deep mistrust of authority, grew friendships, mutual respect, trust and strengthened resolve. People pitched in with whatever skills they could offer. And they were prepared to learn. A clear example of citizen science coming to the rescue in a town in crisis. In September 2022 the British Academy funded a research study on flood resilience in Matlock. The research published in January 2025 found evidence of strong community network formation -localised networks that emerged during a time of crisis and existed for the 6 years leading up to the planning appeal.

Finally, things came to a head  when the WAG agreed with the Council to form a Rule Six Party  to support the council but when the council capitulated, the group was left to put up a solo defence. What surprised everyone was that the  appeal was dismissed by the planning inspectorate, one reason being the risk of surface water flooding. When abandoned by the official experts and authorities, citizen science  provided the crucial evidence in what became a modern-day David Vs Goliath story. 

The Coming of the Ecological University

“Universities have been with us on this Earth for at least one thousand years and will surely be with us in the future; perhaps so long as there is life on this planet that has any well-being. There is now something in not just the name of the institution but in the idea of the university that seems to have durability. But the question imposes itself again: just what is it to be a university?(Barnett,2011)”

Ronald Barnett sets out a masterly critique of our ideas of a university. By offering a forensic analysis of their past and present  trajectory he posits that there is a positive and ontological case for the evolution of an Ecological University. As he argues, we need to develop feasible utopias as part of what he describes as social philosophy, with a critical edge ,which seek to develop ideas which address the question of how to create universities which might be the best fit for this world, and not the best in all possible worlds.

These ideas are perpetuated and reinforced in a world of increasing uncertainty and unpredictability. Hence, there are strong arguments as advocated by Facer(2021) that business as usual is an insufficient response to the crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Climate Crisis. In these circumstances Barnett coins, the descriptor –the therapeutic university—a stance based on the idea of helping the world live purposely with uncertainty-which he advocates is based on the reality that the world cannot be controlled and that for any university, control is an anathema to their core values. And its pedagogy becomes less epistemological and more ontological in character. In this orientation its policies and practices play out in its concerns for human flourishing and the connection to the wider dimension of well-being along with concerns about ethical dilemmas.

But most of these orientations have both negative and positive and even pernicious possibilities. Another more acceptable alternative offered by Barnett is the idea of the authentic university. – one that is true to itself. But as he argues the pushes and pulls from its environment make this hugely difficult especially those that come from regulation and funding mechanisms. Hence, he questions whether we can realistically speak of a responsible university, because these external pressures make it impossible to speak of the university and authenticity in the same breath. His answer is that these apparent tensions between authenticity and responsibility -between the inner and outer calling of the university can be resolved by a different concept – the Ecological University.

This is a university which seriously focusses on both its interconnectedness with the world and the interconnectedness of the world. Its tangible learning  outcomes being towards developing students as global citizens with a care or concern for the world and their contribution via civic engagement towards the realisation of a more environmentally and socially just sustainable world. This characterisation also encompasses the idea of a networked university– which engages actively both locally and globally to bring about a better world.

“This is a university neither  in-itself( the research university)nor for itself(the entrepreneurial university)but for others. Or we might even say simply, for -the-other, for the ecological university has an abiding sense of alterity ,of there being external realms to which it has responsibilities, even while holding fast to its traditional interest in the emancipatory power of understanding for enlightenment”.

Ronald Barnett (2011) The coming of the ecological university, Oxford Review of Education, 37:4, 439-455.

Keri Facer(2021) Beyond business as usual: Higher education in the era of climate change. HEPI Debate Paper 24.

Martin S., Ives C., Carney B. (2023) Universities as Agencies of Human and Social Change:  From Green Academy to Ecological Universities, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sustainability in Higher Education: An Agenda for Transformational Change.