Deep politics for divided times: Take-aways from Alter Ego 2017
“Deep politics for divided times” — this is the (cl)aim of the Alter Ego conference, which certainly was one of the best political gatherings of my life.
Alter Ego aims to develop new political visions, and brings together people to do so. Sounds like a conventional conference, but it is not. The Alter Ego crew hand-picks the conference’s attendees. It encourages them through setting, format, method, and attitude to be there not only in their professional role, but as full human beings. They replaced the usual aseptic conference venue with a place in the countryside, in a green, peaceful environment. The program intertwines intellectual activity with more holistic practices like Yoga and mindfulness meditation. And those who don’t flee (like me) even sing and do rituals around the fireplace!
Experimental: yes. New Age hippy stuff: no
If you start hearing a nagging, cynical voices in your head now, you should silence it and read on for a little while longer. Alter Ego is no New Age fringe event, but by all means the most promising conference I have been to since I started doing Think Tank work. Not despite but because of its unconventional setting, and the space it gives to conversations that go a lot deeper than in the conventional spaces of pretension.
Alter Ego was founded by Ronan Harrington, a guy who — like me — went on a journey of personal development after a few painful years in professional politics (you can see Ronan talk about Alter Ego here). In 2016, Ronan convinced mastermind Jonathan Rowson to co-host the first Alter Ego gathering with him. Jonathan had just started the think tank Perspectiva after having worked with the RSA for a long time. In 2014, Jonathan had published a report called Spiritualise, which brilliantly argues that we need to integrate spiritual sensibility into politics to be able to find more meaningful answers to today’s systemic challenges.
Why spirituality?
Why spirituality? Because increased individual spiritual sensibility is prerequisite for seeing what happens around and in us beyond the material and factual, and the meaning this bears for how we lead our own life, and how we make society, and thus politics. Spiritual sensibility helps to reach a more grounded understanding of what the deeper context is, and where our ego stands in the way of seeing new solutions. Ultimately, this can lay the ground stone for focusing on what lies beyond oneself, while being in close touch with the needs of mind, heart, and soul. This helps to restructure how we perceive, think, feel, and act, and thus to act from a higher level of complexity than our institutional environment nudges us to do.
We certainly need this in the political sphere. Speaking from my life experience, it was only after leaving politics around ten years ago that I realized how most people in the political arena lack an integration of those abilities that go beyond rational, tactical thinking. For instance, the understanding of how mature self-leadership is the nucleus for building lasting political steam. How the inquiry into the existential questions of life and society help set a focus that transcends the currents of daily politics. Or how the realization of your own fluidity and impermanence can help access a truly systemic perspective in thinking and doing politics. In my experience, most politicians lack this perspective, or seclude it into their private selves. Both comes at heavy costs — after all, how can our politics unearth society’s potential beyond the creation of order and material wealth if our politicians can’t even access their personal richness?
Towards the deepening of systems thinking
A highly complex world, filled with existential challenges like climate change, massive global inequality, and the serious risk of democratic regression in the North-Atlantic world, needs people who are able to see and adapt the paradigms that steer their perception, thoughts, and actions. This is the prerequisite for the creation of man-made systems that challenge existing paradigms — i.e. limitations — and thus can help solve the challenges the ecosystem faces. It is the deepening of systems thinking, as Perspectiva points out.
To get there, we need individuals who are willing to reconsider their self — and spaces that facilitate a kind of personality development that goes deeper than what we are used to in conventional settings (the training of skills; self-reflection based on personality tests; the learning of tactics that enable to successfully navigate existing institutions). We need spaces that enable the emergence of new answers. This, of course, requires settings that go beyond the downloading and exchanging of existing knowledge, but focus on the co-creation of new ideas.
Alter Ego tries exactly that, in my understanding.
Three take-aways
The conference brought together thinkers and doers from a fairly broad variety of institutions and countries. Active politicians, artists, activists, meditation teachers, facilitators, think tankers — around 80 people in total — gathered for three days in Kent and devoted their time and energy to asking: what comes next? The focus of the debates lay not so much on the ifs and hows — is the system we have broken; can it be saved — but rather on how we can get to a deepened society, via deepened politics.
I learned many things at the conference. I use this article to highlight three of them (because this is what consultants do):
Take-away 1: We are part of the mainstream
First, Alter Ego showed that the conversation regarding deeper, more conscious politics and deeper democracy has moved beyond the comfortable fringes of irrelevance. The crowd that was gathered in Kent was evidence for that. Most of these folks, whether they like to hear it or not, are part of the mainstream, albeit its self-reflective, future-oriented spearhead. They may stylize themselves as outliers, as the exception to the rule; but as member of the RSA, best-selling author, think tank director, member of parliament, or successful entrepreneur you have influence and leverage that go far beyond average. These people came, despite their busyness, and devoted three days of their scarce time. These people have influence to change things, and we need more of them. For next year, this means: get senior people in power in there, they may be ready for it.
Take-away 2: We need to get out of the like-minded comfort zone
Second, many participants I talked to agreed that it is time to let the pants down and start organizing more forcefully in and beyond the existing institutions. That creating protected niches for open dialogue is important, but can never be an end in itself. Talking to like-minded minds and sharing thoughts and ideas is only one, albeit important, part of the game. What makes a difference, ultimately, is the specific action people take: building and strategically enlarging networks of like-minded others, like Alter Ego does. Finding a political vocabulary for what we do and think when we say we seek “transformation”. Spreading ideas and attitudes by actively influencing public discourse and institutions, as I try to do. Starting concrete projects that can serve as evidence for how doable making a difference is. Organizing in parties and political movements. Et cetera. For next year’s conference, this means: Get more doers, and push people hard to collaborate.
Take-away 3: We need to clarify what we need spirituality for
Third, with regards to spirituality, I realized that at the conference were two groups of people. For both groups, spirituality is relevant. The reason why that is differs, though.
Group 1 appreciates spirituality as practice. Religion, meditation, self-experience on psychedelics is what expands their understanding of themselves, and changes the way they perceive the world around them. It furthers their well-being, and often shows the way out of existential crises. It sharpens and deepens the focus on the self, often in perceived opposition to a world that does nothing to further a deepened access to our life, and thus its more meaningful aspects.
For Group 2, what Group 1 does is the first step of many. For Group 2, spiritual practice is what puts the self into perspective, and what helps to sharpen the focus on what lies beyond the self. This group accepts that emotional and spiritual mindfulness towards oneself is key for identifying a meaningful purpose, and thus direction in life. What is more important, though, is what lies beyond the self — the thoughts, feelings and actions that unite, and the thoughts, feelings and actions that make us transcend the focus on difference, be it our own or of the people around us.
In my perception, the first group felt quite well at Alter Ego: gathering with like-minded others, in opposition to a world that kills itself. The second group felt less satisfied, more impatient. It seemed like they knew that gatherings like Alter Ego are necessary — but, ultimately, remain meaningless if there are no sparks for concrete impact in the outside world. These people were not so much in opposition to the outside world, but knew they incorporate it, and that the opposition against it is ultimately opposition against ourselves.
I believe we need those people to create impact in the coming years.
I will dive a little deeper into the philosophy around Alter Ego in another blogpost. Stay tuned!
My participation at Alter Ego was made possible by the Democracy Lab @Das Progressive Zentrum.
