Should local communities be empowered to look after themselves?

There has been so much written about what makes good leaders: hundreds of books, articles, blogs and videos describing the qualities of a good leader. Leaders determine the course that their followers take but how far have we moved on since the days of hunter-gatherers?

Hunter-gatherer economies gather resources in the short term and waste in the longer term. Many people talk about our ancestors living in harmony with nature but these ancestors destroyed whole species and cut down forests simply to exploit the environment for their own use.

Ever since humans became self-aware, they have been driven by a desire for acquisition to create a sense of security, a sense of the future, even though often very short term to ensure their day-to-day survival.

We haven't moved on from this type of economy, the only thing that has changed is our ability to be more destructive both to our environment and to ourselves. Little has changed, although the basic principles have been overlaid by a veneer of technological, sociological and scientific research.

However, I believe that in order to be able to survive as a species there are two things that need to fundamentally change. The first is our ability to think much more clearly about the consequences of our actions for those who come after us and the second is a change in the structure and nature of leadership.

We can no longer consume in a way that is heedless of the damage that it does to the planet. We can no longer measure our success in terms of product. Answers do not lie in the past, answers are created by developing an image or a vision of the future that is desired; noticing what is already in place and can be built on, then developing and taking the next step.

This requires a mental leap, particularly in psychiatry and psychology, from a problem-focused to a more solution-based approach. I have little doubt that this will be resisted as so many careers have been built upon the former. But as Planck famously said, "science proceeds one funeral at a time". (Planck 1950)

This is why a new type of leadership is required. The current crop of world leaders by and large subscribe to the idea of power, strength and autonomy of leadership. Nowhere are we seeing this more powerfully than in the current Conservative party leadership election. The power of the individual has to be seen and exercised regardless of the level of sanity of the policies and changes that each potential leader may wish to make. This form of leadership is also based in a problem-focused, hunter gatherer economy where success is measured in financial terms, levels of influence and public acclaim of the individual.

The current contenders for the premiership of the United Kingdom are only agreeing and identifying with the hopes of a very small group of individuals, arguably an elite group who are the current kingmakers. Both the contenders are modifying their messages simply to curry favour with this vanishingly small group of elitist individuals. The needs of the greater population, even the economy are being torn up and placed on the altar of a naked grab for power.

The words, phrases and promises being used to woo ever smaller groups of influential individuals is a characteristic of poor leadership, which has become steadily more apparent over the last three decades of political elections across the world.

The thinking of the contenders is becoming ever more short term. The timescales are related more to the headlines in the media the following day rather than to any prospect of a sustainable economy, a sustainable ecology or even a sustainable humanity.

The time has come for a change in structure and nature of leadership. Many now are talking about empowering communities, feeding the power back to the local communities to look after themselves and to determine their own futures.

Great leaders will facilitate, not fight; great leaders will enable communities, not squander human talent on the altar of the economy; great leaders will lead from one step behind, encouraging those they are responsible for to make progress and develop ideas and opportunity for all; great leaders will use and reuse resources (people and materials) wisely and efficiently.

However, it is not just political leaders who are taking a short-term approach, it is becoming ever more apparent in commercial activities as individuals seek to garner as much security as they can by taking away from their neighbour as many resources as possible.

No longer can we build five-year economic plans and expect any kind of reasonably secure survival. We need to take a solution-based approach that will help us to think about the kind of world that our descendants will be living in in 50 or a 100 years' time. In short, we need to be preparing now for the future of our children.

This requires a fundamental shift in the way we think from short-term, problem-focused, primitive hunter-gatherer thinking to a generational, long-term, flexible approach that does not just solve problems that face us immediately but that help develop vision and ideas of possibility that enable our descendants to build their world upon the foundation of ours. Psychologists have a profound responsibility to consider what role they might play in this paradigm shift.

This blog represents the views of the individual author, not the views of the Political Psychology Section, or the BPS.