The RSA Blog

Just so predictable

Blog

03 Sep 2014

Matthew Taylor

Many years ago a phrase used by a friend stuck in my mind: Interrupting my attempt to criticise some aspect of his beliefs, he asked why we should waste time on ‘an already conversation’. Ever since, from time to time, I have spotted this habit of diminishing our lives by replaying in our thoughts, statements and interactions conversations we have already had with outcomes we already know.

The Power to Create (in about 5 minutes)

Blog

21 Jul 2014

Matthew Taylor

It is now ten days since my annual lecture on the Power to Create. Writing a set piece speech can be a bit like preparing a big meal. You spend ages on it but it is consumed very quickly with little but some temporarily satiated appetite to show for your efforts. So I am very grateful for the positive feedback I am still receiving.

'Creative communities with a cause'

Blog

29 Apr 2014

Matthew Taylor

I have been trying to use my preferred way of thinking about human motivation and social power to develop the RSA’s emerging world-view, ‘The Power to Create’. In this regard I am grateful for an idea given to me by public intellectual and social innovator Charles Leadbeater (who will be speaking soon at the RSA about his new book ‘The frugal innovator’.

Devouring the future?

Blog

02 Apr 2014

Matthew Taylor

How should we carry the past into the future? This important question lies, often opaquely, behind personal, political and cultural dilemmas.  Without the past we have no identity, we are not human; but the past can also be an invading army colonising our future and mercilessly wiping out the people we might have chosen to become.

'But you really need to want to change...'

Blog

27 Mar 2014

Matthew Taylor

In a brilliant RSA lecture earlier this week, criminologist Shadd Maruna offers reasons why the idea of rehabilitation has gone in and out of fashion over the decades. He suggests, for example, that the sheer cost of incarceration makes alternatives to custody more attractive in times of austerity. But the Professor also makes a deeper philosophical point about evidence, values and public policy choices.

A simple idea to end political alienation and voter mistrust.

Blog

18 Mar 2014

I ended my previous post on a downer arguing that the political system would never embrace the deep change required to reduce popular alienation from parliamentary democracy.  But since then an idea[1] has occurred to me which might at least open up a possibility of transformation.

When do we want it?

Blog

07 Feb 2014

Matthew Taylor

In the 1970s, so the story goes, when for the first time in its history the Association of University Teachers (now part of the University and College Union) took strike action, a committee of dons was established to agree a protest slogan. After several long and intense meetings a consensus was reached. On the appointed day taxi drivers, office workers and tourists thronging central London were called on to express their solidarity with the AUT’s stirring demand, printed on hundreds of placards and chanted as protestors in their gowns and mortar boards marched down Whitehall: ‘Rectify the Anomaly’.

The good society - it's time to talk

Blog

30 Jan 2014

Matthew Taylor

I'm in Helsinki to meet with our growing band of Finnish Fellows and to speak tomorrow at a conference they have organised. Rather to my consternation not only am I sharing a platform with some rather senior Finnish figures but the title for my talk seems to be simply 'good society'. Apart from 'the meaning of life' it is harder to imagine a tougher brief for a twenty minute speech. Nevertheless I will have a go and what follows will be a key part of my argument.

The choice we want?

Blog

22 Jan 2014

Matthew Taylor

As Martin Wolf reminds us in this morning’s FT, the economic cycle has a behavioural underpinning: stability creates instability (it fosters behaviour such as complacency amongst regulators and greater risk taking in business).