All of Yout'

I-man serve Selassie I continually,
No matter what the weak heart say.

And I know that I & I is like a tree, plant by the river of water,
and not even the dog that piss against the wall of Babylon shall escape this judgment.

For I & I know that all of the youth shall witness the day that Babylon shall fall!

The Room within societal structures and individual incentives

The truly astonishing individuals are those that succeed despite rejection, despite the established interests that they work against, despite the leagues of potential losers who assemble against them.

So the question is, how do we, societally speaking, filter out the dangerous nutters from the innovaters and saviours? We have been historically very poor at this vital process. Many of those possessing real genius have never been recognised, recognised only after their deaths or (most tragically and comedically of all) are seen as dangers to society and disenfranchised or even killed.

The difficulty is that not only is it a thin line between madness and genius, but that the societal incentives for innovating and developing are far less effective and immediate than the individual incentives and fears about changes to the status quo. By its nature those who have power and success within society are likely to be there because of the current systems. So the rich and powerful don't usually want change. The poor and weak do, but they have no means of making it happen.

Could the room be that instrument, that filter, that enables society and individuals collectively to transgress the limitations that raw individualism and short-term selfishness have imposed on us? Could a disembodied concept free of ego be the salvation for the masses?

Probably not. It's just a room, after all.

Mind the Gap

So, six months has passed in Mandatory Lurking world.

And a lot has happened. Although in some ways, nothing at all.

• Career break
• Travel
• Georgia
• Credit Crunch (makes it sound like a chocolate bar)
• Weddings
• Raves
• Birthday
• Back to work

I'll be breaking all this down in my 2008 Rules Part two, to follow shortly.

However, I thought I'd pontificate on responsibility. This seems to be the crucial problem facing our society and indeed the world, specifically, a lack of responsibility by virtually everyone. This is why we've created an economic system which emphasises short term profits for individuals over progress for society. This is why children are growing up unable to read or concentrate because their parents aren't bringing them up properly. This is why knife crime is rising. This is why war is still taking lives uncessarily all over the world.

The crisis brought on by this failure of individual and collective responsibility has given the state, so badly buffeted by the post Bretton-Woods economic liberalism and further by the 1980s economic and political reforms, a chance to reassert itself.

The tragedy is that government (in the UK at least) has been so undermined by its own slavish adherence to the pro-market dogma that it is inacapable of acting unilaterally and innovatively. All of the solutions have been attempts to prop up parts of a failed system. The government should be using this opportunity to CHANGE the system and move away from the individualism of the outdated cod-philosophical justification of greed that has so wrecked our world, economically, politically, socially and environmentally.

We need a SOCIETAL approach, not an INDIVIDUAL one.

In the language of the vanquished, we need to internalize the externalities. Goods need to have REAL costs reflected in price, not just incidental costs. So the price of oil should cover not just the cost to the trader in extracting and shipping it, but all of the associated costs - the damage to the environment, the social costs of the labour and materials, and, most important, a premium added to cover the cost of replacing the oil as a fuel source.

If society were able to over-ride selfish short-termism in this way, we would be able to make decent long-term decisions about our lives and those of our descendants to come, as well as the earth. At present ourselves and governments can only take short-term decisions which discount the future to zero. Governments make decisions based on staying in power another few months - companies make decisions about short and medium term profitability, individuals make decisions based on instinct and cash.

The 'credit crunch' and the downturn are all about the gap between responsibility and current reality. In not taking responsibility for the long-term consequences of our actions, we have destroyed our economy and are destroying our world.

It's time to grow up.