The RSA Blog

Surviving disaster - a question of national character?

Blog

15 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

It feels trivial and almost callous to write about anything other than the tragedy of Japan.  Maybe it speaks badly for my capacity for empathy but over the weekend as the story unfolded I kept waiting for the moment when it would affect me emotionally.

Small groups - getting it right by the sea

Blog

14 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

There have been some very interesting comments on my blog in response to posts about small groups. Reflecting the breadth of my interest (or the lack of precision in my posts), people have posted on everything from the dynamic of religious cults to Latin American group psychoanalysis.

Empathy in an age of pills.

Blog

14 Mar 2011

The Forum for European Philosophy recently hosted a conversation between a philosopher (Raymond Gaita) and a neuroscientist (Tom Farrow) on forgiveness. While talking, they come up with all sorts of ideas about forgiveness, morality and empathy. How about an empathy pill, for example, which could be taken three times daily to trigger the empathic capacity of your brain, making you a more moral person? Farrow and Gaita agreed that this would be a wonderful invention.

Bottom up sweet spots for the Big Society

Blog

10 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

A few days ago I wrote about big business and the Big Society.  Businesses can lever their relationship with customers to encourage changes in behaviour which then loop round to support the company’s commercial strategy and so on. The example I gave was the support Nike gives to sporting participation. There is also Flora’s ‘how old is your heart’ site which encourages people to think about the health and reduce their cholesterol by measures including… buying Flora’s cholesterol-cutting spread.

Can big ideas succeed in politics?

Blog

09 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

Some of you may remember Dennis Norden used to have a steady flow of ‘being old means…’ aphorisms, as in 'being old is when you realise your get up and go has got up and gone’. I suspect they have gone a bit of out fashion now that so many middle aged people continue to try to behave like twenty somethings. Perhaps a new one might be ‘being old is when you look back and find Dennis Norden aphorisms poignant and amusing’. Anyway, my own is additon to the canon is ‘being old is noticing that the point in the week when you think ‘I’ve had enough of this - it’s time for the weekend’ is getting closer and closer to Monday morning’.  

In defence of IDS

Blog

09 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

I have over the years tried to defend ministers and MPs by arguing that they do difficult jobs and are generally motivated by a sense of public service. In that spirit, I am risking making enemies of old friends by writing today to defend the aims – if not yet the method – of Iain Duncan Smith.

To know or not to know; that is the question

Blog

04 Mar 2011

Donald Rumsfeld was widely mocked when he talked about “known unknowns”. However, as is often the way with these things, the phrase has now taken on a life of its own. People now use various versions of this little formulation to explain that they don’t know everything that they don’t know but that they do know some of the things that they don’t know. You know?

More thoughts on small groups

Blog

03 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

So, more rather superficial thinking about small groups (for deeper ideas I can strongly recommend the comments I have received on earlier posts this week).

Small group is beautiful

Blog

02 Mar 2011

Matthew Taylor

Just like when you buy a new car (not that I have done so for many years) you suddenly notice everyone else with a similar model, so I seem this week to be picking up all sorts of interesting ideas on small groups.