Archbishop highlights a shared cultural crisis

Creating a more responsible finance sector requires rebuilding its connection to the wider world and rediscovering a sense of both responsibility for the future of the natural world and joy in making a positive contribution. Or at least that was my conclusion after reading a powerful speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury on climate change delivered last week.

The Archbishop talks about a shared cultural crisis that “could be summed up rather dramatically by saying that it’s a loss of a sense of what life is … a web of interactions, mutual givings and receivings”. He talks about “our calling to nourish” life and secure “a future for all living things”.

He says “a good deal of the talk and activity around the financial collapse has the marks of .. ‘displacement activity’ – precisely because it fails to see where the roots of the problem lie; in our amnesia about the human calling” and “whatever we do to combat the nightmare possibilities of wholesale environmental catastrophe has to be grounded not primarily in the scramble for survival but in the hope of human happiness”.

Even if – like me - you don’t share his religious lens, the speech contains valuable and inspiring insights. Many thanks to UKSIF Vice Chair Helen Wildsmith for pointing me to it.