The World We Leave Behind | Ella Saltmarshe
The World We Leave Behind | Ella Saltmarshe
Why policy-makers around the world are listening to story-tellers
Appears in this episode
“I thought if we just told people the truth, we just told people how it is, then of course they'd realise. We just have to tell them the truth hard enough and then they will change. And that's just not how we work as humans. That's not how our brains work.
“We're super messy, irrational creatures. The truth does not always set us free. We often don't act in our own best interests. And actually, story and emotion is incredibly important. And the right has understood that, and they've understood it much earlier than we have.”
Ella Saltmarshe is “incorrigibly plural” — an anthropologist by training, Ella is a writer, activist, organiser, founder and narrative strategist with experience in public policy and international development. Ella works at the intersection of stories and the climate crisis, channeling her immense creative energy and agency into creating a world we can leave behind for generations to come.
Alongside discussing Ella’s impressive work in the narrative field, which includes helping policy-makers around the world reframe their understanding of the future to consider our long-term impacts and responsibilities, we delve into the principles of storytelling, the fight against propaganda, short-term vs long-term thinking, and the fascinating concept of considering oneself an ancestor to future generations.
The World We Leave Behind | Ella Saltmarshe
I was particularly taken with the emotional impact of the exercise at the end of the interview. I wonder what it would be like to extend the exercise to more generations in either direction. I understand that some cultures have a duty of responsibility to up to seven generations into the future. How different would western culture be if this was part of our story?
Yes, to stewardship.
Also, how are we going to build an economy of stewardship on the foundation of financing as "market makers making money. making markets"?
One of the huge gaps in our popular narratives about "us" is that money and finance don't matter. That it's all just personal morality, and if society is going in the wrong direction, its always because some bad actor is acting badly.
The Inconvenient Truth is that Finance Matters. Our economy today is built on the institutional morality of share price trading and The Growth Imperative: no growth, no liquidity; no liquidity, no market participants; no market participants, no markets; no markets, no money making opportunities for market makers.
There is another choice.
We already have a new financial institution of Fiduciary Money: Pensions & Endowments.
Pensions are constituted to be stewards of The Pension Promise, which is a promise to the future, to be there in the future, in a future that is worth being there in. Endowments are constituted as stewards of civil society, and the articulation, curation and innovation of social norms and social narratives, as times change and society needs to change its norms and narratives to fit the changing times.
Currently, we are turning this stewardship money over to market makers, for them to use to make money by making markets.
What if we let our Pension and Endowments stewards keep that money, and use it to finance Stewardship, instead of Growth?