The Uncertain Solicitor on ... an unreality check

This is intended as a reference point for explorations in related posts, as I describe the situation we find ourselves in. It may seem familiar territory for many readers, but that is the point. We have fallen into the trap of regarding as ordinary so much that is extraordinary, and of accepting the unacceptable. This has led to attempts to paint an alternative, kinder, more caring way of living and working as “unrealistic”, an irony that rings particularly hollow as our present path leads only to a reality none of us would wish for.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch ( the island of waste which is three times the size of France), the almost three billion animals affected by the Australian bushfires of 2020 and drowned children’s bodies washing up on European beaches: if we give our full attention to any of these images on their own, we know something is seriously wrong. If we consider them together, along with the dozens of other examples you can doubtless call to mind, it is clear we must not continue living in the manner which has not merely permitted, but contributed to these events occurring.

Our collective self-delusion has reached epic proportions. Our politicians lecture us earnestly on the necessity of not spending beyond our means whilst presiding over economic systems dependent on burning in a relative instant through the energy capital saved over millennia. These systems require us on the one hand to consume more resources than the planet can generate, whilst on the other preserving an artificial scarcity to control prices. This leads not only to environmental degradation but simultaneous starvation and obesity, both literally in nutrition terms and metaphorically in terms of what different people have access to within societies and across the globe.

We destroy forests, billions of years of life, when aggregated, and one of our best defences against climate heating. At the same time, we talk confidently about our ability to develop carbon capture and storage technologies in the coming decades (time we no longer have) if the right investment can be found. Scientist Chris Stark points out, “Carbon capture technologies already exist. They called trees,” one more inconvenient truth blithely ignored. To compound the craziness, we do this in large part to create space to grow feed for cattle to provide meat for us to eat. This is utterly inefficient and a harmful way to feed ourselves on so many levels. If it was a new proposal today no one would give it the time of day, but we put up with it because a handful of multi-nationals make huge profits from doing it (and they bankroll politicians, ensuring that sense shall not prevail).

This skewed logic permeates so many other aspects of how we live. It is what lies behind our response to the Grenfell tragedy. The appropriate reaction is so obviously to ensure it is never repeated. Instead, we allow legal bills to approach £50milion in an elaborate exercise of buck-passing and insist those least responsible for the combustible cladding covering their homes and least able to pay for its removal face a choice of financial ruin or life in the shadow of a grizzly death. It is this logic which makes it economically prudent for Amazon to destroy perfectly serviceable items in eye-watering quantities rather than disrupt the market by giving them to those in need or selling them cheaply. It is what turns homes into casino chips for those who don’t need them and makes them unattainable for those that do.

These contortions contribute to an environment which distorts our social behaviours too. We clap NHS staff one year, then assault them in their places of work the next. We profess to support our sports team, but viciously abuse its players on social media. We despise the corporate practices of the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon but continue to be avid customers. For years now, the Edelman trust barometer has been recording declining levels in public trust in almost all areas of society. It is no wonder: not because most people are intentionally more untrustworthy, but we have learnt not to rely on organisations and businesses to act in our interests and not to expect rational responses from each other, or even ourselves.

What all this says to me is that anything aspiring to business as usual is not a credible way to act and live. Still, it requires a concentrated effort to see the obvious and to act upon it, when the structure of feeling we function in is so focussed on maintaining the pretence all is well. Like the fish in the River Wye, the water we are swimming in could kill us. Unlike the fish, if we try hard enough, we can see it and do something about it.

Most of the lawyers I know work diligently to do their job well. But what if in doing so, we are contributing to the success of a suicidal system? What pride, then, should we be taking in our work? Or as Krishnamurti put it, a good while ago, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

My hope is that if we seek to initiate change in how the legal profession operates and old hands immediately try to shout us down, dismissing us as being unrealistic and our proposals as out of step with how the world works, we might feel emboldened to challenge the assumption the world, as they conceive it, does work, or that it is realistic to believe all is well when there is so much evidence to the contrary. We absolutely need to get real, but if we do, it will mean doing things very differently to the way those fond of using that exhortation intend.