In Chapter Seven we saw how we try to create a better society by controlling individuals. We blame and punish ‘bad’ people. We try and fix ‘broken’ people. We don't help ‘lazy’ people. And we demonise ‘ignorant’ people. These strategies of control may work in the short term, but they do not remove the underlying causes of crime, ill-health, poverty and democratic disagreement – the wider social conditions that make people ‘bad’, ‘broken’, ‘lazy’ or ‘ignorant’ in the first place. To solve these problems in the long run, we need to switch our focus from control to understanding – from the moral character of individuals to the social contexts that make them who they are.

In this chapter we will see how we also try and create a better world through strategies of control – not just by controlling individuals, but also by controlling entire nations and the natural environment. We think that we can stop climate change with renewable energies and other technological fixes. And we think that we can end global poverty through a combination of aid and economic growth. These methods of control are often a good means of progress in the short term, but are less effective as long-term solutions, and may even make things worse – in the case of climate change, potentially much worse.

There is, however, an alternative. We can switch our focus away from control towards understanding. We can better understand the underlying systemic causes of climate change and global poverty and work to remove them. This may be more difficult to achieve in the short term – and, to many, appears overly idealistic – but it is a more effective long-term solution, and avoids the risks associated with trying to control both the natural environment and large groups of people.

Climate change: understanding ‘nature’

All of the societal issues we looked at in the previous chapter were about how we treat individuals. We often moralise people in an attempt to control them, judging them as ‘bad’, ‘mad’, ‘lazy’, ‘ignorant’ and so on. We saw the limits of these common-sense moral judgements when it comes to changing society. These simple narratives of moral responsibility dehumanise individuals – they reduce people to character traits that fail to account for the complexity of their whole selves and the social contexts they live in.