After a long and messy partnership the UK's exit from the EU represents a complex set of desires to renegotiate the Social Contract. Some of these might be to restore 'charismatic power' to a country used to 'throwing its weight around in the world'. From Orwell's common man to Debussy's challenges to modern realities there are new currents of thought emerging on leadership, power and change in the not-so-united Kingdom that can easily be missed in the light of this huge transition. Not just for Europe but for the globe. Europe has been the centre of dialogue on political systems for hundreds of years. It is again. And it has tended  to drag the rest of the world into its backyard squabbles. So close and renewed attention is vital. This podcast explores some of these.

Shocking Britain: UK's EU exit offers insights into power and change

The two Men of Action of the Modern-Era, Marx and Christ, both anti-philosophers, humanists par excellence, finally unite on this: that capitalism is meeting its greatest challenge from its alienating affect on the self. As return on labour weakens, and risk is distributed more widely by Brexit, and the loss of EU safeguards, the Precariat face the struggle of where to find agency in a fluid trading landscape.

When the two great anti-philosophers of modernity, Karl Marx and Jesus Christ, see eye to eye

The Grenfell tragedy reveals another possible horror and that is the absence of individual actors to bear, in a very modern moral sense, the culpability that our notions of 'leadership' require. We place great store on leaders as agents who have power to change our world, But when failure strikes it seems contemporary society is unable to identity the same power that we once placed so much hope in. Pic: Hannah Arendt

Grenfell and the banality of modern power: and how very ordinary people diligently partake in evil

How much does 'speaking into' the world as a 'stakeholder' effect change? The image of us as stakeholders with a voice is often undifferentiated. This podcast discusses this and other related issues. Including the relationship between myth and reality, and the problems of privileging unquestioned rationalism.

The Mad Shareholder: speaking into contemporary society

There is the argument that ordinary people enjoy life. They enjoy ordinary things. But odd people find ordinary life painful. How much ordinariness is being inflicted by education and business on contemporary life is an important concern for learning. To Know seems rooted in oddness. Especially Socratic knowledge. And does ordinariness in learning affect 'good knowledge'. Especially if 'good knowledge' has lost its humanity.

Naked Education: odd and ordinary learning

Dr Steve Gibbs is a senior lecturer at Huddersfield University's Business School (views mine)

Steve Gibbs

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