Entanglements

Entanglements: Weaving Our Futures brings a fresh re-imagining of the challenges facing us in our disruptive age that provides rich and nourishing food for thought. At the heart of the book is the recognition that we live in a new Precarious-Interdependent Age (P-I Age). This calls for a radical shift in how we relate to ourselves, each other, and to our environment. Simon Western presents a score and more of short essays that each respond to a dislocating social or political event: Covid-19, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the rise of ‘woke’ culture and populism, the climate crisis, the meaning of monarchy, and much, much more. Western invites us to ‘look awry’ at the world, enabling us to observe the unconscious currents and symbolic meanings that shape collective experience and personal identity.

These evocative reflections with a psychoanalytic sensibility are grounded in lived experience. Drawing on his unique journey from factory floor to nursing, family therapy, academia, and organisational leadership, plus a highly valued time as a stay-at-home father, Western bridges personal narrative with social critique. Themes of loss, care, power, desire, belonging, re-enchantment, and digital disruption are explored, always with the intention to provoke reflection and uncover possibilities for ethical and soulful ways of being.

Thus, Western does not deliver glib answers, pithy soundbites, or certainties. Rather, he opens a radical space to explore our troubled and entangled times. This book is unusual as it engages with the deeply personal, the political and the spiritual, utilising a critical but loving lens.

Dr Simon Western is founder and CEO of the Eco-Leadership Institute, a global think tank advancing innovative leadership practices through action research, development programmes, and cultural change work. He works with diverse organisations including humanitarian NGOs, global manufacturing, finance and global technology companies. Simon’s work integrates theory and practice, drawing on psychoanalysis, critical and anarchist theory, theology, and social movement perspectives. His work transcends the university, and is grounded in extensive lived experience (see Chapter 1). He is the author of influential books including Leadership: A Critical Text (SAGE, 3rd edn) and Coaching and Mentoring: A Critical Text. Formerly, Simon led the Masters in Organisational Consultancy at the Tavistock Clinic and was Director of Coaching at Lancaster University Management School. A past President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations (ISPSO), he has trained over 600 coaches worldwide in his research-based Eco-Leadership Coaching System. He writes regularly on Substack and hosts the popular Edgy Ideas podcast, both focusing on what it means to live a good life and to create the good society.