England is in the middle of an identity crisis.  Something needs to be done about this or England will fail as a country and it’s population will be the people who suffer!

What Is English Identity?

Right now this question is difficult to answer.  150 years ago this would have been easy.  We were a global super power.  We  had a huge empire that covered large portions of the globe, including Australia, Africa and North America.  The industrial revolution was in full swing and England was a manufacturing superpower too.  England was definitely a force to be reckoned with in the Victorian times and the years immediately following.  Things were good.  We had influence and we had power, both economic and military.

With the dis-assembly of the Empire and the trend towards globalization, it is becoming a bit harder to define ourselves.  We are no longer a military or manufacturing superpower.  We tag along to America, hoping that it will give us back some of our power and prestige.  Our manufacturing industry is collapsing around our ears and we do not know what to do about it.  We simply cannot compete with cheap labor in the east.  Traditional English values are being slowly eroded away with the influx of foreign immigrants all putting their own unique stamp on our culture.  What it used to mean to be English is no longer the case.  We are a small, scared nation suffering from post imperial depression.  We try to grasp onto what we once had but no matter how hard we try we just can’t stop it slipping through our fingers.  I don’t think this is a good identity.  It is time for England to re-invent it’s self as a nation with a brand new identity that will take us forward into the new millennium with belief and confidence in ourselves and our fellow man.

What Is the Purpose of England?

It’s all well and good to say that things need to change, but what can we actually do?  I think the most important thing to do is to try and define our purpose and from that, our identity will naturally follow.  So, what will the purpose of England be in the next 100 years?

I would like to look at where we have come from first, as I think it gives a clearer indication of the evolution of our purpose.  There are generally 3 types of industry.  Primary, secondary and tertiary.  Put simply, primary is getting raw materials, secondary is making something useful from them and tertiary is using something from a secondary industry or otherwise providing a service.  For example: Primary industry drills for oil, secondary industry processes it into a product, tertiary industry is the shop you buy it from.  I would like to add a 4th industry here and call it academical (a new word I invented for this post).  An academical industry is a high tech industry.  It’s input is people and it’s output is ideas.  It is in these new industries that new technologies will be researched and developed, with the ideas being sold to those who can manufacture at a better rate.

England used to be strong in primary and secondary industry with tertiary industry supporting the population but it can’t compete any longer.  Whilst this used to be England’s identity, it can no longer maintain this.  As the primary and secondary industries fail, the tertiary ones go too.  Not everyone can work at Tesco, someone has to shop there too.  Currently England is seriously lacking a strong and unique purpose, something where it can be of real value to the world as a whole.  Without a purpose it is not hard to see why the English identity is fading away.

Where Should We Go In The Future

The most important thing we need to do is to ACCEPT THAT OUR PURPOSE HAS CHANGED. There is no way we can live the same lives we used to.  The world has changed beyond recognition from the time we were an imperial force.  We need to do this as quickly as possible because for every second that we delay as a nation, we are losing out on our future.  We need to try not to dwell on what we once were and move decisively towards what we want to become in the future.

In my opinion, England should try and position it’s self as a center for excellence.  Somewhere where the greatest minds in the world can come and enjoy intellectual freedoms to develop future technologies.  Our purpose would firstly to provide the best possible environment for nurturing science and technology and secondly to make our discoveries available to humanity as a whole.  We would become the world leaders in intellect.  We have always been an innovative nation and I think in some way that this is ingrained on our psyche.  We need to embrace this aspect.  Grab hold of it.  Run with it and see where it takes us.

The exact model for this is not clear to me but the general direction is.  We need to encourage entrepreneurs and inventors to get together and pool their resources.  We need incentives for them to develop future technology.  Future technology can be whatever we want.  Some ideas off the top of my head are green technology, fusion power and stem cell research.  Things that will revolutionize the way we live our lives.  We also need the government to create incentives for businesses like this to come to the UK.  We want anyone who is even considering setting up a high technology company to see England as an option for a country to base their operations in.  We want the best minds in the world to be in England and we want them to be pushing the boundaries of humanity to it’s full potential.

I believe this change in purpose would lead to a change in our identity.  We would change to being a multi-cultural nation of intellectuals.  Even those who were working in the tertiary industries would hopefully develop a love of future technology and the environment where people are encouraged to push the boundaries of humanity, rather than being stuck in a mindset that belongs in the early 1900’s.

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