I WAS proud to be a signatory in the second wave of artists and creatives lining up behind the Declaration For Independence, drafted by the novelist James Robertson. It is a fine document, stirring even, and stands in a long tradition of cultural “representation” of the Scottish interest.

My friend Scott Hames, director of the Scottish literature course at Stirling University, reminds me that such statements in the past have often helped to “smooth the transition” between “plucky campaigning and official governing reality”. Except this one is aiming at indy, not further devolution, and probably also at interested editorial desks across Europe and the world.

The declaration is, as Scott also says, a “sober statement of agreeable principles”. But much of the flak it has taken – even friendly fire – questions the right of a bunch of writers, musicians, artists and architects to make any statements about the policy or constitution of Scotland. (Scott noted that the declaration has nothing to say about arts or cultural policy itself.) I’d like to return the flak. But I won’t be throwing quivering makars into the salt mines of think tank land, urging them to come up with data-driven surveys of the “creative industries”. Instead, I think there are some hardcore policy challenges for Scotland that artists and creatives can answer, exactly on their own terms, doing precisely what they do.

The main one, simply put, is that we have to move away from a world of consumable and then disposable stuff, and towards a world where we take our gratifications and pleasures from less toxic and destructive sources. And arts and culture will help us do that.

READ MORE: Pat Kane: Are we ready for how radically back-to-the-future shopping will be?

As I wrote last week, the planetary consequences of the trash we generate, and the carbons we burn, are about to hit us brutally in the face. Most of the high streets and malls as we know them, piled up with temporary items made under near-slave conditions, will have to go.

I do not underestimate the psychological shock this transition will have on people. For decades, the shopping experience has been designed to be “retail therapy”, with ever-more sensuous pay-offs.

And let’s think about those working in the malls, if a shrinkage in the retail sector starts to bite due to carbon constraints. Automation is already cutting a swathe through employment numbers, and is due to do much more. It’s going to be chaos (and the current social unsettlement around Brexit is a muffled recognition of the chaos to come). Unless … well, unless governments, regulators and administrators can help us all make the transition to a planet-friendly lifestyle.

Again, I can see that one of the attractions of a “Green New Deal” (GND) is psychological. With everyone else, I shuddered at the sight of two XR protesters being dragged off the roof of a Tube carriage in London, by an angry, everyday mob of commuters. This is exactly the kind of resentment from the streets, Gilet-Jaunes-style, that will scupper any appetite or patience for the needed transition.

Under capitalism’s last 40 years, too many people have been ground down, and ground into shape, defined by their debts and their next payday. So there’s realism and pragmatism in the GND. Giving workers a traditional wage-earner relationship to massive system change – by deploying or developing their skills for it to be constructed – is a good way to build social credibility for the next steps.

Yet these steps have to be towards a post-consumerist society. There’s no point in solid wages for people if they just leave their appetite for cheap retail thrills untouched.

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But the one thing we should take from the age of populisms is that, these days, citizens really don’t like to be lectured at. Public information programmes on, say, changing to a planet-conscious diet, won’t land very well with individuals and families that are already chasing their tails under time-and-money constraints.

I have argued for basic incomes and shorter working weeks for most of my adult life. It’s been largely driven by my desire that societies benefit from the productive leaps of new technology.

But nowadays, I add to that the need to give people more time and security, in order that they can become the active, creative citizens that this century demands; and to feel that they have chosen and forged that identity, not just been hustled and bustled into it.

The declaration is a wee bit hectoring, in this regard. “Freedom of speech and action, and the freedom to work, create, buy, sell and do business should adhere to principles of environmental and communal sustainability and responsibility. Profit and economic growth should not be pursued at the expense of the wellbeing of the people or their habitat or that of other people or nations.”

Does that mean free speech has eco-limits? More interestingly, isn’t the second sentence completely post-capitalist?

But a declaration can only have so much subtlety (and the times are urgent). I gently suggest that a trick is being missed by this statement. It’s being overly modest – to the point of omission – about the transformative power of arts and culture itself.

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I feel that arts and culture practitioners have a lot to show, tell and teach the rest of society. They could begin to share what they do, and how they feel about it. I think it might be useful to a zero-carbon working population, uncertainly stepping away from its old roles and subject-positions.

The conversations might start with questions like this. What does it mean to act upon the world in a way that directly connects with your inner life, with your freely chosen interests and imaginings?

What does it mean to start to regard your skills and aptitudes in life as a form of craft or making – rather than just something for sale in a labour market of “bullshit jobs”, as David Graeber puts it?

HOW do you live with the concept that you have enough resources for a life of quality and purpose, rather than getting on the status treadmill where pay rises are eaten up by status purchases?

Can you get what you need for sociability from pulling projects and missions together with groups of peers, fellow enthusiasts and friends – instead of getting it from workplaces where you don’t agree with their ends, even though their means may be pleasant enough?

I’d suggest that these paragraphs comprise the experience of most artists. We pursue lives rich with meaning, predominantly not so rich with money, but quite clear about the solid foundations needed to build a flourishing, satisfying life.

The late political philosopher Tony Judt used to make this case for social democracy. It establishes a set of predictabilities (support for housing, quotient of work, health, media, education, human and labour rights, other public goods) “so that the many could live unpredictable lives” – lives where interesting, self-fulfilling choices could be made without the consequences being ruinous or fatal.

Arts and cultural making (and enjoying) of course sits alongside other value-driven structures that can help us unplug from the consumer trash-feed – education, health and social care, environmental stewardship, primary science and community innovation.

But Scottish artists should be confident that we bring lightning to all these bottles. The Brazilian philosopher Roberto Unger loves to say: “The point of living is to die only once” – by which he means we should be clever enough, organising the resources we have, for the vast majority of people to live long, unalienated, fulfilled lives, not lives regularly punctuated with humiliation, frustration and lack of felt achievement – the many “little deaths” of an ill-formed modernity.

If a Declaration For Independence means anything, whether constitutionally or philosophically, it has to mean this.