I am currently reading The Kindly Ones, which is a harrowing novel based on an account of Nazi atrocities during The Second World War. So far, the overriding theme has been the ridiculous psychological dances that the characters in the novel do to justify, or even just cope with, the insanity of the horrors that they’re perpetrating on innocent people. The main justification is the state, allegiance to the state, or subjugation to the state, or even the German word “Volk”, the collective, whatever word you choose to give to it. It is that relatively modern vehicle of mass through which power is manifest.

We lose so much by succumbing to that model of how we should run things. Even currently and locally, it frequently occurs to me as I’m driving past the multibillion investment in HS2, a railway that doesn’t start anywhere or end anywhere, that I’m not even sure many people will use. And as I pass it, I’m driving along roads that are so riddled with potholes that unless you’re a local who knows how to duck and weave your way through them, you will inevitably end up bursting tires or breaking suspension. This feels like such a distortion of value and bizarre distribution of financial capability.

It’s madness. That centralisation of power such that power can be manipulated and distorted by relatively small groups of people isn’t healthy. And yet everybody is trained to be terrified of the alternative – anarchism. But actually anarchism is just an inclination to keep things small and local until absolutely necessary to do otherwise.

It may be that we’re too far down the road of centralising power to even consider this, or it may be that the centralised states around the world are crumbling under their own weight. But every time we’re faced with that choice of localising or centralising, I know which way I would lean.