REINVENTING SOCIETY

Can we reconcile diverging demands to create new harmony between economics and our quality of life?


In His agony the God who features in the Judea-Christian Bible might say to us: “I told you so!” In defiance of His warnings humanity has lavishly eaten the forbidden fruit of knowledge and ravaged the Garden of Eden beyond recovery. He might contend that our materialist selfishness has made us submit ourselves collectively to enslavement by the Devil, foregoing every reasonable concern for the longer term livelihood of our habitat in favor of insanely egoistic pleasures. Why, even in respect of our fellow human beings, our family, friends and our broader community we have become grossly indifferent. We have isolated ourselves from one another as we pursue our monotonous jobs, tagging along among the anonymous masses, each of us making huge claims, as individuals, on the available resources for energy, food, clean water and so on, without effectively securing their recycling to cater for the future. This is not merely a slap in the face of God, any god, but of the very essence of nature. How do we think we can carry on?

We all have our own appreciation of the conundrums of our time and of the prevailing societal, political and economic realities. Much depends on our personal circumstances and outlook, and this today seems to be a more prominent distinction among the people in our societies than – for instance – ideology or religious belief, both of which have lost their power to bring people together and inspire them to share and contribute in larger communities. For however we look at it, it is difficult to deny the increased segmentation – some call it atomization – of our societies and the loss of traditional bonds of mutual care and support, material and otherwise, which have largely become the object of collective provisions and services which rather categorize than personalize us in our particular needs. Local societies of private citizens responsible for schools, health care and cultural institutions all have been displaced by large scale institutions, largely operating within regulated public systems which allow for little if any spontaneous civic engagement.

Today however these systems (and institutions) have become subject to severe financial cutbacks, due to large scale cuts in public spending, forcing to reduce and standardize their service levels, allowing for even less personal discretion. At the time when new demands are made to citizens to take their own (financial) responsibilities, they seem least equipped to do so, both economically and in terms of their social context. We may have our various networks, but generally they serve as platforms for communication and information sharing rather than as communities of true mutual commitment.

My assumption is that our world faces a long term period of budget austerity and economic sluggishness if not worse. We can not rely on industrial and commercial innovation to spirit us in another wave of high growth any time soon. But even if this were otherwise, we still need to address the societal framework, including our interaction with the public systems, in which public responsibility, civic participation and the proper management of our collective interests are more closely aligned. The objective being to safeguard their access and promote sufficient public and private contributions, monetary and otherwise, in executing their functions. Such initiatives could counterbalance the current costly emphasis on individualism and re-introduce an element of sharing among a greater group of people with common interests.

One has to be realistic about the actual possibilities of such countervailing development. We have come a long way from the illusion that society can be engineered, that is, unless it creates substantive benefits for a significant segment of the population. Yet sustained scarcity - in all dimensions – can be seen as a viable trigger for citizens to actively pursue options to share and contribute as a means to maintain a reasonable quality of life for all.

It is evident nonetheless that the kind of leadership and inspiration required to effectively curb the current predominance of laissez-faire policies that emphasize individual self-reliance is glaringly absent and has been absent for a long time ever since market orientation and privatization became the prime focus of public policies, both left and right wing. One can not suppose that people take care of themselves unless there is a working context in which they seek cooperation and shared responsibility and shared benefit. To articulate such perspective is the greatest challenge to anyone who takes the human society serious and who does not want to surrender to a world driven by mere self-interest.

Admittedly the above is still rather more conceptual than substantial and it would require further elaboration, both in respect of the suggested route to take and in its underlying analysis. But an effort has to be made. The key point here is to help people to make proper use of their individual responsibility and not take it away from them. There should be an advantage for them, on the long rung, to share – and care – in a greater community of people rather than claiming every possible good individually. Such options have already developed, for instance in the area of private mobility, such as automobile sharing arrangements, and they can be extended into many other areas.



Also I believe that the above will only be fruitful if similar steps are taken at the level of macro-economics, the working of our labor markets, and taxation. We should seriously question the prospect of full employment under present conditions given that industry and commerce are doing everything in their power to maximize their return on investment with the least possible people. The paradox is that every new efficiency in the markets, based on the exploitation of the fruits of knowledge, will move us one other step away from meaningful human participation and this will eventually destruct the very societal fabric on which most public systems and provisions are currently based. We should rather reward employment and fully focus our tax systems on the use of resources and on business profits.

Having said this, it is clear that such thorough re-thinking of the basic assumptions of our world is not done overnight. But if we claim to live in true democracies it is upon us to make sure that more than just one value system or policy framework is available to choose from. As it stands at present, we are going one way – and this is not necessarily the best way.