Measure the good life before it's too late
Are we seeing an unexpected return of the ‘Big Society’? The one heralded by David Cameron and remodelled in May’s ‘Shared Society’, but ultimately rooted in ancient Aristotelean philosophy which taught that the good life is one lived in communion with others. Indeed, there is nothing new under the sun, but the Prime Minister’s recent trip north, beyond the M25, cheered those of us who are hoping for a renewed commitment to genuine devolution, as he confessed civil society is expertly versed in ‘what matters most to local people’.
Tomorrow, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) will launch Community Capital, a publication dedicated to answering these questions. What matters most to people? What keeps us well? What fulfils our desire to live a good life? And before you ask, this pursuit has every bit to do with social justice because – as the data reveals – the daily human experience of poverty is one of powerlessness. And community is the cure. In fact, analysis from the Office for National Statistics tells us that exponentially more significant for life satisfaction than income is marital status, having children and a job. Far from being unencumbered, young free and single, it is in fact the binding of ourselves to others through covenants, contracts and caring responsibilities that provide us with an empowered sense of self. ‘Mother of four’ or ‘60 years married’ say our tombstones, rarely ‘property tycoon’ or ‘owner of Mazda MX-5 generation four’.
We are witnessing families breaking down, longer commutes, the uberisation of the economy and an epidemic of social media addiction. We are a society made sick by a crisis of isolation, fragmentation and rootlessness. A dear friend and mentor of mine, Prof Sir Roger Scruton puts it like this: ‘If you ask why concepts like community, place and belonging have suddenly come to occupy a central place in political discourse, then you will quickly light upon the obvious fact that those aspects of the human condition are, in modern conditions, all under threat’.
There is always a danger in nostalgia; to forget the evils that have been purged and remember only a sanitised version of events that memories tend to project. But GK Chesterton warned “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up”. So, what about the demise of the high streets? Fences have been well and truly removed with the advent of online banking and shopping. They may be the definition of convenience, but what about the soulless, hollow, ghost towns that we have become accustomed to? The Local Trust find that we have lost devastating numbers of post offices, pubs, youth centres, banks, libraries and parks. This is our social infrastructure, and as it vanishes, so the noose of atomisation tightens. Of course, the answer need not be to resuscitate the high street but restore it to a new order. If not retail, then some other enterprise that occupies the intersection of human life and activity.
Former Minister and Downing Street adviser, Sir John Hayes, who chaired our working group for the Community Capital report, laments, ‘too many of the institutions of our civil society – once prized assets – are no longer guarantors of the stability which spawns shared meaning to, and purpose in, human lives’. Our attachments to people and places steer our life choices, often towards the good life. The Social Mobility Commission worry themselves with details about how students from lower social classes are more likely to commute to university and are therefore ‘missing something’ central to the student experience. What about the student with caring responsibilities, or, an unwavering loyalty to a sports team? Noble attachments if you ask me.
What is at risk is the mutual recognition between individuals as belonging to the same place. The gap in between the state and the individual must remain occupied by fraternities – a word now banned by the Twittersphere, but used in good faith to describe the myriad little platoons which are built upon the deep affection held between compatriots. The recognition between two people of their mutual Mancunian-ism , West Ham fan-ness or WI membership is a disarming experience. Or should be, according to Hegel.
Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic dramatises the internal conflict when one realises that he is both a self to himself and an other to another at the same time; that he is in fact part of a first-person plural; the ‘we’. So, for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. For Hegel, unencumbered selves are a figment of imagination. Instead, are not individual freedoms submerged by and for fellow Mancunians, West Ham fans or WI members? We are not hostage to one another but co-authors of Geist, or, the reciprocated behavioural norms of that particular fraternity. Co-authorship means individual freedom becomes undesirable, and self-constraint preferable, as members respect the fraternity ‘with the same loyalty and identification as he would give his own creations’, says Hegel.
Nothing is new under the Sun. But if we are to attempt ‘Big Society 2.0’, or ‘Shared Society 1.0’, we must heed the Hegelian warning; no two people can be artificially stitched together in compassion for one another. In order to rebind the social fabric of communities, we must start from rediscovering a sense of ‘we’.
The CSJ will recommend in Community Capital that government measure what matters – purposeful participation in the life of a community – as a means of testing its own progress in pursuing the good life for every British compatriot.
