Unless we believe the current crisis is a temporary glitch, we must chart a new way
HAVING SPENT 2009 being told we had no choice about so many things, it might be worth starting 2010 with the realisation that there is a choice.
You can choose to believe that the global crisis of which Ireland’s meltdown is an exemplar is a temporary glitch in an otherwise fine system. Or, lacking such blithe optimism, you can take up the challenge of defining a set of values radically different to that which has governed our public lives heretofore. What are the alternative principles by which public life might be lived?
There are, I suggest, four basic values – sustainability, solidarity, security and sufficiency.
SUSTAINABILITY: This concept is the great contribution of the Green movement. But it needs to be deepened. Indeed, environmental survival is impossible without social justice (both nationally and globally) and a large-scale reordering of economic priorities. In order to have the possibility of a liveable environment, we have to have a sustainable society and a sustainable economy. Just as there is no point in economic growth that is built on the depletion of non-renewable resources, there is no point in growth that damages society by increasing division and inequality, by undermining communities and producing damaged individuals.
SOLIDARITY: The idea that we have a responsibility towards each other is at the heart of all ethical systems. It is also an expression of enlightened self-interest: we assume, or at least hope, that the concern we have for others will be reflected back to us. In this sense, solidarity is not just a nice ideal. It is rooted in the obvious fact of interdependence.
SECURITY: The pursuit of ever greater material wealth is being replaced by the hunger for security. In one sense, this can be seen as a negative development. We are driven more by fear than aspiration. Instead of looking to the limitless heavens of consumer acquisition, we want to feel the ground beneath our feet.
In another sense, though, this shift is largely positive. It allows us to define the necessities of life which give us a basic sense of security and to which everyone should have access. And in this process some rather good news emerges. Even in a smaller, less frantic economy, there are more than enough resources to provide these necessities. Ireland is still easily rich enough to be able to ensure that all its citizens have access to housing, education, healthcare, transport and a modest but decent pension. In many cases, we already spend more than we need to on these social goods, but organise that spending so badly that the benefits are unevenly spread and insecurely enjoyed.
SUFFICIENCY: The idea that enough is enough is common sense but it is also deeply at odds with the model of capitalism that we have adopted. That model is based on three words – more, more, more. It does not recognise limitations – of geography and culture, of morality, modesty and equity, of environment and resources. It does not acknowledge the known fact that, beyond a certain level of wealth, happiness does not increase with affluence.
Sufficiency, in this context, has a double meaning. It implies a sense of proper limitation in which endless greed and endless consumption are not idolised, as they have been in recent decades, but reviled. It also implies an equality in which everyone has access to a sufficient share of resources to be able to function as a free citizen. The limits work at both ends – as ceilings beyond which it is unnecessary to go and as depths beyond which no one should be permitted to fall.
There’s nothing especially radical about any of these basic principles. I would sum up all four in a fifth “s” word, socialism. But people have arrived at these same notions from a variety of religious and ethical traditions and perspectives, and the overall labelling may be of much less importance in the 21st century than it was in the 20th.
But if the principles themselves are not particularly radical, their implications are very radical indeed. It is a mark of how far neo-liberal capitalism has strayed from basic civilised norms that its very existence is threatened by these rather simple values.
It has ignored sustainability to the point where it threatens the future of humanity through climate change, forgets the finite nature of many of the physical resources it consumes, engages in astonishingly reckless financial gambles and generates vast inequalities. It is contemptuous of solidarity, preferring to imagine the world as a vast sporting arena in which every game, in order to have winners, must also have losers. It has created immense insecurity. Even in its wealthiest homelands it cannot give most citizens a sense that there is a solid ground of decency beneath their feet. And it is terrified of the idea of sufficiency, needing always to invent new desires.
To assert these basic values, in other words, is to accept the need for radical change in the current system.