When discussing the many material challenges that western countries face today, it’s always better to try and focus on material solutions. I, like most other people who comment on the world now, focus on the issues too much and not enough on the answers.
But even if you do end up seriously considering laws, policies, actions etc that could be concrete answers to problems, the very act of considering practical answers quickly leads on to why governments, institutions et al don’t seem to be taking these steps. Sometimes the answer to this is other practical considerations that you haven’t quite understood, the limits of finance and resources.
More often though, it all seems to come down to a lack of will. The government could control mass migration, it could prosecute rich tax avoiders and poor benefit fraudsters alike. It could build nuclear power plants to provide us with clean, efficient and cheaper power. It could stimulate and protect strategic British industry. It could help the millions of people written off on all sorts of benefits back into work that would restore their dignity and independence. It could target knife crime instead of internet crimes and prevent young men from killing each other. It could fund the prison service making it a safely unpleasant place that is a punishment but also offers redemption. It could stop fighting small wars for uncertain reasons and properly fund an armed forces that projects strength and tells the world you can’t threaten this country and its core interests. It could build more houses so that young people have a more realistic chance at getting a home. It could build a safer, more prosperous society again where people want to have families.
And on and on, there’s so much a serious government could do. But we don’t. And I think that’s down to the incredible cultural changes western societies have gone through. So much change it might well be easier to say what you think has stayed the same since your grandparents were young people to the world we live in now. To narrow in on the main culprit in this decline of the will to act, for me it would be the general philosophical outlook of the west now.
A robust, post-christian secularism has rotted into an all permissive, selfish shithole of a society. Power is always a bad thing, never earned and never exercised in good faith. All situations are complex, so complex it’s best not to act in case you make things worse. In accomplishing a net good for the majority, not one person can suffer. Feelings matter as much as physical violence and no one can be judged for anything, no one can be shamed for anything. Actually, shame does have a home and that’s in our history, all our ancestors were evil. Competitive victimhood bestows some power, but no one stays King of that odious Hill for long before you’re toppled by someone telling a sadder story. And we’re so sad, so unbelievable sad and anxious. We don’t believe in god or anything else but we do believe in our own sadness.
If we want a better society, if we want to solve the real problems we face, we need to start here, with our imaginations and our cultural mindsets, the aggregates of all of our mentalities. We need to talk about what life really is and what we hope to get out of it. We need to embrace rational risk and be honest about the trade offs when we make compromises.
Life is a serious matter, no matter your level of wealth and comfort, fear, danger, sickness and death ever lurk in the margins. In the western world we have focused on pushing our safety and comfort to the limits of what’s possible in reality, with an ever-increasing cost to get an ever-diminishing return. Indeed, this constant focus on safety and comfort has actually eroded these things as people have become more fragile and anxious, afraid to lose what they have and always focused on what might hurt them.
A scared and demoralised population that believes in nothing may make the ultimate consumers because you can sell them everything. Everything from their clothes to their food to their entertainment to their mental wellbeing, health and sense of community, it’s all for sale, or more accurately, all for rent. Great for international capital, but a population like that can’t make a functioning society.
If only we could live our lives knowing that we’re mortal, that we’re all animals but with just a pinch of divine consciousness. If only we could tell new stories about old virtues, if everyone living here could be a bit braver, a bit stronger, a bit more industrious. If only we could believe in ourselves and each other, believe in some sort of shared identity, we could all live better lives together.
I’m not an international citizen of nowhere and nor are most other people, especially normal people with families. We live in places and those places have been run into the ground by the forces of post-modernity. We are coming to the end of the pier, but we live here. We have no choice to go out in the ruins of this fallen empire and try and make a society we all want to live in.