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There are four stages a person goes through in becoming an adult. The first stage is that of the young child up to the age of five or thereabouts. The child's mind and actions are governed by will and emotion. Rules are only obeyed because of the likelihood of being caught and punished for transgressions. They tend to be parasitical, are extremely self centred and unsocialised, and relationships that they form tend to be self serving and manipulative. These traits in a young child are natural. In an adult they are a massive handicap, both to themselves and the society they live in. Because they have not come to terms with reality they live quite painful and chaotic lives. It has been suggested that some twenty percent of our people are at this stage of development. We might call these people 'the lawless'. The second stage of development is the formal or institutional stage where there is a desire to belong, to be a part of something greater than oneself. This, in children, is usually the case up to adolescence. They like things fixed. Fixed, unambiguous rules; fixed rituals; a fixed position in the scheme of things. Second stage adults gravitate towards large companies, established churches and religions, institutions such as the military and so on. They obey the rules because they are 'The Rules' and have a rather legalistic, literal view of regulations. They are model citizens. We might call these people 'conservatives'. The third stage can be compared to the normal adolescent rebelliousness. It is a sceptical, questioning stage where doubt about the status quo leads to the challenging of assumptions that have been handed down. It is a stage of development that holds great promise, and corresponding dangers. The promise is that of the new, of innovation and progress as old ways are re-examined and, if found wanting, discarded or superseded. The characteristics of stage three individuals are those of principled self-reliance. The negative side of such a personality is a destructive criticality, and change for the sake of change, irrespective of whether it is an improvement. We might call these people 'liberals'. The final stage is that of the well-formed human adult. There are no familiar political terms for such people, because they are relatively rare - not only in society but in politics. Examples in this arena shine across the centuries. A list would include, but not be limited to; Asoka, Marcus Aurelius, Alfred the Great, Joseph Garibaldi and Mahatma Ghandi. Since there is no political name for these people we might choose a tribal function and call these people 'elders'. These categories are not hard edged, and individuals can manifest traits from every level, but in general they can be used to explain, and predict, a lot about what is happening in the world today both on a large scale and at the personal scale. It is also possible for people of one level to 'fake' that of another. The worst (and most familiar) example being one of the lawless masquerading as a conservative or liberal. Of course, this does not fool tiny minority of elders, but that does not matter to the impostor, who is recruiting from the 'lower ranks' that are effectively blind to what is happening. Again, history is littered with examples of the lawless rising to positions of absolute power, not mention periods when the lawless in general have had free reign. The view that people of different stages have of each other is interesting. Those at a lower level are generally perceived as being worthy of conversion to the higher level by the latter. Conservatives see the lawless as moral retards and criminals; liberals see conservatives as bigots and fools; elders see liberals as simply 'not quite there yet'. However, the view from the lower level is often one of threat and disdain. The lawless see the 'law and order' conservatives as the enemy - stupid people who obey the rules even if they know they would not get caught if they broke them. Conservatives see liberals as dangerous anarchic idealists blinded to the 'realities of life' or too stupid to acknowledge 'the truth'. Liberals cannot understand elders -- why apparently sane rational people just like themselves can believe seemingly contradictory things. This is most apparent in the field of religion. The lawless, as always, do what is most expedient. The conservatives tend to be dogmatic literalists. The liberals tend towards agnosticism. Elders tend to take a rather mystical or idiosyncratic view. These levels are not fixed. The lawless can be dramatically converted to conservative - this is the classic 'religious conversion of the sinner', although it may not be religion but some other form of order to which they are converted. The conversion of liberal to elder often takes years and is a gradual process, as, to a lesser extent, is the 'loss of faith' (more accurately, the conversion to scepticism) in moving from conservative to liberal. It has been said rather cynically that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested i.e. both have had some illusions shattered. When dealing with people at each level of society a different political and social approach is needed, which is another reason why our society is failing. In the 'good old days' when conservatives were running the show they applied the rule of law, order and force, which was effective in containing criminality and the cruder abuses of morality. Force and power are sufficient and effective ways of dealing with lawless people en masse as, to put it in both lawless and conservative parlance, 'it's the only thing they understand'. Conservative society is inherently law abiding, hierarchical and generally intolerant of difference. Merely appealing to them to obey the law, and shaming them into doing so, works well. Liberal sceptics, on the other hand, need to have the reasons explained to them before they will mend their behaviour; they are reasonable people who do not take things for granted and who require participation in the decision making process. The problem with our liberal society, and those who run it, is that there is a tacit assumption that, at base, everyone is reasonable and all issues can be resolved by people of goodwill sitting down to a rational discussion. Liberal people are always susceptible to 'reasoned' argument. The more gullible can be talked out of, or into, almost anything. That is the weakness, and strength, of liberals in the same way that obedience to order is the weakness and strength of conservative people. It is where the ridiculous notion that 'violence never solves anything' arises. Some people, in fact quite a lot, need coercing first and convincing second. And if that fails, supressing forcibly. It should be noted that there is probably no predominantly lawless culture in existence. Such a society could not work. Indeed, we are seeing predominantly lawless 'nations' appearing (or should that be 'disappearing'?) in Africa. The tribal based societies from which the nation state has emerged were generally strongly conservative with the lawless component very much under the eye of everyone in the tribe and later, village. The elders in turn were held in high esteem and were usually part of the 'ruling class', if it can be described that way. Liberal individuals were rare, and generally, in a static culture that was in balance with Nature and neighbours, both suspect and largely unnecessary. Societies seldom like those who rock the boat, and only tolerate or encourage them in times of change or crisis. Societies that are a mixture of predominantly lawless and conservative are almost always authoritarian, if not outright dictatorships. When the vast majority of the people are conservative then such societies are very tranquil, efficient, but not very innovative. As an example Japan springs to mind as the model. When the percentage of lawless individuals rises then institutions such as democracy become unworkable, as many nations demonstrate. Democracy needs at least some measure of principle and altruism, some give and take, in order to work effectively. True democracy, in the sense of the people as a whole making policy, can only work in a predominantly liberal/elder culture. In any other it becomes a self destructive mob rule. We would note here that what is happening in the world today, and the West in particular can be illuminated by considering where our society as a whole stands. Liberals see our society through rose coloured liberal glasses. These are people who wield a great deal of power and have built for their own level of awareness, and 'reasonableness'. This has meant weakening or dismantling the apparatus of the old conservative society that they view as unenlightened, unfair or repressive. Consequently the lawless people, that is, the criminal element in its widest context, has been unleashed both at the top and bottom of the social order. This is largely what the 'Sixties' were about. Western culture made a quantum leap from the conservative, the rigid hierarchical rule based society of pre World War Two, to a liberal led culture of individual freedom, self expression and massive technical and social innovation and experimentation. It is also not very surprising that much of the characteristic of a liberal led culture is going to appear like an institutionalised teenage rebellion. Sex, drugs and rock and roll, not to mention a love of novelty for its own sake, and the idolisation of youth and its narcissistic interests (although that age group, the 'me generation', are now severely aged teenagers). As for true elders, there are not very many of them, and they are yet to make their presence felt politically, although politics itself is still largely a conservative/liberal phenomenon at present. The fact that our spiritual/social order in the West has been broken down means that our populations are polarising with a lack of education and moral discipline (a conservative speciality) leading to a rising lawless, or criminal, population; and we should not need to remind anyone that the criminals are not only the muggers on the streets but, worst of all, a great many of our new ruling class. There is almost a paradox about what is happening around us. On one hand we see a lot of caring enlightened people who appear to be doing their best, a great deal of talk about ethics, ecological conscience, animal rights and so forth coupled with a rise in interest of all things spiritual. We see sciences and technologies making vast strides. We see horrors on every street corner, genocide, weakness, moral paralysis, rampant crime and the symptoms of despair more profound than in any modern peacetime era. What is happening? Clues can be found in the general response of technically inferior societies that meet overwhelmingly powerful ones. Almost inevitably the former disintegrate, even if they are not conquered. Fundamental to every culture is a particular world-view. It has been argued that the roots of culture lie in a few quite basic ideas or assumptions, which are held in common, about the ultimate purpose and meaning of human life as a whole – our place in the scheme of things. At root, every culture represents an attempt to understand the world, and in some way adapt to, or manipulate, that world. When these assumptions are revealed to be false, or merely impotent in the new world, the social fabric is ripped apart and conservative authority, which is based on that traditional power and knowledge, is instantly rendered obsolete. This in turn frees the lawless opportunist elements who have no allegiance to anything but their own interests and a spiral of anarchy and demoralisation follows. The result is most apparent amongst the men who no longer have a well defined role since they cannot protect the tribe nor, in the new environment, can they support their families in any traditional manner. What follows is drunkenness, drug abuse, crime, disease, gambling, the destruction of the extended family, promiscuity and (in the new environment) unemployment - all symptoms of a fundamental despair at having their place in the world and their future, both personal and as a people, destroyed. The only element that remains relatively coherent, and capable of adapting, are the women. No matter what else is happening, their role is still as it was - to look after and support the children when nobody else will. Does it sound familiar? So, where is the massively superior culture to which we have been subjected? The answer is, it is all around us. We are the 'enemy', and the super-culture that is invading is the future arriving today, disrupting everything we thought was stable and destroying the values of previous generations while offering little or nothing to take their place. It is a cliché to say we live in an era of unprecedented change, but the consequences are seldom appreciated. Science has undermined what conservatives most valued in religion, with the result that it has fed liberal excesses on one hand, and forced some conservatives into the retrenchement of fundamentalism. The rest have presumably not been faced with the contradictions of belief, given that most people in Britain consider themselves Christian yet seemingly know very little of the religion. Yet for the most part Britain was spared the horrors of the ersatz religions of the Twentieth Century - Nazism, Fascism and Communism – that grew into the vacuum ultimately created by the Enlightenment, and for that we should thank them. Meanwhile, we have our own list of contemporary 'certainties' that have proved unable to withstand the winds of change. The idea of a 'job for life' has disappeared creating economic insecurity, and the welfare state has become a monstrous self serving bureaucracy whose ineffectiveness is matched only by its waste. What other institution can claim to have created, from scratch, a brand new form of poverty ie 'the poverty trap'? Then we have mass immigration and the multicultural society where there is no baseline morality, because different cultures see things differently. Instead we end up with a kind of de-facto moral relativism whose (lucrative) bottom line is determined by lawyers and taxpayer funded QUANGOs (for those not British they are 'quasi autonomous national governmental organisations' – usually stacked with 'the great and the good' at no small expense). There is no cohesion, and the word 'community' has become a euphemism for 'tribe' encompassing a relatively small geographical area, or worse, shortsighted self interest based on some trivial factor such as skin colour. Nationhood is becoming Balkanised into a collection of socially immiscible communities – ghettoes by another name. The commonality that once bound us as a nation is sacrificed on the alter of a spurious diversity which is fed by corporate Capitalism keen only to sell mass produced products to the lowest common denominator, while exporting the jobs that once created the wealth. We have vast numbers of choices but very little in the way of real alternatives. This is manifest in everything from identical high streets in every town to all our major political parties having virtually identical policies. Meanwhile, what few recognise at present is that we are starting to make the transition to an elder culture, which is something this planet has never seen, at least when coupled with technology on a large scale. There are many reasons for this, including the power of technology to inform, unite and, with nuclear weapons, terrorise towards sanity. The major factor though may well be simply the ageing of the populations of the rich and powerful nations of Earth and the consequential maturity of outlook. What this will mean is unknown at present. However, while all this is happening what needs to be done from a social point of view is to maintain places for people that are consistent with their own levels of development. We need conservatives and liberals to co-exist within a New Society. If not, then it will disintegrate because no place will be found for the majority, and the immoral minority will continue their destructive rampage both locally and globally. We need strong conservative institutions controlled by elders, supported by the vast bulk of citizens, and served by liberal technocrats. That is, we need a return to the ancient spiritual structure of the tribe as it existed in times (non terminal) of stress and change. We need a new society structured around change, but able to offer everyone a place within it, especially those who seemingly have no place. It is also a truism that if, as a society, we do not offer everyone a place then there will be a class of people with no place in society. So, how do we begin? A number
of things need to be done. The Welfare State and Minimum Wage The fact that in Britain today some forty-percent of the population is reliant to some extent on welfare is an indictment of the entire system. It means that the poorest segment of our people is unable to earn enough to support themselves and their families, despite unemployment being at a low level. Simply stated, too many jobs do not pay a 'living wage' to their employees and the state has to step in to boost their income through taxation of the wealthier proportion of our society. This has two massively undesirable side effects. The first is the creation of a vast non-productive government bureaucracy. The second effect is even worse - it is the effective taxpayer subsidisation of whole swathes of sweatshop industries, mostly in the service sector. It is our contention that the primary function of the government is to regulate - not to tax one section of the population in order to hand out cash to another. The regulation required to rectify the above situation is the statutory minimum wage. There is a familiar argument against raising the minimum wage to decent levels. It is that jobs will be lost either through reduced demand or the export of jobs to lower wage areas of the world. A glib reply that contains more than a grain of truth is to say that any job not worth paying for is not worth doing, but let us ignore that and examine the objections just mentioned. The idea of jobs being exported to low wage regions is a very valid objection. However, assuming this is undesirable, which is an arguable in itself, we can get around this by applying minimum wage laws purely to service jobs that cannot be exported at all. Consider the archetypal low wage job - the worker in the burger bar. Suppose, suddenly, those wage costs double - what happens? It is obvious that the job is not going to be exported to (say) India and your cheeseburger flown in from Delhi so the options are rather limited. The proprietor can employ the same number of people, but increase the cost of the final product. However, one might think that demand is likely to fall and the number of employees reduced. This is the crux of the argument. It does, though, ignore one crucial element. Namely, that overall tax can be reduced because people no longer have to subsidise a large section of the population. On the other hand, perhaps jobs will still be lost because they will not want to spend that extra money on burgers. That too is fine - it is the 'free market' (or freer market) determining that one sector of the economy (burgers) is not quite so viable now it has no hidden government subsidies. Yet in general, most service jobs are not dispensable. Hotels still need people to make the beds and wash the linen. Shops still need sales staff. Hospitals still need nurses and cleaners and the rubbish still has to be collected. The effect of drastically increasing the minimum wage in the service sectors would be to make those sectors more attractive. The manufacturing industries, and the industries with 'exportable' low wage jobs can compete in that new market - or not. Ultimately low wage exportable jobs should be exported to other areas of the world - it is a far better solution than 'foreign aid' from rich First World nations. In addition we might discover that the claim that we have to import more migrants because the labour force is shrinking due to an ageing population might take something of a dent if we find 'unemployment' rising because we insist on no longer paying slave wages for 'menial' jobs. In fact, we might discover that quite a few of our 'old' people are only too happy to flip burgers and maintain a comfortable standard of living quite beyond anything the state pension is able to provide. And as an aside, 'slave wages' seems to be a generous term. A Canadian economist recently published a study which purported to show that paying a worker the then existing minimum wage was cheaper than keeping a slave under tradional conditions of servitude. And one final irony for those
of you who are old enough to remember – do you recall the
prophecies of 'the leisure society'? Immigration Which brings us neatly to the topic of immigration, both legal and illegal. What good has mass immigration done for our society, apart from being a source of cheap labour? No doubt the usual clichés can be rolled out about food, music, clothing etc but these are really just froth compared to the difficulties that have been, and are being caused, by continued mass immigration. However, this is generally overlooked or minimised in both media and government because until recently the downside has only really hit the 'working class' and the poor. If you ask our politicians they will tell you that we need an expanding population to maintain economic growth, especially as our citizenry is breeding below replacement rate, and hence we have an ageing population. Does anyone recall how, for the past several decades we were urged to have smaller families because it was the 'responsible' thing to do for the planet? Who will pay for the pensions is the question that is asked, and the only answer apparently is to import more cheap labour to look after our imminent flood of old age pensioners - because otherwise taxation might have to rise. There is something fundamentally wrong with this, not least the implication that this process must continue indefinitely. When do we stop? When Britain's population is one hundred million? Two hundred million? And if we are going to stop we might as well do it while there is still room to sit down. And the biggest joker in the pack, in fact all of history, might just be that the era of old age itself is coming to an end. There are truly incredible advances being made in the bio-sciences on a daily basis - but that is a topic dealt with elsewhere. When we import unskilled migrants we are, in fact, importing an impoverished alien underclass whose sole function is to provide cheap labour for the 'sweatshop' service sector. As a side effect it creates massive income differentials between the highest and least paid of our people and simultaneously keeps house prices rising faster than either economic growth or inflation can justify. The differentials arise because of the (now rigged) free market effect of a surplus or sufficiency of unskilled labour. The house prices rise because the population is expanding - due solely to immigration. Then, in the name of 'multiculturalism' we fail to integrate our new citizens into our society and they end up ghettoised. Which may be accepted by first generation migrants, but it is not something that their children and grandchildren will readily tolerate, as we are seeing. So - better import some 'fresh blood' if the old lot have 'gone native' and are demanding a decent living. At the other end of the scale where we are importing skilled labour we are invariably taking it from nations that can least afford to lose it. Probably the most obscene example is importing nurses from Africa - as if the people there are oversupplied with medical staff who have nothing to do all day. Why? - because those who use the cheap labour are too greedy to pay real wages and/or our education system is incapable of effectively educating our own citizens. Finally, the issue of population density. To put it in perspective England is three time more densely populated than China, or to put it another way, if the USA had the same population density as England it would have in excess of three and a half billion citizens. Does that sound overcrowded? Multiculturalism Something we hear a great deal - that we live in a multicultural society. The problem is, it is not true. A culture is much more than than the food that is eaten or what music gets played on the radio - it is the laws we choose to live under. Those who claim to want a multicultural society, with but one set of laws applicable to all citziens, are either deluding themselves or consciously attempting to fragment our nation. The culture we actually live in is Secular Western Liberal Democracy (SWLD). Admittedly, it is a very tolerant and wide ranging culture that can embrace many elements from cultures around the globe, and indeed does so. However, to believe that entire cultures can be transplanted here is a mistake because it is simply neither true nor desirable. What we do welcome into Britain are people and those parts of their cultures that are compatible with SWLD. What we do not welcome, nor allow, are the aspects of foreign cultures that clash with our own in a fundamental manner. For example, we do not allow adulterers to be stoned to death, homosexuals executed, apostates and blasphemers murdered or 'honour killings' to go unpunished. The nature of British culture and its seeming lack of defining characteristics often puzzle people when they are confronted by the question - what is it? If we skip the trivial such as Morris dancing and Black Pudding we arrive at a definition that is really a lack of much that is wrong with other nations. For example: When we want to change the govt we have an election, we don't have blood running through the streets. The military does not get involved in politics - the last, and only, military take-over was 350 years ago. We take a certain amount of pride in a relatively uncorrupt civil service and judiciary. We do not have to 'grease the palms' of anyone if we want something done by those who supposedly serve us. In fact, we view that as a serious crime that does get punished. We consider nepotism a bad thing and prefer a meritocratic way. We have a police force that does not use torture and extrajudicial killings as a standard method of 'law' enforcement. We have a political system and freedom of speech such that we can insult politicians, the monarch or prominent religious leaders without being tortured and executed in reprisal. We believe that our children have a right to chose to marry who they will. We believe that individuals may choose their religion as they will (or relinquish it) with no sanctions being applied against them, and that religious violence is alien and an abomination (hence the general distaste for what happens in N Ireland). We do not indulge in 'blood feuds' lasting generations as a matter of settling grudges. We believe that the family of someone who commits a crime should not be punished along with them. We have laws against racism and sexism. And so on. We often cannot see our own culture in the same way fish cannot see the water they swim in - because it is has become the universal baseline culture of the West. This is something of which we should be proud, and we should defend it to our utmost ability. Those who wish to come to live in Britain should be required to explicitly and formally accept these general civic virtues, and uphold them. However, this is not enough. We do not want a nation fragmented along major cultural lines any more than along class lines, especially if those correspond to ethnic or racial divides coupled with 'separatist' tendencies or ghettoisation. Such is a recipe for trouble. What is required is a definite commitment to the creation of an integrated society with common values and a united people who are happy to stand together under a common flag and say 'this is who we are'. The keys to successful ethnic/race relations are the reduction of ethnic competition and weakening of ethnic identification. This needs to be backed up by powerful efforts to promote equality and fight unfair discrimination by raising the costs of racism and discrimination. Bigotry can be fought and beaten, but similarities and unity must be emphasised, not diversity and difference. Anything that promotes racial identikit or separateness worsens tensions and confounds these efforts. Multiculturalism, positive discrimination (affirmative action), group rights, designating special status victims groups and fostering ethnic pride/identity and over-reporting the threat of racism all work against ethnic/racial peace and aggravate xenophobia and racism. Ultimately this means intermarriage and assimilation. Some of the most troubling
areas of inter-ethnic conflict are areas with groups who are very
similar racially and culturally but have very low rates of
intermarriage eg, Bosnia, Northern Ireland. Other places have
great racial diversity, high levels of intermarriage and little
in the way of ethnic problems eg. Brazil. If we wish to solve the
ethnic conflict problem we have to solve the inter-marriage
problem, otherwise even with long periods of peaceful and happy
co-existance conflict can erupt. This means emphasising the
secular nature of our society and discouraging religious
'inbreeding' ie the notion that one should only marry a member of
one's own faith. Social Engineering What is the purpose of
society? Social engineering does not exist in any radical experimental form because the only bodies capable of funding, sanctioning and running such experiments are governments who are almost by definition too conservative. They are not in the business of changing the societies that elected them, whatever they may claim. The only times and places where such projects have been undertaken are in newly formed nations - the most notable of such benign experiments being Israel with the Kibbutzim. The problem with the orthodox politics of today is their rigid ideological blinkers coupled with a lack of both imagination and courage. They are frightened of experiments. They are frightened of being seen to be wrong, and terrified of being seen to have no viable solutions to our social problems. The only thing they are capable of is dogmatic assertion of belief in the face of contrary evidence, both scientific and of the man-on-the-street variety. The key to social solutions is social experimentation, and if the answers they provide are not palatable - too bad. We need to try out all kinds of ideas, from cooperative housing to communal living, especially for the vulnerable and poor eg single parent families and old people. The planning laws should also be used to ensure a mix of high and low cost housing, and to discourage a rich/poor divide in our communities. We need to introduce institutions that create stability, participation and consensus. Among them might be what a lot of traditional societies have, but we lack – a voluntary formal 'coming of age' ceremony, perhaps modelled on the Bar Mitzvah or Jugendfeier youth ceremony. Perhaps also carrying legally binding Rights and Duties. Most importantly we must not encourage sectarian, culturally or racially divisive schooling for our children. As for the family itself, in all societies it has been the major socialising and teaching mechanism when it comes to culture and morality. It is probably under terminal pressure from many directions. The old and most useful form, the extended family, has almost been wiped out in much of the West. It's ersatz replacement, the so-called 'nuclear family' looks to be heading in the same direction. This is not something that any society, or government, can afford to ignore. To foist the functions of family onto schools, 'the street' and television has ugly consequences. However, soundbite establishment politics such as 'back to basics' with its rosy coloured view of the 1950's middle class family is not the way to go. We need to understand why such social disintegration is occurring. It is probably a combination of many factors. On one hand we have a longer lifespan than previous generations, and the notion of 'married for life' now implies up to sixty or more years. In the 'good old days' it often meant much less than half that. The notion of marriage 'for life' has ended. Then we have the pressure on partners to work rather than raise a family and not least the constant stream of subliminal pressure from the media advertising the Capitalist ideal – 'don't share, have your own!'. Own TV, own car, own house... Which is perhaps another reason why so many people choose to be single. At the same time, economic incentives in favour of a shared lifestyle have been removed by successive governments. Why is there never enough? Only when we can answer such questions, and test those answers with experiments, will we begin to get a grip on a worthwhile future.
.© The Consensus 2002 |
