A false culture begets false change

One of the central tenets of this site is that without a root and branch change of culture (especially the ethical culture) in the UK, we will never get back to at least some approximation of the elements that made Britain great. However, I’ve often tried to explain that this shouldn’t become some kind of hopelessly backwards-looking fanatical idea about people with blue eyes and Roman noses having the advantage. Such a result would suit me fine, as I have both: but at times one must eschew selfishness in favour of the greater good. I truly do not care if the inhabitants of this hoped-for Engales (and given what the Jocks are up to, it’s beginning to look like that) are khaki, a nice yellowish-bronze or pink – or indeed any other colour. What I want is for them to share some kind of consensus about the majority mores, legal conventions, liberties and rights vital to the contentment of most people.

Try to make everyone happy, and you will fail. This simply isn’t possible: Utopian aspirations have been responsible for more deaths in wars, pogroms, inquisitions, and concentration camps than every disease put together. The Labour Party remains unable to accept this obvious lesson from history, but its members are not my subject tonight. My concern here is to point out again that the strategy I’ve been trying to put forward these seven years past is about the future, not the past.

There is more to cultural rebuilding than simply a philosophical belief in doing unto others as we would have them do to us. Moral decline has myriad side-effects, and one of them is an inability to change things for the better. ‘The better’ is of course another of those phrases that represent a target for relativists with limited horizons. But circular arguments about ‘better’ are just another way of saying, “I don’t know where to start – so I won’t”. We must surely at least have a go….ever mindful that perfection is not within the grasp of our species.

In a nutshell, a damaged culture gets in the way of genuine progress. And it gets in the way because, if you can’t trust the people in charge of managing that change, you will shrink from allowing it.

An obvious contemporary example is assisted suicide – or euthanasia. It seems to me that it is every being’s right if, in possession their faculties, they don’t wish to continue living – and wish to seek professional help to effect that decision. But realistic citizens know that, in the current ethical environment, allowing such a thing by law would cause widespread abuse of it within hours of its passage.

If you can’t trust GPs to put patient needs before a Mercedes 5 series, than you can’t free them from State control. If you can’t trust journalists to respect the privacy of their innocent fellow-citizens, then you will wind up with a lot of busy-bodies constantly checking how media stories are obtained. And if you can’t trust people to look after your money honestly and responsibly…well, you wind up with a bill for £1.3 trillion.

Think of how many times you have a radical idea, and then the naysayers insist, “Oh you couldn’t do that because…”. It nearly always boils down to an expectation of individual misbehaviour. But at times, it also goes beyond trust.

Trying something new is risky – inevitably. If the commercial culture is one of bums-on-seats and ‘everything must wash its face’, then nothing new will emerge. The current obsession in the performing arts with crossovers, remakes, spin-offs and revivals is a clear and direct result of this. But an arts sector or broader economy unable (or too scared) to invent something new is always going to stagnate – as ours has done; and as that of the United States has as well.

Examples of this can be more directly pernicious. A major reason we do not have cleaner automotive engines today is because oilcos discourage research into such things….and on occasion buy off the inventors before putting the blueprints into deep storage. And then we loop back into trust: such defensiveness is down to fear of becoming extinct as a corporation, but cutting corners (as with BP in the Gulf of Mexico) derives from the same fear of being caned by the shareholders for not delivering on time and on budget. Problems are deliberately hidden so as to keep the share price up. Unwillingness to invest in new oilfields – and thus reduce dividends – is a large part of the reason why we all pay extortionate gas prices today.

But these things are not problems with capitalism per se. On the contrary, they are problems stemming from the culture of capitalism to which the developed West clings….and the erosion of all ethics relating to business and the professions.

The political culture too suffers from this same malaise – except here we replace the shareholders with the electorate. More and more evidence is now coming through to suggest that many of the assumptions and precepts of global warming theory are at best misguided – and at worst plain wrong. But the all-consuming desire to deny errors, to be elected, and thus to gain access to unlimited power far exceeds any consideration of the social good. In this way are wind turbines erected – blots on the landscape damning future generations to low output and high maintenance costs. Their construction is defended by data at best optimistic and at worst bent. Gender legislation is forced through without concern for childcare. Childcare is provided without thought for cost. Health & Safety rules are framed with no understanding of the vital role of risk-learning in preparing children for responsible adulthood. All of this is learning sacrificed on the altar of being seen to be right.

This brief essay covers but a fraction of those elements of our culture that are dysfunctional. But what they all have in common is the capacity to get in the way. That is, to hinder the progress towards widespread improvement of the lot of a nation’s citizens.

The list of those hindrances is daunting bordering on criminal. Bourse financing that encourages speculation rather than capitalisation. Remote shareholders that drive short-termist corner cutting rather than long-term investment in quality and range. Material obsession that dilutes professional standards. Accountancy-sponsored fear that negates experiment. And perhaps above all, materially sponsored power that values re-election far above truth.

‘Change we can believe in’ promised the US candidate in 2008 – now revealed three years later to be just another suit housing a novel Presidential ethnicity. ‘Vote for change’ suggested the Tory Party with even less imagination in 2010. Here too, we got a change of clothes rather than a change in behaviour. We put our trust in these people, and they let us down. For some fifty years now, that has been the hole in the heart of Western democratic politics.