Easing process standards is destroying the creativity we need to survive

If there is one book to be written about the era in which we live, it is the one describing how a complete loss of plot has afflicted every last profession and institution in Britain. Regardless of the dominant political mores at any given point over the last forty years, this amnesia about purpose has continued unabated.

This thought occurred to me yet again this morning as I read the commenting terms and conditions at a website. I always do this now, and if there is a ban on urls, I leave no comment….although quite often I go to the owner’s Twitter site, and say that what he or she is doing is illegal – because it is.

But don’t get me started: the phrase that really caught my eye was this one, saying that no commentator should ‘promote discrimination based on race, sex, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age’. This is not the law at all, but it is our culture’s view of correct behaviour.

It’s a frightening diktat, that one. It means I can’t observe that Asian adults have less pubic hair than Europeans, women have a lower body-muscle content than men, more people have been killed by Islamists in the last two years than every other form of religious extremist put together, German culture is completely different to Greek culture, some people have two legs and others one, male homosexuals rarely have children, and older people often display more wisdom than teenagers. All these things are true, but some idiot is perfectly happy to lay down the law and say that, on this my site, telling the truth will get you banned.

The Race Relations and general ‘ist’ industry (and it is an industry now) has turned full circle from its original well-intentioned desire to stop irrational bigotry, in favour of a new role – to apply irrational judgements that suggest bigotry where none exists. A comment threader here yesterday complained that The Slog has become ‘an anti-Islam racist rant’ – a claim that is not only groundless, it confuses race with religious culture. Such is commonplace…along with that demanding tone of voice – ‘stop this now or else’ – that such pinched goblins seem unable to avoid using.

But that alone is just one small symptom of a cultural illness which, I fancy, could wind up being deadly for our civilisation.

Politicians no longer dictate policy, they take orders; they no longer take soundings – and if they do, such soundings are suppressed when ‘off-message’. Public servants see us as working for them in general, and their pensions in particular. Lawyers no longer provide equality before the law to the poor, they protect the rich from the consequences of equality before the law. Bankers no longer finance capitalism, they starve entrepreneurs and underwrite monopolism. GPs don’t have a calling any more, they have a business model and some targets. Policemen only rarely solve crimes: their new job (as they see it) is being a cross between an amateur social worker and a tax collector. Teachers see themselves as promoters of socio-political conformity rather than individual responsibility and unconventionality. The Foreign Office sees itself not as the vanguard of British interests and values, but the seeker after a quiet life. Judges no longer protect human rights, they defend the cynical exploitation of human rights legislation. Climate change debaters no longer see themselves as seeking the truth, they see their job as trashing the other side. Parents more often see their children as a conduit for their own egos, rather than small bundles of indiscipline and appetite who need to be socialised.

All the above have made changing their function and standards an objective purely to make life easier and more personally rewarding. How very odd it is that those who by and large applaud these outlooks on life call themselves ‘progressive’. But that too summates what contemporary ‘liberals’ are about: people who don’t share their views must be sad/stupid/evil/silenced: for they are not ‘correct’. It’s mind-boggling in its authoritarian nature. And horribly reminiscent of Soviet mental asylums.

People sometimes ask me why I have it ‘in for’ two politicians as disparate as Boris Johnson and Harriet Harman. My answer (increasingly grudgingly given) is always the same: neither has any respect for laws that get in their way, neither can imagine any way in which their free market/feminist credo might be anything other than perfect, and neither has given enough consideration to the consequences of their attitude. People like this are always a threat to liberal democracies. But they are merely aggrandised examples of the developments I describe in earlier paragraphs: they have not thought through what the inevitable downsides of that one-eyed Weltanschauung will be.

Most people in positions of some influence in 2012 do not think about consequences any more because they have not been properly socialised. They think almost entirely in terms of the ‘now’ gratification, the personal satisfaction rather than the social impact. And that pack-animal dysfunction applies right across the piece: from the MoD pinstripe who thinks his job is more worthy of salvation that that of a battle-hardened squaddie, all the way through to the Hedge Fund bondholder who thinks his bonus more important than a stable society using humanitarian values to reduce political support for the lunatic fringe.

There is a lesson in here for anyone paying attention. When personal career advancement and wealth come before social contentment, all the institutions and professions I’ve mentioned (and many, many others) are bound to change their job function to something which more easily achieves the selfish ego-objective. As Chesterton remarked, “People invent new values because they can no longer live up to the old ones”. Policemen will learn about cultural diversity, and fire more coppers on the beat. Doctors will maximise practice sizes and neglect new ideas. Journalists will do the proprietor’s bidding rather than interrogate the status quo. TV contractors will chase ratings rather than raise standards. And yes – bloggers will chase hits rather than write what needs to be written.

Free-market neocon capitalism is the biggest, most intrusive and socially venomous of all these self-serving changes in job description. It comes up with insane terms like ‘jobless recovery’ and ‘deficit-based growth’. But above all, it sees itself in terms of gdp performance and little else. It has lost the two most vibrant elements in its former structure: the risk of discovery, and the fulfilment of personal potential put to the service of a more content society. Just as in the 1960s, there was much talk of ‘Communism with a human face’, what we have in the West now is ‘Capitalism with an inhuman Facebook’.

Stagnation comes in all the sizes of all the countries and all the colours of all the politicians. The current capitalist model demands stagnation: in social thought, political credo, and economic ideas. Ironically, what that does at the level of individual function is bend the rules in order to more easily ‘pass the test’ set by the rigid minds above. This applies as much to Beijing’s old men as it does to feminism’s ageing sisters and Whitehall’s pension-snaffling Sir Humphreys.

We do not need the invention of new but irrelevant social functions. We need to strip away the nonsense, and strip in some new ideas about how capitalism should function. Without achieving that, we will all be Greece in the end.