Ever noticed how we appear to be increasingly alienated from one another these days? Locked away in our own little world: jacked into iPods, mobiles and laptops. Distracted. Remote. Hived off.
Nobody seems to pay any attention to anybody else anymore. We have become compartmentalised. Each of us inhabiting our own private universe. Seemingly unaware that we share our world with other sentient beings.
When we do occasionally notice ‘other people’, it’s often with a sense of annoyance and irritability that we have been jarred out of our private realm: when someone cuts in front of us in the supermarket queue, or accidentally bumps into us on a crowded city street.
Its as if ‘other people’ aren’t real. They have become abstractions. Components parts in a metaphorical A.I. simulation. Welcome to The Matrix.
Other people are increasingly seen as an inconvenience. An unwelcome distraction. Intruders into our proprietary, private worlds. This appears particularly prevalent in our towns and cities, although I’ve started noticing it more in rural locations. The sickness seems to be spreading… even the countryside is no longer safe.
Sometime during the past 20 years, there appears to have been an incremental erosion of trust to the point where ‘other people’ are now increasingly regarded with suspicion and unease. Perhaps to some extent it was ever thus, but I’ve certainly noticed a significant change in attitude during my own lifetime.
Take the tube. Walk to work in any city. Take the train. You will notice this social partitioning and siege mentality in action on a daily basis. Has society broken down at some basic atomic level? If so, how did this happen? What can we do to reconnect with one another? Why should we do it at all?
To my mind, society isn’t irrevocably disintegrating, but it’s exhibiting some clear signs of fracturing. Fundamental fault lines that threaten the stability of the entire social fabric, unless we take steps to repair them. The recent civil unrest and rioting in London (and elsewhere), are obvious signs that something important is broken.
So, how do we heal the rift? I don’t pretend to have the answers, but perhaps we should start here…
• Inequality, Corporations & Politics – I’m a big believer in the argument that more equal societies are happier, safer and more stable societies. One of the big problems we face is that income distribution has become so unequal and skewed, that the ‘have nots’ no longer have any tangible stake in society. The damage inflicted on society by excessive inequality is brilliantly illustrated in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book, The Spirit Level.
Many people now work in low status, low pay, low aspiration jobs, which offer neither a reasonable living wage nor meaning and stimulation. Human beings have been reduced to economic units. Consumers rather than citizens. Units of labour in a government economic growth equation.
At the same time, our politicians appear to fear large corporations, and are unwilling (or unable), to curb the worst of their profit-hungry excesses. Companies pay their staff as little as they can get away with, rather than what is fair. Choosing to ignore their true worth. This is not a healthy model for any society.
For any civilisation to prosper, we must ensure that everyone has a genuine stake in society. A big part of the problem is that an increasing number of people exist at the very margins of society. These people have almost nothing to lose. If they are deprived to this extreme degree, and no longer even care about their own lives, is it any wonder that they show little respect for others? This is not an excuse for antisocial behaviour, simply an explanation.
• Competition – society is increasingly predicated on the principal of competition rather than cooperation. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not suggesting a return to Stalinist Russia. I just believe that we’ve allowed the scales to tip too far in the direction of neo-liberal global capitalism. Unfettered markets, with no checks or balances in place.
Why doesn’t anyone in the lofty corridors of political power stop to think about the valuable finite resources we are wasting by continuing to operate society in this way? How many different brands of toothpaste does a civilisation need? Why are many of our brightest minds wasting their time short-selling shares when they could be working on developing pollution-free fusion energy? Wouldn’t that be of more value to mankind than a 50-point rise in the FTSE 100? If we’re going to fix society, we must cooperate more, and compete less.
• Materialism – we need to stop obsessing about the latest fashions and ‘must-have’ consumer goods. We need to stop comparing our material wealth with that of others, making ourselves unhappy in the process.
We need to stop, take a breath, and ask ourselves: do I have enough already? Do I really need three TVs in my house? Do I really need a newer mobile phone? Do I really need to replace my car?
We need to free ourselves from our sickness of equating success with acquiring ‘stuff’, and instead measure real success using new criteria: am I happy? Am I a good father, wife, brother, friend?
We need to somehow re-engineer society around new values: equality, fairness, compassion, cooperation and human dignity. We need to re-build our society from the ground up, and at every level – families, schools, work, hospitals, etc.
Only in this way will we regain our sense of social cohesion and connectedness. Only in this way will we stop viewing other people as ‘the competition’.
We can do better through cooperation than through contention, and become more aligned to our humanity in the process.
