New times, new politics?

March 20, 2009 by
Filed under: Credit crunch, Politics 

There is a brilliant piece by my old friend Martin Kettle in today’s Guardian. In all the political breast-beating about the world after the crisis he sees something I sensed but could not name (though it echoes the thesis of my first annual RSA lecture).

The political classes are arguing about which of them and which of their ideologies is best suited to manage the post-crisis world. What none of them seems to get is that any plan that understands people as the object (whether they are the object of markets or the state) rather than the subject of change is doomed to failure. The current argument between left and right about how best to empower people is like a man with a fork and a man with a sieve fighting over how to bail out a sinking boat.         

This is a problem of social buoyancy. Politicians can only steer a boat that has the capacity to float. But over recent decades we have thrown too much civic ballast over the side and we have dragged on too much individualist cargo in its place.

This sounds like a counsel of despair. And if we had to rely on an ontology derived from an admixture of Cartesian dualism, neo-liberal economics and our flawed intuition, so it would be. Now is the time for us to call on a wealth of powerful analysis derived from neuroscience, behavioural economics, social psychology and moral philosophy to recast our very notion of who are and how we thrive as human beings.

Take just two insights and imagine, really imagine, how different our world would be if we lived according to them.

First, our personalities are less fixed and more dependent on the context in which we place ourselves than we think. While the things that make people feel good (family, friendship, altruism, good health, fulfilment in our work) are much more universal and constant than the booming messages of consumer capitalism beg us to believe.

Second, our brains are much more plastic (changebale and adaptable) than we imagine. All of us have huge scope to develop as human beings throughout our lives. What matters to that development is to do with inner reflection and social connection more than material success or hierarchical status.

This may sound pious and irrelevant to today’s scramble out of crisis. But one of the reasons the new world will see the West decline and the East rise is that, all in all, the citizens of the East have a more realistic and sustainable (which to some extent means humble and resigned) idea of what life involves. The simple fact that most of the West consumes more than it produces while most of the East produces more than it consumes is a powerful symptom of cultural difference.

We cannot simply abandon our own cultural traditions, and there is much of the West to cherish and preserve. But for leaders to construct a feasible future for our societies means citizens reimagining a feasible and fulfilling way of life for themselves.

But when will politics get anywhere near questions like this?

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6 Comments on New times, new politics?

  1. Matthew Cain on Fri, 20th Mar 2009 4:22 pm

    2. Small point but when I started to tell people about Doidge’s book last summer I found that the plastic analogy didn’t really work (at least, not in the UK). It works within the book (hardwired – metal vs. plastic – flexible) but the analogy needs to be something more organic and flexible for people to really grasp it – IMHO.

  2. Paul Evans on Sat, 21st Mar 2009 10:21 am

    3. I’d suggest that it could be a great deal simpler than all of this. Surely this para holds the key?

    “But one of the reasons the new world will see the West decline and the East rise is that, all in all, the citizens of the East have a more realistic and sustainable (which to some extent means humble and resigned) idea of what life involves. The simple fact that most of the West consumes more than it produces while most of the East produces more than it consumes is a powerful symptom of cultural difference.”

    Our problem is that we’ve had a model of politics and democracy in which candidates have had to pander to the semi-populist climate that has arisen out of a political space that is not an agreed one? Rather than discussing politics in the context of ‘public service’ media, we’ve had to do so in the demagogic environment shaped by the commercial mass media.

    Perhaps that environment is now collapsing? Perhaps a space can emerge where the relationship between voters and politicians isn’t the ‘advance auction of stolen goods’ that de Tocqueville outlined?

    Perhaps it’s one where politicians can be judged by their ability to make decisions and to involve us in those decisions in an appropriate way? I can’t see that there’s ever been an intellectual defence of elections based upon mandates and detailed manifestoes.

    The way that consumer choice has driven politicians has led to irresponsible and unsustainable government. No politician would have dared to kill-the-golden-goose that the financial services sector has been imagineering for the last couple of decades even if they’d had the capacity to understand that it was a fraudulent thing.

    Surely it’s time for politicians of all stripes to ask themselves what the circumstances are in which they can deliberate effectively and make the best decisions with a democratic legitimacy?

    We know that civil society requires some of it’s parts to be conversational and some to be adversarial. The dogs in the street must know now that there are bits that are adversarial that should be conversational and vice versa, and it is this that could be fixed relatively easily if the question were asked properly – or is that over-optimistic?

    I’d suspect its a more straightforward question than seeking an undefined cultural change of mind from the whole populace?

  3. matthewtaylor on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 8:42 am

    4. Hi Matt

    Thanks for this. I added some brackets to try to be clearer. 5-0 eh – you must be fantasy land. Apparently I was on MOTD on Saturday night sitting next to Adrian and Frank. WBA were woeful. Mowbrey says he doesn’t want to compromise his footballing principles but what principle is it that a team should spend 90 minutes in a home match against another struggler without having a single shot on target? Hope has gone so at least my summer holiday from football anxiety has started early.

  4. matthewtaylor on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 8:58 am

    5. Hi Paul

    I agree with this although I don’t think the two points are contradictory. A more realistic politics and a more responsible media might contribute to a culture that focused more on finding contentment in our lives as they are rather than always wanting more – whether it’s money, celebrity, sex etc.

    I write about another angle of the problem of finding sensible solutions against a hostile media in my blog later this morning

    Thanks

  5. Matthew Cain on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 5:58 pm

    6. It’s either like 2005 where we’re destined to win the trophy or it’s like 2002 when you bullied me into the accumulator bet because I thought we would win every game til the end of the season and I ended up losing my tube pass on the Bayer Leverkusen game and having to walk to ippr every day until the end of the month.

    http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-fc/liverpool-fc-match-reports/2002/04/10/bayer-leverkusen-4-liverpool-2-d-post-64375-11775145/

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