A step closer to closing the gap?

May 23, 2012 by
Filed under: Social brain, The RSA 

Starting to focus on my 2012 annual lecture, I want to find a way of taking the 21CE argument to a new level, making it both more nuanced and more powerful. The posts I will write are not much more than thinking aloud so may be of little interest, but many readers have given me useful tips and advice as I have worked on previous iterations so I will, as always, be grateful for views…..

Although I’m not a musician I suspect making a speech is a bit like playing a piece of music.  The aim is for the audience to be fully engaged, a combination of commitment to the experience and being swept along with it. Things can go wrong in two ways:  a loss of coherence so the audience loses connection and interest, or succumbing to the facile; the easy beat, the inane chorus, the rhetorical cliché – communicating but not engaging.

Having delivered versions of my 21st century enlightenment (21CE) speech on many occasions, most recently in Amsterdam last week I have come to recognise the points at which engagement is most likely but also the points where I am most guilty of succumbing to obscurity and inanity.

The basic structure of the 21CE argument is as follows:

1. People as a whole need to change if we are to build the future we say we want (‘the social aspiration gap’)

2. We are (re) discovering many important things about human nature, many of which counter either/both common sense or/and the previously dominant model of homo oeconomicus (‘the social brain’)

2a. [An addition to the original 2010 speech] Human beings are struggling to cope with key aspects of the modern world using brains which evolved in the very different circumstances of the first 99% of human existence

3. One element of ‘becoming the people we need to be the create the future we say we want’ is examining what has become of the core values of the enlightenment and reframing those values in the face of modern challenges and modern knowledge (hence 21st century enlightenment)

The original airing of the social aspiration gap thesis (although I didn’t actually use the phrase) was in my first annual RSA lecture in 2007. The date is interesting in as much as the argument ‘we can’t go on like this’ seemed less blindingly obvious a year before the global financial crisis. Back then I identified four challenges which could not conceivably be overcome without a major shift on public behaviour and social norms: living sustainably, improving public services with limited means (little did we know what was to come!), promoting social cohesion and increasing democratic engagement.

In further versions I defined the gap in terms of three ways in which citizens needed to change; becoming more engaged, more resourceful and more pro-social, and in the Amsterdam speech I tried a different formulation:

….in essence we need citizens better to align aspirations and actions in three domains, the political, the personal and the social

So, problem one: This still isn’t right, the individual resourcefulness category is too broad (ranging from living more healthily to being more entrepreneurial) and the domains of democratic/civic engagement and social responsibility overlap.

The other problems are more ones of emphasis. The idea that citizens have to change can sound rather over-bearing so it is important to emphasise that the gap is between the society most people themselves say they want and the one we seem on track to build. The converse problem is a dulling instrumentalism, as if the only problem with people is that they aren’t efficiently aligning their wishes and behaviours.

So it is important to state that the aspirations we are not on track to meet aren’t just to do with existing social problems (like better care for older people or more and better employment) but also the pursuit of shared values and ideals – such as social justice and human fulfilment. The fact that we don’t all agree about these aspirations is something to be carried forward to a later part of the argument focussing on ‘the good society’.

Also, while the focus is on how people’s current behaviours and attitudes are inadequate to the task of social progress, this doesn’t mean people at large are ‘to blame’. For example, the poor quality of public discourse on political and policy matters is as much to do with the culture and norms of the political establishment as the attitudes of citizens. Closing the gap is not primarily about exhortation to citizens – although changes in social norms are absolutely necessary – but a whole variety of reforms in institutions, policies and practices.

On reflection I think I need to develop the argument in two ways. On the one hand, to define more clearly the fundamental nature of the overall aspiration gap problem. On the other hand, to offer some specific examples of the gap and what might be needed to close it.

Take for example the gap between our desire for respect, dignity and compassionate care in old age. The gap can be seen to have three elements:

A collective action problem: We want the social outcome but don’t always and accept or act on what that means for us as individuals (for example, we need to save more and live healthier lives)

A policy and innovation problem (for example, we don’t have the right framework for pension saving or social care insurance, and we haven’t developed clever and practical means of tapping into our ability/willingness to care better for ourselves and each other [although Southwark Circles shows what is possible]

A deeper problem of social norms and arrangements (for example, ways of living and working which increase social distance and isolation, or ageism reinforced by market based ideas of human value)

Social aspiration gap problems are by definition ’complex’, in that getting to where we want to get to probably involves change in several domains; ‘profound’ in that progress on these problems will raise broader issues about how society works going beyond the usual parameters of this policy problem; and ‘normative’ in that progress is not simply about taking current assumptions and values and changing incentives, but must to some extent be based on a process of social development which involves change in how we think of ourselves and ourselves in relation to each other.

One advantage of this way of describing the social aspiration gap is that it segues neatly into the next section of the argument, which is about changing ideas of human nature.

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3 Comments on A step closer to closing the gap?

  1. Bernard Mason on Tue, 29th May 2012 1:17 pm

    2. Citizen? The English are not citizens. What is the correct term for a person who has no power to control an unelected elite as they dismember her/his state to suit their own privileged class? Serf? Ceorl? Culak?

  2. Livy on Fri, 1st Jun 2012 3:38 pm

    3. The thing is, you don’t want to be the bad bass player who launches into a well thought out, theoretical sound, technically adept yet toe-curlingly contrived solo that makes 2/3s of the audience check their phones for text messages or go and chat to each other at the bar. That happens precisely because he tries to do too much and be too complex.

    many readers have given me useful tips and advice as I have worked on previous iterations so I will, as always, be grateful for views…..

    Nah, seriously you’re fine, I really wouldn’t worry. At this point, if you’re only a few weeks out then don’t change a thing. Any advice on content given too close to a performance runs the risk of not being correctly assimilated in time, and if employed on the day, may not be executed in a manner congruent with the bulk of your material which is already tried and tested. You’ll end up achieving the opposite of what you want.

    Although I’m not a musician I suspect making a speech is a bit like playing a piece of music. The aim is for the audience to be fully engaged

    Don’t try to fully engage the audience. Don’t try to win an argument – you can’t do it. As soon as you get in to one, you’ve already lost. There’s a very old (and admittedly trite) saying in boxing: “If you go for the knockout, you will not win the decision.” That boring bass player that makes you roll your eyes is essentially going for the knockout every time. In your case, you were basically at your best in the past when you didn’t give a f**k what people thought and weren’t even trying too hard.

    The musical equivalent of what you’re looking for seems to be a new piece of phrasing, technique, or theory to act as a musical device to spice up your playing; new arguments or lines of reasoning to convey your thoughts and better persuade people. All that’s fine, except…. and again, apologies for being irritatingly opaque about this… – the highest level of technique is to have no technique. I think it was Miles Davis who first said that you need to learn (or rather, drill) all of those phrases, licks, techniques and theoretical devices so you can simply forget them all. If you consciously and conspicuously decide to play a Diminished phrase over the V chord of a 12 bar blues, or burn through as many notes of a scale as possible before your rhythm section resolves their progression then your playing will lose its human component and instead sound diatonically rigid, boxed-in, cold and clinical.

    Once you internalise all these things and move beyond study, beyond instrumentation, then the scales fall from your eyes and music, like any pursuit in life, really becomes an eternal ego dissolving quest of self-improvement centred around perceiving and intuiting time. You realise that you are not only the least important person on that stage but in that room, and arguably not even responsible for your own best work. The ideas belong with you, not to you. Your thoughts come through you, not from you.

    Beethoven’s 5th Symphony is still loved and played after two hundred years because there is a sense, an irrational, illogical, hokey sense, that the 5th Symphony existed before Beethoven even sat down and played those iconic opening eight notes.

    Livy

  3. Dave Gorman on Wed, 20th Jun 2012 9:03 pm

    4. Hi Matthew,

    Interesting as always. I’m just catching up on this but three thoughts to consider:

    - I found your lecture making the connection between these ideas and sustainable business to be very interesting indeed- and much that could be built on there
    - Perhaps a little less on the diagnosis and more on solutions in a number of the areas, and perhaps dwell on how change happens at a personal level, or in communities of place or interes, and in organisations.
    - You posted a few months back on potential research connecting well-being, higher-order thinking and good citizenship. I think that was a fascinating area to develop?

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