How many more times? BEWARE THE GAP !

November 14, 2011 by
Filed under: Politics, Public policy, The RSA 

The American political strategist James Carville is reputed to have said something along these lines: ‘it is only when a politician thinks he will be physically sick if he says the same line again that the ordinary voter is just beginning to recognise it’. I am not a politician but I was reminded of Carville’s view when someone recently e-mailed after hearing me deliver a speech.

The generous correspondent wrote ‘I was fascinated by your concept of a social aspiration gap, have you written anywhere about it’? The tempting answer is ‘yes, in was in my first RSA annual lecture in 2007 and I have been banging on about it almost constantly since’. But just because I’ve been talking doesn’t mean anyone’s been listening. The impact of an idea is a lot to do with the context in which it spreads. Perhaps now, when I find it a bit wearisome to rehearse the argument again, is just when it fits the moment. So here, in its bare bones, it is again.

There is a growing gap between the general aspirations of a country like ours and the course upon which we are now set. In many areas ranging from providing dignity to elderly frail people, to competing successfully in the global economy, to reducing social inequality, we are simply not thinking and behaving in the ways which will deliver what we say is our preferred social outcome. Closing the gap requires citizens as a whole to change in three ways:

We must be more engaged; by which I mean we must understand and accept the real choices facing decisions makers and also the ways in which our own behaviour shapes those choices. As an example of the latter: the trade off point between sustainability and economic growth will probably improve if we are willing to act voluntarily to curb our greenhouse gas emissions.

We must be more resourceful; by which I mean we must, on the one hand, be more entrepreneurial, risk taking and creative and, on the other, be more self sufficient in terms of managing our lives whether this means updating our education, managing our health or investing for our retirement.

We must be more pro-social; by which I mean we should see making a contribution to the well-being of wider society as an important part of our lives and the definition of a full citizen.

The starting point for broad strategic policy should be the question: how can we enable people to be the people they need to be to create the future they say they want? This starting point is likely to lead to a careful analysis of how people live and what they value (a new social economy combining private and public resources with more intangible assets like levels of care, compassion, confidence, trust and solidarity), and which proceeds through a process of co-design and co-production focussed on major institutional reform in pursuit of deep and long term changes in norms, expectations and behaviours.

Apart from the email, a number of things have made me want to restate and refresh the social aspiration gap analysis. Analysis of the crisis in Europe seems to be turning to the failure to confront populations in countries like Italy and Greece with the looming reality of their situation while the long term remedy lies in those populations (and it is of course the same for us in the UK) becoming more economically competitive and less reliant on state expenditures.

In terms of the idea of greater resourcefulness I have become increasingly interested in the idea of narrative. A few weeks ago on this page I suggested that one reason for an apparently greater willingness to work hard for modest pay of immigrants may reflect the stronger story they hold about self-improvement. It is simply more motivating to feel you are running hard to go forward than that running hard to stand still, especially when there is a just about tolerable option of not running at all.

Finally, in terms of being pro-social, my concern that this sounds merely pious has been somewhat assuaged by reading a speech by NESTA CEO and respected policy guru, Geoff Mulgan . It’s not the most substantial speech he has ever given but, in focussing on volunteering, civility and philanthropy and giving reasons to believe social media will in time expand these virtues he provides some rigour to this part of the argument.

These ideas can be variously accused of being obvious, vacuous, judgemental or naïve, but five years after first describing this analysis I still find it strikes a chord with audiences. So maybe instead of being disappointed that it hasn’t taken off I should now be shouting it out more loudly. Having said which being convinced I am right and that one day my brilliance will be recognised is the kind of thinking that will end up with me walking down Oxford Street wearing a sandwich board bearing the slogan ‘beware the social aspiration gap’.

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5 Comments on How many more times? BEWARE THE GAP !

  1. Russell Webster on Tue, 15th Nov 2011 7:19 am

    2. I think narrative and/or being part of a larger movement quite obviously does make a huge difference in the way that it focuses activity and makes us feel that together we can achieve something worthwhile while on our own, the default position of many of us is – “why bother? It won’t make a difference”.
    People involved in the ‘occupy’ protests are clearly enjoying writing their own story. In a very different way, if large scale philanthropy which seems culturally so much more expected and prevalent in the US than the UK, can be re-cast as social impact investing with small investors adding their collective power, it could also help close the aspiration gap in some areas. The narrative of ‘creating social impact’ rather than buying shares for retirement in a reasonably ethical way is very attractive.
    If only I had money to invest…

  2. Livy on Tue, 15th Nov 2011 9:12 am

    3. With regards to the second aspect and new approaches through social media:

    …be more self sufficient in terms of managing our lives whether this means updating our education, managing our health…reasons to believe social media will in time expand these virtues he provides some rigour to this part of the argument…

    Australian website, Hello Sunday Morning , using the concept of blog communities to help people give up drinking. Members post regular updates on their progress and comment on others’ for mutual moral support.

  3. Ian Christie on Tue, 15th Nov 2011 11:56 pm

    4. I like the Gap analysis and agree with the thrust of the recommendations for readiness to change. But there is potentially a tension between Matthew’s second area for action and the other two. Resourcefulness and self-sufficiency can be – and have been – given an over-individualistic interpretation over the decades of neoliberalism. To fit well with the call for pro-social behaviour and values, and for more engagement, this idea needs to be cast as a means of reconnecting people to neighbours, places, networks and cooperation, as in emerging models of collaborative consumption and sustainable community. Fending for ourselves in managing health, education and later life finances only takes us so far, and that will not be very far in conditions of long-range economic constraint, which is what may well be in store.

  4. Zio Bastone on Wed, 16th Nov 2011 12:19 am

    5. Your paragraph eight is very strange. Out of the moral hazard argument (governments sheltered by the euro spend recklessly on welfare, egged on by a stupid electorate) you use what Spivak called worlding (economically the Southern Europeans are like children is effectively what you’re saying) to legitimise colonialist ambitions, in this case those of neoliberalism. You say nothing of the substitution of technocratic governments for democratic ones, however odd and/or unrepresentative the latter, in Greece and Italy. Meanwhile the original sin argument (which isn’t colonialist at all but seeks to explain how economic colonialism comes about: countries borrowing in a fiat currency they themselves can’t create are apt to end up bust) does seem a lot more plausible on the evidence. As with the 1994 Mexican debt crisis, the ASEAN crisis a little later, the Argentinian default of 2002 and no doubt others to come.

    And when one actually graphs the activities of the bond vigilantes (Cf Krugman’s ‘I am a Frankfurter’ in the NYT for one example. His ‘WSJ: Debt fears send rates up’ caption is particularly droll) the economic fundamentals don’t tie up. If it’s debt, for example, why then are Japan’s yields so low? If austerity is a good thing why are Ireland’s so high? If flinging money at welfare is the problem then what about Sweden? Or Canada? Etcetera..

    Then there’s MMT with its wholly different interpretation of how governments create or eliminate debt through vertical transactions with the private sector. Or David Graeber’s anthropological view of debt as a much more complex situation than can be registered by the numbers.

    Markets, in other words, are not the Oracle at Delphi, for all that people in public bars like to think that they might be, drawing rather unwise conclusions about Life.

    A colonialist gaze also vitiates what you intend as your central thrust. Of your three proposals, one, the ‘new social economy’, is simply vapid (like Rodney King’s ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ as real people are getting undeservedly clobbered economically), one a plea for passive compliance with one’s betters (‘we must understand and accept the real choices facing decision makers’) and the third a sort of Tebbit-like injunction to grow up: ‘We must be more resourceful … more entrepreneurial … more self sufficient.’ Well indeed.

    What you don’t consider at any point is how existing power structures may thwart aspiration, how those power structures came about and how they may be changed. Nor do you offer much descriptive analysis of the problem, such as the shrinking away of spaces we used to share through the turning of politics into the selling of consumables to a patronised electorate; the instrumentalization of far too many activities in the service of a postponable something else; the elevation of ‘efficiency’ over effectiveness and usefulness in the name of endless Pareto chimeras (you recycle this elevation); the absurd conflation here in Britain of the privatised with the commons on one side and the publicly owned with the commons on the other within a pretty shallow debate about the State; the steady substitution of technology and control for the difficult social dynamics of wisdom, responsibility, justice… And so on.

    We are losing an awful lot without really seeming to care much either way.

  5. Livy on Wed, 16th Nov 2011 4:47 pm

    6. @Ian Christie:

    You’ve put it very well where you say,

    “Resourcefulness and self-sufficiency can be – and have been – given an over-individualistic interpretation”

    and I would absolutely agree that this is the biggest stumbling block of the second component, making it incredibly difficult to sell to people. Whenever this comes up over a pub chat I don’t even bother making the case any more, it’s as if people are either immune to the argument or I’m not good enough at making it.

    “Fending for ourselves in managing health, education and later life finances only takes us so far, and that will not be very far in conditions of long-range economic constraint”

    If, for example, you and I both feel we should drink less alcohol, and we then use social media to update our progress, share anecdotes and offer each other advice and encouragement through a network of countless other individuals who’ve gone through the same experience, would we really be fending for ourselves? Or would we be fending for each other?

    Health and later life that you mention are actually very good examples, and Tories would argue those conditions of long-range economic constraint are exactly why we should be more resourceful than we were during the boom times. There’s simply no money left.

    Take weight loss. Obesity directly costs the NHS £4.2 billion and indirectly causes a £15 billion hit through broader obesity related issues such as sickness absence to the wider economy and society. Unfortunately (or not, depending on your disposition), society will not lose weight for us. It cannot, and 61% of adults are overweight or obese. I forget the figure for children, but I remember that it was equally scary.

    If somebody is even 40lb or 50lb overweight and wants to reduce their risk of developing diabetes or other lifestyle related illnesses later in life (as well as the risk of society paying for the treatment), that person will have to dedicate at least a year of their life to that endeavour. They will have to dedicate most of their spare time, most of their disposable income (if they even have any these days) and most of their mental focus to virtually nothing else. Losing that amount of weight requires training in a high intensity cardio activity at least four times a week, eating six or seven meals a day in precise nutritional proportions at two and a half hour intervals and remembering to carry it with you everywhere you go.

    The gap between people being the people they need to be to create the future they say they want can’t be filled with government spending. Even with a theoretically inexhaustible well, I’m not sure how much government would have to spend to make us take the immense joy of eating completely out of our lives for 6 days a week and instead treat food like medication.

    Livy

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