‘The Re-Enchantment of the World’ as Theoretical Critique and Social Practice

Introduction

‘The re-enchantment of the world’ emerged as a concept in the 1980s in the work of Maurice Berman, in a work on the philosophy and psychology of science of that name and became adopted as a tellingly evocative motif among certain environmental writers and theologians. Ironically, until now it has not featured much within the social sciences; ironically, that is, because the expression was a challenge to the sociologist Max Weber’s characterisation of the predicament of post-Enlightenment societies in a phrase he had borrowed from the poet Schiller, ‘The Disenchantment of the World’. Through ‘disenchantment’ Weber had in mind, the distancing from the immediate experience of nature – and, indeed, the experience of the sacred in nature that had predominated in the medieval mind – through the emergence of the modern scientific viewpoint, and the increasing rationalisation and bureaucratisation of society enabled by the technological and economic advances of the age, which together created a sense of alienation of the individual, from the natural environment and the social other.

We may ponder the extent to which Weber’s characterisation of his own day has, in fact, become more pronounced over the intervening century, with the rise of consumerism, digital technologies, managerialism, big data and the threats to the environment. The aim in this essay is to begin a discussion about the sociological dimensions of re-enchantment as a critique and alternative to the disenchanted state of modernity. This is not a call for a return to a prescientific, magical or mythical view of the natural and social worlds, even if an appropriation and reimagination of shared cultural inheritances may play a part. But here the focus is on an attempt to undergird theoretically the idea that progress can only be measured by advances in the empowerment of the individual, spiritually and materially, against those forces that attempt to block or suppress it.

There are four thematic sections through which a sociological interpretation of re-enchantment is explored: differentiation and integration; freedom and belonging; progress and empowerment; and re-enchantment as an anti-Nietzschean programme. The focus is on a critical analysis of the ideas of three very different thinkers. It begins with a brief exposition of the theory of evolution as orthogenesis proposed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1890-1955) in his work The Phenomenon of Man. Second, it considers the secularisation of the eschatological view of history in Francis Fukuyama’s essay The End of History. Finally, it critiques and presents a counterproposal to Nietzschean mythologisation found in Thus Spake Zarathustra and other works.

Differentiation and Integration in Nature and Society

Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest, palaeontologist and anthropologist. He proposed the concept of orthogenesis, the idea that the evolution of the cosmos, life, consciousness and human history were all linked and guided by the immanent presence of the divine in nature and the human mind. He saw evidence for this in the appearance of increasingly complex forms of life, in the appearance of increasingly human-like forms in the fossil record, and in the appearance of increasingly large brains and resultant rise in intelligence, processes which he referred to, respectively, as complexification, hominisation and encephalisation. Teilhard theorised that evolution had passed through three qualitative stages, that of existence, life and consciousness, and proposed that this foreshadowed a fourth and final stage, that of super-consciousness, in which the divine and human become fused, in what he termed the Omega Point. Powering these developments, he surmised, were two types of energy, which he termed radial and tangential. Radial energy, he asserted, was responsible for the radiation of the complex variety of life from a single point of origin, while tangential energy bound matter into more complex arrangements that allowed the emergence of higher order states of being.

Teilhard was very clear that he considered he was advancing a scientific account of the evolutionary process, albeit one that incorporated a theological perspective, and at the time he wrote The Phenomenon of Man, his ideas were considered an important contribution to the debate on science and religion and sufficiently influential that the prominent evolutionist Julian Huxley wrote an effusive introduction to the book, perhaps despite reservations. Today, Teilhard’s ideas on evolution are largely discredited, and almost universally so by evolutionary biologists. While he offered an interesting insight into the phenomenology of evolutionary change within a metaphysical framework, his teleology, in particular, was never widely accepted. Evolution from the time of Darwin has been asserted to be a stochastic process, guided only by the principle of differential survival through adaptability to changing environmental conditions, underlain by natural, random variation.¹

Nevertheless, Teilhard presents what could be called the enchanted view of the world, one of nature suffused by divinity, one of predestination and essential goodness and his fusion of the religious and scientific insights gained through his life experience is a good point of departure for grappling with the idea of re-enchantment. While Teilhard may not have succeeded in adding to our scientific knowledge of the evolutionary process, there is a case that he has contributed to an understanding of human nature. In the concept of the emergence of the human mind/brain as ‘evolution understanding itself’, Teilhard has distilled the idea of humans as quintessentially and uniquely spiritual beings, even as we are continuous with the rest of nature. In addition, even those who maintain a strict agnosticism and reductive interpretation of human biology – even those who advocate a forthright atheism – fail to be unmoved by the sacredness (their terminology) of nature and of the highest human cultural achievements. This does not constitute evidence for the existence and intervention of a divinity; it is, however, an argument that human nature represents a qualitative discontinuity with the rest of nature.

Furthermore, while the concepts of radial and tangential energies owe more to the ideas of vitalism and the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer than to empirical science, they are a useful tool for thinking about human social change, particularly in the more generic and less loaded terminology of differentiation and integration. These are widely observable tendencies in all societies throughout history; moreover, they are principles which tend to stay in balance. If differentiating tendencies, for example the desire for freedom, independence and personal glory, become too strong they result in social fracture, but tend to provoke moves towards greater integration, such as solidarity or cooperation. On the other hand, if integration becomes over-dominant, as it does in authoritarian and totalitarian states, this tends to provoke moves towards liberation and secession. However, differentiation and integration should be seen largely as analytical categories; they are predictive only over unknown time scales.

Teilhard allows us to imagine the world differently. However, he was not a sociologist and his vision was marred by his political naivety and his inability within his thought of dealing with the reality of human evil, a just criticism of his Catholic superiors in an otherwise unjustifiable suppression of his teaching and writing during his lifetime. More recently he has been quietly readmitted and championed in the Catholic Church’s reassessment of biological evolution. His concept of the Omega Point has also featured in some apocalyptic futurists vision of human synthesis with Artificial Intelligence. But the point remains: the very concept of re-enchantment must engage with the world as it is and critique the state of social, political and economic disenchantment, if it is not to be a philosophical cul-de-sac and monopoly of ideologues and dreamers.

Freedom and Belonging as Interdependent Values

Shortly after communist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe were tumbling, the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama produced a seminal essay entitled ‘The End of History’ in which he declared that the cold war had been won and the victor was liberal democracy. This seemed prescient at the time as dictatorships of the left continued to fall and to transform into at least nominal democracies. This declaration was in essence an update of a thesis advanced by Hegel, referring to his own time, that the liberal state of Prussia represented the terminus of historical development. Fukuyama was heavily influenced by the Hegelian philosopher Alexandre Kojève, who saw in the establishment of the European Union, that epitome of a faceless and unaccountable bureaucracy, a political terminus, and so renounced philosophy to join its ranks.

Over the next decade, developments were to prove that Fukuyama’s assertions were just as premature as Hegel’s had been, with the rise of political Islam, a newly assertive Russia and the persistence in China of a one-party communist state, despite its growing affluence.

Despite these predictive failures, there is a core of powerful reasoning behind this school of thought. Hegel saw the liberal state of Prussia as resolving the inherent dialectical struggle between the spirit of reason and the material. Perhaps more pertinently, Fukuyama saw in liberal democracy the system in which the eternal struggle for freedom and recognition could be realised most fully. Quite rightly, in my view, he saw that human historical destiny is driven by fundamental values that define our human nature, and that any system that thwarts these desires is bound to fail. But although I accept the premise that social evolution is driven by deep-seated values, I believe that Fukuyama was only partially correct in the values he identified.

Fukuyama asserted that in fact liberal democratic societies manifested the necessary conditions for the realisation of freedom and recognition and that while history, as the unfolding of human events, would continue, ‘History’ as the struggle for a just and equitable society was basically over. This did not mean that he saw liberal democracy as a perfectly good society in which everyone achieved happiness. On the contrary, he saw it as a spiritual wilderness in which we are all responsible for instituting those activities which contribute meaning to our otherwise meaningless lives. While some criticise Fukuyama for being overly optimistic about the prospect for the triumph of liberal and democratic values, I find his view of the destiny of humanity to be deeply pessimistic. Fukuyama, if anything, presents the vision of a disenchanted world in which the culmination of historical progress is a disinterested political state, which at best facilitates its citizens to pursue individual means to alleviate their ennui.

The ideal of freedom has been central to almost all discourses on the nature of our social being, but particularly those that have championed individualism. This has, of course, been primarily a discourse that has occurred in the tradition of Western thought, stretching from the ancient Greeks, through Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus and Luther, the Enlightenment philosophers to the modernists and post-modernists of our contemporary world. Yet even in those cultures that have not traditionally emphasised freedom, the desire for freedom and the yearning to express individuality and to break out of oppressive social constraints or hidebound customs lies dormant or quietly seethes below the surface. Therefore, freedom is arguably more than just a western idea, but a universal value for all cultures and a prime differentia from all other mammals.

But Fukuyama, like others in the rationalist and individualist tradition, committed the error of ignoring the other prime value of humanity, which is the need to belong. Belonging is something that we share with animals because we are also animals, in our origins and in our instincts. Belonging, to return to the socio-political motifs explored in the previous section, is the most fundamental way in which the integrating factor manifests itself in human society. Unlike animals, though, our sense of belonging is not limited to an immediate family or troupe, but ranges over a far more extended span of groupings, including imaginary, abstract and mythic associations and constructs, such as organisations, nations, religions and concepts such as humanity.

Human belonging, therefore, is not primarily instinctual – even if it is instinctual in origin and basis – but deontological. That is to say, the forms of life to which we belong are structured by laws, rules, traditions, customs and beliefs, which are ultimately the expression of shared values; values to which we ascribe through willing association. This is as true for those forms of life which we may consider to be instinctive, such as family and tribe, as it is for the more abstract forms. Belonging, therefore, partakes of the freedom which we have already asserted to be a principal value; there is no belonging where this belonging is not fundamentally voluntary. I say ‘fundamentally’ because we are not normally in the habit of reminding ourselves of this on a moment-by-moment basis, bound as we are by other considerations of belonging, such as love and friendship, respect, duty, dependence, and so on. But any association (between adults, who are morally autonomous) which is not at its basis voluntary, is a form of servitude.

A moment’s reflection will suggest that this relationship between freedom and belonging is not one-way. As our spirituality emerges from and matures based on our animal instincts, so freedom, as the basic expression of our spirituality, is given shape and density through our forms of belonging. Freedom without belonging, to the extent that it could exist, would be an evanescent quality, for the nature of our freedom is that we willingly sacrifice a degree of our moral autonomy as free beings for belonging, so that our freedom can find expression in forms of belonging, which might include such transcendent forms as belonging to a loved one, a deity or a country, and will almost certainly include such mundane forms as a profession and leisure pursuits.

Progress and Empowerment

The ideas of both Fukuyama and Teilhard expressed a theme fundamental to the Western outlook and literary canon, the predetermined transformative moment in human history. This is undoubtedly biblical in origin, in the narrative of a divine providence, from the myth of the expulsion from Eden to the final judgement of the world. However, this narrative also finds expression in secular eschatologies, derived from or inspired by Hegel, such as the Marxist conviction in the appearance of (or return to) a perfect communist society, driven by inherent contradictions in the economic structures and relationships in every hitherto existing form of society. Fukuyama, as discussed, believed that we were witnessing the ‘End of History’ with the triumph of liberal democracy over communism and Teilhard himself identified a number of such inflexion points, foreseeing a final eschaton, the ‘Omega Point’. All of these theories see human history as ‘progressive’. I will contrast these perspectives with another, that of the evolution of both nature and society as stochastic, that is, open and random and consider how this contributes to a theory of re-enchantment.

Progress is an idea that comes in and goes out of fashion. It defined the Victorian era, both in terms of technological advance and in social welfare. For much of the past fifty years it is a term that has been associated with the political left, particularly in the areas of social justice. Still the question remains whether there is such a thing as progress, or is there simply change, as one set of ideas, concerns, technologies and problems gives rise to another. The latter would be compatible with the idea of social evolution, like biological evolution, being open, random and purposeless, in contradistinction to the ideas that see an underlying teleology in human affairs.

Progress is a creed adopted by optimists and by optimistic ages, whereas one would probably characterise our times as pessimistic, despite the huge advances in technology. This pessimism is perhaps a manifestation of the ‘revenge effect’, whereby every advance seems only to create new problems; indeed, much of our pessimism arises precisely because of advances in technology and their arguably deleterious effects: on our health or safety, on our environment, or on our social being. There is a view, championed, for example, by James Lovelock, the proponent of the Gaia hypothesis, that as an evolved species we are constrained by the self-regulating system of the biosphere of which we are a part, and that being out of kilter with nature will only hasten our own demise or, certainly, diminution. In such a view, all our pretence to progress amounts to nothing; we in the developed world are no different to the tribes of the Amazon or have advanced in evolutionary terms beyond palaeolithic humans.

Failing a catastrophic failure of human civilisation, in which case Lovelock’s hypothesis would be vindicated in a world which would no longer comprehend it, I propose a more optimistic view, based on a phenomenological account of the reality of the accomplishments of the human spirit in science, art, religion, politics, economics and technology, one in which our experience of progress can at least be put to the test, rather than simply dismissed. That test would be the extent to which change actually empowers us as individuals. I see this as the single vector by which progress can be judged to have occurred or not. Looking at the scope of historical development, societies emerged in which the role of the individual came to play a greater role and in which, from an objective viewpoint, individuals became more equal and thus more empowered. Clearly, this remains an unfinished task, not only on a global level, but even within developed societies. In fact, I believe this will forever remain unfinished, as it is intrinsically impossible for human beings to be equal by any measure that we care to apply. However, inequalities and the conditions for disempowerment continually arise as society changes, whether that be in life chances, longevity, suffrage, wealth and poverty, health, education and skills, social status and wellbeing that need to be challenged at the individual and the societal levels.

Re-enchantment as an anti-Nietzschean programme

A discussion of re-enchantment would be incomplete without a consideration of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose ideas constitute an important departure of Western philosophy from its Enlightenment tradition and detour through Romanticism into mythologisation, irrationalism and, according to some commentators, nihilism. Nietzsche was a brilliant scholar and, before his final descent into madness, saw more deeply into the psyche of Western culture than perhaps any thinker before or since. He cannot, therefore, be ignored as a precursor of re-enchantment. Consequently, it is important to discuss his doctrine of the will-to-power, a critique of whose principal motifs will help characterise the scope of re-enchantment.

Nietzsche is notoriously difficult to pin down, as his most influential work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which developed some of his earlier themes, and presaged some of his later ones, was written in dramatic aphorisms, which are open to multiple interpretations. Despite being largely unknown outside academic circles, Nietzsche’s influence on the twentieth century cannot be denied, as different aspects of his ideas contributed directly or indirectly to eugenics, National Socialism, the sexual revolution, liberal theology and postmodern philosophy. The four ideas to be considered are the Übermensch, the transvaluation of values, the death of God, and the eternal recurrence. Each will be briefly discussed and their critique frame the outline of what I understand the implications of re-enchantment to be. Rather than a Nietzschean interpretation of mythic heroism as the will to power based upon pure physicality and warrior virtues, re-enchantment constitutes a counterpoint in terms of human spirituality and individual empowerment through self-transcendence. It is explicitly an anti-Nietzschean stance.

The Übermensch is Nietzsche’s anthropological prototype, a heroic figure, nominally based on the pagan gods of German folklore, who rejects the values of the contemporary society to live entirely by their own chosen values. The Übermensch – talented, ruthless, aristocratic and this-worldly – is the opposite of the stereotypical bourgeoise middle class person that Nietzsche despised. The middle classes are always a target for elitist figures, despite embodying many of the virtues of stable societies and their cultural values, and the mentality of the Übermensch has undoubtedly seeped into the attitude of the totalitarian ideologues of left and right of the past century and their intellectual apologists. Re-enchantment, by contrast, is the empowering of Everyman,² the individuals who inhabit real societies, through addressing the symptoms and causes of disempowerment as they occur under existing conditions.

Surveying the conditions of his day, Nietzsche called for a transvaluation of all values, particularly those derived from Christianity, such as meekness, humility, love and forgiveness. It was not that he necessarily saw these values as wrong in themselves, but that he perceived European civilisation as weakening through the predominance of these values, and a belief in the afterlife, and in danger of sliding into nihilism. Christianity was effectively emasculating the will to power of the populace. The anti-Christian rhetoric of Nietzsche has been effectively transmitted into today’s western liberal societies, particularly through postmodern thought, which has come to dominate leftist academia and politics. This ignores the significant cultural inheritance of Christian beliefs and history to the development of the ideas of freedom and belonging, referred to earlier, along with the contributions of humanism, which belong to the universal Everyman, not exclusively to the West. Through undermining the foundations of belief in freedom and authentic belonging, the modern Nietzscheans are actually disempowering Everyman, in preparation for becoming a vassal of the elites and an all-powerful state.³

As part of his critique of Christianity, Nietzsche, through the mouthpiece of Zarathustra, spoke of the death of God, one of his most provocative and misunderstood statements. This has less onto-theological import than the assertion that belief in God and in an afterlife no longer had any power to motivate European civilisation to greatness. Ironically, though, Nietzsche invoked the pantheon of ancient deities in the mythical Übermensch in an attempt to re-enchant the world. This is also notable in the existential philosophy of Heidegger, a disciple of Nietzsche, who in his late works came to deify the concept of Being. In my view, it is in our nature, as spiritual beings, that we seek the transcendent, in order to find significance in our lives. Whether that be in the religion of our civilisation and forefathers, in a new religious, philosophical or political movement, in great art, literature and music, in the experience and contemplation of nature, in creative pursuit or in surpassing human achievement in sport and adventure, seeking transcendence is not only an expression of our freedom but also our desire to belong to the community of our peers.

Nietzsche despised the Christian morality founded on the idea of sin, the apologia for life as lived and the abasement of the self before God, as a fatal weakness. His riposte was the doctrine of the eternal recurrence that is best understood as a thought experiment: imagine that if we had to live each moment of our life over and over again eternally, would it be possible to live without a single regret? Nietzsche was not advocating living a blameless life in a conventional sense, but a Dionysian existence of indulgence, and one without shame.

There are several things to say about this. First, there is an implicit fatalism in the idea of eternal recurrence, which hearkens back to pre-Christian paganism, although, if my interpretation is correct, it was probably postulated as an ironic rhetorical device. Secondly, it advocates a form of life entirely without thought of the consequences of one’s choices on others, except inasmuch as the other is the object of the will to power. Thirdly, the recognition of fault, apology and remorse, punishment, mercy and forgiveness are among the intricate processes that have evolved in all human societies to mend breaches in the state of belonging. Nietzsche sought to empower the individual by dissolving the virtues that enable natural human bonds to form. By contrast, the mythic recovery of the great cultural traditions is to empower individuals – not the bureaucratic state – to create a more orderly, peaceful, prosperous and just society.

Finally, re-enchantment posits an eternal vigilance and resistance to the forces of disenchantment in a world which is constantly changing in a manner beyond any individual’s control. Specifically, it is a state of permanent resistance to the forces of disenchantment that are embedded in those institutional structures which seek to suppress human freedom and interpose ersatz forms of association in place of authentic belonging. However, resistance is a subtle stance, in which benefits and risks have to be carefully considered, as do the consequences for oneself and the greater whole. There are selfish rebellions that seek to assuage an immediate discomfort or satisfy a pressing desire, but do not result in long-term benefit to the individual and may add to the bureaucratic burden borne by others and thus detriment to the common good. There are revolutions in the name of the liberation of the people, which strip all freedoms from the people and deliver them into penury and totalitarian nightmare. It is impossible to know the exact outcome of our actions, and consideration of consequences and of historical precedent should be the first obligation of resistance.

Not all institutions are disenchanted, and our resistance may take the form of testing a moral community before immersing ourselves within it. In other cases, we may seek to empower ourselves by evading the reach of certain oppressive powers. In yet other cases, we may seek to challenge those powers by agitating for fundamental change in vested interests, seeking to empower larger swathes of society. In all cases, though, it is the empowerment of the individual in the balance of freedom and belonging which is sought, not the benefit of a group or the state. This should be the second obligatory consideration of resistance.

Conclusion

The re-enchantment of the world is rooted in a cultural hermeneutics: the reinterpretation of the enchanted myths of origins and heroic figures of the distant or the recent past, for clues to the transcendental meaning and purpose of our lives and the disenchanted state in which we often find ourselves. By way of a detour through a critique of evolutionary determinism (natural and historical) and the Nietzschean will-to-power it has also taken on social theoretical dimensions.

Accepting the view of social evolution as open and random and that, therefore, there is no finality and no determined course, nevertheless it is possible to assert that there is a definite telos to human societies, which is that they should be structured in such a way as to facilitate the empowerment of the individual in an incremental sense. Re-enchantment is not a terminal event in human history, except inasmuch as all desirable outcomes are declarative, if not historical, termini; nor is it, in any real sense, a process, for that also implies an inevitability and a course. Rather, it is a state of perpetual resistance to historically sedimented or newly emerging forces of disenchantment, which prohibit or threaten the individual expression of freedom and the free experience of belonging. The position of women and minorities in various societies is an example with a long history; the societal dangers posed by digital technologies is one that we are beginning to be aware of.

The re-enchantment of the world clearly has sociological and political dimensions, as a critique of, and policy for reform of, social institutions, respectively. In highlighting the central role of the empowered individual, it also has a moral dimension, a duty that falls on every person to resist, in however large or small a measure, the obtrusion of the disenchanted world upon our lives.

Notes

1.  I would add a caveat to this. While natural selection explains in a very satisfactory manner the adaptability of nature, it does not explain – without a great deal of apparent fudging and speculating – the appearance of new forms of life and the transition between forms, for example reptiles to birds, or the appearance of bipedalism. That is not to argue for creationism or a form of guided evolution, only to point out that our understanding of these processes is still incomplete.

2.  Everyman is a nod to the subtitle of Thus Spake Zarathustra, A Book for Everybody and Nobody (Alle und Keines), but also to the literary Everyman, the eponymous subject of a 16^th century English morality play, the ordinary human being attempting to justify their time on earth, and the undistinguished stock character who is a foil for the heroic figure in literature and film.  

3. In my essay “Emancipation with a Clenched Fist: A Critique of Postmodern Critical Theory” I argue that Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment is a more fitting characterisation of Marxist-influenced postmodern identity politics than it is of Christianity.

Further Reading

Maurice Berman (1981). The Reenchantment of the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Francis Fukuyama (1996). The End of history and the Last Man. New York: the Free Press.

Richard Jenkins (2000), Disenchantment, Enchantment and Re-Enchantment: Max Weber at the Millennium. [MWS 1 (2000) 11-32]. http://maxweberstudies.org/kcfinder/upload/files/MWSJournal/1.1pdfs/1.1%2011-32.pdf

Friedrich Nietzsche (2005). Thus Spoke Zarathustra: a book for everybody and nobody (translated by Graham Parkes). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1961). The Phenomenon of Man. London: Harper & Row, Publishers.

From Certainty to Normative Agreement: a thought experiment in furthering the project of modernity

One of the accusations thrown at postmodern theorists and activists, such as the purveyors of identity politics is that they are advocates of relativism and deniers of facts. I am going to argue that this is actually their greatest virtue. They go downhill from there on in, as they seek to impose their own brand of conformism on the majority, but in dismantling the ‘grand narratives’ of the past few centuries, they have performed an important service to the future. Only, I would go further and turn this into a permanent state of knowledge at the edge of chaos in order that the presently halting project of modernity may continue.

The virtue of relativism is precisely the undermining of certainty, that vice of the fearful and vengeful, to which so many throughout history until today have been sacrificed, a vice to which postmodernist theorists and activists after their initial foray into emancipatory rhetoric have themselves succumbed. How to avoid the trap of, in the words of the philosopher William Warren Bartley III, this “retreat to commitment”? I propose a first step of the dissolution of ‘facts’ as badges of prestige and authority to which everyone wishes to lay claim. Through a number of further steps the final goal is the reconstitution of a range of broad but shifting and tentative agreements on a normative account of the world.

This first stage can be referred to as epistemic levelling and this is likely to be the most contested, but as I will argue, the most necessary step to get beyond the current ideological impasse. This is the proposition that there be no ‘facts’ upon which we can build a rock-solid case for whatever position we wish to hold on any particular issue, but rather sets of beliefs about the disposition of the world. The concept of a fact is like a fossil in the strata of knowledge, the immutable remains of a once-living idea. If the history of thought has taught us anything it is that yesterday’s firm and accepted truths are now viewed with incredulity. We can and should flip that around; how likely is it that what is considered either orthodoxy or ‘edgy’ today will be reviewed with anything other than stupefaction in the future? Except perhaps by historians and philosophers.

The relativity of truths is something that we have come to accept in even such a hard-edged area of science. The mechanistic worldview constructed throughout the period of modernity from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, with the contributions of such geniuses as Galileo and Newton, and which fostered the belief in the nineteenth century that almost all that could be known was already known, began to collapse in the twentieth century, first with Einstein’s theories of relativity and then with quantum mechanics. The primacy of historical relativism in the sciences was consolidated in Kuhn’s concept of the scientific paradigm, but even in Popper’s conception of scientific method, the bold conjecture on what the flow of information reveals about reality is only tentative as it awaits its inevitable falsification. The generally accepted view of the nature of science today, Lakatos’ concept of ‘research programmes’ essentially combines elements of both Kuhn and Popper.

We can generalise what we have learned from science to say that one’s perspective on the world, whether that be physical reality, political partisanship, views on morality, and so on, is a theoretical ordering of the information that is available in any context, which is essentially saying that we all operate on belief systems sustained by the information available to us, or at least the information we are willing to entertain. This view is largely supported by a recent development in the cognitive sciences, known as ‘active inference’, which asserts that humans – as well as all other sentient beings – are continually modelling their environment and their place in it and algorithmically correcting model error through informational signals coming through their sensory organs as they act (although given what I have argued above, you are not obliged to take this as evidence, only perspective). There is a twist to this, though, to which I will return later.

There is a possible objection to the proposition of epistemic levelling and the dissolution of facts that I can think of. That is what can be called second order perspective. If I state that ‘X believes Y’ it can be argued, irrespective of the facticity or otherwise of Y, that “It is a fact that ‘X believes Y’”. If statements of the sort ‘X believes Y’ are classed as Z statements, then it can be argued that there are classes of statements, of which Z statements are an example, which are facts. Such logical formalism finds its apotheosis in mathematics and, to take the most elemental mathematical statement ‘1 + 1 = 2’ as an example, such statements are clearly facts. Or are they?

There are several potential refutations of this stance, all interrelated and related to the idea of decontextualization. One is that such formalisms tend to yield either tautologies or paradoxes. Such self-evident statements are formally true but yield no interesting information about the real world that we could categorise as insightful or practically useful. Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem demonstrated that no mathematical system can be proven within its own parameters. Ultimately, all mathematics rests on a genre of belief, known as axioms. In our own experience, once contextualised to the world of experience, even 1 + 1 does not always equal two, for example in system formation or in the fusion of two things onto one.

The proposition of epistemic levelling is that all perspectives are at ground individual and that all perspectives are rooted in the sets of beliefs that an individual has about the world they inhabit and that at this level of intentionality there is an implicit equal validity: no hierarchy of opinions, no preferential beliefs, no orthodoxy, only the way that each individual sees the world. This is an important precursor to the rest of the argument, and its implications essentially shape the argument.

The next step of reasoning should be as follows: assuming we are not in a Cartesian dream or in the Matrix, but we live in a real world which we share with others, if each person’s set of beliefs is individual and unique, then one of three moral stances is true; either my perspective on the world is uniquely right and everyone else’s is wrong, or someone else’s is right, or we all are right about some things and wrong about others. Intrinsically, there is no a priori way to know which of these three options is correct, but only a posteriori testing of one’s beliefs through gathering information as we act in the world. Acting in such a manner, though, implies that the third option is the most likely and reasonable, for in doing so we accept the first option as implausible. The second is realistically untestable. This being so, it suggests that we should have at least a grudging respect for others’ views of the world, tolerance of views different than our own, and an openness to dialogue with others, for this is one of the mechanisms by which we discover confirmatory or disconfirmatory evidence.

The social and political implication of this is that freedom of expression, including the expression of unpopular views but also the encouragement of dialogue should be fundamental principles in every social institution in society, as this allows for error correction and the growth of knowledge.

Merely dialoguing with others will not necessarily lead us to have the same ideas; it is probably better if it doesn’t. What it does do is generates greater respect for difference, exposes at the same time similarities of human experience, refines our own thinking and makes us more emotionally resilient. It also prepares us for the final stage of the process, which is the differentiation of beliefs through their consequences experienced as social agents. As this takes place at the individual level and as we are most likely to have a model that mixes beliefs that are more closely aligned with reality and those which are less so, the consequence for individuals is likely to be salutary but beneficial in the long run.

How can this very private experience of model testing and error correction be contextualised with the reality of our social belonging? After all, we typically inhabit different forms of life, such as families, neighbourhood associations, religious organisations, political parties, professional bodies, schools and colleges, trade guilds and unions, the various forces, voluntary organisations, musical bodies, clubs, and so on. The answer is not entirely clear but goes something like this. The tenor of life in a developed society is of multiple and voluntary belonging, in comparison with the past when opportunities for belonging were limited and anyway mostly compulsory. In the evolution of the project of modernity this is likely to be a trend that continues and accelerates, fractionating the established forms of society and even nations more. At the same time people will negotiate new forms of life, some long-term and some short-term, based on shared values. Societies will become ongoing experiments in living, with some better outcomes and some worse, but none being perfect. Relatively good outcomes can be expected to be more widely adopted, with the emergence of normative agreements, but through the natural osmosis of observation and dialogue, not through coercion.

Dream on; such an evolution of modernity cannot come to pass unless the dragon of certainty is slain first. I mentioned a twist in the process of active inference: normally, one updates through error correction the model of the world based on the information incoming; however, it is also possible to act in the world in such a way that the incoming information is only that which reinforces prior views. This relates to the first of the three moral stances mentioned previously – the position that one’s own perspective is the only correct one. Unlikely as that is, it is a position that some people hold due to such factors as immaturity, bad experiences (such as abuse or persecution) or mental illness and often a combination of those.

There are a number of ways in which people in this position can deal with the cognitive dissonance that must inevitably arise. One is to isolate themselves completely (the hermetic solution); one is to curate the information to which they are exposed, something that is now possible with the internet and social media (the ‘filter bubble’ solution); the third and most dangerous to a culture such as that in the West, which has thrived on freedom of expression, is to band together with those that share a subset of one’s view of the world and collectively pressure changes in society that essentially outlaw any other views (the collectivist solution). That manifests as the ideological suppression of dissent

All three phenomena are expressing themselves in developed nations today. But whereas the first two do more damage to the individual concerned (although can be a problem for society in the long run), it is collectivism that is damaging society most visibly and immediately. Whereas the prior political settlement of left/liberal and right/conservative was not perfect, both positions had claims to legitimacy and were broad in philosophical scope, encompassing many on both sides who could comfortably have been on the other. The left led the way (as it often has done, embracing more creative and disruptive types) in adopting identity politics, essentially the interests of marginal minorities – ethnic, religious, sexual and lifestyle – that do not naturally represent the interests of the majority and, through a process that does not need to be reiterated here, have made this the priority of almost every public social institution and have effectively banned discussion of whether this should be so.

Clearly, the phenomenon is far more complex than this. Moreover, postmodern identity politics does raise legitimate questions about the place and inclusion of marginal minorities that need to be debated. Collectivist coercion of the majority, however, does not allow debate. Such a model of reality can only accumulate errors as time goes on as corrective information is banned, denied and deflected. Three dangers now present themselves. Postmodern identity politics can only thrive in a society that is open, tolerant and prosperous, but itself not only does not contribute to these conditions but aggressively denigrates the culture which does and that has allowed it to appear and propagate, effectively becoming a form of parasitism, weakening and perhaps even terminally threatening the society that it inhabits. Then, while the collectivist front must inevitably disintegrate, as it is starting to do now that it is reaching almost total hegemony, the question is how much damage will be irreparably done to society in the process. The third danger is that of reaction, a backlash against minorities that will undo all the progress that has been achieved through democratic reform.

A curious admixture of ignorance and certainty has become the default position of too many in society today. The charge of ignorance is justified, one that we are all prey to; what needs to be punctured is the mantle of certainty. I have suggested that this is achieved through an understand that we are all operating with sets of beliefs, mostly wrong, but some helpful, many innocuous and some downright dangerous, and that the best method of error correction is to engage in vigorous debate with others, particularly on points on which there is disagreement. It is good to see that some governments and institutions are waking up to the threat that muzzling free speech poses and are taking corrective measures. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for overcoming the impasse to restoring the project of modernity. There should also be encouragement for the practice of the free dialogue of ideas within our institutions as widely as possible.

On Meritocracy: Is merit or good fortune the driver of success?

Merit is the idea that the most just distribution of social and economic goods falls to those who work hard for them and demonstrate required skills at an appropriately high level. The correlate of that is that the process by which individuals advance in society and are rewarded should be by them demonstrating the required attributes of ability and competence in the area in which they are working, which is what we refer to as a meritocracy.

The idea of a meritocracy lies at the base of many of the processes by which our society operates today, from school and university entrance exams to job interviews and has resulted in the ubiquitous requirement of certificates in almost all forms of employment above the most menial. Meritocracy is a very old idea, at least as old as the institution of professional armies. In Qing dynasty China through the influence of Confucius (551-479), exams were introduced for recruitment to the civil service, to weed out those who were gaining preferment on the basis of family connections. Every culture has had a history of the incompetent and corrupt gaining power, which they have used to enrich themselves and their relatives and contributed little or nothing to the public good, or even much to its detriment, and this continues in many countries today. It was to address this problem that the idea of meritocracy developed and selective processes were deliberately introduced.

Meritocracy in the developed world has a strong relationship with the idea of equality of opportunity. Recognising that merit and hard work may be insufficient – may not even gain a purchase – if social and economic conditions excessively hamper some people, such societies have sought to put in place systems that attempt to create a ‘level playing field’ on which individuals compete, through universal education, healthcare and welfare, for example. The idea of the level playing field, nevertheless, remains largely theoretical and in practical terms must be always a moving target as demography, social conditions and societal expectations move. This – although political ideology is a more proximate cause – has caused some theorists to demand that the idea of equality of opportunity be abandoned and replaced by the notion of equity. I consider this to be a dangerous and divisive move, which I have criticised in detail in a previous essay.

Recently the notion of meritocracy has itself come under attack. In The Tyranny of Merit, which Colin Turfus has reviewed on the Societal Values website, the American philosopher Michael Sandel argues that meritocracy as it has come to be practiced, as a form of credentialism in education and work, is driving division and resentment. While flawed, Sandel does at least offer an argument of some nuance and sophistication. Leaning on some elements of Sandel’s argument, Clifton Mark develops his critique in an essay entitled “Meritocracy is not just false, it is bad for you”. He points to evidence from social and psychological experiments that shows that belief in meritocracy reinforces senses of both superiority in the successful and inferiority in those who do not meet its stringent requirements. That in itself, of course, would not be a commanding argument that meritocracy was ineffective (false), merely ethically undesirable. Fatal to his argument, he links these two – the pragmatic and ethical (clearly not having imbibed Hume’s admonition against such) – through an argument that success depends not primarily on achievement, but predominantly on luck.

This is a bad argument from several perspectives. Along with Sandel, he assumes first of all that meritocracy is a universally applicable measure of success, whereas it largely applies in particular circumscribed circumstances, for example those competing for high status and well-paid jobs, jobs carrying a lot of responsibility and jobs requiring specific highly developed skills. These tend to be, moreover, jobs to be found in well-established systems premised on hierarchies of competence, in which there is a necessity to fit into an existing culture. The founders of organisations, institutions and businesses are not typically subject to meritocratic standards; they are pioneers who succeed or not depending on a range of skills, not a narrow set that results in a specific certification. They are more likely to set the standards that others have to imbue. The same could be said of many artisans and the successfully self-employed.

To move to the main issue in Mark’s argument, we cannot deny the part which luck plays in every successful person’s achievement. This is something that most people believe; however, most would be hard-pressed to say what ‘luck’ actually is, failing which it does not constitute a very strong argument against meritocracy. And certainly the author does not venture a definition, nor, significantly, distinguish between luck and the sense of being lucky. If we think of luck as the random turn of events which fortuitously favours some people and other not, Mark and others in agreement with him would then presumably argue that this bakes advantage or disadvantage into the playing field on which we are supposedly equal players. However, even to be subject to the whims of fate we have to subject ourselves to the play, like Luke Reinhart’s antihero in The Dice Man. After all, the odds of me winning the lottery are miniscule, but if I don’t play, they fall to zero with certainty.

This suggests another way to read luck, which is as opportunity. In the abstract, opportunities are almost endless, although we know in reality they are delimited by social conditions, by our desires and, most importantly I think, our attentiveness to the opportunities on offer. The first of these explains both why good governments are committed to equality of opportunity – because it expands the talent pool upon which society and economy depend – and why people migrate, legally or illegally, when they consider the existing conditions to be poor in their own country. The second point is obvious and not worth belabouring. I want to focus on the third, the issue of attention to opportunity.

Some people say we create our own luck. What I think they mean is that being prepared for opportunity increases the probability both seeing the opportunity when it arises and of being able to take advantage of it. “Fortune favours the prepared mind” as the saying goes, which I think says it well. That preparation has at least two dimensions, though. There is the development of the necessary intellectual or practical skills in line with personal desire and ambition. Then, there is the social dimension. This includes the ability to be articulate in socially important or career-defining situations, such as an interview, and the development of an enhanced network of contacts, which increases the likelihood of opportunities through interpersonal knowledge. These two things increase considerably the chance of seeing an opportunity when it arrives. There is one more: to take the risk and say yes to an opportunity when it arrives. It is surprising the number of people who have settled for a comfortable life rather than expose themselves to a greater challenge.

So, I think the argument from luck as a criticism of meritocracy is a non-starter. Rather, the idea of luck, not as a passive recipient but as an active agent, underlines the necessity of promoting and strengthening equality of opportunity. Although Mark does not propose an alternative, many are now prepared to demand an equitable solution, whereby groups who are considered disadvantaged are given preference in education and status job opportunities. In principle, all other things being equal in terms of skills, there is nothing wrong with this, when this is a decision made on an individual basis. Clearly, though, as the disadvantaged are by definition minorities, this cannot be universalised. When, as is the present case, equity becomes an ideological fixation, this is exactly what happens: identity trumps individual merit, but only for the disadvantaged sacred to the particular political ideology.

Two arguments are being confused here: one is whether a meritocratic system is more effective than an alternative in achieving the maximum utility of economic and governmental systems by promoting (ideally) the best possible candidates, which neither Mark nor Sandel offer any plausible evidence against; the other is whether a belief that success achieved through hard work being the result of inherent superiority, is morally wrong, which I think we would agree it is. Returning to the title of Mark’s argument, which parallels that of Sandel, he claims that meritocracy is morally pernicious, turning its believers into entitled, self-centred and uncaring individuals. Yet he undermines this with the other evidence he puts forward that believing in luck is more likely to make one grateful. There is nothing inherently incompatible between success through hard work and gratitude for that success, for we all “stand on the shoulders of giants” and all have received helping hands on the way. If there is a dearth of gratitude the fault lies in the social elites, parents and teachers in failing to instil that value. (As an aside, I find the greatest lack of gratitude and blindness to their own privilege among those who consistently denigrate the freedoms and benefits of their own society in the faux outrage on behalf of carefully curated victims of oppression.)

Nevertheless, there are, I believe, arguments against a meritocratic system, though they are hypothetical and may yet be resolved. They are what I term the issues of the globalisation of merit and the social concentration of status.

In an increasingly interconnected world, but one in which communication between individuals is now routinely carried out remotely, the local expert is becoming an endangered species. Companies and organisations now have access to a global pool of talent. This works to their advantage as they can optimise the search for the prime candidate globally, based on digitised credentials an interview online and maybe even the offer to work remotely from their own city or country. In near proximity to the hirer there may be 100 slightly less qualified candidates who will not get the job, each of whom in the past would have stood a greater chance of being employed locally. If, which is likely, this trend continues, and when combined with the offshoring of jobs that has happened notably in the UK and America, leading to large swathes of both countries that are in the economic doldrums with large numbers of economically inactive people, it will only further augment the erosion of the very idea of community upon which society is built.

The other problem is less well known and somewhat controversial. Children, we now believe, inherit their intelligence largely from their mothers. In the past, when most women were uneducated and married primarily for economic security, inherited intelligence was more widely distributed across the social classes. With the advent of universal education, and particularly with state sponsored selective education, this resulted in a degree of social churn, allowing even those from humble backgrounds to rise to the top of society. It was the case even two generations ago that a significant number of politicians, magnates and scientists came from poor families. With record numbers of women entering university and going on to professional careers, if they become mothers they will have children with men of a similar educational and professional level, so status – measured by education and income – will tend to become concentrated in such families and their children have the double advantage of a likelihood of higher inherited intelligence and the wealth associated with increased opportunities for good education and enriching life experiences. The converse is true: poor and undereducated men only get to have children with similar women, exacerbating the generational disadvantage.

This latter hypothesis is controversial for reasons other than its political implications. We do not know the degree to which intelligence is inherited and the degree to which it is nurtured by the environment. Also the demographics of countries such as the UK and America are changing. Middle class couples are having fewer children, many are having none and population replacement is increasingly falling to migrant families, who have more children and many view education as the source of upward mobility. Regarding the globalisation of merit, this could be a transient phenomenon in historical terms. We could see the re-emergence of an economic and social localism that coexists with a globalised high-order economy. Whatever the case, meritocracy is here to stay – at least if we intend to stay competitive in the world – though the necessity for equality of opportunity to be linked to changing social needs and expectations is paramount. Context is needed, clearly. Not every aspect of life can be decided on meritocratic grounds – I have argued that its scope for implementation is rather narrow. Furthermore, just as the operation of the market does not inherently generate greed unless we teach that it does or neglect to teach the virtues of moderation and generosity, a meritocratic system is perfectly compatible with empathy and gratitude if we want it to be.

The Importance of Ownership

The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. (Karl Marx)

The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. (Friedrich August von Hayek)

The right to private property meant at the same time the right and duty to be personally concerned about your own well-being, to be personally concerned about your family’s income, to be personally concerned about your future. This is hard work. (Mikhail Khodorkovsky)

As the popular saying goes, reflecting a curious intertwining of temperance, envy and schadenfreude, “You can’t take it with you” when you die. So if one takes the big perspective on life, Thomas Carlyle’s “little gleam of time between two eternities”, we have no absolute claim on anything, even our own bodies, which some have understood to mean that there is no basis for ownership at all. Such might be the view of various types of metaphysical reductionism, whether of scientific, philosophical, political or religious complexion. However, the cultural mainstream of every society has always taken a more assertive approach to ownership – of land, persons, things and ideas – as central to human life in its multiple dimensions, the substance of this “little gleam”.

Yet, a young generation has arisen in the West for whom the dictums of Karl Marx on the abolition of private property are widely accepted as morally just, with little reflection on either the meaning of ownership, their lives in relationship to their own possessions, or the implications of individual ownership or its abolition for society as a whole. Nor any historical perspective, for that matter. The ancient Stoic tradition of oikeiosis, or self-preservation, reformulated by John Locke in the European Enlightenment as the rights to life, liberty and property, are the basis for the claim to bodily autonomy, frequently resorted to by the Marx-supporting young, unaware that the absence of these rights does not mean the end of ownership as such, merely the defaulting of ownership by the individual (and of the individual) to a corporation or the state. Think slavery and the East India Company, women’s rights in Afghanistan and Iran today, and mass starvation in every experiment with forced collectivisation.

You will probably be aware of the advertisement taken out by the World Economic Forum during the pandemic which stated that “By 2030 you will own nothing and you will be happy”. Naturally, there has arisen, as with all things that we learn of via social media, polar interpretations of what this means – whether referring to the idea of the circular economy, by which everything will be recycled, or a conspiracy by a globalist elite to impoverish and immiserate the masses – with denunciations and claims of disinformation from both sides of the divide. And, as with all such information, it is impossible to judge, based on evidence in the digital realm alone, whether one, both (partly) or neither of these perspectives is correct. Whatever the case, the issue of ownership of property is becoming a complex and contentious issue, intersecting as it does with issues of freedom, belonging, wealth, justice and the environment, that is, with practically every aspect of individual and social life, and so one worthy of serious exploration.

What is it to own something? There is, of course, a general definition, which is the legal right to possess and exercise control over the use of something, though this is often expanded to include different types of ownership, such as sole, multiple or corporate, and different types of entity, such as material and non-material. But it is the basic definition that I am interested in, which contains four key ideas for analysis: that of a legal right, that of possession, a presumptive ‘owned’ entity and that of control. Before moving onto that analysis, though, it is important to note that the definition implies a corollary: that there is no right to possess – i.e., have in one’s possession and dispose of, certain things for which no legal right exists (because such possession explicitly violates the relevant laws), such as other persons, stolen goods, illicit substances, categories of weapons and formerly-existing rights that the state has decided can be removed or overridden.

I want to start with the concept of possession, of which there are three categories of discernible interest. First, we can say it is to have something to the exclusion of others, that is something that others can have and use, temporarily or permanently, only by permission of, or lending, donation or sale by the owner, who has acquired it from its previous owner or owners by similar routes. Then, there are things which are the property of a creator, either tangible or intangible, which are possessions over which the creator has the moral right to assert ownership, even if there is no formal legal deed establishing ownership, an issue that might be contentious only if the owner is further asserting the right to dispose of the thing for recompense in the market. Finally, there are a group of things which are the property of the commons to which we have free access, at least in reasonable measure, from public land for personal consumption, such as fish from the sea, water, wildflowers and berries, firewood and rocks. For example, some people collect driftwood or pebbles from the beach or fossils from exposed rocks to keep as ornaments, or wood and water for cooking, with few if any impediments.

The latter case is, in some respects, the most interesting. Clearly, no legal right of ownership exists; in some cases, e.g., private land or where local bylaws exist, taking possession of such items might be prohibited. However, in general, the freedom to take possession is a limited right that is understood as a common pact established by tacit agreement among the public, on the understanding that this freedom is not to be abused. But this case is also interesting because it throws into highlight the question of what possession is when no legal right exists and when the right of acquisition depends on something as intangible as general public consent, when ownership is transitory and transcends the legal, in other words.

To turn to the entities themselves, we can assume the legal status of ownership or the common agreement exception without by any means exhausting the phenomenology of ownership. Consider the things we own can also be referred to as our ‘possessions’ and our ‘belongings’ and both these terms have a potential dual directionality. To take belonging, when we speak of something as our belonging, not only not only are we asserting a right of ownership, we should consider the idea that in making this assertion we are stating that we also belong to the thing, in other words there is an emotional attachment between us and the thing in question. We clearly do this in respect of another person when we get married: the marriage vow is unambiguously a promise of mutual belonging: “forsaking all others…to have and to hold”. And just as marriage is the foundation of family and extended social bonds, with far less gravitas ownership of property and things grounds us to place, time and a sense of social responsibility.

It is for this reason that radical ideologies, including religious fanaticism and politically extreme sects have railed against material goods and private property. For ideological movements rightly regard attachment to the world as leaving no room for religious fervour or revolutionary action. But even within mainstream religion there has been a distinct frowning on excessive attachment to the things of this world. One of the principal precepts of Buddhism is that desire (attachment to people and things) is the cause of suffering. Indeed, when we move to the idea of possession, we see a connotation of ownership that is more problematic, particularly in its bidirectionality; that is, not only a holding fast to, a grasping of something, but of being captured by the thing. Desire to possess can be so strong that we are no longer master of our feelings, which can wreak havoc in the world. So, in this case, we are right to harbour a certain scepticism towards ownership.

There is, in fact, a tradition found in the sceptical philosophies and their incorporation into some religious traditions that honours this emotive distancing from things while recognising a spiritual bond, which is the idea of stewardship. From this perspective we are never finally the outright owners of something but rather the stewards who are called to care for things in order to bequeath them to future generations. This has a strong relationship to the idea of the commons, discussed above. Historically, the common lands could only survive when there was a common consent to abide by the collective good, and also today the rather more limited case of the commons retains the element of both tacit agreement and shared responsibility for its preservation and continuing status. What I would like to suggest is that rather than being an anomalous exception, the common good is fundamental to ownership as such. By this, I am not advocating that property should necessarily be held in common, but that there is an important element of ownership rests on the idea of the common good, our responsibility not just to the present but to the future.

However, before developing this idea further, I want to sound a cautionary note: one reason why private ownership has proved so potent, including our ability to dispose of our possessions in any legal manner that we choose, even if that risks offending common sensibilities, is that the idea of the common good has too often been the refuge of charlatans and incipient tyrants who have arrogated to themselves the mantle of the collective virtue. Ownership is a form of power that gives an owner protection against abuse by other individuals and organisations including the state, in the former case by the laws punishing crime and in the latter by fundamental human rights. Therefore, in my view, it is insufficient to rely on a common good argument for ownership alone, despite the attractiveness of the concept of stewardship. There needs to be guarantees of the right of ownership in law.

Although the idea of property is as old as human settlement, laws governing the rights of possession only developed with sophisticated societies, for example within Roman Law. However, in Roman Law and forms of law deriving from that tradition, such as the Napoleonic codes common across Europe today, law is created and administered solely by the state. In England an entirely different legal tradition developed known as the Common Law. Under the Common Law, laws were created by judges, entirely independently of monarch or parliament, considering and passing verdicts on particular local claims, which then became precedents which applied across all of England. It was from such Common Law that private property rights emerged that were then carried to America and other places by English settlers. With ownership – initially this was principally of land – an owner inherited a bundle of rights, such as occupation, building, access and usage rights, which they were free to dispose of separately.

The system of the Common Law was the process by which judges in seeking the truth and right in the details of particular cases actually manufactured common consent to the rule of law, including the rights of ownership of private property. It requires common consent across all society, including the institutions of authority, to see ownership as foundational to the common good. That consensus seems to have been largely achieved by the mid-twentieth century in the Anglophone world, but since that time the state continued to grow and the bundle of rights bequeathed under common law have been gradually whittled away by central and local government regulation. Moreover, the institutions that provided some bulwark against the power of the state, such as organised religion, trade unions, civil society oversight, the sanctity of marriage and the autonomy of the individual and family, have either withered of their own accord or been actively undermined. This leaves individuals increasingly at the mercy of arbitrary government power.

Today the right of ownership established in law is not just a fact, but I consider a fact to be increasingly problematic. We are moving to a time when central governments have not just the possibility but increasingly the inclination to frustrate ownership (or the lack of competence to provide opportunities for such, which amounts to the same thing), particularly ownership that bolsters autonomy and therefore individual freedom, such as home ownership, car ownership, the ownership of one’s own information. Ownership does not only promote freedom; it increases both wealth and a sense of belonging. In this light, the exorbitant rise in energy costs, the imposition of increasing travel costs and restrictions, the insatiable demand for information and the inflationary rises in the price of food can be seen indirectly as an attack on freedom and solidarity and the creation of a dependent and compliant populace, something governments came to particularly appreciate during the pandemic lockdowns.

The most egregious examples of the authoritarian use of power to disenfranchise a segment of the population recently have occurred in Holland and Canada, neither example of which has received much media coverage. In Holland, which is one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world, the government has unilaterally decided to seize the land of 3000 farms in order to meet EU emissions targets. The alternative, in at least some of the cases, is to force farms to stop using nitrogen-based fertilisers, without which the scale of production needed to produce crops at the levels required cannot be met. That the government is prepared to compensate the farmers is beside the point; families that have been sometimes for generations on the land are being driven from their homes; moreover, food production required to sustain the population and economy cannot be guaranteed. It is worth pointing out that a similar move by the Sri Lankan government brought the country to the brink of collapse in 2022.

In Holland the farmers are fighting back. What happened in Canada, though, is more immediately worrying for the precedent it sets. While most countries had already ended the lockdowns, Canada was imposing ever more draconian rules governing movement and the ability of people to work. In response, a huge convoy of truckers set off across the country to Ottawa to confront the government by parking all over the city. Rather than negotiate, the government forced donations collected to support the truckers to be redirected and froze the bank accounts of the protest leaders using an emergency law created for an entirely different scenario. The freezing of bank accounts (no pun intended) should be considered the most chilling action, not only because of the curtailment of the right to protest, but because of what it says about the right of ownership. Despite the fact that the money you earn is legitimately yours, governments now have a template, and the possibility in a digitised economy, to control your access to it if you exercise your right to protest their policies, which is tyranny in all but name.

Admittedly, we are not there yet. But the pace at which things are moving towards centralisation of government powers, a ubiquitous surveillance society and a totally digitised economy, it could arrive faster than we expect. Can we seriously expect the amassing of such power not to be abused given the experience of history? Ownership of private property, including land, goods, wealth and ideas, are the most important basis of individual freedom and free societies, codified in the laws of the land. However, with the fading of the common law tradition and shared culture there is at present nothing which grounds the legal right to ownership except the whim of the state. Its rooting in the distributed acceptance of private property as a common good among a population is the only secure basis for the legal right of ownership, a message which needs to be broadcast with some urgency.

Equity Explained, Part 3: A Return to Fairness

As outlined in part 2 of this essay, equity as part of the EDI agenda represents a thoroughly dishonest and dangerous process of institutional capture, which subverts the historical trend of the rising freedom and empowerment of individuals, but also dissolves the natural bonds of affinity and sociality between individuals in organisations by a subtle enforcement of an uncriticisable moral code, language manipulation and self-policing of opinion, which ultimately only reinforces a hierarchy of compliance, one which, moreover, replaces the natural hierarchy of such things as competence and merit with one of moral worth. It is worth, though, reiterating and summarising the various layers of this deception (or “misdirection” as we termed it) as it illuminates the rather complex psychosocial nature of phenomena such as equity. This in turn will enable a greater insight into what a profoundly different and truly emancipatory theory of equity might look like.

In classic Equity Theory equity is an individual judgment of fairness comparing one’s own input and reward with a comparable other. The postmodern use of the term ‘equity’, however, removes the judgment from the realm of individual assessment and places it in the hands of ideologically motivated advocates of social justice, who are informed by an intersectional perspective of identity politics. Within institutions this is designed to result in actual unequal outcomes, for example in hiring and promotion, for certain groups defined as worthy by identity politics. Perception or potential perception of such inequities is already countered by a victimological narrative and resultant moralizing of identities, as either “oppressed”, with whom one must sympathise and form “allyships”, or “privileged”, who are to be denigrated and engage in self-denunciation, and a parallel narrative of fabricated ‘thought crimes’ applied to those who oppose or might consider opposing the inequities arising from this and the justifications for them, resulting in an environment of threat, intimidation and silencing, which can only be considered a form of coercion. However, it is insufficient that there be a sullen acquiescence to unfairness while harbouring a silent opposition. So various forms of ‘training’, such as ‘unconscious bias training’ must be deployed in an attempt to counter the natural individual judgment of what is equitable and to accept the judgement of a self-appointed moral authority.¹

The apparent complexity, strategically and tactically, is extraordinary. However, it is largely self-generating. I have likened this type of phenomenon elsewhere to viral infection.² Such negative transmission of a resentful and, ultimately, nihilistic ideology arises from a few basic principles: the refusal to test any ideological assertions against empirical evidence; systematic lying and camouflaging of reality; the use of emotive coercion and intimidation, rather than reasoned argument; and accusing those in opposition or are attempting to uncover the truth of exactly the same (or worse) practices. In other words, classic deflection, deception and misdirection, as practiced by congenital liars, criminals, ideologues and con artists through the ages. Unfortunately, many well-meaning and intelligent people are taken in, and even assist in this process, by its superficial appeal to fairness and the opportunity to burnish their own virtuous self-image.³

Today, virtually every organ of state, institution and organisation has been captured by the ideas of postmodern identitarianism through the trojan horse of EDI, including the academy, law, education, the corporate world and the media – even the scientific media.⁴ The threats – to livelihood and even to actual freedom – are becoming real, as rules, policies and even laws are deployed in the name of compliance. If it is still possible, this perverted interpretation of equity engaged in by the postmodernists has to be exposed and purged from all our institutions, which otherwise risk failing.

From this rather pessimistic assessment of where we stand today it may, nevertheless, it may be possible to discern and retrieve a reconstructed and improved concept of equity. First, the meaning of equity as understood by Equity Theory, that of the individual judgment of fairness, has to be reinstated. The individual judgment of fairness is the benchmark for any free and effective society. However, in fairness, the postmodernists are right that there must be in the name of justice a collective, social correlate of the individual judgment, some societal input into attending to the problems within the concept of equality of opportunity. Let me expand on those two points.

Equity Theory states that equity is the state in which the ratio of one’s own input (into work or any other activity) to the rewards reaped (monetary or some other form of appropriate recognition) is judged similar by oneself to the ratio of input to rewards for another person, usually in a similar place or occupation, a comparable someone in other words. Being a ratio, though, it is actually scalable, meaning that it is possible to compare oneself to another in a very different situation. This requires, clearly, a great deal of transparency and honesty. For example, considering someone who earns disproportionately more, one would have to go through a self-reflective process to consider relative inputs in terms of hours worked, but also temperament, educational level and skillsets achieved over time, responsibilities and such things as penalties for failure.

As we are social beings, this sense of fairness extends beyond how we ourselves feel treated to others close to us and, beyond that, to others that we feel an affinity to and even, at the most abstract, moving outward, to others in general. The sense of fairness belongs within our own experience but is not limited to feelings just for ourselves. But unlike the EDI agenda which captures the aspect of our sensibility towards others to advance an agenda of minority interests to which the majority are coerced into accepting, equity in its natural state is a homeostasis achieved through the negotiation between individuals, that realises and acts upon the norms of society.

Societies as they have evolved towards modernity and the development of prosperous economies are able to offer more services to individuals and more opportunities. The state as the representative will of the people should be responsive to the will of the people for opportunities for advancement of their fundamental desires for economic and physical well-being, and opportunities to do something meaningful with their life. The natural norm of a society of free and prosperous individuals is for opportunities to be extended equally to all (the converse is true; in societies marked by oppression and want, there is a tendency to hoarding, both of opportunity and goods). However, the agreed norms of society also extract a quid pro quo: that the will of the majority prevail, which is that all, unless there are exceptional circumstances, abide by the convention that individuals avail themselves of the opportunities that society offers, such as being a good citizen, being educated and working for a living.

There exists, therefore, a symbiosis between the sense of fairness (internal to the individual) and equality of opportunity (prevalent in the norms of society, reflecting the will of a people) that we can refer to as the proper sense of equity. However, this is not a static concept, either for the individual or society at large, but changes over time and with circumstances. The freer and wealthier a society becomes the more it and the individuals that make it up becomes sensitised to inequities in opportunity and the more augmented the sense of ‘opportunity’ becomes. It also becomes more capable of addressing inequities of opportunity, for example improving avenues for education and training, implementing policies that deal with the difficulties of the genuinely disadvantaged and providing medical or technological solutions to many disabilities.

No society can progress unless there is dissent and criticism of what exists. Dissent from the accepted norms of society is what changes the discussion in society and sensitises individuals to inequities. The best form of society in which this happens is a society that prioritises the freedom of the individual. In such a society the point of equilibrium is represented by tolerance of others that also places demands on individuals and a cost to dissent, which is the right to disagree and disapprove of the dissenter. While the issues underlying and motivating the equity (EDI) agenda are real (though exaggerated and hypostasised), the agenda itself seeks to impose conformity on society, which must then be backed up by coercive measures. Besides the potential economic costs on society, the danger is that rather than generating tolerance and gradual acceptance of difference, it will result in backlash, social fracture and hatred of the other.

The goal must be a society which is considered fair by most of its population, in which there is continual progress towards reducing inequities of opportunity to zero, even though this cannot realistically be obtained as every development brings new challenges. It cannot be equality of outcome, because this is to engage in a type of reductionism – invariably about people’s earnings – which is unrealistic in anything other than a feudal society and undesirable in anything but a communist society – the ultimate forms of power and wealth inequality. A free and equitable society is one in which people negotiate the norms of fairness in relation to themselves and others from a panoptic viewpoint and, at the same time, place demands on themselves and others and have demands placed on them by others. This is fundamentally what is meant by individual and social resilience.

In such a society government represents the will of the individuals who make up that society. The principles underlying such a government’s priorities must include:

• The value of the nation and its economy lies in the people, its principal asset
• The common good rests on the good of each individual
• Recognition of the common desires and freedom to pursue those desires

In the pursuit of fairness, policies of government and non-governmental organisations should include:

• ‘Blindness’ strategies in assessing merit developed and encouraged widely
• Technical, educational, psychological, etc. support systems developed
• A greater awareness of the different types of disadvantage and research into how these can be solved or mitigated

NOTES

1. Many have noted ironically that the postmodern left has been using Orwell’s 1984 as a textbook rather than a warning, drawing the parallels between rightthink and EDI or thoughtcrime and the various fabricated ‘phobias’. Tellingly, 1984 also ends with the realisation by Winston Smith that he loves Big Brother.

2. Don Trubshaw (2020). The Spectre Haunting the West: Marxism and the Contagion of Resentment. Societal Values (Online): https://www.societalvalues.co.uk/the-spectre-haunting-the-west-marxism-and-the-contagion-of-resentment/

3. Cui bono? Actually, a number of different types of people. As mentioned, well-intentioned liberal-minded people get to feel they are doing something good, sticking up for the victims of oppression, as long as they are able to swallow a certain amount of intellectual sophistry. Then there is a cadre of people who make their living from identity politics: researchers and authors, lecturers, diversity champions, and so on, who are believers and opportunists, very often from the very minorities championed by the advocates of identity politics and, predominantly, middle class. Then there are a minority who genuinely hate the West and want to see every vestige of it utterly destroyed, for whom identity politics is the perfect opportunity to critique endlessly every aspect of its culture, society and history. Finally, the very few (ultimately tending to one individual) who see in the chaos to come the perfect opportunity to establish a totalitarian rule of whatever system is supposed to rise when democratic society collapses.

4. Bo Winegard (28 Aug 2022). The Fall of ‘Nature’: A once-respected journal has announced that it will be subordinating science to ideology. Quillette (Online):  https://quillette.com/2022/08/28/the-fall-of-nature/?fbclid=IwAR0qxCHOH1pDI74GlUl1jcmS7MAZUhTMG03m-C5HcQFIpd6U3v1WduVIfrc

Book Review: Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm: How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor and fails to fix the planet.

For a long time, there has been no real centre ground politically on climate change: either you have been accounted a believer or a denier. This is nowhere more demonstrably seen than in the US, where stance on climate change has become another front in the partisan politics and news coverage. In a two-part essay, posted in April and July 2019, I attempted to step outside this conflict and to determine, on the one hand, the extent to which climate change conformed to the concept of a paradigm shift, as that had been theorised in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, unifying previously disparate branches of the earth and geographic sciences, and on the other, how the idea of climate change itself tested the conceptual limits of what is meant by a scientific paradigm.

It is reassuring to find that on certain key points, principally that the status of being a scientific paradigm is determined when issues of technological control and budgeting for research outweigh those of political and moral controversies, my views converge with those outlined in a new book on the climate change debate. In between the cries of imminent apocalypse and outright denial that seems to be the daily fare of the mainstream and alternative news outlets on the issue of global warming, Bjorn Lomborg sounds a rare note of sanity and moderation in his new book, False Alarm: How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor and fails to fix the planet; although, if the author’s claims stand up, not as rare – certainly among the scientific community – as we are led to believe. Lomborg’s achievement is in providing much-needed broader context to the climate debate, based on years of researching and writing on the topic.

At the start he states categorically that climate change is real and that it is a problem, which must be mitigated; however, it is also the outcome and sign of growing prosperity and, therefore, is inevitable as long as we wish for progress – progress that paradoxically ensures mitigation is possible. Although Lomborg doesn’t specifically use the term, he is arguing that climate change is a form of ‘revenge effect’ whereby every advance made and every problem solved always gives rise to a new set of problems. As such, he sees climate change as just another in the challenges that mankind has faced in adapting to survive, to live better and more comfortably, in a fundamentally hostile environment, and that we are as capable as a species of meeting this challenge as we have others that we have faced before.

Lomborg is an economist and, as such, his approach to climate change is predominantly economic throughout the book. As well as its many strengths, this has its weaknesses and obviously opens his argument to criticisms from experts in other fields, who can claim that this big-picture approach tends to overlook the real and immediate documented effects of a warming world on species and their habitats, as well as on marginalized human communities. Unsurprisingly, he and his ilk are sometimes referred to by their critics as “lukewarmers”. However, Lomborg discounts many of the fallacies perpetuated by the climate lobby and argues convincingly that an economic approach, based on pricing harm and the cost of remediation is the only viable long-term policy that rational government can follow, particularly if the alternative is to make unrealistic pledges in the face of hysterical claims and then do nothing; or pursue a policy of ruination, something that the Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus has shown in his analysis of the UN’s attempt to limit warming to 1.5°C, a source that Lomborg explicitly relies on. The message to politicians is clear: do not act on the panicked advice and pressure of activists, for this will do far more harm than good.

In the first section, ‘Climate of Fear’, Lomborg dissects the problem around the discussion of climate change. He sees a number of problematic areas, though each of these imply a range of issues in themselves. The main one seems to be that of how the media functions in the information age, by leveraging crisis and outrage as much as possible in order, presumably, to gain commercial advantage. The public and even politicians, who should be better informed, are then relying on bad or misleading information. This seems to be the root of all other misapprehensions about climate change. As a result of misinformation, the general public tend to overinterpret all types of unrelated, or only indirectly related, events to being the consequences of climate change. As an example, he cites the ‘bullseye effect’ in which the expansion of human populations and increased property wealth in susceptible regions give the false impression that extreme weather events are more common and are causing vastly greater damage, whereas human behaviour is largely the cause. Lomborg convincingly decouples many natural disasters from global warming, which many assume are their direct cause. For example, the evidence that hurricanes are getting more powerful or more frequent is weak or tenuous and there is none that droughts are getting longer or more widespread. A second source of problems then seems to be politicians under pressure asking the wrong questions of scientists and getting the wrong – at least unhelpful and even harmful – information in return. Lomborg gives the example that asking how we can achieve zero carbon emissions, which is essentially what environmental campaigners are pushing for, is like asking how we can achieve zero traffic fatalities. In both cases the answer is essentially the cessation of the activity giving rise to the problem, whatever the cost to society.

The inextricable link between prosperity and climate warming is further developed in section 3, ‘How Not to Fix Climate Change’, which first looks at the so-called ‘rebound’ effect. This is the well-documented effect whereby money saved by virtuously renouncing carbon-emitting activities, such as driving, travelling by air or eating meat, is instead spent on other carbon-emitting activities, underlining the inescapability of carbon emissions in a prosperous world. Lomborg’s point is that individual decisions to forego certain pleasures or opportunities, if simply undertaken for the sake of the planet, are virtually meaningless, such is the miniscule contribution they make. This is even true for major carbon-generating activities. He cites a particularly arresting example that if nobody in the world travelled by air between 2020 and 2100, it would delay predicted climate change by less than a year.

In this section Lomborg also begins to outline an economic analysis of various paths forward. He considers five paths to the future based on the UN’s economic forecasts up till 2100. Two are the best-case scenarios, one the expected scenario and two worst-case scenarios. Under all five there is increased prosperity overall, but otherwise the difference between best and worst-cases are stark. The best-case scenarios are ‘fossil fuel development’, which forecasts a 1000% increase in GDP, virtually no poverty, low inequality, but the highest temperature rise and ‘sustainable development’, which forecasts many of the same benefits, but a lower temperature rise and a GDP increase of 600%. The two worst-case scenarios see the lowest temperature rises but still predict overall GDP increases, but the benefits are unequally distributed. Of these, the worst case sees an overall rise of just 170% in GDP, increased poverty and illiteracy, poorer health and conflict over resources. This is the route following the implementation of policies advocated for by climate alarmists (most of whom are from the rich world), which will disproportionately disadvantage the poor.

Lomborg develops his approach to tackling climate change and his critique of the climate lobby, particularly the approach taken in the Paris climate agreement in section 4, ‘How to Fix Climate Change’. He lays out five approaches: a carbon tax, innovation, adaptation, geoengineering and prosperity, all of which make a contribution. However, he emphasises innovation as the only long-term prospect for controlling man-made climate change. There are going to have to be alternative and better fuels, new generations of nuclear power with the possibility of nuclear fusion and various technologies for carbon capture. In order for that to happen there needs to be prosperity in order for a sizeable proportion of GDP to be invested in Research and Development. The problem with alternative energy sources and technologies at the moment is that they are expensive and inefficient. They are only taken up to any significant degree when there are subsidies. As soon as cheaper and more efficient technologies appear, they will naturally be taken up by consumers.

In the concluding section of the book, Lomborg deals with ‘Tackling Climate Change and all the World’s Other Problems’, debunking the tradition of apocalyptic environmentalist prophecy, showing that in each case the predicted doomsday scenario was solved through a combination of adaptation and technological innovation. Again, he applies an economic perspective to contextualise climate change as just one of many problems faced by humanity. According to surveys taken across the world, climate change is now considered by the public and the intellectual and cultural sectors to be the number one global crisis. However, most economists see it as a long-term problem and one fairly low in their list of priorities, below dealing with inequalities of health and literacy in terms of its contribution to human well-being.

For a book dealing with an abstruse a subject as the economics of climate change, False Alarm is a very readable book. It does not overwhelm the reader with jargon or difficult technical terms. Graphs are kept to a reasonable number, are pertinent and self-explanatory for the most part. The sectional approach allows the gradual development of an argument, although the sections are not entirely self-contained and there is a lot of overlap between them. Lomborg also illustrates his points with interesting, sometimes surprising and occasionally amusing examples. He has a straightforward thesis, but one that captures a central dilemma with climate change, that it is a concern principally of wealthy countries and a consequence of the unleashing of the power that has made that wealth possible. As such, he has essentially given the answer as to why, for all the rhetoric, little to no progress has been made in actually addressing climate change. The dilemma is that even a rudimentary grasp of the scale of the problem shows it to be intractable, but public sentiment by and large makes difficult a rational response of dealing with it as a long-term issue.

The criticisms one could raise are slight compared to the virtues of the book and perhaps not entirely pertinent to what Lomborg has set out to do here. There seems to be an unwillingness to go on the offensive against the climate alarmist lobby. Apart from a brief dismissal of no-children advocacy groups, there is no explicit attack on the irrationality and hypocrisy of the anti-humanism and anti-capitalism prevalent among climate and environmental activists. For this group, Lomborg’s message that the solution to global warming is increasing prosperity and investment in Research and Development is certain to be rejected outright, although, admittedly, this is clearly not the audience that his book is aimed at.

In the same vein, the other point I notice is that the various pieces of evidence do not come together in a round denunciation of the policies being pursued as a result of the Paris Agreement of 2015. It is my understanding that these policies are exactly those that correspond with the worst-case scenarios that Lomborg has identified – aiming for the lowest possible temperature rises irrespective of the economic consequences. I am not sure whether this reserve is indicative of a lack of killer instinct required of an effective prosecutor, a lack of philosophical rigour in following through the strands of information and argument to their logical conclusion, or a deliberate strategy to address a wider audience and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. There are those, of course – there is already evidence of this – who will, irrespective of reason or evidence, simply expand their definition of climate denial to include those, like Lomborg, who refuse to kowtow to the narrative of impending climate catastrophe. One hopes, though, that this book will bring to the attention of the general public, specialists and policy-makers, not just the scale of the problem of climate change, but the positive steps that can be taken by governments to address it.

Bibliography

Bjorn Lomborg, False Alarm: How climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor and fails to fix the planet. New York, NY: Basic books, 2020.

Compassion and politics: a dangerous mix

Once, driving in a foreign land many years ago, I passed a person walking alone on a dark, unlit country road. As random, irrational violent thoughts cross all our minds from time to time, I had an unbidden image of attacking them. Instead of just dismissing the impulse through fear, anger or humour, as those of us who have the good fortune not to be psychopaths are wont to do, I was flooded with an overwhelming sense of their vulnerability and through that of the vulnerability that we all share in this world. I think this was the first time that I understood what compassion, as spoken of by the great religious and moral exemplars, such as the Buddha, actually meant: something between a sense of identity with others, of oneness, and what today we refer to as empathy, but also something like a sense of awe at our smallness in a vast and perhaps ultimately uncaring universe.

Given that personal insight and the importance I believe attaches to the great moral teachings for our psychological and social well-being, I want, nevertheless, to explain why I think the idea of compassion as a basis for political rhetoric and policy is as reckless, corrupting and dangerous as that other great idol of the push for political supremacy, equality of outcomes.

In the first place, compassion is a subjective feeling that in and of itself has no necessary correspondence with the state of nature or the disposition of society or the individuals within it. It could be referred to as a state of grace in which we are given some insight into the existentiality of human being. Unlike an alternative, but in some respects similar, intuition that life is insular and meaningless, however, which can lead to a pathological indifference to or even hatred of humankind, experiencing compassion makes us feel in some manner connected to people. It is important to recognise, though, that this feeling is neither reciprocated nor otherwise manifest in the world. It only becomes so, when it is acted on in some way, through a negotiated transaction between ourselves and others, through politeness, through a greeting or a kind word, though an act which is received and found acceptable to another.

It is the failure to enter into such a negotiation with the world that the first danger of compassion can emerge, which is the delusion that the feeling is, in itself, a portent of personal virtue. In this respect it can be compared with sentimentality, a feeling indulged in by some of the vilest dictators and murderers, which, while universal, has sometimes assumed an exaggerated importance in a particular cultural milieu, notably that of the Nazi leadership. All values, of which compassion is but one, exhibit a fundamental semiotic duality: as concept, as arbitrary and conventional linguistic sign for communication; and as symbol, expressing and evoking a shared emotion. Because we are social beings, a communality of experience leads us inexorably to identify shared emotions in a cultural setting with virtue in-and-of-itself.

This danger is augmented when, in addition to the failure to negotiate one’s feeling with the world by a value-appropriate communication and action, the sense of in-group virtue overrides the essence of the value itself – in the case of compassion, the sense of empathy with the other and togetherness in a hostile world – and becomes, instead, the basis for an exclusionary rhetoric: that those of different political perspectives, for example, not only lack compassion, but are intrinsically without virtue and can be justifiably be mistreated verbally, reputationally and even physically. This is a phenomenon not exclusive to the value of compassion, but its strong divergence from innermost meaning is peculiarly striking.

The second danger of compassion is that, particularly with the prevailing orthodoxy that feelings trump all else, including facts, the belief that one is motivated to a specific course of action by feelings of compassion, in itself constitutes the rightness of that action. To be moved by feelings of compassion to address an evil in the world cannot, obviously, be wrong, as this is one of the important reasons why people are motivated to do things. The problem arises because either someone is biased by ideological presuppositions about the nature and location of evil and thereby misidentify the root of the problem they wish to address, or they collect insufficient evidence to verify that their proposed solution will actually work, or both. It is, I suppose, an example of the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

The figure of the do-gooder derided in much of post-Victorian fiction, the busybody who makes others feel equally inadequate and irritated, is at least an individual who can do damage only on a local level. This is nothing compared to the damage achieved by governments that attempt to pass legislation based on feelings of compassion, or at least the assumption that they are acting in the interests of a more compassionate society. For it goes without saying that most such attempts invariably fall foul of the objections raised above, that they misidentify the nature of the problem and do not take account of the possible – usually unintended – consequences of the policy. The law and compassion are fundamentally incommensurate. Law upholds the virtue of justice, which – at least in the common law tradition – is the examination of the claim to truth of a particular case. It is based on the evidence of the particular disposition of facts in the real world, in which feelings play little or no part.

To illustrate this point, I want to examine two cases ostensibly involving compassion politics. The more recent and easier case, that of Universal Basic Income, which has been proposed numerous times, most recently in face of the challenge posed by automation. The harder case, is that of the abolition of slavery 200 years ago, in which slavery was outlawed in the UK and throughout its colonies.

At any one time there are several experiments with Universal basic Income (UBI) being carried out worldwide. Some of them are very localised and small scale. The largest and very recent one (2017-2018) was carried out in Finland, which involved 2000 unemployed people randomly assigned to the programme. The purpose was to give the participants some economic security while they looked for work and would be paid throughout the period regardless of whether they found a job in the meantime. To the extent that it provided security and promoted psychological well-being, it was considered a success, but in terms of motivating people to find work, it was not deemed successful and there are no plans to extend the programme or even repeat the experiment. UBI appears an enlightened idea which founders repeatedly on the entwined issues of human nature and affordability. As we have seen with the protection payments for furloughed staff during the lockdown this year, justifiable and certainly compassionate as they have been and which can be considered a quasi-experiment in UBI, they do not address the issue of ongoing employability – or even, there are some indications, the desire to re-engage with work – while racking up an unsustainable debt.

On the surface the abolition of slavery seems an open and shut case of compassion politics – Wilberforce even read out accounts of the mistreatment of slaves in parliament. Also, it seems to go against the principle that action should be evidence-based as, certainly, no pilot studies were carried out to see if abolition were likely to be a success. However, this is to miss the point. Although slavery had existed in almost every society (and continues to exist in many societies to this day), against the shift in the religious, cultural and philosophical beliefs of the age, it could no longer be held as justifiable. Therefore, although there is no denying that compassion played a part, the force behind abolition was the repudiation of what had come to be seen as a great evil in the light of an evolving truth. There was no question at that point, in the minds of the abolitionists at least, who eventually became a majority, that justice would only be served by making slavery illegal.

Although some of the issues raised by those who believe in compassion politics are evils which should be ended, too many of them fail to meet two important criteria: That a potential change in the law addresses a tangible evil and that the solution is clear and the enforcement of law is the sole option. The case of slavery meets these two criteria; one set of human beings were owned by another and were being traded as commodities, so there was no disagreement over the way in which this could be brought to an end. UBI does not meet either of these criteria; the supposed evil – a future without employment due to automation and AI – though possible, is still hypothetical and, therefore, not tangible, and it is entirely possible and likely that the challenge will be met by new forms of employment.

Meeting these two criteria is important because changes in the law impose a burden on the freedom of individuals and a judgment has to be made that society as-a-whole benefits from such changes. Many issues meet one of the criteria, but not both. Drug addiction is an obvious scourge which has a tangible impact on the user, their families and society to some extent. But after 50 years of drugs proscription we are further than ever from eliminating the problem – in fact, it has only exacerbated the problem. Drug use and addiction are enormously complex phenomena and it is not obvious that prohibition was ever the answer. Moreover, it is not clear that drug use at least is even seen as a tangible evil any longer.

I want to build on the foregoing discussion to consider the epitome of compassion politics, the welfare state as the solution to poverty. I believe that having a welfare state as a safety-net that prevents people from falling into destitution, or supports those incapable of supporting themselves, is a mark of a civilised society, so I have no problem with its existence. But mainly when we talk about poverty we are speaking about relative poverty, which only means falling below the median wealth in a particular society. Although it may sound harsh, there is always a measure of choice to such poverty. Some people, admittedly a minority, prefer to live simply and probably consider themselves free rather than poor. For the majority of the poor in developed societies and economies the suffering of poverty involves opportunities not taken and the consequences of choices made, such as not taking advantage of education, not being willing to move, being a teenage single parent or some form of addiction. One of the unfortunate effects of institutionalised welfare is that it facilitates such choices by blunting the consequences of them, allowing the development of an underclass for whom living on welfare is virtually a lifestyle choice.

This brings me to the third danger of compassion politics, which is inherent in the very nature of compassion itself, which is that it is, fundamentally, a feeling of the powerful for the weak. This links the experience I referred to at the beginning of this essay with things such as the welfare state, but whereas my experience was unexpected and fleeting, institutionalised compassion cements this inequality in place. Compassion politics is infested with a particular type of corruption in which the assurance of its institutional power and the sense of superiority of those who advocate it lies in the continued subjugation of its constituency. There is little motive to solve the powerlessness of the powerless and thus their unfreedom. On the contrary, the existence of such an underclass, rather than a sign of failure of welfare to address a systemic problem, becomes perversely a sign of the virtue of welfare advocacy.

Compassion motivates us to recognise suffering and reach out to others. It plays a vital role of mitigating the processes of our society: the impersonal objectivity of scientific method, the inevitable decay of all things and the extinguishing of life, the unfairness in the lottery of birth and the disparate outcomes and experiences of people’s lived-experience, the punishment for wrongdoing, the unforgiving nature of the market, the losing out to rivals in love, promotions, sporting events and elections. Compassion helps to soften the reality that so much in life is a zero-sum game. However, compassion cannot replace these processes, nor can it underlie them. The processes are realities of nature or discoveries of universal human social application, which have added to the collective sum of human peace, prosperity, freedom and happiness, but not in every moment of time and not in every case for every individual, which is where compassion has its place. However, we should not forget that it is a subjective feeling that has no necessary correspondence with the real world. We should appreciate it for what it is, an intuition of the suffering of all people and all things. In all else we should be guided by our accumulated universal wisdom.

Marriage in the Twenty First Century

In the winter of 2007-8 I authored a piece for an international organisation entitled ‘A Charter for Marriage: Reconsidering the Foundations of Marriage for Twenty First Century Secular and Multifaith Britain’. I saw it doing two things: first, finding a centre ground between the patriarchal cultures of Britain’s immigrant communities, who valued marriage as the centre of extended family, but who had brought with them attitudes and practices inimical to British culture and law, and the liberal and secular culture of the UK that had enshrined personal rights and freedoms, but among whose population marriage rates were declining; secondly, I saw it as an opportunity to mount a robust defence of marriage, by examining the institution philosophically. More than ten years on, I want to revisit that idea in a markedly changed social and cultural landscape.

Although in that document I expressed the belief that marriage was not for everyone, I argued that it was a fundamental social good, which could best be approached from an ethical consequentialist perspective:

“We believe that the decline of marriage has contributed and continues to contribute significantly to the social troubles of our time, such as family breakdown, abuse of partners and children, poverty, illiteracy, innumeracy and inarticulacy, low educational attainment and hence employability, abuse of alcohol and other substances, delinquency and crime in general, depression, poor health and lower life expectancy in advanced countries, amongst other things. The growing number of low-occupancy households also contributes to the housing shortage and therefore has an environmental consequence.”

At the time I saw the possibility of immigration from cultures in which marriage was central and based on deep cultural and religious values having a positive effect on British society, through a sort of cultural osmosis, through assimilation, perhaps even of an increase in interracial and inter-ethnic marriages and the creation of a revitalised culture of marriage.

Since that time the social landscape and narrative with regards to culture, marriage and even gender has changed beyond recognition. Even oppressive practices alien to Britain are now championed by liberals as authentic expressions of diversity, undermining the hopes for both assimilation and revitalisation. Meanwhile even the norms of established categories such as male and female identity have been rewritten. Probably the greatest change, though, is the acceptance into law of same-sex marriage. These changes have to be recognised, even if not universally welcomed. From the vantage point of twelve years on, the issues at the time seemed relatively straightforward; if one was speaking or writing of marriage, one was unambiguously referencing a relationship between men and women, something that had been an unquestioned fact in every society.

However, I am less interested in establishing normative definitions of such terms as ‘marriage’, ‘man’, ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ and ‘gender’, as in establishing the fundamental values that underlie the institution of matrimony. While the arrival of same-sex marriage has created a definitional complexity to those who wish to address the issue and philosophical concerns of those who have an aversion to the overturning of a historically unchallenged institution in the name of equality, I see no specific way in which it undermines the status of marriage between men and women. Though I have clearly in mind heterosexual marriage, most of what I have to say could be interpreted in the context of same-sex marriage, for the point here is to explore the dimensions of a particular legal and ethical relationship.

Other developments, though, seem to present a far greater challenge to the institution of marriage. That can certainly be said about the recent (2019) decision to legalise civil partnerships for heterosexual couples, for this is a direct attack on the status of marriage. Indeed, the couple who pursued this case through the courts cited specifically their desire to abandon the traditions of marriage, believing it to be patriarchal and oppressive. Then there are the economic and political barriers to marriage. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs, which have only been replaced by low-paying and insecure employment, do not create the conditions for the creation and preservation of stable relationships. Government policies have not helped either, moving economic benefit away from married couples towards child support.

For something so fundamental to the continuity of society and of the civilising of the relationship between the sexes to be in decline suggests that we need to be more self-consciously aware of what the state of marriage aspires to be in the twenty-first century. One of the problems may be that our concepts are still those of the mid-twentieth century, possibly even those of the nineteenth, when the society has changed immeasurably. The question then becomes about the fundamentals of marriage that philosophical introspection reveals and which bind it as an institution in its own right. I will argue, contra the prevailing prejudices of liberal thought that it is simply a dated convention, what might be derisorily termed “just a piece of paper”, that it is bound by principles and values that both reflects the core beliefs of an enlightened culture and acts as a repository of social capital when societies go astray, prime among which is love.

The interrelationship between marriage and love is not straightforward and this complexity has expressed itself in all cultures. Marriage customs are different throughout the world, but share in common a commitment between a man and a woman to each other and any children that are born of their union. This commitment is made before a figure or group representing authority, that of the tribe or the state. Traditionally, but less so now in the West, a representative of a religion, signifying a spiritual authority, consecrates the marriage. Marriage has been seen in every society as a way of regulating sexual desires, not only to prevent the socially destructive power of infighting and jealousies, but also to ensure the socialisation and enculturation of the next generation through a recognised kinship structure. Thus, marriage can be seen to lie at the centre of a complex nexus of cultural concerns.

Love is an altogether more difficult proposition. It is probable that the significance and connotation of the term – if not the feelings, which are universal – are different for an average Chinese person compared with an average American or Iranian, based on cultural concepts, norms and expectations. Just consider the range of meanings that love has within the context of Western civilisation: there is the love that parents feel for their children and children feel for their parents, there is love between friends, love of country and the love of God that mystics speak of. Then there are the feelings, frequently considered baser, such as lust, possessiveness and attachment, yet which are often described as loves. The love between a man and a woman can be like any of these or a combination of any or all, and more beside.

In cultures where marriages are frequently arranged, love is not seen as a prerequisite for a marriage to take place. British Asians, amongst whom arranged marriages are commonplace, frequently state that love is seen as something that should ideally emerge over time in a good marriage. This, though, may be an adaptive idea in relation to the ubiquity of Western ideas and images. For the majority of historic cultures love has not been seen as central to marriage; marriage has had, principally, a social function. Even in the West marriage has frequently been seen as antithetical to nobler aspirations, of calling or of a higher ‘untainted’ love. But Europe is undoubtedly the origin of the modern notion of romantic marriage. In medieval Europe, mirrored to some degree in other civilisations, a tradition of romantic love began, marked by passion, eroticism, anti-authoritarianism, anti-traditionalism and anti-clericalism, and frequently – almost invariably – tinged with tragedy. Over the centuries this idea has taken root in our culture, though its fortunes have ebbed and flowed according to the social trends, until today when romantic love has become the prevalent mode of our thinking about love.

Nevertheless, there is a paradox at the heart of romantic love. While its very intensity brooks no argument as to its authenticity, that same intensity, which is at one with its inherent rebelliousness, means that it has no context within which it can be renewed save that of opposition to the established order, specifically marriage. Romantic love is, therefore, doomed to be transitory and, as such, cannot actually lay claim to authenticity. The liberation from marriage, achieved under the banner of ‘free love’, is unlikely to result in greater social freedom; perversely, it is more likely to invite further insidious intrusions of the state into family life as it attempts to prevent social meltdown. A study of the early Soviet Union’s disastrous experiment with the dissolution of ‘bourgeois’ marriage and its oppressive policy reversal several years later, is instructive.

If there is one positive outcome of the decline of marriage as duty, convenience or social acceptability, it is that there has emerged a consensus that if a relationship between a man and a woman is to be meaningful and ongoing it must be based on enduring love. Such love is categorically, though, not the same thing as romantic love.

For a start, real love must be reciprocated in a relationship between lover and beloved. Being based on feeling alone, romantic love may assume, but does not predicate, reciprocity. Unrequited love is in fact one of the strands of romanticism, though we tend to view it today as a pathological condition. Secondly, enduring love, unlike romantic love, cannot be based on just the given feeling or the given attraction. Basing a relationship on that is equivalent to trying to remain solvent while living solely on savings or an inheritance; sooner or later they must run out, depending on how thrifty or profligate one is. True love requires commitment, investment in the relationship and the creation and recreation of the object of love. Thirdly, if love is to endure, then it cannot be, unlike romantic love, merely a feeling, for the measure of a feeling is its intensity not its persistence and no relationship can be maintained at a level of high intensity indefinitely; therefore, true or enduring love, as opposed to mere infatuation or inconstant attachment, must also be implicated into a human system that partakes of the universal values of a culture, such things as patience, loyalty, compassion, respect and companionship. No human society has devised any such system with any stability outside of marriage.

If married love emerges as a somewhat complex notion, it is this very complexity, like that of other complex phenomena, that gives it its robustness. At its core, though – and this is where the romantics are vindicated – there is a profound feeling that has both a mysterious and a transcendental character. This feeling, though, is embodied within an institutional structure, that of marriage, which is both its context and expression.

The duality of marriage as both context and expression of love is the irreducible construct in which its facticity is rooted; everything else flows from it. Its existence in sociological terms is deontological, bound together by human desires and needs, laws, principles and values. Its continual deconstruction in modern liberal culture and politics is why we are at where we are at: the scourges of fatherless families, abuse of partners, addiction to pornography, loss of interest in relationships, the causes of innumerable other social ills and a demographic time-bomb. A marriage in which there is no love or love has faded is a common cultural trope of mockery and self-justification in modernity, but its opposite, love that is free of bounds is a motif that has acquired mythic status, despite our understanding of its existential emptiness. Marriage, rather than family – a misconception of both traditionalism and modern liberalism – is the root of our social belonging. It is the act of self-limitation in bonding oneself to another that makes the family a procreative social and cultural unit and, therefore, paradoxically, the power to harness the opportunities of our greater social freedoms.

The Institutional Principles or Values of Marriage

But if love and marriage are so conceptually fused, what are the defining principles and characteristics of this institution that would give it a robustness and adaptability to a changed social landscape and steers a middle ground between excessive liberality and reactionary illiberality? There are five principles that seem to meet these requirements: freedom, equality, commitment, legality and communality. There is a potential sixth – exclusivity – but this seems an overarching principle which is implied by all the others; but it is worth keeping in mind that these principles can only be defined in the context of wishing to share one’s life with another person in a mutually exclusive and enduring relationship.

Freedom

Love, by its very nature, cannot be coerced. Although it may not be true to say that it arises through free will, it is something that is given freely. There are, as discussed previously, forms of tragic love that arise in relationships of dependency – either one-sided or co-dependency – and romantic ideas of unrequited love, but married love depends on reciprocity and mutual happiness with and in the relationship. While mutual help and support are clearly part of the relationship, especially in times of difficulty, a strong independence is also required that people have qualities, skills and connections they bring to the relationship. This means having space in which to exercise one’s freedom, whether that be through a career or circle of friends. This in turn requires trust, for while there has to be a protective element to a relationship, jealousy can quickly destroy it.

For this reason, marriages can only be entered into willingly by both spouses, and can only be recognised as such by the willing consent of those entering into the relationship. The support, encouragement, advice, guidance and material contribution of the parents, family and wider community are to be actively encouraged; however, any form of coercion is forbidden, as violating the spirit of marriage. There is a clear distinction here between arranged marriages in which, even though neither spouse may have met prior to marriage, both have consented to the process, and forced marriage, in which either one or both are unwilling. In the internet era arranged marriage is changing even within cultures that have practiced it, so the distinction between this and forced marriage is even clearer.

Under all circumstances, the support and advice of wider family and community would be expected to sustain and strengthen the marriage bonds of couples in their midst and to seek all opportunities to avert crises in relationships, but if all else fails, the corollary of the right to enter a marriage freely is that, should the relationship between husband and wife break down irretrievably, it is the absolute right of the couple to seek dissolution of the marriage. In the end, we belong to ourselves; the commitments we make to others, however enriching they may be, are our choices. We never belong to another person, which is why even in a marriage we should respect the other’s autonomy. A marriage is essentially an agreement to build something together – a life together or a family together – which may take precedence over one’s independence, but this in the end is the irreducible matter of one’s choice. Relationships typically go through periods of challenge; there is always something that can be done to overcome those challenges.

Equality

Equality is a fundamental human value. We can see this in how children at an early age develop a sense of fairness and unfairness. In the context of marriage equality means equality of value or worth. In some cultures, sons are more highly prized than daughters. This is the legacy of an agrarian stage of human culture and of ‘bride price’ traditions that has no place in the twenty-first century and should be eliminated wherever it continues to exist. In a marriage both partners have to feel that they are valued. This requires negotiation so that the sense of fairness is established and may have to be renegotiated at various points in order to be maintained. For example, one arrangement might be in place before there are children, another while children are growing up, and yet another needed when they have left home or after retirement.

Above all, men and women should have the right equally to enjoy love in a mutual and exclusive relationship. Therefore, any imbalance in the distribution of freedoms and rights between a husband and wife is to be condemned. This applies not only to polygamy, but other forms of coercion and abuse whereby one spouse is diminished or devalued with respect to the other, for example gender-biased laws, imposed dress codes or female genital mutilation.

 Commitment

Commitment is the biggest obstacle to people getting married it seems. This is understandable, as this is where the irresistible force of desire meets the immoveable object of individual freedom. Marriage is an act of will, the furthest from the “bit of paper” argument that its detractors put forward as can be imagined. Though it is clear that marriage is in the broader interests of society and should be promoted more and supported more in a rational society, not everybody is suited for it and should perhaps not enter into it. If commitment to marriage means anything, it means commitment to that person for life, not on a temporary basis until difficulties or a better opportunity arises. For this reason, anything that violates the principle of absolute commitment and trust in an exclusive relationship, such as multiple marriages, concubinage and infidelity is unacceptable.

The commitment to marriage means putting the quality of that relationship before all else: before profession, social standing, interests and wealth, even before children. Naturally, in a marriage, all these things tend to accrue and deepen and enrich the lives of the couple. In the course of a lifetime a couple’s fortunes may rise and fall, but the relationship should always sustain them through all stages of life, including old age and decline. Views on the status of the marriage after the death of one spouse will depend on theological and moral perspectives. Just as divorce is a right, which some feel compelled to exercise, some may choose to remarry after the death of a spouse.

Legality

The relationship between marriage and the state should be simple in conception, but has become complex and confused in detail. Marriage is the prime institution of socialisation of citizens and, therefore, to that extent one of the pillars on which the stability of the state rests. The state, therefore, has a duty derived from self-interest in protecting and encouraging marriage. As such, marriage has been considered a legal-ethical construct, given form through custom but authorised through the recognition of the state. Until fairly recently this has been understood as an unspoken contract: the state gave married couples some economic benefits and latitude in decisions about their children’s upbringing, for example; in return, citizens abided by the law, sent their children to school, ensured that they provided for them and inculcated the moral requirements of living in a shared society with others.

More recently, this unspoken contract has been gradually revoked. Successive governments have seen it as their duty to protect children – sometimes from abuse, true, but often from parental beliefs in conflict with official policy, for example over sex education or the political indoctrination of children. The most outrageous example of this was the Scottish Parliament’s attempt effectively to make every child a ward of the state through the Named Person policy. On the other hand, government has gradually removed all support for marriage, undermining marriage as a normative and aspirational state for citizens and the institutional context for the raising of children with both their parents present. This is not entirely the fault of politicians as governments are responsive to cultural changes and marriage has been under attack from within academia, the media and the culture establishment for the past fifty years. The final resistance caved in with the extension of civil partnerships to heterosexual couples in 2019. What they have created is an institution with rights but no obligations; rather than stabilising society the social burden passes to the state and, inevitably, the taxpayer.

The decision to grant rights to unmarried couples equal to those of married couples is irrational, weakening the institution of marriage, the social fabric and, ultimately, the authority of the State itself. Rational government should involve itself in explaining the value and benefits of marriage (for which there is ample empirical evidence), promoting it through the educational system and perhaps rewarding it more through the tax system.

Communality

Through marriage, one becomes not just a part of another individual’s life, but of their family and social circle. Marriages function, therefore, to bind societies more closely together. International, interethnic and interracial marriages, and just marriages between those of different backgrounds (under generally tolerant social conditions) can overcome the ‘suspicion of the other,’ contributing to a richer, less stratified and ‘ghettoised’ social mix. Though we all hope fervently for a world in which the present inequalities of access to freedom, health and wealth can be addressed, this does not change the fundamental point that love is a universal ideal, for which wealth or poverty, class, race or religion are no barrier. Marriage, moreover, as is often noted, can be a route out of poverty and a basis for better health and educational and employment prospects. Promotion of marriage would also undoubtedly improve the social character of many nations that have otherwise made vast strides as the result of more liberal political and economic cultures.

One hopes for happiness in life, but all human life is ringed by potential tragedy as we contemplate the loss of those close to us. Moreover, suffering of some sort is something that we all have to deal with. Marriage embodies the potential for great happiness, but does not guarantee that life will be easy; rather, it should be thought of as providing a context in which we can understand and embrace all aspects of life and a source of strength for managing them, including the most difficult. It is often noted that loneliness of the elderly and alienation of the young are an increasing problem in developed societies. This correlates strongly with the loss of marriage as an aspiration among the young and the prevalence of broken marriages which all-too-often means separation from a former spouse’s family and relatives as well, if not outright hostility. Marriage based on enduring love, while not a universal panacea, does not contribute to the problems and can solve many of them. A good marriage provides the best social foundation for men and women to survive and prosper in a harsh world, not only materially, but also emotionally, psychologically and spiritually.

*

Promoting a view of marriage based on these principles is morally, psychologically, politically and sociologically sound and well-grounded. It is not just good for the well-being of the individuals involved, but also in the interest of communities and the state, for which the existence of good marriages is the bedrock of their stability and longevity. In an age where an increasing number choose not to marry, marriage is frequently satirised in popular culture and even governments cannot bring themselves to officially recognise it as anything special, it is important to reiterate that all civilisations have recognised the importance of marriage. Defining marriage as the context and expression of enduring love allows us to categorically state that the highest virtues and values of all cultures are found in the commitment of a couple to marry, live a life dedicated to each other and raise any children to be virtuous and productive men and women.

 

 

Dilemmas regarding the justice of claims for national independence

As most of the world knows – although there are surely corners where the news has not permeated or imposed its importance on the local consciousness – the United Kingdom is undergoing a protracted political crisis in its attempt the leave the European Union. Views on the meaning of this differ, to put it mildly; one could say that this issue has polarised political opinion in the UK more than any other in a generation, perhaps even in the last hundred years. This is not – as is often claimed – because of the stupidity or bad faith intrinsic to one side, but the natural outcome of it being a matter of utmost importance to the future history of the nation, over which there is passionate feeling.

There is a view that, more than a political disagreement, this is a constitutional crisis we are undergoing. I think this is intrinsically unknowable; not because the complexity of the arguments are such that even the best minds disagree – which is true – but because the British settlement is itself the outcome of an evolutionary process. If the UK emerges from this period of crisis with its reputation ultimately enhanced, say in ten or twenty years, we will be able with confidence to affirm the robustness of Britain’s unwritten constitution and its superiority over its scripted rivals. On the other hand, failure to resolve the issue satisfactorily could well weaken the Union fatally and result in its dissolution.

Before focusing on the details of what is happening in the UK, I want to frame the issue in terms of a dilemma inherent in claims for independence that are universal to every attempt to secede from a dominant power. There is a need, therefore, to establish first  that this is indeed the case with regard to Brexit. In his 2006 book Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union, the political scientist Jan Zielonka draws detailed parallels between the EU and its medieval imperial predecessors. More recently, the sociologist Wolfgang Streeck has written more succinctly on this theme. Lest it be thought that this is an exaggeration by Eurosceptics, I refer to a recent declaration by Guy Verhofstadt, the chief Brexit representative for the European parliament and a former prime minister of Belgium, at this year’s Liberal Democrat conference that:

‘The world of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It is a world order that is based on empires. China, is not a nation, it’s a civilisation. India… is not a nation… The US is also an empire, more than a nation… And then finally the Russian federation… The world of tomorrow is a world of empires in which we Europeans, and you British, can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together, in a European framework and in the European Union.’

All the evidence points towards the EU increasingly centralising power with Germany as the dominant hub. To the EU leaders, then, Brexit is rather more than just leaving a club, even more than seeking a divorce settlement; it is rather more like insurrection in a corner of an empire – at least an empire in ambition and in the making, with all the danger that presents to the project. That the EU is at present incapable of defending itself against such insurrection militarily, does not mean that it goes unpunished. As such, the UK faces the dilemma that all moves for independence face,  because there is not only an issue of legitimacy  – at which point does a claim to autonomy for a territory become legitimate? And with/for whom? – but a fundamental imbalance in power. There has always been a strong undercurrent of the zero-sum game to issues of autonomy. This makes it very difficult to resolve the issue without – at the very least – rancour, and in the worst case scenario civil war.

This question of legitimacy can be divided into three separate questions: What – if any – are the intrinsic limits of such claims? What creates the internal political will to pursue such a claim? and what are the realistic opportunities to achieve such an end? In seeking to answer these questions three principles emerge: the identity of a people; the strength of the popular will behind the claim (which two principles constitute the justice of the claim); and the existence of a mechanism by which the dominant power accedes to the claim (which supplies the politico-legal framework of the legitimacy or otherwise of the claim). These three principles come into play in every bid for territorial independence and a consideration of their interplay results in a fair estimation of the likelihood of success. Each will be considered in more detail.

The first question concerns the relative merits of any calls for secession. Logically, there is no limit to the fractionating of territory and peoples and even the most minor and obscure of issues will sometimes attempt to delineate a separatist cause. Reason demands that there needs to be a limit to this tendency, but the question specifically addresses intrinsic limits. I find that question to be answered by the human psychological need for belonging, in particular belonging to a social group that forms an integral part of our personal identity. In other words, territorial division could never terminate at the level of the individual and their personal property, but somewhere above that in the hierarchy of social groupings; so there is a natural brake to this process. There is, for most of us, a sense of the ‘natural community’ of belonging with people with whom we identify and when this coincides with a geographic region, this can be the seed for secessionary longings.

Certainly in the modern world this sense of identity is more likely to be marked by adherence to a common culture of shared language, religion or history than it is to outdated notions of race. More than this, though, as these differences are in themselves not a sufficient reason for secession, there is inevitably a narrative of grievance that can be wound into a political platform. Many times the grievance is based on real discrimination or persecution; sometimes, it is manufactured solely for partisan political gain. The Kurds of Iraq, Iran and Turkey have a common identity apart from the nations of which they are a part and have genuine reasons for wanting to break away, having suffered persecution and the status of second-class citizens, although the likelihood of the emergence of a united and independent Kurdistan is remote.

The second principle is that of the strength of the popular will, the ‘momentum’ or the existence of a ‘critical mass’ for a change in the territorial settlement of a nation. There is a spectrum of claims from the trivial to the momentous and unstoppable. What actually constitutes a legitimate claim, though, is questionable. It is not simply about numbers, for example a majority in a region which want to secede. There are invariably  geopolitical concerns on the part of the dominant power in giving up a territory that trump the wishes of that desire among a population. There may be economic reasons against giving up a particularly productive territory. These are, of course, pragmatic considerations rather than arguments against just cause. In the end, it might be only a question of the relative power of the cases being made. The problem is, there is no transcendent point from which such competing claims be judged, wherever we might, as individuals, stand. The nature of these things is that they they must be fought in the court of public opinion between the state and the secessionist proto-state.

Other things being equal, there are moral rules of thumb by which we might arrive at a personal decision on where our sympathies lie. If the refusal to grant autonomy creates a huge injustice in terms of the suffering of a people, we might consider the claim to be just; otherwise not. If the claim is made on the basis that a people believe it is to their economic advantage, even if it is to the detriment of the wider region, we are much less likely to be sympathetic. If the people have a history of independence and this has been removed by conquest or diluted  or subterfuge, there is probably a stronger case. The case of the Uighurs is compelling in this context. Granted a relative degree of autonomy in 1955, the Xinjiang region was largely ignored until its economic potential became obvious to Beijing after which the Han population started to increase and impact on the indigenous culture and language. Resistance to the disappearance of their culture was met with an authoritarian response, which in turn initiated an outbreak of terrorist attacks among a relatively peaceful people. The response of Beijing has been to take total control of the region, the most complete surveillance of a population in the world and the incarceration and indoctrination of an estimated 1-2 million people in concentration camps.

The third principle relates to the existence of a legal mechanism for the independence of a region. In the absence of any such framework there is no right of independence and little recourse for the supplicant state but to either give up its ambition or to engage in extra-legal means such as sabotage and terrorism, raising the cost significantly – for both sides: that of the dominant state of holding on to a recalcitrant population and that of the separatists of undermining the moral strength of their claim. Independence is, as stated earlier, fundamentally a zero-sum game, however we look at it. There are rare cases, such as the partition of Czechoslovakia, when the country divided into two relatively equal parts by mutual consent. In the majority of cases a region is attempting to secede from a nation, such as the Basque region’s attempt to separate from Spain in 2017. As Spain has no constitutional mechanism for this to happen the only outcome in the political crisis was annulling of the independence referendum and the arrest of the leaders of the separatist government.

The clash between the justice of a cause and its legitimacy in law is the space in which we can feel morally conflicted. It has long been accepted that Scotland, for example, has a right to cede from the United Kingdom. The justice of Scotland’s move towards independence, though, is questionable. Scotland and England have a shared history of 300 years and, despite the distinctiveness of Scottish culture, the population of Scotland is as heterogeneous as that of any other part of the UK. Granting greater autonomy to Edinburgh and the establishment of a Scottish Parliament, rather than settling the matter of cultural distinction and historical grievance, have given it a permanent political character. Scots have had unfettered access to British institutions of influence during this period of union and have shared in its prosperity. Moreover, in a ‘once in a generation’ referendum in 2014 the people voted to stay part of the UK. So for the political representatives of 8% of the population to continually lay claim to a third of the landmass of Great Britain is of dubious legitimacy.

The case for British identity vis a vis Europe is, I think, stronger than of Scotland’s separate identity within the the UK. The UK existed as an independent country for more than 250 years prior to joining the EU and its constituent parts for centuries more prior to their union. A strong case has also been made that the transfer of powers was achieved through sleight-of-hand in an manifestly undemocratic way, which has fuelled a popular sense of injustice. In terms of culture there is clearly a sense of common identity, even though this has been diluted over the past 50 years by waves of immigration.  The requisite critical mass of popular support for independence was supplied by the outcome of the referendum of 2016. Despite this, Brexit has proved to be fraught with difficulties despite the existence of a mechanism for withdrawal, triggered by article 50 of the EU constitution. The past three years has seen obstacle after obstacle thrown in the path of independence. Intentionally or otherwise, the EU has achieved a significant victory in moving the civil war into the supplicant nation, rather than fighting rebellion on its own periphery.

At dispute seem to be two fundamental questions. The first is how we evaluate the outcome of the 2016 referendum on membership of the EU. On the surface this seems to have a simple answer: the outcome was the decision to leave. However, from the beginning this apparent result was challenged. There were claims of irregular and unlawful practice, lying and cheating, misappropriation of campaign funds, in fact the whole litany of standard accusations in politics throughout the ages, few of which have been tested in court and none of which in themselves has resulted in any attempts to cancel the outcome. There was the claim that the 52-48% win for leave did not constitute a sufficient margin for undertaking such a momentous change, which seems a reasonable claim until consideration is given to whether the same conditions for the opposite outcome would have applied, when it becomes obvious that this is just a case of special pleading. In fact, an acceptable margin had not been established beforehand. The outcome was also challenged on the basis that a referendum could only be advisory; however, inviting the population to take part in a historic referendum and then ignoring the popular will would be politically dangerous, especially as the turnout for the referendum was over 70% of the electorate.

The second question, which has arisen in the wake of the referendum, and particularly in the most recent weeks, concerns the way in which parliament represents the people it is supposed to serve. As we are a representative democracy in which MPs are voted in to represent the electorate in their constituency, this seems to be the crux of the dilemma we are now facing. Is it simply a matter of electoral arithmetic that the MPs, who were overwhelmingly remainers, accurately represented their constituencies, while being at odds with a plebiscite of the entire nation? A similar phenomenon is fairly common in general elections when the outcome of the ‘first-past-the-post’ system – and the number of seats in parliament – is not representative of the popular vote. However, it is well-established that there are a significant numbers of MPs whose preference – and, more significantly, their subsequent actions – are at variance with their constituents. I understand why many MPs might feel conflicted, not just because of their personal preference and what they consider the best interests of the country and their constituents, but because they might represent a constituency that voted remain on balance. However, this is to miss the point entirely. The referendum was a nationwide vote on a single issue – whether the UK was to remain in the EU or to leave the EU – so their personal reservations or the votes of their constituency locally count for nothing. Whether Londoners or Glaswegians voted decisively to remain is irrelevant, because the UK did not.

There are without doubt complexities to the issue such that it would be rash to accuse these MPs of bad faith in seeking to find the best possible outcome in exiting the EU. However, it is very difficult to see what these MPs will achieve, other than to frustrate the process of leaving and have the UK remain in the EU. They will not state this in so many words, for to do so would be to delegitimise the basis of democracy in the country, which is founded, after all, on the popular will. They voted repeatedly against an admittedly bad deal and have now voted to prevent a no-deal scenario, despite the most obvious point that to negotiate successfully there must be the option of walking away from the table, forcing the Prime Minister to request yet another extension, having squandered two previous extensions.

My conclusion is that MPs and other players have chosen to adhere to their their original position in the referendum rather than abide by its outcome and this is the major source of both the political and constitutional instability we are witnessing. The constitution has functioned well until now because of a shared set of assumptions, rules and values which have governed politics in the UK, the most important one in this case being that the results of votes are decisive, sacred even. Remainers have refused to accept the verdict and are employing a series of legal technicalities and maneuvers to block the realisation of Brexit. In response, the PM has deployed the tactic of attempting to ignore the law and subvert parliament. Whatever the outcome of this battle, it is debatable whether the tradition of an unwritten constitution that evolves through necessary piecemeal reform will survive.

In attempting to see the process of Brexit from a more disinterested viewpoint of the principles of independence applicable anywhere, account must be taken of the EU perspective. For Brussels and Berlin the prospect is one of losing territory, a diminution of territorial projection (through access to the UK military forces), no open access to one of the strongest economies in the world, as well as its jobs and skills markets. As the major power in the negotiation of the terms of the break it has no obligation to make this process easy for the UK. The EU claims we have proposed no serious alternative to the Irish backstop. Perhaps the UK should be flexible on the future of Northern Ireland. The region voted remain and the numbers are moving towards acceptance of unification with the republic. The condition would be that no such consideration should be given to Scotland becoming independent and being welcomed into the EU. Putting aside the hypocrisy of the backstop which Brussels has imposed on the UK in order to prevent a hard border in Ireland, only to then impose a hard border on the British mainland by the accession of a new member, the appearance of such a border could be interpreted as an act of war by a hostile power.

 

 

An assessment of the status of climate change modelling as a scientific paradigm (part 2)

The latest news that the Antarctic has undergone rapid melting in the period 2014-2017 (Vaughan, 2019), undoing 35 years of gradual growth, one of the touchstones of climate change sceptics, effectively demolishes the argument that global warming is not real. Nevertheless, the pressure by activists for radical and immediate restructuring of the economy is potentially dangerous, though probably futile. The utility of viewing the model of anthropogenic climate change as a scientific paradigm, established in part 1 of this essay, is that it attempts to insulate the work of scientists in the field from overt pressure and the decontextualization of their data for political ends, while giving space for practical policy to meet the challenges climate change presents.

Such a move also raises a number of questions. One is that if a paradigm shift is under way, what is the nature of the prior paradigm (or paradigms) from which resistance has emanated? Another concerns the status of scientific prediction within the paradigm, as opposed to political grandstanding or wild speculation. Then there is the issue of the limits of the concept of a paradigm – what defines a scientific paradigm and at what point does it outlive its usefulness?

Resistance to the climate change model from prior paradigms 

From the perspective of the Kuhnian paradigm hypothesis, rejection of the climate change model can be considered as a clinging-to and resistance-from the perspective of a prior paradigm. The question then arises as to the nature of this prior paradigm. In fact, there seems to be no prior unitary paradigm, as global warming was barely a perceived issue until the 1990’s. Instead there were individual disciplines working within their own silos – climatology here, oceanography there – with their own specialisations and methods, which would rarely if ever have talked to each other. Many, though not all, climate change sceptics represent the older generation of scientists wedded to older ways of thinking. As Kuhn and others have proposed, the nature of a paradigm shift is that it frequently accomplished more by the older generation dying off than by conversion to the new paradigm, which, in any case, is never a matter of pure rational decision.

As a paradigm is, at least in part, a social construct, it is never just a matter of reason organising data; there are always assumptions, values and biases, such as cultural prejudices, built into its structure. If this is the case, then the paradigmatic forerunner of the climate change model can be understood as an essentially conservative one, one that embodies, explicitly or implicitly, a religious vision of nature and humanity. This is not one that necessarily disavows science but sees it as an expression of the mastery of nature granted mankind, ultimately by a benevolent deity. It is optimistic in outlook compared with the current environmentalist view, believing that nature is abundant and limitless and too resilient for us to do much harm. Moreover, it prioritises human life over other forms of life and asserts our cosmic right to exploit nature for our own benefit and is, thus, essentially also humanistic. This model was essentially shared across the political spectrum before the advent of the widespread adoption of the environmentalist perspective.

Thus, another source of resistance to the climate change model can be seen from those who have difficulty accommodating within their worldview the dethroning of human beings as masters of creation or the pinnacle of evolution. They see science as a tool for the continuing expansion and improvement of the human race, or at least the fortunes of the nation. Perhaps the realignment of the left almost universally with the environmentalist vision is less an expression of conviction with the facts of the climate change model than it is with the universal failure of socialist economics and its essentially optimistic view of humanity. That leaves resistance now to the climate change model from believers in nationalist supremacy allied to capitalist economics,  which  includes most of the world, though few are brazen enough to put it that bluntly.

This resistance is a powerful force. Moreover, even those who believe in global warming have a problem in following the logic of their conviction, because it is not just pro-environmentalist but also markedly anti-humanistic, and it is difficult in practice to deny your own right to exist and prosper. Few are willing even to give up the most environmentally unfriendly practices we are aware of, such as driving cars, taking holidays to exotic locations by plane, using high-tech equipment and shipping food and goods around the world to satisfy our needs and desires. Fewer still are willing to give up on the modern world and retreat to a natural life – even if such a thing could be defined; after all, it was not modern peoples that eliminated the native megafauna of the world, but peoples in primitive societies. It is certainly paradoxical to the environmentalist argument that the people most inclined and best placed to live life in harmony with nature are the richest.

Within the climate change paradigm – and this is a sign that it is gaining growing acceptance – different philosophical, economic and political agendas are emerging, besides radical de-modernisation. One sees the future as adaptation to a changing climate, looking for new economic opportunities in a warming world. Another sees the route to controlling anthropogenic warming being through new technologies which mitigate the harm done and even reverse it. In these views sound environmental policy means that consumers are able to make choices better for the environment, such as buying hybrid or electric vehicles, changing their diet away from those that require intensive farming, etc. This demonstrates the beginning of the maturation of the paradigm. Not all will be converted, but they will not be around forever.

Scientific explanation, prediction and control

A claim that is raised by sceptics of global warming and its associated climate change is that the model is invalidated by a history of failed predictions or predictions wide of the mark, invariably on the side of doomsday scenarios rather than on the side of caution. This is not the place to consider the various anomalies in data that are seized on from time to time by opponents of the model, who, perhaps unknowingly, hold to a radically falsificationist view of science – that a single counter-example is sufficient to demolish a theory (rather than presenting a challenge that needs to be accommodated within the theoretical framework); there is an extensive literature on such claims.

The issue to be considered here is the relationship between a theory’s ability to explain and to predict. A viable theory must do both and clearly prediction is built on the foundation of having offered an explanation for some phenomenon. There is a fundamental imbalance, though, between the two: an explanation is an interpretation of the existing data, while a prediction is a projection into the unknown (often, but not necessarily, the future) for which there is no existing evidence, which only the future can supply. As discussed in the first part of this essay, the reasons for the acceptance of a theory can be, and usually are, more than just rational and evidential; they often involve an aesthetic component – the new theory is simpler and neater in some respects. This also presupposes that there is an evidential gap in the present. Theories are able to usefully predict and lead to the possibility of control only when they have completed the theoretical gap in “successfully” explaining the contemporaneous data.

I want to look at four examples of generally-accepted paradigm shifts and examine their relation to explanation, prediction and control: the Copernican (heliocentric) revolution; evolution by natural selection; general relativity; and plate tectonics.

The case of the Copernican Revolution is often upheld – if one can be excused the lexical quirk – as the paradigm of the paradigm. This has much to do with the fact that Kuhn first developed the idea of the paradigm shift looking at the historical emergence of heliocentrism in Europe (Kuhn, 1957; 1985), but also that it manifests clearly those characteristics which came to define the paradigm in other cases to which the concept was applied. Copernicus had surprisingly little data on which to base his theory; his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was published in 1514, 100 years before the advent of reliable telescopes and Galileo’s evidence from planetary observation in 1615. It was based more on a theoretical consideration – that Kuhn refers to as conceptual ‘economy’ – that heliocentrism resolved  the increasingly untidy and unrealistic model derived from adapting the Ptolemaic system of epicycles.

Copernicus’ model paved the way for Newton’s theory of forces, gravity and the mechanics of ballistic flight, without which we would not be able to place satellites in orbit. It also opened up the way to astronomical research and the possibility of flight to other planets. The fundamental intellectual shift that took place in the Copernican revolution, allowed us to see the possibility of other systems and worlds like our own and begin the search for them, unhampered by dogma. The number of exoplanets now identified runs into thousands, some having many earth-like characteristics (NASA, 2019).

Darwin’s (1859) theory of evolution by natural selection was the culmination of a tradition of observation that went back to Aristotle, but which was subsumed under the scholastic theological and philosophical concept of the Great Chain of Being and the revival of ancient mythology in the western medieval period. Darwin was preceded by important classifiers of biological form, such as Cuvier and Linnaeus, as well as a philosophical tradition of evolutionary thinking. Darwin’s seminal contribution, though, was to imagine a mechanism by which the transformation of form over time might occur. There are two fundamental ideas: continuous variation of organisms in form from one generation to another and selective pressure from the environment of the organism that allows particular variations to prosper down the generations.

At the time Darwin’s theory accounted for the great variety of organic forms that exist, the prevalence of unique species in isolated environments, such as the Galapagos Islands, and the existence of different creatures in the fossil record. However, there was no evidence to support the idea of inherited variation. This only gradually emerged, first in the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900, then the elucidation of the structure of DNA by Crick & Watson in 1953, confirmation coming through research into the mechanism of the development of viral resistance. The theory underlies all current experimental work in biology and has given rise to new technologies that promise increasing control of biological processes. The decoding of the human genome in 2000 raises the possibility of individually tailored treatment for a variety of diseases as well as direct intervention in the blueprint for life.

Though we continue to live largely in a Newtonian worldview regarding the everyday interactions between things – indeed we have been able to send rockets to the planets based on Newton’s equations – we now consider Einstein’s theory of gravity, developed between 1907 and 1915, to be more general and more accurate. Einstein dealt with a long-standing philosophical problem with Newton’s theory of gravity, the difficulty of a force acting instantaneously over immense distances, by re-conceptualising gravity as the curvature of 4-dimensional space-time. This fulfils the requirement of a paradigm shift that there needs to be a fundamental shift in thinking, not merely in detail. Einstein was also able to achieve in the process a unification of other concepts, such as the equivalence of mass and energy.

Einstein’s work was almost entirely theoretical. Nevertheless, confirmatory evidence came within a few months with his prediction of anomalies in the orbit of Mercury. In 1919 gravitational lensing was observed for the first time. Two predictions proved difficult to confirm: gravitational waves and black holes, massive stars collapsed to a singularity. The first evidence of gravitational waves was seen in 2015 (Castelvecchi & Witze, 2016). The existence of black holes was generally accepted from the 1970s and indirect evidence has accumulated. It is only in 2019, though, that direct evidence – a photograph of the energy released by infalling matter forming a halo around a black hole – has been available. The data over the past 100 years has confirmed the status of Einstein’s theory. We know, however, that it must be an incomplete theory, as it is not compatible with quantum mechanics, which has also been repeatedly confirmed at the atomic level. This again is a facet of the paradigm; it remains an area of research precisely because it continues generates questions in problematic areas.

The fourth example, Plate tectonics, is probably the least well-known, as it raises no profound philosophical or ethical issues, generates, as a result, few headlines, and was the cumulative result of quiet research by scientists unknown outside their specialised fields. It had been observed for several centuries that the shape of some of the continents suggested that they had once fitted together, rather like a jigsaw puzzle. By the nineteenth century it was also speculated, based on the presence of common sedimentary deposits around the globe and the distribution pattern of identical fossil species, that the continents had a shared geological history in a supercontinent called Gondwanaland. In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift, whereby the continents had moved to their present position over millions of years. Though the theory accounted for the known evidence and was more plausible than alternative theories, such as an expanding earth or land bridges between the continents, it provided no mechanism for this motion and was discounted by the mainstream geological establishment. In the 1930s Arthur Holmes proposed that convection currents in the mantle, generated by heat from radioactivity, drove the movement of the earth’s crust. This remains until now the accepted mechanism, though there has been no experimental verification. The main outlines for plate tectonics was developed in the 1960s, based on the work of Wilson (1965) and others on transform faults, whereby the continents are considered to float on giant plates of oceanic crust that are created at oceanic ridges, slide past each other and disappear at subduction zones.

Plate tectonics has created a unified theory that encompasses all the large-scale geological processes. It has very strong explanatory power, supported by an increasing body of evidence and, therefore strong predictive power. However, this predictive power is limited to macro rather than micro scale events, which are statistically correlated and highly chaotic. Practically, plate tectonics has not yet afforded us a way to accurately predict and thus control (or control for) potentially devastating events such as volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and mudslides, the dynamics of which are, nevertheless, very well understood.

What these examples demonstrate is that a paradigm shift to a new paradigm:

• Occurs to address anomalies within an existing paradigm.
• Meets resistance from adherents of the existing paradigm.
• Reconceptualises the core elements of a theoretical system and gives a different explanation, which forces us to think differently.
• Achieves the unification of hitherto disparate phenomena by being more general.
• Predicts outcomes, events or phenomena that would act as confirmatory evidence.
• Initiates a period of normal science, usually extending to decades, which includes the hunt for confirmatory evidence and exploring the limits of the paradigm.
• Opens up the opportunity for new forms of control over nature.

The anthropogenic model of climate change, from this perspective, is the epitome of an emerging paradigm. Perhaps a couple of points need some explanation, the first, regarding reconceptualisation. I would argue that the model is virtually unique in seeing human economic activity as a part of nature that merits scientific investigation, rather than as a subject of political and economic critique. Not only that, but economic activity becomes the conceptual core of the theory that ties together the various systems – atmospheric, oceanic, lithographic, ecological – into a coherent theory. The second is that it bespeaks the need for a dispassionate evaluation of the predictions of the theory, primarily global warming, which, if precedent is anything to go by, is likely to be measured in decades. That means at the level of scientific research we should be wary of sensationalist claims reported before proper peer review takes place, which are likely to result in bad policy decisions, just as we should be dismissive of sceptics grasping straws to uphold outmoded paradigms.

The validity of the concept of the paradigm

So far, I have undertaken an evaluation of whether anthropogenic climate change conforms to the idea of a scientific paradigm as laid out by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. I want to turn this around now and consider the extent to which climate change science tests the limits of the paradigmatic concept. In particular, I want to look at the contemporaneous extra-scientific ethical, political and philosophical debates around two of the cases considered in the last section, those of the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions, as a precursor to evaluating the status of paradigms vis a vis climate change.

The concept of the paradigm as envisaged by Kuhn has strong sociological roots, not only in the idea of science as the activity of a scientific community, but also that of intergenerational resistance and advocacy, and the aesthetic appeal of the new. This is important to discover the limits of the idea of the paradigm, what is not included; a concept in which every form of human intellectual (and other) endeavour could be included would have little utility. It is ultimately to determine whether the paradigm is a useful concept in understanding the development of scientific theories and, specifically, whether it applies to the climate change model.

Today the controversy that raged around the introduction of heliocentrism is, when considered at all, viewed through the lens of our own values. We tend to be highly critical of Copernicus’ decision not to publicise his ideas more widely, challenging the earth-centred view promulgated by the Catholic Church, and are appalled by the threats made to Galileo by the inquisition and his virtual silencing. It is important to remember, though, that the acceptance of the heliocentric model was not only a challenge to Catholic tradition and authority (the upholding of geocentrism is Greek in origin, not biblical), but to the idea that humanity occupied a central position in the Creation and was accorded a value as such and, moreover, that the evidence for it was thin and itself theory-dependent (Chalmers, 1982).

After 400 years the controversies over the move from a geocentric to a heliocentric model have faded. We now know that our solar system is a miniscule part of a galaxy, that of a galactic cluster, in turn one of billions in a universe that may, hypothetically, be part of a multiverse. The knowledge is background to the everyday, while forming part of a great deal of scientific research, which is where it enters the realm of politics and finance. Beyond considerations of cost for some of the more ambitious programmes, and perhaps of risk and priorities in the case of space exploration, there are few troubling ethical and philosophical issues associated anymore with this paradigm.

Rather like Copernicus, Darwin delayed the publication of his theory of evolution because of its theological and potentially social implications at a time when religion was still a powerful force in society. Whereas we have absorbed the knowledge of our dethroning as the centre of the cosmos, we are still dealing with the implications, philosophical and ethical, of our existence being contingent on blind chance, as well as the power to alter our destiny. Unlike the Copernican revolution, the Darwinian revolution has from the beginning generated troubling ethical dilemmas, political philosophies and social movements. Social Darwinism emerged in Darwin’s own lifetime and the twentieth century saw the rise and fall of the eugenics movement. Today we face dilemmas over genetically modified plants and animals, the threat of bioweapons, designer babies or clones and the potential combining of human DNA with that of other species or advanced robotics and the emergence of human sub-species. These possibilities pose ethical and political problems of an existential nature.

In these cases there were, or are, highly contentious issues of a political, theological, philosophical or ethical nature that form a penumbra around the core science. Popper refers to these collectively, which do not meet his criterion of falsifiability, as ‘metaphysics’. Indeed, evolution by natural selection does not meet this strict criterion, though Popper allows it the status of a ‘metaphysical research programme’ (Popper, 1976). By this criterion none of the established scientific paradigms would have got off the ground, certainly not the heliocentric paradigm, which was clearly falsified by some of the information available at the time. This metaphysical penumbra exists – to a greater or lesser degree – around all scientific endeavor, but is recognised as significant and, therefore, has a more natural place within the concept of the paradigm. The question is whether there is a limit beyond which it is no longer possible to talk about a scientific paradigm, but only a political or ethical agenda, and whether anthropogenic climate change has crossed that line.

An accusation levelled at climate change science is that it is not real science but a fabrication designed to bolster left wing and environmentalist criticism of capitalism and the consumer society and justify anti-capitalist activism that, by implication, leads to a vilification of conservative politics, which has mostly been business-friendly. If this were true, it would blend imperceptibly into the entire political activism of the left on issues such as economic inequality, women’s and minorities’ rights and increasingly issues around identity. In that case, if the model of anthropogenic climate change would be considered a paradigm it could be argued that any body of theory and practice, including those of the social sciences, humanities and arts, which include variable degrees of interpretation and imaginative construction, should be legitimately considered paradigms. This would virtually render the term meaningless and we would have to look at alternative means of demarcating science from non-science, such as Popper’s criterion of falsifiability or Lakatos’ (1974) notion of research programmes.

I suggest that the way out of this corner is to look at the issue of control rather than explanation or prediction. This means that the assignment of paradigm status remains intact to the degree that control is exercised primarily in the technological realm, not in the political realm, notwithstanding the political and ethical dimensions of all science and technology. This is clearly the case with heliocentrism, where almost all issues are technological and few ethical or political, and it is increasingly so with evolution, although there are areas where major ethical concerns and scope for political decision-making arise. I would say that anthropogenic climate change’s status hangs in the balance at the moment; there is clearly a theoretically cohesive idea, based on real-world data, which leads to explanation and prediction, and a limited penetration of alternative energy technology into the market, but control of the agenda is still largely in the hands of activist and political players, not led by research, development and economic priorities.

Conclusion – the new normal

There is little doubt in my mind that we are experiencing the effects of human colonisation of virtually every natural system on the planet – how could it be otherwise with regard to industrialisation and global trade, when we have had an impact on nature from prehistoric times? However, we have to see this in context – actually, a number of contexts. The first is that we are on the brink of a number of existential crises, some of which receive far less publicity than they should compared to climate change. Secondly, we should recognise the resilience of nature; as long as we implement changes, there is reason to think that much of the present damage can be reversed and we can adapt to those that cannot. Then, we need to recognise the enormous capacity science and the free market have shown to generate solutions to seemingly intractable problems and improve the quality of life.

The acceptance of the anthropogenic climate change as a scientific paradigm creates a new normal, meaning a realignment of our values and economic practice, driven by increasing technological control over environmental parameters. It increases the probability of the extreme fringes of anti-humanism and year zero advocates within the environmental wing and anti-Capitalists within the left having less impact on policy and the focus being put on mitigation and alleviation technologies. In this context Toyota’s recent decision to make its hybrid technology open source is an interesting development (Gorey, 2019), as it promises to seed a fundamental technological change in the direction of mitigation, while expanding the market in which competition based on quality – rather than monopoly – becomes the norm. Initiatives of this kind represent a realistic and hopeful step-change in the new environmentally aware economy.

References and Bibliography

Calder, Nigel (1978). The Restless Earth: A Report on the New Geology. London: Penguin.

Castelvecchi, Davide; Witze, Alexandra (11 February 2016). “Einstein’s gravitational waves found at last”. Nature News. doi:10.1038/nature.2016.19361. Retrieved 11 February 2016.

Chalmers, A. F. (1982). What is this thing called science? An assessment of the nature of science and its methods. Milton Keynes: The Open University Press.

Darwin, Charles (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Gorey, Colm (3 April 2019). Toyota to make secret hybrid tech open access until 2030. Silicon Republic. Available at: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/toyota-prius-hybrid-tech-open-access

Kuhn, Thomas (1957). The Copernican Revolution (Copyright renewed 1985). Harvard University Press.

Lakatos, Imre (1974). The methodology of scientific research programmes. Philosophical Papers Volume I. edited by John Worrall and Gregory Currie. Cambridge: CUP.

Lutz, Ota (April 19, 2019). How Scientists Captured the First Image of a Black Hole. Teachable Moments. NASA: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Available at: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2019/4/19/how-scientists-captured-the-first-image-of-a-black-hole/

NASA Exoplanet Archive. Available at: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/. Retrieved 10 July 2019.

Popper, K.R. (1976): Unended Quest, an Intellectual Autobiography, Fontana/Collins, Glasgow.

Vaughan, Adam (1 July 2019). Antarctic sea ice is declining dramatically and we don’t know why. New Scientist. Online at: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2208180-antarctic-sea-ice-is-declining-dramatically-and-we-dont-know-why/

Wilson, J. Tuzo (July 24, 1965). “A new Class of Faults and their Bearing on Continental Drift”. Nature. 207 (4995): 343–347.