We all know this feeling...
A couple of years ago, I remember coming across a newspaper article that depressed me to my very core. I tore it out, and found it in a coat pocket the other day. It was an interview with Corinne Bailey Rae from shortly after her first album turned platinum; but the bit that caught my eye wasn’t about her at all really. It was about her mum. “My mum teaches in a primary school,” she said, “and when she asks the kids what they want to be when they grow up, they say, ‘famous’. She asks them what for and they say, ‘Dunno, I just want to be famous.’”
Ouch. No wonder she looks a bit glum sometimes.
But in the world of increasingly indistinguishable Over the Rainbows, X Factors, Britain’s got Talents, and so on, could anyone claim to be surprised to hear that there is a void where our children’s dreams of their future should be?
For me, this gets to the heart of the work that needs doing, and that needs the most creative among us to apply themselves. We need a new shared for our society, a dream which will inspire us all in different ways. Every healthy society has shared dreams. They guide values, attitudes and behaviours. They can hold a society together in adversity, and provide a foundation of common ground in an ever-changing world. They can do so often without ever being openly articulated. But when they begin to fall apart, they can leave a society deeply lacking in resilience, and our children with an empty space where their dreams should be.
That is where we stand today. Our materialist dream, the dream of progress, of eternally rising material standards of living building from one generation to the next, is broken. We are beginning to have to confront painful facts. In pursuit of our dream, we have used half the world’s supply of fossil fuels in 30 years. The gap between the richest and poorest across the world is wider than it has ever been, and the same is true within the UK. Species extinction rates are at a thousand times the background rate, and the loss is beginning to be measurable even in conventional economic terms. Eternal materialist progress, infinite growth, is simply not possible within a finite system. Our dream is broken.
And what do we have to offer in place of the broken dream? Sustainability? The conservation economy? In its present form at least, this is not a dream to call the world to action. This is not of the order of altius citius fortius (higher faster stronger), the Olympic dream that has pushed us on to ever greater achievements, breaking mental and physical barriers with every generation. As a movement, we must face this fact: Martin Luther King would never have inspired the change he did with a racial equivalent of the Brundtland definition.
Sustainability and conservation, then, are for me not the new dream. These are merely a precondition, a feature – albeit a fundamental feature – which must be built into the new dream, but which cannot itself be mistaken for the dream.
But if we are back at square one, is a new dream even possible? Or is it a fundamental of human nature to seek to improve material standards of living, and therefore we are fighting a losing battle?
A new dream is indeed possible. It is possible because the materialist dream is far from human nature; rather, it represents a drastic imbalance of human values – it accentuates the competitive at the expense of the co-operative, the relative at the expense of the absolute, the self at the expense of the community, the rational at the expense of the intuitive. And at some level, we know it. We know this isn’t true to human nature. We know this is not how we want to be.
We can see this as soon as we look beyond measures of material standards of living, to measures of quality of life. While the former have risen over the last few decades, the latter has not. Indeed, on many measures, quality of life is declining. Average life satisfaction has not increased for decades, despite vast increases in GDP. Mental health care now costs the NHS £12bn a year. The obesity epidemic grows apace. We are richer, but we are not happier or healthier. We have more in our lives, but the quality of those lives is being eroded.
So how about this for a challenge that really could start to frame the new dream:
How can we generate the greatest possible quality of life for everyone on the planet? How can we generate the greatest possible quality of life for the next generation, such that they can do the same for those that follow them?
This isn’t new thinking. Cameron’s Conservatives, indeed, were among the first to formulate it, with the Quality of Life Report, now a good few years ago (of course, they made the dramatic cock-up of making Zac Goldsmith the voice of it: a tax-exempt non-dom heir to billions telling us we don’t need money to be happy? Nice one lads…). But it’s there for the taking, and I think it could be heading towards the answer. Anyone else?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post. Again!
The biggie here for me is, how do we measure well-being? what does it constitute of?
Life expectancy? Infant mortality? Unwanted teenage pregnancies? Inequality? Rate of participation in local communities?
The Spirit Level has a lot of interesting points to make on this – everyone, including the rich, are worse-off in an unequal society. Mental health, physical health, and perhaps crucially, our attitude towards money and the importance of “stuff” is all skewed by how unequal a society is. For all Cameron’s peddling of the well-being mantra, the redistribution of income is arguably a strong place to start if we are to try and nudge people towards valuing more than money, and it’s 21st century badge, fame.
I agree with much of your diagnosis – I think the symptoms of the disease are becoming clearer.
But I’m not sure I agree that the main challenge is to create the “new dream”. I think this might be a “nice to have” rather than a fundamental.
Smith, Rand, LeFevre, Friedman, and others, the fathers of modern capitalism created a system. This system of free markets, specialisation, capital flows and distributed risk, is rather boring, cold, uninspiring and confusing for all but the few that deeply study it or play within it directly. But its effects have been profound on our world. This system has proven its ability to create wealth and deliver significant rises in standards of living.
As with any system it is not perfect. It needs political and societal stability to work therefore it is potentially compromised in its universal adoption; it is resource intensive and provides little direct incentive to conserve thereby putting huge strain on natural systems; and in the West it is now having malign effects on societies, communities and individuals – witness challenged democracies, neighbours who don’t know each other, and obesity for example.
It’s becoming clearer to me that the solution is a new system; and thinking practically and pragmatically it is most likely going to be a modified form of free market capitalism. I bet this won’t be sexy, visionary or dream like – it will evolve from thinking and intellectual debate rather than radical leadership. Think Adam Smith’s 5 book, 800 page treatise rather than Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream”.
The choice, and this is a hard one especially for those of us that have prospered the most from the old model, is whether we move before or in response to crisis. Systematic change needs an equilibrium to be disturbed before change happens, and then there is always regression back to the mean. Here we do need leadership, on a national level but also an individual level, to deal with the ambiguity of this transition and move towards a system that is still unclear but different and hopefully better.
Interesting points both… which if you’ll forgive me, I think come back to the same thing essentially: the idea that this is more a quantitative, functional issue of measurements and structures than a more qualitative issue of aspirations and dreams.
I have to say, I disagree pretty strongly. MJ, what I’d say to you is that there are a hell of a lot of alternative measures out there. I’ve put some of the documents on our resources pages – things like qualitative growth, the Stiglitz Commission report, the Happy Planet Index (crap name, but…), the National Accounts of Wellbeing, etc are all good alternatives. But there isn’t going to be a perfect answer, just as GDP was never seen as a perfect measure when it was first adopted – Kuznets himself said it should never be used as the sole measure of a nation’s success, and as a society we went in with our eyes open to the imperfections; we’ve only closed them more recently. What I’m saying is, the reason why we’re not measuring this stuff isn’t because you can’t; it’s because at some level we don’t want to. We haven’t yet got to the stage where as a society we are able to see that there is more to life than money; until we do, we can’t make the shift.
To Justin, I’d say much the same – this is not an issue of structures, it’s an issue of popular will. Indeed, you refer to Adam Smith’s tomes: these were of moral philosophy, of ideas and dreams, more than they were manuals for running an economy. Your evidence proves my point, not yours. We of all people should understand that humanity is more emotional than rational; this is first and foremost an emotional, philosophical, qualitative problem. When we want to find the solution, we will find it.
So I would reiterate, I believe we do need a new dream. We need to believe that there is something more to life than material standards of living, for at present this is the myth we not only live by, but which we export all around the world through the medium of movies, magazines, and even ourselves as tourists – examples which show the people we photograph working in their fields that they shouldn’t work hard; they should industrialise.
I’ll close this with the words of Abraham Lincoln: “With public opinion, anything is possible. Without it, nothing is possible. Therefore he who shapes and moulds public opinion enacts far more than any statesman.” It’s the dream that needs moulding. Once we have that, anything is possible.
i think we need many dreams all moving in the same direction.
diversity feels key.
i think reductionism and mono thinking is a big part of the problem
consciousness, compassion, respect, integrity, purpose, empowerment, trust, learning, community, love (dare i say it).
these i think are the common qualities and foundations for new ideas.
but we need visionaries and dreamers at all levels, local, national, global.
But i think i’m more with Jon here.
But then I’m a dreamer
The debate is good. I like taking opinions and polarising them to draw out their nuances and implications. However we are in dangerous territory here. This is not, to my mind, an either / or question.
I am not arguing against dreaming, vision or leadership but without systemic change we fall into the classic marketing trap of spin – all dreams and no substance. I do not deny we need new dreams but we also need practical frameworks to make those dream a reality. I don’t agree that we have cracked a system that gives us different, more balanced outcomes, despite happy planet indexes and well being accounts. Currently we have a set of isolated ideas, somewhat superficial stabs at new metrics, but no coherent system that can replace free market economics.
Of course this is also a chicken and egg problem. Jon I think argues with validity and power that “we need to believe that there is something more to life than material standards of living”, I add to this call to action a desire to find a new system to support this perception change. We need to team the emotional with the rational. That’s what Smith did so brilliantly – he envisaged a rational system which built upon the foundation of human “self interest”. As I have argued previously on this blog he also teamed this with a moral code that is often forgotten and causes boom and bust.
So what comes first? The perception change is happening, maybe not fast enough, and we need more of it, but what we also need are systemic changes which rebalance the system in favour of the outcomes we desire. Without this I fear all our dreams will be hollow.
don’t disagree at all.
i just feel we need more action, quickly.
and i don’t see it coming top down.
so encouraging more action on the ground, experimenting with new systems at a micro level, sharing and spreading the awesome work that’s already going on is for me more of a focus.
if the people start moving, the system might follow.
Jon,
What an interesting post. I have seen similar stats from other surveys that show young people’s interests in ‘traditional’ pursuits undermined by this fascination with fame and celebrity. It’s a bad day for train drivers and airline pilots everywhere.
Having spent the best part of 20 years in broadcast media, I can vouch for the destructive nature of this obsession: to want to be famous as an end in itself, is a horribly divisive trait, causing damage not only to those hell-bent on ‘gaining’ it, but all the poor unfortunate souls who come into contact with them. Celebrity causes an incredible tear in community and an asymmetry amongst social groups. It is like a social capital black hole, where not even fairness and consideration can reach escape velocity and avoid its clutches.
So much of your post reminds me of the parallel conversations (including ours) around social capital. For me, the demise in community, the obsession with instant gratification and indeed the general malaise around sustainability, is all a product of the denudation of social capital. If sustainability (or rather unsustainability) is the pain in our collective neck and the occasional spasm in our middle back, then the demise of social capital is the underlying compression of a lower vertebra – go to the source of the problem and the symptoms will disappear.
You make an interesting comment, albeit fleeting, in your post, saying dreams can hold society together in adversity. I agree, but wonder whether the perception of advancing adversity stimulates the creation of a shared dream. It is no coincidence, I feel, that this current climate is with us after 65 years of no real national adversity. Our social capital has dwindled for the simple reason that we don’t think we need it. We think we can go it alone.
But of course, that’s not true. Whilst we marketers have done a great job of providing a plastic social capital fillip in the form of iPods, Timberlands, Facebook and Pot Noodles, we are, in our hearts, not so easily convinced. The correlation (and increasingly causality) between materialism and depression and other ailments, is clear. We – and brands – have always been good at manipulating social capital for our clients’ gains. We need now to encourage it for society’s gain. I do not think the two options are mutually exclusive.
The challenge – again as you so rightly say – is how to measure this adjustment in society. GDP doesn’t measure social capital, but rather the thin, ambivalent exchanges within social capital.
GDP obsesses with output, and we need to capture outcome.
As you say, GDP was always recognised as a rough – hideous even – proxy for economic progress. But it was used for one simple reason – it sort of worked at the time. The old adage, ‘…what gets measured gets managed’ is wrong in this case. Instead, it should be: ‘…what can be managed should get measured.’
Last point in this long, winding and probably pointless thought, and a return to your opening salvo. You talk about the need for a new dream. And some others here have argued for a more pragmatic response. For me, I think dreams are wonderful. But a dream captures where one would like to be with no appreciation of how to get there, and even if getting there is possible.
In this context, maybe a dream is simply too complex. We do not have to worry about how to get to the state you mention. We’ve already been there. It was where we all started, and is as hardwired into our intrinsic values system as the constant desire to lie down in a field, or put our feet in the water. We’d like to kid ourselves that we are always facing forward and marching ahead, but in many ways I do not think we’ve come too far (and we’re secretly pleased for that).
I am not sure we need a dream. I think we need to remember.
G
Have to say, Justin, I think on this one we’re further apart than you think. Not to play rhetorical games too much, but I think the reality is that change is going to happen systemically not systematically. What do I mean by that? Well, systematic change is about linear, logical, mechanistic progression. It’s how we’ve tried to convince ourselves the world works since Descartes. That way of thinking would suggest zat ve must understand vere exactly it iz ve vant to go, und den go zere. But I don’t think it works like that.
Systemic change, as I see it, involves all the individual, disparate parts bubbling away, and starting to bubble in a different direction, with a burgeoning set of knock-on impacts on one another. What helps catalyse that process is if one of the parts, which happens to be a bit more conspicuous than the others, can articulate what that new direction is all about – that gives all the parts a bit more encouragement that they can believe in what they’re doing and do it a bit harder. Take the US civil rights movement. It’s not like MLK appeared on an otherwise empty scene. It’s also not like he actually articulated all the ways that society could work differently, and made everybody completely confident that it would be fine. Rather, he became a conspicuous part articulating the new direction for bubbling. And he catalysed the process, which eventually forced the systematic people – the last ones to come around – to reinvent their logic. That’s the order it’s happened in with virtually every major change you care to mention. And that’s why I say a dream is important.
I think Dan and Guy’s comments chime with this.
Dan, as I see it, is talking about bubbling – and he’s dead right I reckon. It’s only by celebrating the bubbling that’s already going on that we’ll find that more conspicuous part, the part that can articulate all this a bit better and make it something the bubbling can head towards with a bit more conviction.
Guy is talking – among other very cool big thoughts – about the knock-on impacts that happen between the bubbles, what he calls social capital. And I think he’s dead right too. The more bubbling parts bump into each other, the likelier it is that they’ll be reassured that there are other bubbling parts around (and get each to recognise the rubbish bits of what they were doing before), and the likelier that the more conspicuous one(s) will emerge to catalyse the process.
So – I don’t think it is about redesigning the system. I think it’s about encouraging the system to redesign itself, and admitting that logic will follow not lead.
Guy, it’s going to take me a while to digest the rest of your stuff. But I think I understand social capital a bit better now.
Wow! Been offline for a few days – what a great debate.
Jon, I think you miss my point a little. Or perhaps I didn’t express it very well.
Firstly, I’m not arguing “this is more a quantitative, functional issue of measurements and structures than a more qualitative issue of aspirations and dreams”. What I want to know is what does our aspiration and dream mean, in concrete terms? What is the change we want to see?
Martin Luther King had a dream, but he had concrete ideas of what that dream meant. He wanted to end racial discrimination and segregation, and this meant, for instance, the desegregation of schools, buses, and other public amenities, among many, many other things, all falling under the broad umbrella of the civil rights movement. As you say, he articulated a wider struggle, but naming a dream without a concrete idea of what it means in practice is just spin.
As such, although I agree with the notion of “well-being” and “quality of life” I find them vague and rather subjective terms, and am more interested in exploring what the really important “individual, disparate parts bubbling away” are. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
Secondly, I think we need to nip in the bud the idea that all things “quantitative” are bad – there is a difference between methods of measurement and type of vision. GDP is a method of measurement but has been turned into an end-goal and vision. I’m also arguing for a “qualitative” vision like well being, but we will measure success in a quantitative way. You cite some of these “quantitative” measures yourself, such as rising costs of mental health care, obesity, and stagnant levels of life satisfaction. Which start to answer my initial question of what you think well being consists of.
Lastly, perhaps you and I are just interested in different parts of the debate. Like Dan I think the real action will happen from the ground up, so that’s what I’m drawn to.
I’d like to name the dream, but I think I’m more interested in what the Rosa Parks of the world need, rather than who the next Martin Luther King is.
Gutted I can’t make the meet-up on the 3rd as I think this debate would definitely benefit from some face-to-face discussion!