Britain’s Lost Sense of Self
I recently read an article in The Economist in which the author states rather plainly that the violence and anarchy of the riots which began in London and have spread across England are the result of “moral malaise.” According to the article, British politicians are quick to hand out their ready-made partisan parlance: the Left says it’s the government’s fault; the Right decries: “criminality, pure and simple.” But The Economist calls both sides on the carpet for lazy thinking. The author instead appeals to an “absence of internal, moral restraints” combined with “near-American levels of [economic] inequality,” which is, of course, ultimately a moral dilemma as well.
I find this appeal to morals surprising on one level, don’t you? I thought we (the West) had moved beyond morality. Talk about “an inherent sense of right and wrong” is so passe. And yet, here we are… again. We can’t ever seem to shake it.
Darwinian psychologists, scientists, and philosophers tell us we need a standard set of morals to survive as individuals and thrive as societies but that there is no basis for such a standard, that the future will consist of those individuals who know there is no such thing as absolute truth but pretend there is in order to survive and reproduce. Is the truth about reality that we know what feels most real and true isn’t real or true and we have to lie to ourselves and pretend that what feels true–but we know isn’t–is? Or is it more likely that the ‘beneficial lie’ is really the truth after all? Did we invent the sun to explain the light and the shadow? Or do light and shadow prove the sunshine?
The article goes on to say the loss of moral norms and absolutes has resulted in a loss of self:
The widespread assumption that, for all their inequalities and fissures, the country and its capital are fundamentally orderly and harmonious, has been revealed to be complacent. The cracks in British society—economic and moral—have opened up, and they are deeper than they seemed.
The riots have been bad for Britain’s already stuttering economy. They have been ruinous for the people whose homes and businesses have been damaged and destroyed. They have tarnished Britain’s image around the world. But most of all, they have been desperately disorienting for the country’s own sense of itself.
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About The Author
Renea McKenzie
(Editor in Chief) is a poet whose work often centers around the relationships between nature and the city, loss and love, faith and protest. She holds an MLA in English Literature and an MA in African American Studies. In between her two Masters degrees, Renea took a "gap year" to study theology at the famous L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland. L'Abri is also where she read the Harry Potter saga for the first time and fell in love with the characters and the story's triumph of sacrificial love. Renea leads an incredibly talented creative writing group at her church and spends a fair amount of time binging books and Netflix and swing dancing at the historic Sons of Hermann Hall.
Good thoughts.
It is interesting that think about that even those who don’t believe in a basis for morality still tell us that we ought to live as if there is — indeed, that a society needs an agreed upon morality as part of its social glue.
There is something fundamental to the human experience that drives us to order our world and ourselves as if ideas like right and wrong, justice and injustice, are meaningful. Is this an evolutionary holdover, some sort of social construction … or, as you suggest, is it a glimpse into the true state of things?
Thanks, Thomas. Very well said.
Even when Nietzsche (sp probably) pronounced God dead, he admitted that he wouldn’t want to live in a world where people did not believe in a higher purpose, for reasons that the most recent London riots illustrate. Of course many such intellectuals think that the higher purpose is a mere illusion for taming the unsophisticated masses.
In much of the London riots coverage I see people confusing cause and effect. The absence of internal, moral restraints is the cause of the social unrest. It was caused by the dependency culture created by the welfare state. They didn’t need internal, moral restraints because the government insulated them from most of the consequences. The economic inequality is simply one of the consequences that the government couldn’t insulate them from. But economic inequality isn’t a moral issue. It isn’t poverty–and note that the looters weren’t stealing bread–in the face of plenty. People throw around and manipulate economic equality data trying to imply a moral issue as if we are telling starving peasants to eat cake. That is, the economic inequality is not a cause of the riots. It wasn’t even really an excuse used by the looters. It is the gloss people who do not want to confront the moral issues put onto the riots. For the chattering classes, economic inequality is easier to understand and fix; they can feel good about themselves for “doing something” about the problem, without challenging their own perspectives, or solving the problem.
I wonder if the UK’s PM reads The Economist?
This BBC article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14524834 states in part:
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David Cameron has said tackling the “broken society” is back at the top of his agenda following last week’s riots.
He said he would review all policies, speed up plans to improve parenting and education and turn around the lives of 120,000 “troubled” families.
To tackle a “moral collapse” he pledged a war on gangs, but the home secretary said there would be “no quick fixes”.
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In a speech in Oxfordshire, Mr Cameron described the disorder that spread from London to parts of the East and West Midlands, Merseyside, Bristol, Manchester and Gloucester as “a wake-up call for our country”.
He said politicians had been unwilling to talk about rights and wrongs, but “moral neutrality” would not “cut it any more” and said “the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations” must be confronted.
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BTW, don’t ya just love the term “disorder” to describe the riots/looting…
Hi AH,
Good point about Nietzsche. And I think you’re probably right about economic inequality too. Poverty is the problem there. In an unfallen world we’d have all our needs met and we’d be perfectly content with our situation regardless of what others have.
Thanks for your comment!
Anonymous,
Cameron claims to be a Christian and probably is. It wouldn’t surprise me if these comments are his worldview coming out more overtly at an opportune moment.
For all I know the writer of The Economist article could be a Christian too and is trying to subtly throw a pebble in the morals-don’t-exist worldview pond.
Thanks for this great followup material!