Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks

This is a valuable book for assessing the current state of the American and Western European communities.  Rabbi Sacks provides historical context of the ideas that have led to an “I” focused culture, outlines the symptoms of a weakened “We” culture, and provides some insights as to what can be done.  He combines a politically and economically moderate view with a conservative social perspective.  I’ve rearranged the chapters to make the summary flow better.

Introduction

The 1990 “end of history” celebrating the victory of mixed economy capitalism and liberal democracy was an illusion.  Societies are based on a 3-legged stool of economic, political, and moral systems.  The West’s moral system has been threatened by individualism since the Reformation and Enlightenment, but the threats accelerated and started to really bite with changes in the 1960’s.  Political systems, social results, income inequality and fundamental rights of free speech, liberty and freedom are threatened today by this deterioration.

Morality: “concern for the welfare of others, an active commitment to justice and compassion, a willingness to ask not just what is good for me but what is good for ‘all of us together’.”  Inner voice, conscience, superego, custom and tradition, natural law, religion.  “To be a member of a society was to be socialized, to internalize the norms of those around you, to act for the good of others, not just yourself.”  Morality makes politics, economics and communities work by emphasizing trust and persuasion instead of transactions and political power.  As social norms are internalized, transaction costs are minimized. 

“A FREE SOCIETY is a moral achievement.”  Liberal democratic systems depend upon moral citizens.  “If we care for the future of democracy, we must recover that sense of shared morality that binds us to one another in a bond of mutual compassion and care.  There is no liberty without morality, no freedom without responsibility, no viable “I” without the sustaining ‘We’.”

Sacks argues that the movement from “We” to “I” was driven by five factors.  The intellectual appeal of existentialism and emotivism that reject an objective moral order and rely instead upon subjective individual choices.  Social exhaustion after the Great Depression and 2 world wars leading to the postwar counterculture, sexual revolution and therapeutic society focused on self-actualizing individuals alone.  The “liberal” political decision to exclude morality, religion and social norms from legitimate political debate and laws, emphasizing only rights.  The Reagan/Thatcher political/economic victory which limits state influence on the economy.  Technological changes which undercut “face to face” interactions.

The social results reflect Durkheim’s concept of “anomie”: rootlessness, anxiety, uncertainty, and fear.  Loss of social capital, breakdown of family and marriage, loss of trust in institutions, increased crime and drug usage and lower trust and civility.  In a Western world with much higher real economic standards, individual happiness and confidence have not grown.

The loss of morality and trust has undercut political processes and people.  Inequality, conflicting values, privileged elites, and poor government results have led to populist demands from left and right for strong leaders to “solve the problem”.  The weakening of society level groups and growth of minority groups (and reactive native majority groups) and immigration have increased the focus on identity politics, polarizing and coarsening political debates.  The loss of objective moral, scientific and communications standards has encouraged a post-truth political environment. 

Income and wealth inequality continue to increase in a global economic system.  With the loss of moral pressures and Milton Friedman’s view that business should only optimize profits, not address social, environmental, and other stakeholder goals, many firms have truly pursued maximum wealth without considering any other factors, relying on the government and society to underwrite their inevitable losses.

Many universities and other leading institutions have embraced postmodernism’s assertions that everything is about power and that the only moral choice is to support the exploited minority groups and oppose the powerful elites.  Freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and press are merely tools of the powerful and can/should be overthrown in this view.  Individuals fear expressing themselves in this intolerant atmosphere. 

Sacks emphasizes the intellectual confusion of “outsourcing” which can deliver benefits for the economy and perhaps the political sector, but which does not apply to the moral, community, society dimension.  The market economy offers many choices and implicitly encourages individuals to believe that they “ought” to be able to choose whatever they wish, while moral choices involve trade-offs and sometimes absolute goods and bads.  The political sector is tasked with the “outsourced” consequences of bad individual, economic and political choices.  It must regulate, insure, and provide services.  Morality cannot be outsourced to the state, elites, religious leaders, social media influencers or other groups of “pet sitters”, “athletic trainers” or “management coaches”.  It requires the “hands-on” involvement of all citizens. 

He argues that these moral issues, risks, costs, and opportunities are becoming clearer to leaders and citizens.  Younger citizens and language usage show an increased interest in morality.  Human and natural systems can repair and improve themselves. 

‘5. From “We” to “I”

Sacks outlines the “intellectual” history that has led to an overemphasis on “I” and the loss of “We”.  Early steps in Greek philosophy and the Bible included increased roles for individuals.  The Italian Renaissance saw greater personal self-awareness.  Luther focused on the individual’s direct encounter with God, unmediated by the Church.  The “absolute individual” was now considered completely outside of his social roles.  The radical skeptic Rene Descartes re-established independent philosophy based on the individual and his doubts alone.  “I think; therefore, I am” contrasted with God’s answer to Moses that “I am that I am”.  Hobbes and other social contract theorists based a legitimate government on freely choosing citizens.  Kant elevated individual reason as the basis for philosophy and serves as a transitional figure.  He focused on universality, humans as ends, the golden rule, intentions, and the mind/soul but he too began with the individual and his choices rather than society, God, community, revelation, or history. 

Unlike many modern commentators, Sacks skips over Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his “natural man is good” approach to government, education, and morality.  He next highlights Kierkegaard’s contrast between the “aesthetic” life of the senses and the ethical life of righteousness and duty.  There is no obvious basis for choosing either option, so the individual must make a “leap of faith” to embrace one or the other.  Nietzsche continues the existentialist investigation of options and proclaims that “God is Dead”, biblical religion is “slave morality”, the best men need to recover their superpowers and choose their own morality, decisions, and actions, irrespective of the consequences for society.  Then and now, very few really embrace Nietzsche’s extreme position, but it opened the door to considering a life based on individual choice, a romantic/nationalist perspective and a fully subjective morality, language, and power as described by some existentialists and many postmodernists.  The self-aware person knows that his existence and experience are more real than any socially imposed rules or universal, ideal concepts and can either accept the external constraints in “bad faith” or face the challenges of “existence” bravely.  Not a superman but a vaguely heroic honest man.  The American option termed “emotivism” shares the subjective, feelings-based nature of individual choices.  Authenticity or expressive individualism become the supreme virtues.   The self-aware individual is everything.

Sacks shares that everyone’s favorite observer of early America, Alexis de Tocqueville, worried in 1830 that the fledgling country could be harmed by “individualism”, “a feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows so that, having created a small company for its use, he willingly leaves society at large to itself”.   He ends with sociologist Emile Durkheim’s 1890 emphasis on anomie, where a loss of a shared code can destroy society through suicide, deviancy, crime, and disengagement.  “Anomie, it seems to me, aptly describes the state we inhabit today: a world of relativism, nonjudgmentalism, subjectivity, autonomy, individual rights and self-esteem … An individualistic universe may be free, but it is fraught with loneliness, isolation, vulnerability, and nihilism, a prevailing sense of the ultimate meaninglessness of life … Human society has evolved to a stage where the rights of the individual, particularly those with wealth, power, and status, supersede all other rights and responsibilities.”

‘9. Identity Politics

The author outlines a history of swings between individualism and “groupishness” as context for explaining and rejecting modern identity politics.  We are social animals, emotionally invested in our individual and group identities, illustrated by our passion for sports teams.  The individual chooses which group identities to wear or is given them in the postmodernist view.  This attachment can form the basis for a moral community.  Group loyalty is a powerful force, binding individuals to the group and committing them against conflicting “others”.  Historically, religion, ethnicity, nation, class, income, and education/trade have all competed for group attention. 

Although they were named only in the second half of the 20^th century, identity and identity politics have long histories.  “I am a Greek”, “I am a Roman”, “I am a Christian”, “I am a British citizen” make the point.  Religion was the leading identity for most of the last 2,000 years in the West, with social, political, and economic roles bound into a single system.  The protracted European religious wars made a simple return to the “ancient regime” impossible.   The Enlightenment thinkers elevated rationalism and individualism to create a universalist viewpoint that tried to downplay specific group identities.  Newton provided universal science.  The social contract theorists offered universal political systems and principles.  Descartes, Montaigne, and Kant offered universal philosophies.

These ideas changed the world and then generated a backlash.  Too universal, too timeless, too abstract, too mechanical, too technical, too legal, too commercial, too heartless, too static, too disruptive, too progressive, too …  Moving from an integrated social, religious, political, and economic system to something altogether different created pushback.  Haidt’s WEIRD versus traditional societies is at the heart of these difficulties.  Certainty is slowly eroded with more new ideas, religious denominations, political models, industries, trade, professions, science, technology, and transportation.  This is discomforting, even for the “winners”.  Sacks describes this rational Age as noble, utopian, and unsustainable.

We then get the Counter-Enlightenment, Romanticism, irrational forces, and new shades of religion.  Nationalism becomes a newly attractive group identity, combining language, culture, geography, tradition, practically lived experience and history.  Race becomes more important due to global experiences, colonialism, the end of slavery, geology, biology, social Darwinism, anthropology, and psychology.  The scientific study of man leads to eugenics and Naziism.  Economic class is raised up by Marx in his “scientific” and historic studies of man leading to communist regimes.  “All three movements offered a strong sense of belonging in place of the abstract, identity-less, human-being-as-such that was the human person as understood by eighteenth-century rationalism …  In place of the universal came a new sense of the particular …  thinkers started to focus on what makes us different.”  This pursuit of group identity had terrible consequences in the 20^th century.

In the postwar era, we have swung back towards the individual.  As described above, there was a long-term preparation for making the individual the sole focus of life, leaving behind the community, moral and cultural perspective.  Science supplanted religion leading to a Secular Age, where the default worldview is mechanical and “this worldly”.  The accumulated influence of the existentialist, pragmatist, analytical, skeptical, and postmodern schools of philosophy shaped the intellectual class to neglect religion, morality, and community.  The Romantic Age, underpinned by Rousseau’s good person and supporting the creative artist as a model reinforced the individualistic tendencies even as it tried to define an organic alternative.  The failures of nation, race and class worked against any “new” community approach.  The success of religions, national patriotism, economic development, liberal democracy and professional and not for profit communities did not have a strong “public relations” department compared with the promises of their modern competitors.

Sacks criticizes the re-grounding of “liberal” democracies on the “thin” morality of Locke, “built on the premise of the individual as the bearer of rights, and of autonomy as the supreme value of the social order …  key theoreticians were … John Rawls and Robert Nozick …  Essentially, you could do anything you liked so long as it was legal, fair, and involved no harm to others.”  He notes that communitarians like MacIntyre, Sandel, Walzer, Taylor, and Bellah provided alternatives. 

Within this extreme version of “classic liberal democracy”, political groups and society were asked to be “tolerant” and not impose their views.  Multiculturalism arose, especially in Europe, emphasizing differences and reducing the commitment to integrate new groups into national and local societies.  Together with the “contemporary left” and postmodernism’s emphasis on oppressed minorities, modern identity politics was born.  This is a new group identity, oriented towards the group rather than the individual.  It encourages very strong group loyalty.  Like Marxism, it believes in the eventual victory of the collection of oppressed groups.

Sacks like none of this.  “There is a real danger here of the splitting of society into self-segregating, noncommunicating ghettos.  One of its axioms is that ‘only a member of my group can understand my pain’ …Over three hundred years the West has, with some success, developed an ethic of tolerance and respect for difference, and in a liberal society the prejudice and discrimination that undoubtedly still exist are to be fought wherever they occur …  This reaction …  will end in tragedy.  It turns difference into exclusion and suspicion.  It builds walls, not bridges … It encourages a mindset of victimhood and oppression.  It abandons the idea of the common ground and the common good.”

Community leader Sacks shares his experience with ecumenical groups to promote national British community while maintaining their distinctive approaches.  He encourages us to be laser focused on the potentially cooperative, win-win society in contrast with the state where competitive power politics is unavoidable.  He contrasts (good) patriotism with (bad) nationalism.  He quotes Orwell’s definition of patriotism, “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.”  Without a shared moral community, the political and economic dimensions will fail.

’11. Post-truth

Nietzsche “set the table” back in 1870 on this issue.  “When people gave up their faith in religion, it would not be religion alone that they would lose.  They would lose morality, and with it a concern for truth, and then even science would lose its authority.”  Nietzsche – “Nothing is needed more than truth, and in relation to it, everything else has only second-rate value”.  People have always considered truth versus self-interest.    If there is no objective truth, religious dogma, or social conventions, why bother with truth? 

“The hermeneutics of suspicion” plays a role here.  Language is used as a tool by the powerful to deceive.  Always look for the real meaning.  Applied radical skepticism.  Marx blamed the capitalists.  Nietzsche saw a conspiracy among the weak.  Freud blamed subconscious drives.  The postmodernists formalized this to blame the power controlling elites.  Political, economic, and social systems conspire through their institutions, structures, language, and norms to preserve the standing of the elites.  Objective truth, religion, morality, science, and religion are just clever tools of oppression.  Global cultural awareness, a diversity of religions, scientific changes, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of religion, political tolerance, social tolerance, literary and artistic interpretations, revisionist history, geological and biological history and Einstein’s relativity all contribute to the general cultural skepticism about objective truth.

Modern social media and the internet have now provided the facts and interpretations “at a glance” to reinforce this idea of subjective truth.  “Without truth, no trust; without trust, no society.”

’17. Human Dignity

The ancient Greeks defined and honored human dignity in various ways: heroes, truth and wisdom loving philosophers or simply as qualitatively superior to the animals.  The Hebrew Bible describes a God who creates man in his own image for the purpose of living a moral life.  Man is given “free choice” and this freedom defines his life, politics, family, community and theology.  “We have dignity because we can choose.  Dignity is inseparable from morality and our role as choosing, responsible, moral agents.”  Kant agrees that mankind, in as much as it can make moral choices, has earned its dignity.  Human dignity played a large role in Western societies for two millenia.

Yet, once again, man’s intellectual progress poses a threat to our moral civilization.  This is mainly the story of “science versus religion” in the popular imagination.  Copernicus removed man and earth from the center of the universe.  Newton’s physical laws removed the “need” for God’s continuous support, even though Newton thought it was still required.  Modern geology expanded time to make 2,000 years just a “flash” of time.  Spinoza argued that as physical beings we are subject to the laws of the physical world and not free, after all.  Marx claimed we are determined by economic laws of production at the Hegelian level of history.  Freud claimed we are driven by subconscious drives and without true choice.  Darwin made man an animal, like any other and established a mindless, probabilistic motor for history.  Neo-Darwinians outlined how altruism too is just part of genetic natural selection.  At a popular level, each of the pillars supporting human dignity, man as something special, was undermined.  Human dignity is merely an illusion.

The author takes a few shots at the “science alone” worldview.  Man in small space and time does not eliminate dignity, free will, choice, freedom, or religion.  No evidence or logic forces us to embrace the skeptical worldviews, which are also based upon uncertain foundations.  Science is incapable of addressing humanity’s imagination, conceptualization, deep communication, cooperation, feelings, love, awe, appreciation and creation of beauty.  Science cannot evaluate the critical role of cultural limits in the form of “thou shalt not”, sacredness, justice, and judges.  Science assumes away human freedom with its assumption that causality shapes everything.

In the 500 years since the Italian Renaissance, man has done tremendous things intellectually, scientifically, technically, politically, economically, and socially.  Human rights and human dignity are embedded in our modern political constitutions.  The “special individual” view of the world has driven a dozen modern philosophical outlooks that shape our world.  However, the radical “science only” view of the world has a strong hold on the modern imagination leading to Charles Taylor’s Secular Age where we all naturally start with the assumption or worldview that excludes the transcendent dimension in all of life.

Sacks rejects the modern neuroscientists who claim that “free will” is an illusion and criticizes the “total freedom” view of the expressive individualism crowd.  He argues that the “just right” middle view of man as a moral animal best describes our situation.  We have self-consciousness.  We can see the world as an impartial observer outside of our own personal perspective.  We are aware of our own drives and desires but can override them to some extent.  We have a sense of responsibility for our thoughts and deeds.  We have immortal longings.  We reach for the transcendent.  We have religious experiences.  We are essentially moral agents.

’19. Why Morality?

“A society of individualists is unsustainable.  We are built for cooperation, not just competition.  In the end, with the market and state but no substantive society to link us to our fellow citizens in the bonds of collective responsibility, trust and truth erode, economics becomes inequitable, and politics becomes unbearable.”

In 1831 Alexis de Tocqueville visited America to check on its progress as a democratic society.  He learned that the separation of church and state had unexpectedly created robust churches despite its lack of government support and that these churches thrived in their social role of supporting families, local communities, providing education and services.  Despite its support by the citizens, the churches and their pastors played minimal roles in politics.  He also noted the country’s propensity for creating associations for addressing problems and opportunities aside from the market or government.  Hence, the society dimension was very strong alongside the “rugged individualists”.  Competition and cooperation both played important roles.

In 1831 Charles Darwin wrestled with one of the inconsistencies in his theory of natural selection.  Human societies everywhere exhibited altruism.  Altruistic individuals should not exist under a “survival of the fittest” model.  Darwin suggested that “group selection” could explain the development and preservation of altruistic behavior.  A group of loyal, supportive, cooperative members might outperform one composed of only selfish individuals.  Cooperation can play an important role in a competitive process.

Subsequent research indicates that altruism has developed in 3 waves.  First, various animal groups exhibit “kin selection” where close relative cooperation delivers more descendants.  Group selection in human groups is based on the ability to establish trust.  Game theory demonstrates that repeated opportunities to support a teammate can be enforced without a major free rider problem when individuals use the “trust but retaliate” “tit for tat” strategy.  Humans had the communications, thinking and memory abilities to be more effective in cooperative small groups as large as 100-150 members.

On a larger scale, the “one on one” cooperation strategy breaks down.  The incentive to cheat and free ride without being caught and punished rises.  Trust between group members is disrupted.  Cultural group level selection employs other tools to enforce group discipline: myths, rituals, sacred times and places, temples, and priests.  Early religious communities were able to bind groups together for their common advantage.  Monotheistic religions further emphasized the role of the community in preserving order and avoiding chaos or disaster. 

Human societies are highly experienced in employing competition and cooperation in their proper roles.  Cooperation, trust, loyalty, and morality are mutually reinforcing in civil society.  They provide the basis for effective economic and political institutions.  Sacks again criticizes the “liberal” shift in the 1960’s to rely solely upon a “thin” morality of a political system based upon safeguarding individual rights and showing tolerance.  “Something that had never been managed successfully before: namely, sustaining a society not held together by certain predominant ideas, not bound by a shared moral code, not committed to substantive ethical ideas held in common.  How can there be a society in the absence of anything to bind its members in shared moral belief?”

’21. Religion

The author quotes Washington, de Tocqueville, Kennedy, and Durant on the need for morality as the basis of society and its economic and political institutions.  Religious belief and participation are falling in the West generation by generation.  Community and morality can be supported by kin selection, reciprocal altruism, human empathy, and familiarity with the “Golden Rule”, but this is insufficient on a large scale due to the “free rider” problem.  There is an incentive to act out of self-interest and fake participation in society.

Sacks covers again the widespread emergence of formal religious groups in human history using rituals, priests, temples, calendars, and myths to bind individuals to the group.  The fear of disorder plays a role.  The search for meaning plays a role.  The fear of punishment from an all-knowing God plays a role.  When “everyone else is doing it”, cultural norms become an unspoken background.  The most effective religious societies enjoyed the best results taking advantage of cooperation, reducing inner conflicts, and defending the group against nature and enemies.

Monotheism consecrated the social structure and the individual.  In the Abrahamic faiths there is an intimate relationship between God and each individual.  Morality includes justice and love.  These religions expect more than compliance, they require moral performance.  Will and choice are elevated above fixed character and fate.  The moral life is more important than the physical life.  This vote of confidence in the individual’s nature, freedom and choices allows for some flexibility in social choices like the form of government and earthly political decisions.  History allows for progress and regress; it is not determined or inherently cyclical.

This heritage honors history and tradition, but equally honors debate, pesky prophets, and the separation of earthly powers.  Combined, many argue that this “paved the way” for our modern individual based liberal democracy and mixed capitalist systems.  Religion effectively creates community within the church and by building habits in practicing members, also in adjacent and broader communities.  Sacks highlights additional research that focuses on the practical effect that religions or surveillance states have when individuals believe they are being watched and will be punished for bad behavior.  Religion provides a longer-term perspective that is required for making some political decisions such as those about climate change.

“Religion … builds communities.  It aids law-abidingness.  And it helps us to think long term.  Most simply, the religious mindset awakens us to transcendence.  It redeems our solitude.”

‘1. Loneliness

“Morality, at its core, is about strengthening the bonds between us, helping others, engaging in reciprocal altruism, and understanding the demands of group loyalty, which are the price of group belonging.”  “Marriage, parenthood, membership in a community, or citizenship in a nation” all require this moral commitment by the individual to make a binding covenant with the group.  There is a strong transactional commitment, but much more.  The individual adopts the group perspective, seeks the good of the group and is personally transformed into a new “I” by the experience.  The gain in the “I” perspective and the loss of the “We” perspective has had a negative synergy effect.  “We” experience makes more “We” interaction easier.  Its absence makes any “We” engagement more difficult. 

The change in perspective can be measured and its negative impacts clearly seen.  Language studies document the shift.  Analysts such as Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone document the large reduction in community participation of all kinds, the reduced rate and success of marriages and the loss of shared family life.  These changes make organizations and institutions less effective.  They reduce trust in institutions and other people.  Fewer and less positive group experiences reduce the incentive to invest in other group experiences.  Once again, there is a negative “ripple effect”.

“So, individualism comes at a high cost: the breakdown of marriage, the fragility of families, the strength of communities, the sense of the identity that comes with both of these things, and the equally important sense that we are part of something that preceded us and will continue long after we are no longer here.”

Collectively this leads to physical and social isolation, loneliness, and anxiety.  Relationships become increasingly transactional, we expect less from others, we give less in return, Martin Buber’s I-Thou framework is lost.  The data confirms these results.  Individuals feel more alone, have fewer friends, trust less and worry more.  This loneliness shows up in measures of suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse and longevity.

Groups were first formed to share food, defend against enemies, and perform as groups.  As the moral sense declines and mutual responsibility is experienced less often, groups become less effective.  Historically, strong groups have been a mutual insurance policy against the risks of life.  In a complex and challenging world, many groups are less effective in this role.

“One significant contribution of religion today is that it preserves what society as a whole has begun to lose:  that strong sense of being there for one another, of being ready to exercise mutual aid, to help people in need, to comfort the distressed and bereaved, to welcome the lonely, to share in other people’s sadnesses and celebrations”.

“We can do things that our ancestors could hardly dream, but what they found simple we find extremely hard.  Getting married.  Staying married.  Being part of a community.  Having a strong sense of identity.  Feeling continuity with the past before we were born and the future after we are no longer here.”

‘2. The Limits of Self-Help

Morality turns us outward.  “The pursuit of the right and the good is not about the self but about the process of unselfing, of seeing the world for what it is, not for what we feel or fear it to be and responding to it appropriately.  Morality is precisely un-self-help.  It is about strengthening our relationships with others, responding to their needs, listening to them, not insisting they listen to us, and about being open to others.”  Humans are given the ability to do second-order evaluations, stepping outside and viewing themselves as an object, considering their own thoughts and decisions in a broader framework, choosing which desires to satisfy.  Morality begins with but does not end with the individual.

Morality is based on high quality relationships, not self-awareness or self-esteem.  Personal growth is mostly stimulated by others who support, uplift, listen, advise, counsel, and challenge us.  With high quality relationships we are open to transformation.  Sacks cites literature, management guides, Viktor Frankl, Iris Murdoch, Adam Smith, and Plato in support of his view.  Transformation and growth come from the outside, not from internal contemplation.

Philip Rieff’s 1966 “The Triumph of the Therapeutic” is referenced as one of the first critics of the self-help movement, observing “individuals” aided by therapists as the replacement for religion and pastors.  The individual is capable, almost solely by himself, of managing his life.  Rieff notes that the “therapist-patient” relationship replaced the “individual-community” relationship.  Sacks notes 2 reviews of the self-help literature that concluded that the field has been a failure, delivering narcissism, self-obsession, aggression, materialism, indifference, shallow values, and anti-social attitudes.  He notes that even Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers eventually questioned self-esteem as a worthy goal to pursue.

Sacks argues that morality, purpose, and the good life are derived from relationships and community.  The individual cannot reverse the sequence and individually pursue self-esteem, self-actualization, and happiness.  They can only be achieved as a byproduct of morally engaging in community and pursuing a calling or vocation.  Achievement can drive self-esteem, but not vice versa.

‘4. The Fragile Family

Rabbi Sacks has strong views in this chapter.  He notes that civilizations have used various family structures but concludes that “The family – man, woman, and child – is not one lifestyle choice among many”.   Humans are one of a few mammal species with children that require years of attention, so “pair bonding” was required for our success.  Families are biologically natural.  In many early human cultures polygamy developed as powerful alpha males leveraged their dominance.  He quotes James Q. Wilson, “in virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have enquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children”.  The Hebrew culture promoted monogamy as every person had been created in the image of God and had an equal right to marriage and children. 

This religion also stressed the love of God and man, man and neighbor, man and stranger, and man and wife.  The relationship was a moral bond, a covenant, something more than reciprocal altruism.  It is described as “faithfulness, fidelity, loyalty, steadfastness, not walking away even when the going gets tough, trusting the other, and honoring the other’s trust in us.”  Sacks notes that the Jewish people have survived due to their faith, family, and community.  Marriage, like faith, is a sacred moral virtue.  He notes Martin Buber’s insight that “truth, beauty, goodness, and life itself do not exist in any one person or entity but in the “between”. 

Marriage provides an opportunity for two equal individuals to be transformed into one and experience transcendence.  This experience helps to further develop moral capabilities.  It provides an opportunity for “bride and groom” love equal to “God and man” love.  It gives individuals an opportunity to frequently think outside of themselves, to give and receive counsel.  It provides an opportunity to manage desire and submit to a higher value.  It gives the opportunity to have children, provide for them, educate them, and raise them within the community, offering an identity and transmitting culture through generations.  “One of the great achievements of the West … the single most humanizing institution in history.” 

Sacks decries the notion of “free love” that began in the 1960’s.  It breaks apart the elements that marriage knits together.  Sex from love.  Love from commitment.  Marriage from having children.  Having children from being responsible for their care.  We see sex without responsibility, fatherhood without commitment, marriage as a mere formality.  The breakdown of the traditional family has been quite significant.  Fewer and later marriages.  More divorces.  More births outside of marriage.  More children living without one or both parents.  The author notes that these trends have stabilized and that research by Robert Putnam in “Our Kids” shows that the top socioeconomic “one-third” of society remains committed to marriage, family, career, religion, and community.  However, the bottom “one-third” has very low rates of marriage and two-parent families and most births without the benefit of married parents.  This lack of investment in children has very negative consequences: poverty, health, security, safety, education, opportunity, mental health, crime, drugs, alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, etc.  Society invests in mitigating these “social ills”, but marriage and a secure family appear to be a critical base for child development that cannot be replaced by programs.

’10. Time and Consequence

The market, state and society all struggle to balance short-term and long-term costs and benefits.  Each is guilty of overemphasizing short-term effects and ignoring long-term effects.  Investors and financial markets roughly limit time trade-offs through interest rates and security prices even though major mispricing across time is common.  Separation of powers, different legislative roles, young voters, and political party self-interest attempt to inject some balance in politics.  Morality can play the key role in determining social attitudes, norms, and laws.  It is the most critical factor of all.

Morality has historically played a conservative role in slowing social changes.  Religions and conservative political parties emphasize relying on what has worked historically versus what might work or might fail due to the “law of unintended consequences”.  Sacks points to modern chaos theory as proving that deterministic reasoning is incapable of predicting the effects of changes in complex systems like society, so it is best to be very cautious.

Sacks focuses again on the 1960’s when “classic liberal” political leaders chose to prioritize John Stuart Mill’s view that “the only purpose for which our power can be rightfully exercised over any member of the civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.  His good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant”.  Political and social leaders also tacitly embraced the expanded use of marijuana and drugs as part of “freedom of choice”.  Sacks points to the economic, individual, spiritual, and societal costs of drug use today as proof that this was a very bad decision.

Sacks criticizes Utilitarianism, allied with classical liberalism’s optimism about rationality, education, and human progress, as being overly simplistic and inadequate for considering individual or public policy choices.  How does utilitarianism manage costs, benefits and consequences that extend through time?  For how long?  How probable?  Intended?  Foreseeable?  He argues that decision makers must accept that they have a limited ability to see the future and should make changes slowly, incrementally and with a concern for if they can be reversed if needed later. 

Sacks is especially critical of modern society’s “rationalistic hubris” and “fatal conceit” when applied to moral norms and institutions.  He argues that society has learned through time that it requires a system of deeply embedded “thou shalt not” rules to offset the weaknesses in human character.  They may be religious, cultural, or secular norms, but they must be widely held, taught, and reinforced.

‘3. Unsocial Media

The author sees the proliferation of electronic communication and social media as a revolution with as large of an impact as the printing press, some good but much very bad.  This seductive technology has captured 7 ½ hours per day of screen time on average.  Individuals become addicted, are seldom fully present, struggle to focus, promote themselves, worry about comparisons with others, become short-term and shallow thinkers, lose sleep, become anxious and depressed, lose trust, have more contacts and fewer friends, and fail to build face to face social and moral skills.

Sacks worries most about the loss of time to build social and moral skills.  He argues that impersonal electronic communication simply cannot substitute for being in the presence of another person, reading their analog verbal and non-verbal communications, listening, valuing them as people, moving back and forth, empathizing, investigating, managing the tone of a conversation, injecting humor, trying seriousness, changing subjects, summarizing, refocusing, doing the human and communications dance.  He references Martin Buber’s “I-thou” relationship and Emmanuel Levinas’ encounter with the face of the other.

“Bonding, friendship, trust, discipleship: these emerge from face-to-face conversation and the subtle clues that accompany it and that shape the contours of human interaction …  Morality is born when I focus on you, not me; when I discover that you, too, have emotions, desires, aspirations, and fears.  I learn this by being present to you and allowing you to be present to me …   [on social media] character is trivialized into personality, ‘likes’ take the place of genuine respect, and the presentation of self takes the place of engagement with others …  Most fundamentally it leaves us morally underdeveloped, addicted to a search for popularity that has little to do with character, virtue, or anything else, and that is the worst possible training for resilience or happiness in the real world of real people and real relationships.” 

’12. Safe Space

Professor Sacks has a very high view of the role of the university.  A moral community of scholars collaborating in the pursuit of truth and managing the intellectual heritage of mankind.  Historically this institution has had its own values, norms, objectives, and practices.  Truth is the goal.  Truth requires a community, free speech, listening, being listened to, considering diverse thoughts, criticism, civility, respect, debate, rational argument, and evidence.

Twentieth century philosophy that denies any type of objective values leads to morality as merely emotional language.  Postmodernism agrees that there is no objective truth other than the domination and oppression of minority groups and the obligation to work against the powerful elites.  There are only “interpretations” of morality, history, language, and institutions.  Universities are not exempt from this analysis and provide an opportunity to actively pursue these ends through political means.  Hence, we get the cancellation of free speech, the ambiguous concept of microaggression, safe spaces versus non-safe spaces and no-platforming to ban threatening speech.

The university migrates from being a social institution in pursuit of truth and morality into a merely market-based trainer and a ground for political action.  Within this context, political activists can leverage grievances, threats, and intimidation to capture the university.  The non-university doesn’t believe in truth, morality, community, or its role as a social institution.  It loses free speech, listening, diversity, interaction, civility, and reasoned argument.  The faculty and institution cannot advance knowledge outside of technical specialties.

Students are deprived of the active learning community that makes them life-time learners and prepared for life’s mental, social, and moral challenges.  Students fail to learn critical thinking and effective psychological skills.  The university becomes part of the polarized political system, actively devoted to pursuit of a single political agenda, and strongly opposed to any other.  Oppressed minorities are praised, while other supposedly “privileged” groups are criticized, shunned, and attacked.  The university becomes an active player in opposing any moral order other than the postmodernist order.

’15. The Return of Public Shaming

Social media has provided an opportunity for individuals who feel that they or their worldview has been wronged to immediately seek redress from perpetrators in the court of public opinion.  In some cases, this has led to low power, status or resource individuals gaining support for their legitimate claims in a manner that was not available before social media times.

In other situations, it has led to “public shaming” of individuals perceived to have offended deeply held moral views of some individual or group.  “Political correctness” has gained an enforcement mechanism.  “The problem with vigilante justice is that it follows no legal norms.  There is no due process”.  It reinforces polarization.  Shaming, like revenge, is a personal response to a perceived threat to the honor of a group. 

Western culture has mostly adopted impersonal responses to offenses through its justice systems.  Religiously, penance and retribution have been used to atone for the offenses.  The individual maintains his moral agency, separated from the sin or the action.  Public shaming is a non-constructive tool of justice.

’16. The Death of Civility

“Loss of shared moral community means that we find it difficult to reason together.  Truth gives way to power … people start defining themselves as victims.  Public shaming takes the place of judicial establishment of guilt.  Civility – especially respect for people who oppose you – begins to die.  The public conversation slowly gives way to a shouting match in which integrity counts for little and noise for much.”

“Civility is more than good manners.  It is a recognition that violent speech leads to violent deeds; that listening respectfully to your opponents is a necessary part of politics in a free society; and that liberal democracy, predicated as it is on the dignity of diversity must keep the peace between contending groups by honoring us all equally in both our diversity and our commonalities … it is an affirmation that the problems of some are the problems of all, that a good society presupposes collective responsibility, that there is a moral dimension to being part of this nation, this people, this place.”

The “team of rivals” was “never less than respectful, they spoke about issues not personalities, and what united them was more than good manners.  It was a conviction they shared about politics: that it exists to reconcile the conflicting desires and aspirations of people within a polity, and to do so without violence, through reasoned and respectful debate. Listening to, while not agreeing with, opposing views, and trying as far as possible to serve the common good.”

The loss of civility is driven by individualism overshadowing community and morality, the internet providing effective tools for consuming only one’s own viewpoints and anonymously attacking others, and the divide between the “somewhere’s” and the “anywhere’s” in a global, competitive, meritocratic society.  There are large differences between the lived experiences, perspectives, and politics of the mostly highly educated, mobile, globally informed professionals and their counterparts who have less education, broad experience, income, opportunities, and options.  Modern politics is adjusting to this underlying change in the human landscape.  The philosophical loss of broad community, shared values and values combined with technologies that help to divide makes addressing these differences in a civil manner a large challenge.

Sacks provides three insights from the Old Testament.  “For there to be justice, all sides must be heard …  all truth on earth represents [one of multiple] perspectives … the alternative to argument is violence.”

‘6. Markets Without Morals

Sacks supports capitalism and global trade, noting that they have raised incomes for all, reduced poverty, engaged staff, encouraged innovation, and knit nations together to oppose war.  Unfortunately, markets do not inherently deliver a “fair” distribution of wealth and income.  They do not self-regulate against “bad actors”.  They promote a materialist, consumerist set of values.  Public morality is required to work against human greed.  He cites the individual corporate failures and fraud at the turn of the century and the broader failure of the banking industry in “outsourcing risk”, ignoring long-term factors, engaging in fraud and self-enrichment leading to the Great Recession.

Adam Smith and other leaders of the Enlightenment assumed a background of shared morality as they developed economic and political institutions to replace those of kings, nobles, and bishops.   The decline of that morality and the social pressures to comply, together with libertarian philosophies that justify focusing on the individual/firm alone rather than all stakeholders, has resulted in firms and individuals pursuing their self-interest using all possible means, including ethical gray areas, short-termism, and outsourcing risk to others. 

The “greed is good” aura of successful business leaders and mass media coverage encourages others to pursue the paths to riches and evaluate their lives and others based upon wealth alone, discounting things like character, honesty, integrity, and service to others.  Once again, the decline in shared morality has negative feedback loops that prioritize the pursuit of wealth and power while undermining morality, character and the common good.

‘7. Consuming Happiness

The Greek and Judeo-Christian traditions ideally emphasized doing good, seeking meaning, and leading the moral life as the route to happiness.  Developing virtues such as nobility, courage, temperance, wisdom, justice, righteousness, harmony, balance, and alignment with God/reality would lead to a transcendent, ongoing, resilient satisfaction.  Pursuing community-based joy in work (calling), family and simple pleasures was a wise and universally available approach.

During the Enlightenment a more direct route to individual happiness was proposed.  The feelings associated with pain and pleasure could be managed to produce happiness in the Utilitarian view.  Although some Greeks had adopted the hedonic (pleasure seeking) philosophy, this was uncommon.

In the last 500 years the West has achieved incredible standards of living, with higher wealth, comfort, security, health, choice, communications, knowledge, entertainment, and leisure.  Yet, once modest standards of living were achieved, happiness did not continue to grow.  Today, it is falling for many teens, and we see “deaths of despair” reducing lifespans.  Unconstrained, humans appear to have no limits to the pleasures they seek from consuming goods, services, and experiences.  They highly value relative wealth and consumption.  Firms use targeted advertising to make sure that consumers are never satisfied.  Individuals flaunt their wealth and consumption.  Consumption provides fleeting rather than lasting satisfaction, so the cycle continues without producing lasting happiness.  An addictive pattern and habits are established.  Moral values are “crowded out”. 

Sacks points to the effective role that an institution like “the Sabbath” can have in setting aside market, consumer values on a repeated basis to allow individuals to engage with moral values and community activity.

‘8. Democracy in Danger

In the West citizens are increasingly unhappy with their political representatives and systems.  Trust, political participation, hope and belief in liberal democracy are down.  The center-left and center-right parties face greater competition from populist parties at both ends of the political spectrum.  Citizens see their representatives as unresponsive, out of touch and ineffective.  Citizens are angry, increasingly willing to give up structural protections to gain results.

Sacks identifies a primary cause for this change as the slow shift from an American-style political system of limited government, individual liberty, inalienable rights, and a strong civil sector of family, community, and associations to a French-style system of centralized government, “the general will”, state provided services and minimal space for civil society to operate.  He points to the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights as a transition point where citizens moved from protecting their inalienable rights from government to demanding that government protect their human rights and deliver services.  Both systems highlight “rights and liberty”, but the definitions, philosophies, and priorities are distinct.  The US style is individualistic at its core to limit the state’s role and preserve civil society, community, and morality.  The French style is national/group at its core to guarantee certain individual legal rights and services.

Sacks argues that the American-style system can protect individuals from the state and preserve the community building role of families, churches, and associations at the local level.  He argues that the French model overpromises.  Formally, it promises to only identify the “general will” and deliver relevant protections and services, without “absolute” protections of individual rights.  Individuals have different perceptions of the “general will”, so they are consistently disappointed by the results of politics which invariably do not exactly match their views.  Citizens pay taxes and obey the laws.  They develop a sense of entitlement to the services, programs, regulations, courts, and other state institutions.  The demand for services grows while the willingness to fund programs lags.  The state is an inherently impersonal actor and cannot deliver the local experience of working together to serve neighbors.  Citizens are especially disappointed by the historically dominant moderate parties and turn to others for new and better solutions.

The author is no fan of populist parties which overpromise even more, sometimes addressing specific issues effectively, but being incapable of solving the inherent tension between unrealistic expectations and limited resources.  They tend to become authoritarian, employ communication tricks, remove structural safeguards, buy and sell assets, mortgage the future, start wars, debase the currency, start trade wars, identify and demonize scapegoats, reinvent truth, etc.  The specter of a negative feedback loop destroying civil society and the political system looms.

’13. Two Ways of Arguing

Sacks calls for a “pox on both your houses”, criticizing the woke postmodernist new left and the populist extreme right for failing to participate in the “search for truth” or to recognize their shared interests and humanity.  This chapter is mostly focused on the caustic, one-sided attacks on social media by younger citizens.  He quotes President Obama’s advice to work “hands-on” as an activist to persuade others and notes that successful activists offer the same advice. 

Political issues are inherently complex, messy, divisive, principled, and multi-faceted.  Most are not primarily matters of “right and wrong”.  Practical politics is like making sausage, requiring compromises, and best done only by those with strong stomachs.  Demonizing the “other” increases polarization and starts a negative feedback loop.  Trade-offs are required in all negotiations and require innovative ways for all parties to believe that they have benefitted regarding their most important goals while giving up just a little.  Solutions may leave some issues for the future, ambiguous or delegated to administrators.

The law of contradictions does not always apply to political or religious arguments.  Two apparently opposite approaches may BOTH be right, in different times, places or situations.  Universal ideals are important but very difficult to implement as laws.

Sacks points to the Old Testament and Jewish experience for advice.  Arguments abound.  Between scholars, prophets, schools, and sages.  Between God and man.  Between angels.  The process of debate is deemed to be good.  Dissent is constructive.  Arguing for the sake of heaven, truth and healing is good.  One view may be recorded as the enforceable law, but many are deemed valuable.  Arguments for the sake of victory and power alone, ignoring the truth, are rejected.  While Sacks holds many conservative cultural positions he is consistently in the classic liberal camp in support of the value of reasoned communications, criticism, and debate.

He encourages activists and citizens to recognize their shared situation and common interests as neighbors, coworkers, teachers, coaches, volunteers, taxpayers, consumers, sports supporters, parents, retirees, citizens, travelers, seekers, humans, believers and inheritors of history, morality, and society.

’14. Victimhood

Suffering, betrayal, injustice, oppression, inequality, and exclusion exist in all societies.  Individuals who experience unfair treatment have two basic choices.  They can choose to look backwards as the objects of mistreatment and embrace a sense of victimhood.  Or they can look forward as free choosing moral agents and move on with their lives.

Sacks points to Abraham and holocaust survivors as positive role models who take the latter route.  They look forward, take constructive steps to rebuild their lives and use their experience to teach others.  They don’t relinquish choice, complain, remain angry and bitter, stew in victimhood, or seek retribution.  They focus on the actions which they can control which can deliver future happiness.

The author outlines how a victimhood culture has developed in the post-war West.  The “triumph of the therapeutic” described by Rieff explains how a feeling-based individualism pursuing self-esteem and self-actualization set the stage for a departure from historical norms of personal responsibility.  The fight for individual rights for racial minorities and women evolved into a demand for group-based recognition, proper regard, and self-esteem.  Minimal state protection of individuals became group rights to “equal” status and recognition. 

This was driven by the neo-Marxist postmodernist philosophy that sees everything as a matter of power and oppression.  All minority groups and intersectionalities are directly and indirectly oppressed by all the tools of the ruling society: language, politics, economics, education, entertainment, religion, and culture.  As seen by the existentialists, the individual members of an oppressed group often don’t even know they are living an inauthentic life and must be liberated to see that they are victims of oppression.  Conflict between groups is necessary.  History must be rewritten from the victim’s correct viewpoint.  Overthrowing the oppressors is an ideal, existential goal rather than just negotiable politics.  The oppressor group is morally wrong (blamed) and any opposition to victory must be shamed (cancelled). 

This requires the state to intervene to protect these essential “rights” of the groups and individuals.  These rights become politicized rather than promoted by individuals and civil society.  Political conflict is unavoidable when one group blames another group.  Sacks notes the progress of Western politics and society in the last century in expanding and protecting individual rights and the ongoing responsibility of individuals and society to address all moral wrongs.  He fears that making these issues purely political will not change human nature but will result in group conflict and polarization without an easy exit path.

Sacks once again contrasts Greek and Judeo-Christian cultures.  The Greek culture emphasizes fate, the impersonal role of external forces, individual impotence, a tragic view of life and the need for individuals to always consider the community’s views to avoid shame, from which there is no good path of recovery.  The biblical culture emphasizes the individual relationship between man and God, free will, responsibility, internal guilt in the face of an all-knowing God, a path of penitence and forgiveness and ultimate hope.  He emphasizes that victimhood and shaming belong to a tragic culture, so are inconsistent with modern Western views.

Individuals who choose to adopt the “victim” perspective harm themselves.  They cannot change the past, but they can recycle emotional pain and block future opportunities for personal, character, family, social and economic growth. 

“Victim” groups have an even larger negative impact on society.  They push individuals to assume the “victim persona”.  They undercut individual and civil society steps to improve conditions for mistreated individuals and groups.  They encourage a revolutionary “us” versus “them” context resulting in continued group conflict and preventing incremental political solutions.  They encourage individuals to adopt unrealistically ideal views of themselves (pure) and others (bad), engage in virtue signaling and critic shaming.  They fundamentally undercut the individual based rights and responsibility perspective.  They replace truth with power and victory as the supreme value.

’18. Meaning

Rabbi Sacks begins with, “Philosophers have traditionally identified the search for a meaningful life with service to a moral cause, a community, a country, or God.”   Unfortunately, with the shift from “We” to “I” Western citizens and students prioritize financial well-being over learning, helping, and developing a meaningful philosophy of life.  The intellectual/artistic class, in the shadow of postmodernism, is left adrift, with only subjective values, unlimited freedoms, no rudder for guidance, resulting in a bleak nihilism.

Sacks considers the life and critics of David Foster Wallace as representative of the modern intellectual milieu which “favored highly intellectualized, complex and aestheticized principles instead of embracing simplicity.”  Wallace suffered from mental illness and committed suicide.  He produced acclaimed literary works but saw widespread cultural discontent, lostness and a lack of inherited meaningful moral values amongst his peers.  Sacks dismisses easily finding adequate meaning in simplicity or mundane activities but notes that highly experienced mystics have taken this path.

The modern view that privileges the role of isolated, autonomous agents and dismisses God seems just as destined to failure today as it was in the times of radical skeptics Pascal and Nietzsche.  Some say that “God is dead” while others say, “we’re not listening”.  By assuming away God, objectivity and meaning we remain in a world described by the title of Sarte’s 1944 play “No Exit”.  Sacks rejects the option of polytheistic pursuit of peak experiences through the arts and sports as ultimately unfulfilling distractions.

Sacks notes that meaning is defined by fate in pagan worlds, faith in Abrahamic religions and fiction by postmodernism.  Moderns argue that fiction may have meaning for a single individual but cannot have ultimate meaning.  Sacks contrasts science and religion and their complementary cognitive modes, embracing the integrative forces of narrative as equal to the scientific method in its truth claims.  Sacks argues that the “redemption narrative” where an individual faces difficulties, suffers, but still moves forward in hope to finally reach a goal that serves others is a possible source of meaning even in a skeptical context.  He does not directly tie this to Christianity, Taylor’s Secular Age, religion, or myths.  He emphasizes that humans are “story telling” beings that can gain stability in the present (achieve meaning?) by considering the past and aiming towards the future.

’20. Which Morality?

We have a solid understanding of the various moralities or moral systems practiced today and in the past.  Moralities start as “thick” combinations of religion, ethics, customs, rituals, taboos, manners, protocols, and etiquette based on a single time and place.  They may evolve into more focused “thin” theological systems with more universal applicability.  Haidt identifies avoidance of harm, justice as fairness, loyalty, reverence, and respect as common moral dimensions.  Cultures can be organized around the goal of their ethics: civic/service to the local government, duty to a hierarchical system, honor in a military or courtly world, or love-based morality.  Different cultures tend to produce different kinds of individuals, oriented towards tradition, inner thoughts, or external influence.

Sacks argues that our awareness, analysis, and appreciation of many cultures does not absolve us of the need to choose a culture, community, ethics, and morality.  To pursue a meaningful life, we must choose a moral community and engage our thoughts, feelings, and actions.

“A mature understanding of the many ways there are of organizing a society and a life may make us more tolerant of people unlike us, but it does not preclude the knowledge that, if we are to find meaning, depth, and resonance in life, we must choose a language of deeds as we choose a language of words.”

’22. Morality Matters

Human nature is unchanged, and people wish to be moral.  Telecommunications makes us more aware of the needs and sufferings of individuals and the actions that could help.  We have more resources to address those needs.  The latest generation shows an increased sense of moral responsibility.  Since the Reagan/Thatcher period, the state has been a smaller actor in areas where civil society can address social needs.  The basic moral rules are very widely held by actual communities (as opposed to philosophers): “help your family, help your group, return favors, be brave, defer to superiors, divide resources fairly, and respect other people’s property.”

The state and market cannot improve our moral situation.  Individuals can change their behavior to think, decide and act better and thereby influence others to join them.  Improved morality does not require an overarching plan and program.  It can be built by one act of kindness at a time.

Our current situation has been driven by lower religious participation, the conflicts of multiple cultures living side by side, and philosophical ideas that prioritize the individual over the community and claim that moral judgments are often simply fronts for political power.  Sacks emphasizes that the state has “crowded out” the institutions of civil society, making them less effective, removing individual morality building experiences and responsibility, inserting political considerations, and interrupting the “law of natural consequences” between bad moral decisions and personal responsibility.

“We will have to rebuild families and communities and voluntary organizations.  We will come to depend more on networks of kinship and friendship.  And we will rapidly discover that their very existence depends on what we give as well as what we take, on our willingness to shoulder duties, responsibilities, and commitments as well as claiming freedoms and rights.”

’23. From “I” to “We”

We have experienced a shift from “I” to “We” in the US in the 1830’s and 1930’s and in the UK in the 1850’s.  Cultures can be changed through new ideas, institutions, and leadership.  Humans naturally wish to “do good”.  These actions provide physical and mental health benefits.  In a wealthy society, incremental time and resources invested in service provide a greater return than extra consumption.

“In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can do alone … A covenant is a relationship … about identity … [and transforms] … A covenant creates a moral community.  It binds people together in a bond of mutual responsibility and care.”

Business leaders, economists, thought leaders and professional employees are using covenant like thinking to reform corporations to consider the interests of all stakeholders once again, leaving behind Milton Friedman’s advice to maximize profit alone.

The US Declaration of Independence established the country in covenant terms, and these were renewed by President Lincoln during the Civil War.  “Covenant politics … is about ‘We, the people’, bound by a sense of shared belonging and collective responsibility, about strong local communities, active citizens, and the devolution of responsibility.  It is about reminding those who have more than they need of their responsibilities to those who have less than they need.  It is about ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to make the most of their capacities and their lives.”