The Directionless of the Western Ideology

My sense of the West is that it has lost an essential confidence in itself. Although, as an ideology, the Western vision of domestic politics still maintains considerable sway, it feels increasingly that this is a default position, rather than a desirable one. People are unhappy with the results of years of Western liberalism, but it is safe, as generally the alternatives are also somewhat undesirable. This hasn’t stopped the rise of movements opposed to the Western ideology, but has meant that their successes have been at most partial ones.

The opponents of Western Liberalism are increasingly able to gain in strength and number. Both from the left and the right, there is a sense that things are not working. However, the alternatives are relatively unclear. There are big ideas and big projects, but they exist on the extreme and don’t get to the nub of the discontent. There are some optimistic, semi-messianic projects. Stuff like the left’s desire to increase state spending massively or “Making America Great Again” are good examples. Both these things have an essential kernel of similarity, I believe. This is the belief in destruction over construction and an unjustified quasi-religious hope for redemption. Essentially there is a belief that the current system is not really working, and we need to destroy core elements of it because they are not doing us any good. There is a hope to replace this with something new, and by doing so things will immensely improve – the hope is strong, and the people preaching it often feel like religious preachers, firm in their convictions about doing something significant. However, I don’t think anyone is clear about what to replace our current system with. It is therefore the case that our times are destructive, and quasi-messianic. This pattern to politics I feel is both erroneous and essentially chaotic.

We need a new model that takes the best parts of the old one, and integrates them into something new. This model and vision needs to be clear, if inevitably – as with all ideology – sometimes ambiguous and slightly self-contradictory. This is what I propose to give to you today (ambitious I know!).

Definitions and The Crisis

For me, the crisis of modern Western Liberalism seems to originate in the success of the project. ‘Modern Western Liberalism’ in the sense that I define it, is the idea that we should maximise our freedom. ‘Freedom’ in turn has changed meaning over time, but since the 1960s, generally, one of the things it has done is try to reduce the strength of social institutions like the family and the church. In essence, it has tried to maximise the freedom action of the individual through destroying the social institutions which may limit their freedom. Western Liberalism has therefore traditionally been both reactive and destructive against certain social and cultural structures. Of course, this is not the only legacy of Western Liberalism, but it is one that relates to the capacity for the individual to generate meaning on a day-to-day level. Changes to the social sphere are changed in order to increase the capacity for an individual to develop freedom in their day-to-day lives.

Other things ‘Modern Western Liberalism’ has focused on include increasing both wealth and equality of opportunity of individuals within society. In both cases, there is a commitment to increase the ability to have a better quality of life through having greater ability to get material things. Western Liberalism provides the ability for the individual to choose what to do, and assumes that largely, either people think in terms of economics or that no one has sufficient knowledge or capability to tell others how to act in a social setting. In both the economic and social world, ‘Modern Western Liberalism’ decides to allow individuals to have the capability to choose what they want to do. It assumes that largely, society is best when people have the ability to make their own decisions.

‘Modern Western Liberalism’ has largely succeeded. There are not many formal social institutions that people are bound to join through the force of social pressure. At the very least, it is very hard to maintain that at a societal level, there are structures that exist that bar people from achieving what they want to if they have the economic means.

However, I think that there has been a significant cost of this success. It has created a sense that people don’t know what they want to achieve. In modern society, a sense of purposelessness and meaningless is very easy to slip into, and I feel as if Modern Western Liberalism has enabled this. People cannot fool themselves into living lives that seem satisfactory. This is the crisis, but it need to be explained and developed.

Man as a Machine

Thomas Hobbes maintains that man is a machine. He thinks about this in many ways, but I think one of the most interesting elements of this is how a man will always act to get things. Humans are machines and will generally try to work towards achieving things – it doesn’t matter what these things are, but what matters is that regardless of the particular thing that man is working towards, they have a constant need to try to work towards the achievement of things.

He believes, therefore, that we all want to meet objectives. These objectives depend on our circumstances, but importantly, although the specific objectives change as a result of circumstances, we will always maintain the capacity to define new objectives and go after them. It is an essential and unchangeable fact of human nature that, generally, humans want to use their ability to act to meet fixed objectives. The things which we want to achieve don’t really matter, what matters is that we will always act to achieve something.

Where this gets slightly more interesting is if we think about this in relation to the aims one want to achieve. Man always wants to achieve, broadly speaking, two things. The first, is the basic essentials of survival. These are common to all humans. Things like food and water. This is because we will die if we don’t have these.

The second, is the achievement of a life that one finds meaningful. Usually, there is a sense of achievement implicit here. One wants to eventually be in a position where one can say that they have achieved the sort of life that they set out to achieve. This usually relates to set goals. As Hobbes implicitly noted, whatever the conditions, we are still essentially the same machine. We are still human, and so whenever or in whatever conditions humans happened to live, we still have the same essential desire to achieve a meaningful life. This is big, as it means that we don’t need lots of economic goods to achieve a meaningful life. We just don’t. We can achieve a meaningful life in any and all conditions. In this way, it feels as if there are two ways things society can do to facilitate the achievement of the ‘good life’.

The first of which is provide people with the basics of survival. It just makes sense that society would want to do this. No one can begin to think about living a meaningful life if they don’t have access to the things which should ensure their day-to-day survival. If society exists to make people’s lives better, and I believe it should, we should ensure the basics to everyone regardless of their conditions.

The second is that society should provide whatever possible to enable people to achieve a meaningful life. This, from what I have just set out, may seem to be absurd. You may point out that I have just noted that man is man wherever he is, and therefore can achieve a meaningful life in any and all conditions. This is true, but that doesn’t mean that there are certain things that can make the achievement of goals more difficult for an individual. For example, if you are Sisyphus, pushing a boulder up a hill, again and again for all eternity, and you define your aim as getting the boulder over the hill, then your objectives will never be met. On the contrary, if you set an aim of getting 10 A*s in your GCSEs and to do so is not impossible, only a struggle, then that result is going to be a meaningful one. It will provide you with a sense of value and a sense of achievement once you have achieved your goals.

In this way, there are certain things that society can do to help you lead a meaningful life. I will aim to show that this is possible and that in society today there are ways of revising Modern Western Liberalism to achieve this.

How to Create Meaning Socially and Culturally

Having the capability to create meaning socially and culturally can be done by making the objectives that those in society latch on to easier to achieve and more realistic. In the example I set out previously, the state and society can act to exert pressure on an individual to change their fundamental aims, to avoid being like Sisyphus. This can be done through putting social and cultural pressure of individuals within society.

I think Modern Western Liberalism has had some key failures in trying to do this. To explain this, I will first look at how modern Western Liberalism has failed to do this. Secondly, I will show what the alternatives are.

First of all, modern Western Liberalism has failed to create meaning because it assumes two things. The first is that individuals are perfectly capable of forming structures of meaning in their day-to-day lives in the absence of structures which explicitly guide individuals. The second is the fallacy that economic achievement is a potentially sustainable system of achievement for individuals.

Modern Western Liberalism works on the assumption that maximising the freedom of individuals to decide what to do with their lives will always optimise their capacity to achieve the ‘good life’. This, unfortunately, does not seem to be true. As men are machines which operate in much the same way in any conditions, they will look towards society to inform their ideas about what is a meaningful life, as they did before. It’s worth looking at what actually has happened as a result of the ideological victory of liberalism.

Liberalism has a commitment to destroy essential structures within society– often because things that provide meaning also necessarily restrict freedom. When I talk of ‘structures’ here, I mean social and cultural institutions that are able to give people a sense of purpose by achieving something within this framework. For example, Christianity is a social and cultural structure that does this. You can work towards being good in God’s eyes. The liberals see this analysis in a slightly different light. What they see is that the social and cultural pressure to obey what the Bible says is restricting your freedom. Liberals are critical of the Bible’s capacity to inform your version of a good life, as they believe that only you – and not a 2000 year old book – can decide what is good for you. This function is met by other social and cultural structures too. The family, for example. You can work to foster a good relationship with your children, your wife or your husband. So does friendships. So does the desire to achieve meaning through fraternal bonds with fellow workers – this is by no means just something that is socially conservative. In fact, some of the most common social and cultural structures destroyed by Modern Western Liberalism have been communities in places like the north of England. Here, the destruction of the creation of meaning through communities centred around production and fraternity is key. This sort of meaning-creation is practically lifted from a Marxist interpretation about how creativity and work can produce meaning.

The victory of liberalism has side-lined these traditionally dominant institutions. However, the relationship between the individual and society has not changed essentially, as man is still the same machine, and still lives in a society composed of other machines. Instead, new cultural and social pressures have filled the hole that previously was occupied by these traditional social and cultural structures. In much the same way as the family or Christianity or work may have informed man’s essential desire to create meaning in a different age, in this new age, we have a new structures. This is because humankind acts as an organism that has the same sort of habits regardless of the development of rational thought. Individuals, generally, like to attach meaning to social and cultural structures – and even when there are less of these around, the human machine still does so.  

The most obvious one of these new structures is the attachment to the achievement of economic goals. Essentially, increasingly, people determine their success as individuals in relation to the achievement of economic goods. This manifests itself in many ways. The first, and most obvious of which, is that a person will define their success or failure on their capacity to look good to the rest of society through the achievement of economic goods. Maybe, for example, they want a nice car to show off to their friends. Maybe, they think that they want to achieve an economic position in society that is above the one they currently inhabit. They want to break out of their low-paid job. This occupies the same sort of space that achievement through commitment to God may have occupied 100 years ago. Of course, humans naturally trade, and often naturally value wealth. However, the relative emphasis of the importance of this does change over time, and at the moment it seems to be – almost by default – the pre-eminent method of the formation of meaning. 

Of course, there are other things that have replaced the old structures too. I do think another aspect of the world in which we live in is that it is potentially slightly harder to clearly form in your head what your goal in life is. The sense that no one can throw themselves totally into one sort of belief totally – because liberalism is necessarily destructive and critical of structures generally – has meant that a lot of people have a lesser sense of their aims in life. The sense that young people don’t know what they want to do with their lives is a common feature of society today. There is encouragement to think for yourself, and work out exactly what you want to achieve. However, when the structures of meaning are being constantly criticised by a uber-rationalist liberalism that criticises everything, it becomes quite hard to do this. It is almost ridiculous and socially unacceptable for a man to want to become a monk – because liberalism is so critical of the inconsistencies of the church. The critical nature of liberalism means that it is a lot harder to successfully retain faith in structures within society generally. Man retains his essential, natural yearning for meaning, but loses his capacity to exercise this. Man will continue to attempt to create new forms of meaning within society generally, but is far less likely to be able to achieve it in a relatively easy way.

In this sense, there liberalism has been unsuccessful in achieving what it set out to do. It is unsuccessful because it places far too much emphasis on the human capacity to create rules for life rationally and be able to carve out a meaningful existence for oneself.

The Problems with Economics

By aiming to achieve things through the achievement of economic ideals, you are putting yourself – potentially – in the position of Sisyphus. This, obviously, depends on how you are doing economically. However, it is important to state that our emphasis on economics as the almost sole form of achievement of meaning in society is potentially both harmful and disastrous. It leaves bad, unfulfilled and painful lives.

It is important to state that the achievement of economic goals are not essential to having a meaningful life. They are only important because of our sense of what we value. This may seem like an analysis which side-lines or ignores the needs and wants of what we deem to be the poor. I think, in fact, it sort of does the inverse. It liberates the poor, it allows the poor to conceive of a better world where the struggle that they undergo is one that is more likely to lead to a meaningful life.

Everyone can achieve a meaningful life, when their goals are both clear and achievable. One of the worst possible ways to try and do this is through a system that emphasises economic routes as the way to achieve goals. This is because, economic goods exist in the real world. There is a finite amount of them, and therefore in many respects it is often a zero-sum game. There are many examples of this. When you achieve something in a world where everyone prizes economic goods, you usually can only do so at the expense of others. Getting a good job usually means that someone else has to lose out.

You may have a good criticism here – you may tell me that economic growth is a thing that means that this is no longer a problem. Everyone gains, everyone gets happier. My response would be the following. It is true that economic growth gives people a sense of achievement in the generality across society. People feel that they have got a better job through their own efforts even if it is largely as a result in the general uptick in societal wealth. However, I think that this poses lots of problems. First of all, it makes society dependent on the achievement of an increase in real wages. When this has not occurred over a long length of time for the vast majority of people – as in the past 20 years – there is a sense of immense dissatisfaction generally. This is really bad, as it can threaten to undo the whole project of liberalism, which has several laudable elements.

Secondly, it is still a zero-sum game nevertheless. It is still the case that you want to be better than your neighbour, even if you are living in better conditions than you were in your youth. Often, comparison is where a sense of achievement in individuals comes from. This can and does come in multiple forms, but usually relates to how an individual feels as if they have done relative to a range of reference points. Some of these will be against real life examples of success that are still impossible for everyone to achieve. People appreciate a general uptick in wealth and often self-attribute this as being as a result of their efforts – however, it is often not enough. People still look at their neighbour and think, ‘Why are they doing better than me’. In contrast, when you define success or failure in relation to more achievable goals like having a nice family who you care for and care for you, then that demand is not at the expense of anyone.

A second, interesting reflection on valuing the achievement of economic goods relates to the hopelessness of some of the demands. The models of ways of that an individual can live – often in so called ‘role models’ – are often hopeless distant ones in society, but nevertheless ones that people are encouraged to believe they should attempt to emulate. This is very sad, and creates a hopeless optimism within society. People like footballers, musicians and TV “personalities” tend to exist to be emulated – but, precisely because of their presence at the centre of our collective experience, cannot be emulated by everyone. In an economic world, where we need to achieve material wealth and attain recognition from others in our attempt to attain meaning, life becomes Sisyphean. It would be far, far better for people to have more realistic ambitions that they can actually achieve, and not end up like Sisyphus.

What to do?

Now we have established the problem with the west, I think we should provide a solution – it would only be fitting, to at the very least, avoid hypocrisy at accusing liberalism of being essentially destructive. (Although I would argue I still am being hypocritical nevertheless!)

There are two options. One to live a more meaningful life generally. The other is to attempt to try and reform society to value different things. When enough people do the first, it is likely to lead to a paradigm shift in the way we conceive of a meaningful life, meaning a dynamic change to the nature of liberalism.

The first thing to note is the following. This is that, we as individuals, have the power within society to create new conceptions of what society expects of us. We did it in the 1960s-80s, where society shifted to a more clearly egalitarian and liberal one by destroying the cultural pre-eminence of social and cultural structures like the family. This was the result of a relatively long process of challenging social and cultural norms. The roots of this challenge lay in relatively small subcultures which had deeply held moral qualms about the strength of cultural and social structures in society. For example, the ‘Beat Generation’ of Kerouac and Ginsburg was an early precursor to the radicalism and individualism of the 1960s and was based of a relatively sound philosophy of the liberative quality of breaking social and cultural norms.

I believe a similar thing can and should be done in the West today. A small, rational and constructive revision of society to emphasise the fact that there should be a bit of social pressure on people to conform to fit social and cultural structures which provide meaning relatively easy. The important thing to note here is that I agree with a lot of what liberalism says, and that freedom generally can help people achieve a meaningful life for varying reasons. Formal ‘negative liberty’, especially, can allow people to do things that they want to do, which can often relate at a deep level to achieving a meaningful life. In this way, I think any revision of Modern Western Liberalism has got to realise that, generally, Modern Western Liberalism is not all bad. The basic point, that people are in the best position to achieve their own sense of the ‘good life’ is right. However, there is an essential need in society today to make some small, incremental reform that acts to make it easier for people generally to have good lives.

How we can maintain the ‘advances’

I think it is important to continue to retain some of the other good things about liberalism more generally, and as a result, I think we should attempt to create a balance. In this very final section, I will say how I think that these advances can be maintained.

A criticism you may raise is that the ‘advances’ of the last 50 years should not be thrown away, and these ‘advances’ are relatively tangible. You may point to the liberation of women, for example. I think that my ideological world view is more compatible that you may think with this one. I think that, in actuality, the ability to rebel against cultural and social structures allows one to attain meaning – because one has a relatively explicit and attainable purpose in the way they want to live their life. When we look at the ‘Beat Generation’, for example, the radical individualism and rejection of the social and cultural structures generally allows them to live fulfilling and purposeful lives. Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, a semi-autobiographical account of this era, relatively explicitly shows this. There is a tension in the novel between the traditional and the radical individualism of Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise. The ability to rebel against social and cultural structures gives meaning to one’s life as it allows the expression of individuality and the achievement of a definable purpose. In this way, liberalism allows purpose when there is a tension with the existing social and cultural structures that is seeking to destroy. Therefore, it may be good to attempt to create a system where there is an essential internal tension between different conceptions of what is right, because this tension allows people to pick a side and define their purpose.  The act of allowing two differing, conflicting accounts of what it is to live a meaningful life may be the best way of allowing people to live truly meaningful lives.

We need two groups that are both brave yet tolerant existing within community. It is that essential tension that allows people to pick something that they believe in and gives liberalism a dynamic character. One of these should definitely be the current system of liberative freedom. The other can be whatever we want it to be. In any case, the act of rebellion needs something to rebel against, and Modern Western Liberalism doesn’t work – because it is so essentially destructive – in the absence of this. Things will not be perfect, but I think things can be more perfect if we make this sort of revision to the way our society works.

Conclusion

This defence of some dominant social and cultural structures within society deals with the main thrust of an argument that I have been thinking about for some time. There are some points that I have not developed out of fear of losing the clarity of argument throughout. These include defining what I mean by meaning, which I may expand on in another blog post. Another key point of internal tension relates to the fact that it is very hard to define what a human needs to survive. Both of these I have an answer for, but it would take too long for me to explain here.

My conclusions, generally though, are the following. What we should attempt to do is create social and cultural structures that encourage more realistic achievement of meaning. Some good examples may be to retain some elements of church worship within society, to create workplaces that encourage fraternity and solidarity and retain the pre-eminence of the family. There are of course problems with prizing all three of these. For example, belief in already present structures may carry unnecessary, potentially harmful baggage. This is why there must be a tension and balance within society that allows people to have the greatest possible freedom to choose.

Society is a complex organism that moves slowly, but is in essence natural. The desire to implement grand rational projects onto society is like trying to teach a beehive to build a house. It ignores the essential incapability for humans within society to act completely rationally. Society naturally organises itself in familiar patterns and changes only slowly in similar, recognisable ways – in much the same way animals migrate in similar patterns. For example, there is a similar and unchanging structure to most societies. There is always an ‘elite’ that rules and has thoughts about how to rule centred around some form of state apparatus that attempts to organise and control human action. Similarly, below this there is almost always a great mass of people that have varying degrees of conscious interaction with this ‘elite’. This is just one example of many of how human society tends to naturally conform to certain natural, but general, rules.

Therefore, to over-rationalise, and to try and organise people in rational patterns without concern for the essential kernel of irrationality and organicism of human society is a danger. It tends to lead to conclusions that are total, and attempts to do the literally impossible. This, I feel, is where Modern Western Liberalism has gone wrong over the past 50 years. A lack of recognition that humans are not perfect - and do imperfect things - has allowed the idea that humans can form conceptions of the meaningful very easily, without guidance from social and cultural structures to become a dominant one. This has had very significant consequences, creating meaningless lives en masse as the tide of economic growth came in. I hope we can fix this,

Yours,

WFF