Society

When Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990) said that there was no such thing as society – was she lamenting the fact?

We live in a careless world where many statements are misattributed or were never said in the first place. Still, I was pretty sure she said something on the subject because it was widely reported at the time.

But still, let’s get the quote right.

It’s here in an interview she did in 1987 for the magazine Woman’s Own. You can find it in Margaret Thatcher Foundation: Speeches, Interviews and Other Statements.

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

… [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … [t]hat was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system … when people come and say: ‘But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!’

It doesn’t sound as though she is lamenting the fact that there is no society. Rather, she seems to be saying that the concept does not exist in reality.

She seems to be saying that a person shouldn’t think he or she can have an easy ride by living off the back of other people. But beyond that there is nothing – just individuals swimming in the stream.

Is that inevitable? Is ‘society’ an illusion?

If everyone cared for everyone else and identified with their wants, that would make a society where everyone felt part of society and not outside society.

You can’t impose that. Well, you can but even empires crumble because they are held together by force rather than by mutual bonds. Society, if it means anything, has to be felt from within and built from within.

This is a foreign concept for us, the idea that we are a society and identify with society. We are used to feeling that we navigate our individual ways through society. For the most part we feel that society is a thing and we are in it, but we didn’t make it and we don’t feel in our bones that we are it and it is us.

Of course if there is pressure from outside then we huddle together and come together, as people who live through wars tell us. But again, being pushed from the outside to come together is not the same as having a communal vision of society that we are it and it is us.

What was it like in the days when generations of people lived in a village and everyone grew up together?

It’s inevitable that in that environment the villagers would get close to one another, sometimes as close as with their own family. Maybe everyone thought of the village as a big extended family.

How did individuals view themselves in the days when communities were close knit and stable for generations?

We cannot know for sure, but within living memory we have seen how individual expression has blossomed and is multiplying faster and faster.

There was a time when change was not expected.

Now we expect change. We expect more and more rapid change.

Change and different varieties of expression are part of us now.

All these varieties of expression fill a need and a desire or they wouldn’t have taken off like they have. So what is it like to be an individual now? With so many billions of people on the planet, it is easy to say that many people are redundant, irrelevant. They are not needed to keep the species going or to develop new ideas or methods or technologies.

Add to that the feeling many people – especially younger people – that things are getting worse, not better. People see that money is getting tighter and the planet is going down the drain. Or at least things are not getting better for them and for most people, even if a few celebrities are raking it in.

So it is getting tougher for people to find meaning in their lives.

How do people find meaning in their lives when they feel irrelevant, inconsequential, alone?

What is the origin of the need to feel relevant, meaningful, and significant?

In Man’s Search For Meaning, Viktor Frankl examines the perennial question that people ask; what is the meaning of life. He says that the meaning is found in how one responds to life as it comes to meet you.

That may be so, but in a crowded world the bottom can get knocked out of a person’s will to act responsibly when they feel that it simply doesn’t matter because however they react to life, they are redundant in the whole structure.

It gets worse. How does a person even know which of their responses are truly theirs? We are all influenced by our environment, and what is to say that the environment is working for us and not against us?

Frankl also said that a person must find meaning, that it cannot be given (much less imposed) from outside.

But against this is the fear of losing one’s way – of being swept up in a convincing story and then being attached to a cause where attachment fills a need greater than an examination of the truth.

Eric Hoffer writes about this in The True Believer.

Has it always been the same, at least since man became an urban animal?

One thing is certain is that when man lacks the support of the family, the community, the village – he is plagued by uncertainty.

We have to live with uncertainty, and in its nature it is unpalatable. We cannot stop thinking of ourselves and our outcomes, but we can put a cap on it by not dwelling on the self and its needs, but on what is outside, waiting to be fulfilled by us. In the balance between meaninglessness and meaning, thinking of the other counterbalances the weight of a world of meaninglessness and changes the world and us.

The arc of history is plainly the emergence of the individual and the individual’s claim to be the ultimate arbiter. And as long as the adventurers could find new ground big enough to contain their egos, then the world could go on spinning.

Now the world is small and we are bumping into one another with nowhere to go.

So the race is on whether we mutually destruct or find the benefit in truly thinking outside the box of our own heads and join together.

For which we have to ask ourselves, for whose benefit are we acting?

From the accumulation of what desires, actions, and impressions do our current desires arise?
How do we step off this speeding wheel of accumulated desires, actions, and impressions that determine our thoughts, actions, and desires? That is assuming we even know we are on this speeding wheel or want to get off.

Menachem Mendel Of Kotzk said:

If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. But if I am I because you are you, and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you.

If I present to you a face made up of what I think you want to see, where my object is to satisfy my desires and your desires are irrelevant to me except insofar as they help me achieve my desires, then we never meet.

If I hide inside of you, or you inside of me then we do not meet.

If you are you and I am I, then the conditions are met for meeting, provided one thing.

The philosopher Martin Buber speaks about it in I And Thou. By looking at the way we relate to inanimate objects we can see to what extent we do the same with other people. And to the extent that we do not treat people as objects to be used but recognise them as essentially us, and connect, then a different experience of existence opens up.

And Buber says, God is what is felt when we connect. When that happens there is no future, just this moment for as long as we can hold it.

Once is an event, twice is a maybe, and three suggests a pattern.

One

When consultants at a hospital in Britain came to the dawning suspicion that Lucy Letby, a nurse, was murdering newborn babies, they told the management. And as they describe it, the management made them feel like creeps. Management even went so far as to require them to apologise to the nurse for saying about her things that were plainly not true.

Except of course they were true.

We know that because the nurse was convicted of murder. Some people say that there has been a miscarriage of justice. They say it wasn’t Letby who did these things. They say no one did and that it was natural causes exacerbated by poor hospital standards.

But let’s leave that aside.

The point to draw from this is that the management at the hospital just didn’t want to know and they didn’t want to investigate. They just didn’t want to upset whatever the system was that was in place. The system had been trundling along and they simply wanted it to continue trundling along, even if babies died. Apparently.

Two

Employees stole 1,500 artefacts from the British Museum. It turns out that it’s been going on for many years. It might have gone on longer had not somebody unconnected with the museum told the British Museum his suspicions. He saw an artefact or more than one item listed in eBay and put two and two together.

In response, the British Museum ignored the complaint and continued to ignore it for years. In fact, they even accused the whistleblower of something underhand. I don’t know what it was that he was supposed to have done, but whatever it was, he was innocent of it.

Eventually the truth came out, and now the police are investigating.

Three

Rebecca Wight, a nurse with sixteen years experience raised what she called concerns of life and death with the management at the Christie Hospital in Manchester. In an external memo, the Trust wrote that “We are grateful that RW raised her concerns which we took very seriously and used to improve the service. When RW raised concerns with her consultants, changes were made to the service and additional supervision was provided…”.

Internally the CEO Roger Spencer wrote “We are disappointed The Christie is once again the subject of untrue allegations made by Ms Wight.”

What Conclusions To Draw From This

I have said for years that there is a ‘sweep it under the carpet’ culture in Britain. What’s important is that it looks like the right things have been done. Less important is that the right things have actually been done.

That carries into not wanting to do anything about anything lest it upset the current state of affairs. I haven’t made this up. The TV series Yes Minister made a running joke of it.

The problem is that the aim and purpose of these institutions is to help. So it’s painful when the management circles the wagons and denies that there are any problems. In the hospital cases I would guess the managers are not themselves doctors. And in the case of the museum, managers who are not curators.

The function of a manager is to run an effective ship, and if anything happens on their watch, then their skills as managers are called into question. That risks their salaries and perhaps their jobs. What is needed is somehow to decouple what the managers are responsible for from any bad actors on the staff.

Of course, the range of bad actors is broad. Let’s stay with people trying to do the best job they can but with a side order of self importance or rank or forceful personality.

In operating theatres at a leading hospital in New York or Washington DC. (on’t hold me to the details) surgeons overrode nurses who raised the alarm. For example, a nurse would say that the surgeon had left a swab in the patient. The surgeon wouldn’t listen and the patient would suffer in consequence.

To correct this the hospital made a rule. When anyone in the operating theatre sounds the alarm, they must stop and they must investigate. There is no fault and no blame. Everyone is responsible and has a voice and works together to solve the problem.

That rule would change situations from ‘them and us’ to one united and involved unit with one purpose.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Even if a person was a castaway, all alone on a desert island, he or she would still have in mind the approval of people back in the civilisation.

Imagine the castaway is fishing. He or she would measure his or her success as a fisher in terms of proficiency, skill, manual dexterity, as seen through the eyes of people back in civilisation.

If the castaway became really proficient at making a shelter, finding food and dealing with their desert island world, he or she would imagine the admiration of others. He or she would be proud of how much more ‘real’ they were than the others back in civilisation. Even disdain is by reference to other people.

There are those who devote themselves to the materials and to the task in hand. They are absorbed into the task, and the work is its own reward.

How many are there like that? Many? Not many?

Who even has the work in which they can become absorbed?

Tell me it isn’t so.

The fact is that except for sociopaths, in our heads we all live in a community of other people.

And nearly all of us do everything by reference to other people.

So now, what is success?

Is it where each person sees the others as a springboard to their own personal success?

Is it where each person does not care about whether the others are successful – except insofar as a lack of success that others achieve endangers or helps their own chance of success?

Is it where success means a common success?

A common success means each person feels that success is only success when everyone succeeds. It means each person feels responsible for everyone else.

Are we any good at feeling that kind of desire for communal wellbeing?

Why should we be when the arc of human development over the past centuries has been for all of us to search for and find our individual voice. We may be polite, accommodating, civil, or pushy and grasping – with all shades in between – but in truth we are all making our individual way forward.

Tell me, how is it working out?

And now that we (or at least Google and Facebook) have access to big data, we learn that our precious individuality is in large part a mirage. We are predictable. We give off signals all the time.

We leave such a trail of data points that we have become exposed for the predictable creatures we are.

So where is our individuality that we guard so preciously?

In truth we are tied to avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. Follow our trails over the years, and you will know us.

So, my idea of my success – is my idea of success even mine?

How far did I choose my pleasures? Keeping up with the Joneses stretches a lot further than the neighbour’s new car.

Suppose a person comes to realise that everything they do is built around an image of success they didn’t themselves create.

Or that they started with an idea and then just continued out of habit.

Suppose a person comes to realise they are in a race defined by success and rejection where they themselves are the only person they care about.

Suppose a person comes to feel they want everyone to succeed and not for they themselves to succeed at everyone else’s expense.

Perhaps the first conscious step that person can take if they feel that, is to put themselves among the kind of people who share that vision and that they aspire to be like.

Define success. Nothing happens in a vacuum. Even if a person was a castaway, all alone on a desert island, he or she would still have in mind the approval of people back in the civilisation.

Imagine the castaway is fishing. He or she would measure success in terms of proficiency, skill, manual dexterity, as seen through the eyes of people back in civilisation.

If the castaway became really proficient at making a shelter, finding food and dealing with their desert island world, they would imagine the admiration of others. They would be proud of how much more ‘real’ they were than the others back in civilisation. Even disdain is by reference to other people.

There are those who devote themselves to the materials and to the task in hand. They are absorbed into the task, and the work is its own reward. 

How many are there like that? Not many.

The fact is that except for sociopaths, in our heads we all live in a community of other people.

And nearly all of us do everything by reference to other people.

So now, what is success?

Is it one where each person sees the others as a springboard to personal success?

Or is it one where each person does not care about whether the others are successful – except insofar as a lack of success of others endangers or helps their own chance of success?

Is it one where success means a common success?

A common success means each person feels that success is only success when everyone succeeds. It means each person feels responsible for everyone else.

Are we any good at feeling that kind of desire for communal wellbeing?

Why should we be when the arc of human development over the past centuries has been for all of us to search for and find our individual voice. We may be polite, accommodating, civil, or pushy and grasping – with all shades in between – but in truth we are all making our individual way forward.

Tell me, how is it working out?

And now that we (or at least Google and Facebook) have access to big data, we learn that our precious individuality is in large part a mirage. We are predictable. Predictable and we give off signals all the time.

We leave such a trail of data points that we have become exposed for the predictable creatures we are.

So where is our individuality that we guard so preciously?

In truth we are tied to avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. Follow our trails over the years, and you will know us.

So, my idea of my success – is my idea of success even mine?

How far did I choose my pleasures? Keeping up with the Joneses stretches a lot further than the neighbour’s new car.

Suppose a person comes to realise that everything they do is built around an image of success they didn’t themselves create.

Or suppose a person comes to realise they are in a race defined by success and rejection where they themselves are the only person they care about.

Suppose a person comes to feel they want everyone to succeed and not for them to succeed at everyone else’s expense.

Perhaps the first conscious step that person can take is to put themselves among the kind of people they aspire to be like. Then maybe they can be clear enough in the head to define success.

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I wrote this piece on May 2nd, on Typeshare. That was a copy of the article I published on 22 January 2023 on Bear Blog. There may be a yet older version that I wrote.