The task for all humanity, I modestly suggest, should be to make the world a better place – and that requires us first to decide what a ‘better place’ would look like. Without that, we can have no Goal, and no proper sense of direction. Specifically, I suggest, our Goal should be to create – convivial societies; personal fulfilment; and a flourishing biosphere.
All three are important – no single one has priority. The three vital ingredients of a truly agreeable and secure world are like the legs of a three-legged stool, if any of them is compromised the whole structure collapses. But of course, in most modern societies, and most societies from the past, one or more of the three is neglected, which is one good reason why the world is in such a mess. Note, please, ‘fulfilment’ rather than the more usual ‘happiness’, which all too easily is taken to mean hedonism. So it is that farming for example – or nursing or teaching or building houses or anything else that is really worthwhile – is infinitely fulfilling for those who love it but it’s certainly not all fun and games. Note, too, the term ‘biosphere’ which means the living world rather than ‘environment’. ‘Environment’ simply means ‘surroundings’ and in these neoliberal days it is equated with real estate. Nature is reduced to stage scenery.
Movement towards the Goal is what ought to be meant by ‘progress’. Progress should not, as is now the norm, be equated simply with technological innovation or increase in material wealth. But modern governments do not define their Goal in any satisfactory manner. They focus instead on ‘targets’ which should simply be seen as means to an end – but they rarely if ever spell out clearly what the end is that they have in mind, if any. Thus, in Britain right now both the major parties are intent, and in the Tories’ case obsessed, with economic growth – or ‘Growth, growth, growth’ as the fly-by-night Prime Minister Liz Truss put the matter. But perpetual growth is of course impossible in a finite world – and doesn’t necessarily or usually raise the wellbeing of humanity as a whole and still less of our fellow creatures even when it is achieved.
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