I wrote yesterday about the importance of commitment. It is the foundation of the freedom from fear to which I believe our society should aspire.
Commitment is to a person, family, friends, community, workplace, region, culture, religion, gender or identity, country, humanity, the planet. And I am aware I will have made omissions. Commitment is a message that others matter. Equally, it's a sign that the commitment of others matters to us.
Writing this made me think about commitment. Almost without exception we humans know what it means. And again, almost without exception we have it. So I thought of plotting our commitment on a vertical, Y, axis.
I think it appropriate to allow for the opposite of commitment. I call that antipathy. Since few hate everyone I think we all start with positive commitment. But it can become negative
The horizontal, X, axis I use to plot remoteness. The resulting plot shows that as some groups are more remote from us we are as less committed to them.
The function may well not be straight, by the way. In an enlightened person who never feels antipathy to others it may be asymptotic to the X axis:
Most of us, I fear, are not so enlightened. We do suffer from antipathy. We have a commitment function that becomes negative.
Why does this matter? It does because I think two things have happened n my lifetime. The first is that our personal commitment may have reduced. If we were once where the red line, shown below, was then we are now at the blue one. We are less committed. Even if our commitment function has remained a constant gradient than we are as a result hostile to more in society. The increase in our own selfishness, which might be the best explanation for our reduced commitment, has consequences in our attitude towards increasing parts of society.
Alternatively, we are just as committed to those close to us but our wider commitment falls away rapidly. Again, we have moved from red to blue.
In either case, commitment has fallen in society.
Why has that happened, as I think is the case? I would simply offer neoliberalism - the political argument that only the individual matters - as the cause. And we are suffering the consequences.
NB: I am sure there are those who have written this much more elegantly than I have here. This is just my morning musing.
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On a related topic, I remember a remark about commitment from a manager in JP Morgan: “Anyone who thinks that people having families, civic duties, and social commitments – team captains, club secretaries, church wardens, volunteers – are less committed to their work, they’ve got it backward: you get commitment from people who make commitments, and people who have never committed to anything in their lives won’t show up for you, either”.
That’s a while ago, and at the very beginning of the major white-collar employers’ public commitment towards ‘work-life balance’.
Some companies did ‘get it’: they recognised that demanding more and more of their workers’ and managers’ lives was actually eroding the quality of their employees’ work and their commitment to their employer.
Some companies understood the value of a useful life, applying ‘work-life balance’ as window-dressing and using a charade of caring about it to identify and ‘assist’ employees with commitments by systematically sidelining them; and, all the while, demanding more and more ‘commitment’ to the exclusion of all life outside of work.
I’ve seen this play out, in the art that I practice – but will never teach, because I can never guarantee that my work will allow me to turn up for a class of the students – and in the civic and social and charitable work that I used to do.
All of the clubs and sports, societies and fraternities, charities and civic bodies that rely on affluent middle-class white-collar workers turning up and participating after work are diminishing in London; and many that I used to know have closed.
No-one’s got the time, and I do not doubt that this is happening in every city in our country.
Maybe we’ll get a chance at it when we retire.
That’s the dark side of the ‘commitment’ demanded by the dominant relationship in a white-collar worker’s life: there is no room to be committed to anything else.
Perhaps this is one of the causes of the chart you drew today.
And the value of that committed, unpaid, economy is enormous
To be practical, look at the preserved railway movement that underpins some parts of our tourist economy and its largely voluntary
Try doing it with a City job. It just won’t happen
Swimming with Sharks by Joris Luijendijk is worth a read on commitment in the financial services world. That is on the connection between the lack of it and selfish, amoral behaviour.
I’d say the reason we commit less is predicated in the family. Neoliberalism is just a byproduct of the destruction of the family.
Or the other way round?
Terry james Scales says:
“I’d say the reason we commit less is predicated in the family. Neoliberalism is just a byproduct of the destruction of the family.”
I hope as Richard suggests, it may be the other way round. Otherwise we’re on an exponential path.
Or perhaps the people who dreamed it up all had cruel nannies who never bought ice creams ?
Nile,
Yes, I agree it has all gone far beyond a joke, this idea of commitment to an employer.
It rarely seems to be a two way street.
You will have noticed I expect the need to be ‘passionate about….’ I actually heard a grown man tell me he was ‘passionate about sales’. Pity he hadn’t stayed in sales instead of moving into management. (rude word deleted) !!
Still, those were the good old days. Now you need to be ‘Obsessive about….
Where do we go from there I wonder…..
I was on the Tube yesterday in central London, and a homeless man got, and, very apologetically, asked for some money to get into a hostel for the night. The look of misery and distress on his face was palpable, so I searched in my pockets for some change. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I use cash less and less these days, I had none.
I was the only person in the carriage to take any notice of him at all. Now, he may well have addiction problems (he was very red faced), but, given that he thanked me for obviously looking for money, and then courteously thanked the rest of the carriage, though they acted as though he didn’t exist, in a perfectly lucid manner, I don’t think he did.
My point is that the most committed person in that carriage was the homeless man. He showed more civility and manners than the rest of us. I would have given a bit of help if I’d had change, so I suppose that’s some form of commitment to others.
For whatever reason; embarrassment, disdain, contempt or cynicism (all beggars are scrounging conmen), nobody else appeared to give a damn.
Thanks to the neoliberals, and their psychopathic individualism, this is where we’ve ended up.
Re AW
I would add city life to your list of things to blame for this indifference or harshness. It grows well on city soil, just as neoliberalism does.
In the country ( yes, the real one, it still exists, with proper peasants and all) the man would have got a few pennies out of his committed search for help.
If only because they always have change in the country…;)
City life can make you hard, remote, if you don’t watch it. You need to watch it, because it’s not inevitable, as many examples of solidarity have shown in recent terrorist attacks in London, Paris and elsewhere.
There’s no-one to watch you and give you a frown if you show a lack of humanity in a city, so you have to be even more prepared to commit to a common good.
No one will notice much if you don’t, unlike in the country, where you’ll be considered a loner, a selfish one.
But that can also mean that committing to the common good in the country can be less sincere than if you do so in a city. You do it because of outside pressure, because you want a good reputation, not just because you feel it’s morally and humanly the right thing to do.
Oh well…all these graphs first thing in the morning got me musing too…I’m sure there are many more causes for this lack of commitment, including increased mobility and a sense that we don’t belong.
I don’t think this is about some city/country divide Marie, I think it’s a demonstration of where decades of anti-societal politics has got us. Remember, some of the ares where anti immigrant sentiment (and the anti EU vote) are highest are country areas.
I doubt the homeless get any better treatment from the locals there than in London. In fact, I’m betting a lot of homeless people migrate to the cities in the hope of, if nothing else, getting more money to survive on by begging.
Please correct me if I’m wrong in this.
The massive increase in homelessness because of benefit cuts and the decimation of social housing is the primary reason you see so much of this. And it’s very depressing to see another human being reduced to such abject straits. I don’t think of myself as a particularly empathic person, but from now on I intend to carry change around me with me to hand to such poor sods. Not a solution really I know; but I feel that 10p or 20p isn’t going to bankrupt me, and just the fact that somebody else cares about them, if only for a fleeting moment, might make the misery of these peoples’ lives a little less.
God, when are we going to get a decent government in this country?
I think this would also resonate with the increase in loneliness. People justify dropping others – being less committed to others – because they are busy, prioritising their own needs and concerns. All reducing connections and diminishing society.
People work much longer hours & obviously that has an effect.
I don’t think that the increased bureaucracy has helped much either. I used to help out at a sports club & had to get my ‘not a kiddie-fiddler’ accreditation. I didn’t mind too much but the accreditation was, bizarrely, not read-across. A chap there had to get separate ‘not a kiddie-fiddler’ accreditations for the sports club, the scouts, the church & the youth club he ran at a school. He was, not unreasonably, a bit bitter about this & its no wonder a lot of people would rather just not bother.
Mind you, my time at the sports club did bring home to me how life had changed. When I commented on one young lady ‘s stance that “you need to keep your feet 12 inches apart” she instantly replied “sorry, don’t do inches”.
eriugenus says:
” ‘not a kiddie-fiddler’ accreditation. I didn’t mind too much but the accreditation was, bizarrely, not read-across.”
Well actually they are read across. Except that not many people know that and most organisations seem to insist on having their own personal search done.
It isn’t strictly necessary, but it’s what happens. It’s to do with the way it was introduced I think; that set the pattern.
I regard it as outrageous that some employers expect an employee to pick-up the tab for it.
The whole business is indicative of the extent to which trust has broken down, and communities have broken up.
Congratulations Margaret; no such thing as society just a random collection of strangers.
I blame the weather.
People on the continent (I’m thinking Spain particularly) sit out on the street much more. Now I know Spain is a bit of a bogey man at the moment, but my experience of big city Spain (Valencia and a couple of short visits to Barcelona) is that people are much more sociable.
It’s noticeable in this country that people are more likely to stand around and chatter to neighbours and passers by when the Sun shines.
In Britain we have relied on pubs and they are increasingly being taxed out of business. So we all live too much in our places of work and our little separate domestic boxes.
So we need more sunshine, shorter working hours and cheap booze. (Which we were promised when we joined the Common Market !! )
Sort it Richard please. 🙂
By 5
Can’t do sooner