I noted these paragraphs in the latest Substack by the author who writes as Aurelien, whose identity I know but will not share. H has considerable foreign affairs experience. For me, they summarise an aspect of the politics of care, and show that the idea is not new, but is necessary:
As it happens, and for reasons quite unconnected with these essays, I've been preparing to write something about George Orwell, whom I have always admired greatly as a person and writer, and I was struck once more by the way in which Orwell's moral vocabulary, and even universe, now seem so utterly removed from ours. For Orwell, the greatest virtues were honesty and authenticity, and his philosophy could be described in one word as “decency.” He didn't really care what people thought about what he thought, and what he wrote, which is why he was a relatively unsuccessful journalist until the end of his life, attacked from all sides. Likewise, Socialism, I think, was for Orwell primarily a question of the creation of a decent society, where people didn't have to starve or live in unhealthy conditions. (He was always very critical of Utopianists of all persuasions: as he said, the point of Socialism was not to make things perfect, but at least to make them better.) Winston Smith's famous observation 1984 that “if there was hope it lay in the proles,” was not a fantasy of some future revolution, but a pragmatic judgement that for any kind of society to survive at all, it was necessary to rely on the decency found among ordinary people, which the Party had abandoned as thoroughly as our current ruling class has.
It's hard to imagine such a vocabulary being employed today by our elites, or even at all. Orwell thought not simply that a decent society should be a political objective, but also that people should behave in their private lives and to each other with what he called “common decency.” That didn't exclude some pretty sharp exchanges between Orwell and his opponents on literary and political issues, but all of his contemporaries agreed that he was never spiteful or personal. That sounds hilarious now, if you ever stumble accidentally into the slime-pits of contemporary social media, but it was much more the case in his day than now.
“Decency” has been made into an Unword now, along I suppose with “honour,” “honesty,” “courage,” “shame” and other expressions which now form part of the glossary handed out to students obliged to read literature published before about 1980.
We need to reclaim these words. If the world is to survive, we must.
And let me stress that the whole article is worth reading. Aurélien asks an uncomfortable but necessary question: what happens when those who hold power no longer feel any moral obligation to others?
His argument is that modern political and economic systems increasingly reward those willing to ignore ethical constraints. In a world framed by self-interest, the common good is sidelined, and those most prepared to act without restraint are often those most likely to succeed.
The consequence is what might be called a systemic failure of morality. If individuals assume others will behave well, the greatest personal gain comes from exploiting that trust. When this logic operates at the top of society, where wealth and power are concentrated, the damage is magnified. Those with the greatest capacity to shape outcomes are also those least constrained by responsibility, creating a widening gap between public expectations of decency and elite behaviour.
The result is a breakdown in trust that cannot easily be repaired. Critically, most people still rely on cooperation, fairness and mutual obligation to make society function. But when those in charge act as if only personal advantage matters, the legitimacy of the whole system is called into question. A society that rewards moral indifference at the top risks not just inequality, but instability, and ultimately the erosion of the social fabric on which it depends.
This is an argument worth reflecting upon.
This is a Substack worth reading.
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Reminds me of a shocking take from The Trap – the 3 part documentary on Freedom by Adam Curtis (iPlayer).
Neoliberal economic models are predicated on actors who are self centred, compete against everyone else and operate only in their own narrow self interest. But most “real people” don’t behave that way ….. So who does? Neoliberal economists and psychopaths.
The/A problem is that their poor behaviour and values, and stigmatisation of “the others” has been normalised then reinforced as our society gets more fragmented and those that feel entitled have been less accountable.
I see our problem as, people only learn about the meaning of self interest from an economics perspective. Economics has a tendency to reduce all of human complexity to money. All our moral commitments are discarded and replaced by profit motive as if we are indifferent from them. It assumes that we can trick our moral conscious to believe bad things are indeed good as long as they come at the right price.
Funnily enough I just came across this
An economist who joined the US Marines aged 50 in 1942
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Douglas_(Illinois_politician)#Military_service
I rather liked
After Douglas left the service he returned to teach at the University of Chicago around 1946.[20] In 1947 he was awarded the highest honor in the economics profession when he was elected president of the American Economic Association.[21] But soon Douglas found himself at odds with the faculty at Chicago, stating, “… I was disconcerted to find that the economic and political conservatives had acquired almost complete dominance over my department and taught that market decisions were always right and profit values the supreme ones … If I stayed, it would be in an unfriendly environment.”[22] Unhappy with the situation at the university, Paul turned his attention to Illinois politics.
Nothing has changed in economics over 80 years……………
Agreed and thanks for noting that
Well put.
A conundrum I can’t explain – some of the most immoral people in politics, achieve their success by dishonestly stirring up faux moral outrage (eg: on immigration, or “benefit scroungers”) and it seems to work.
It is much harder to mobilise moral outrage in pursuit of truth and justice.
I bang on about morality a lot – maybe because I am a god-botherer. But I don’t have an easy explanation for why evil politicians manipulate moral outrage so successfully, and good people find it so difficult. I think the answer may have something to do with self-interest?
But, like Aurelen, I think that there is a moral majority
I heard a thing on Radio 4 at lunch time which was about joining the debate about mass praying in Trafalgar Square. There is no debate, there is only faux outrage from Farage and Badenoch. Why do the BBC jump on these bandwagons?
They are captured
Nothing to disagree with here.
We need to realise however that is the elite’s ability to ‘buy out’ decency with the power of their cash corrupting politics etc. People are essentially too often bribed out of their decency because those with pleonexia think that money – endless money – is the answer to everything. Those hiding criminality and stupidity in the City for example will be ‘looked after’ whenever the shit hits the fan and bonuses will be paid..
In reality, this is an abuse of money, a resource or ‘good’ for society used to make that society less decent instead. And of course the other way money is abused is NOT to use it to create decency, keep it scarce where if people don’t have enough of it they will be tempted into accepting indecent behaviour. If you keep a population with a lack of means, but sell them 24/7 capitalism, desperation creeps in and decency goes out the window.
More than anything though it shows us that for the rich to have so much power at their hands that they cannot wield it properly. Money simply carries them away. So the answer can only be to take it off them and dilute the power of money through the many.
I think this is called ‘democracy’? Now I’m not sure democracy exists. But say that I accepted that it did. Then I’ be even more certain that the more inequality you have, the less democracy we will have and, the less decency there will be.
“Those with the greatest capacity to shape outcomes are also those least constrained by responsibility, creating a widening gap between public expectations of decency and elite behaviour.”
How many of those “Elite”, if psychoanalysed, would meet the diagnosis of being a psychopath? Can a Politics of Care ever become a reality, unless we can somehow prevent these people, from ever getting close to the levers of power?
A quick AI definition of psychopathy gives:
“Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a persistent lack of empathy and remorse, shallow emotions, manipulation, deceitfulness, and antisocial behaviours. Individuals with this condition often appear charming and normal, while exhibiting high impulsivity, boldness, and a disregard for social norms and others’ safety”
Trump? Putin? Netanyahu? Musk? Thiel? Zuckerberg? Blair?
If we could re-frame these people from being “successful”, “clever”, “powerful” to being “not normal”, “dangerous”, “a threat to the rest of us”; might that begin to change perceptions?
I’m sorry if this is rather jumbled collection of thoughts, feel free to not post it; but if it strikes a chord, you might want to expand on it.
The turning point that hastened the end of McCarthy’s anti-communist witch-hunt was the lawyer for the US Army asking him, at a congressional hearing, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?”
(As an aside, the McCarthy’s lawyer was Roy Cohn, who later acted for Trump. You can see a shared sense of ethics.)
Plenty of people of whom that question could be asked today, but I suspect it would have no great effect.
I have a theory that the descent into the current moral morass was at least partly triggered by Blair’s second win — after it had become clear that he had blatantly lied to the public about WMDs. The lesson drawn by politicians of all colours was that lying has no electoral downside. Subsequent elections have further confirmed that lying is in fact a good way to get elected.
I mourn the passing of a more principled public life. It is why I believe we need a law criminalising ‘deliberately or recklessly misleading the public”. That really should be easy to enact: it would be a brave politician who argued that such lies should be permitted.