Reflection on the Riots

Many people have been shocked by the recent riots in London and other cities.  Various explanations have been offered, and continue to be offered, as to why they occurred, with politicians and others disagreeing with each other, sometimes vehemently.  My own view is that the anatomy of the phenomenon is likely to be immensely complex, with no single explanatory factor and many and various different and disparate causes.  It would be better, in the light of this, to avoid some of the knee-jerk reactions we have heard.  The Prime Minister’s emphasis has been on being tough with the rioters, threatening to remove people from their ‘subsidised housing’ and taking away their benefits.  I disagree with him about this, not least on the grounds that exacerbating the difficulties that some of these people face is hardly likely to help to ensure that there is no repetition.

Among the various explanations for the riots are those which emphasise the sense of hopelessness and disenfranchisement experienced by at least some of those involved; and in a society in which the gap between rich and poor has been widening for many years now, this argument has to be taken seriously.  Some people emphasise what they see as a general moral breakdown in society, a problem which they argue has been getting gradually worse for decades; again, there is ample evidence to support the veracity of this claim.  Still others point to inadequate parenting and the scarcity of good role models, especially for boys.  There are, of course, other explanations offered.  In my view, they are all contributory factors and, importantly, they are all related in some way.

Many commentators remark upon a crisis in modern western culture of which all the above factors are characteristics.  I believe that the cultural crisis is directly related to the rise of secularity which is not, of course, to say that in the past everything was rosy, nor that people of faith are intrinsically any more 'moral' than others.  At the root of the problem, as I see it, is the fact that a secular worldview cannot give a coherent account of the intrinsic value of the human person.  As Christians, we would say that every human person is intrinsically valuable because every human person is created in the image of God.  By intrinsically valuable, I mean valuable by virtue of being human; and not valuable for what a person may be able to produce, or consume (such a view would see the human person as merely instrumentally valuable).

The reason why secularity cannot provide this account is because, in the absence of an acknowledgement of God and his sovereignty, all we can say about the human race is that we are here purely by chance and that any values we establish in society are purely subjective (and relative) values which can change by common consent at any time; or, more dangerously, by the consent of those who hold the reins of power or influence, whatever these might be.  In this framework, there are no abiding values which can claim universal consent.  So a state of affairs can easily come about in which people are valued for their ability to produce goods and profits; or for their intellectual or sporting ability, or their looks, or whatever.  When this occurs, others are then inevitably undervalued, being valued in merely relative terms.  There may even be a situation in which some people feel they have nothing to contribute, and consequently no real stake in society.  Some, including myself, would argue that this is precisely where we are today.

Universal, objective values can only ever be established and defended within and overarching framework which acknowledges the transcendent and sees a clear purpose in human life; a framework in which every human being is acknowledged to be unique and precious.  In addition to this, but inseparable from it, the framework must include an account of the ultimate purpose and rightful destiny of the human person.  Without such a teleological framework (telos = tending towards an end), there can be no adequate account of the intrinsic value of the human person, and there is always, therefore, the likelihood of violence, exploitation, feelings of alienation and the like.

Given the firmly secular nature of contemporary western society and culture, this sounds like a pessimistic outlook with regard to the future, but I would hope that Christians, and other mainstream religionists, might at least influence the debates which will now take place; and that a first step towards a better future might be for those in positions of power especially to try to ensure that every single member of our society can be affirmed and valued for their essential humanity and not for what they can ‘contribute’ to society in chiefly material terms. 

The Deficit - belt-tightening for all?

Last Sunday, Karen and I went to the big Lakeland shop at Windermere.  We do occasionally, and I always find myself people-watching whilst Karen browses around, picking up the odd item.  For the uninitiated, the shop sells a large range of household goods, of good quality, along with what I would describe as middle-class fripperies.  These fripperies include such items as banana-holders (yellow, to look like the actual banana, of course), overpriced Jamie Oliver mugs with monikers like 'Top Dad' and 'Green Fingers', and green mats to go in the bottom of one's freezer boxes to make the veg last (a bit) longer.  There is a long list of bourgeois accoutrements which every respectable home must have.

On Sunday, the place was packed.  At the one end of the shop, there is a large line of tills, and there was a decent-sized queue waiting to get to the tills.  One would never have thought that the country was labouring under the burden of a large fiscal deficit, only just out of recession and facing predictions that worse might yet come.  What was absolutely certain was that the people in the Lakeland shop weren't suffering too much.  Maybe this is what Cameron meant when he said that 'we're all in this together'.  Not so bad after all.

I've always noted that the affluent benefit most in an economic boom and suffer least in a slump.  The concomitant is also evident: the least well-off suffer most in a slump and benefit the least in a boom.  I also believe that the current government's approach to our fiscal challenges is primarily an ideological one.  The ideology is essentially to do with reconfiguring the national economy in favour of the 'private' over the 'public'.  Only yesterday, it was announced that public sector pay had fallen in real terms at the very same time that there had been an unprecedented rise in private sector pay.  Lansley's proposed health reforms provide another example of this priority.

In an article on 29th March this year, Johann Hari called 'the deficit' 'the biggest lie in British politics'.  He says that we have been fed a false account as to how we are in crisis and that the medicine prescribed is inappropriate.  He adds, correctly, that what appears to be broad philosophical consensus between the main political parties is simply not challenged, except by a few Nobel Prize-winning economists.  The lie centres upon the so-called debt crisis and the supposed need to eradicate the debt rapidly.

Hari goes on to say that, as a proportion of GDP, the British national debt has been higher than it is now for 200 of the last 250 years; that Japan's national debt is three times ours, and yet they are still borrowing at good rates.  Cameron says that the bond markets demand that we pay off the deficit rapidly because, if we don't, our national credit rating will be downgraded and then we shall have to pay the debt at much higher rates of interest.  Hari argues that the bond markets are making no such threat; indeed, he cites the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman, who says that the bond markets actually punish those who cut too quickly and deeply and thereby damage the prospects of economic growth.  It's interesting that the last two countries to have their credit rating downgraded are Ireland and Spain, both of whom did precisely what Cameron is arguing for.

The economist who drew the salient lessons from the Great Depression, Hari says, was John Maynard Keynes.  These lessons are as follows.  In a recession, individuals sensibly cut back their spending and save more.  This leads to a fall in private demand and a fall in economic activity.  But if, at the same time, governments cut back, too, then overall demand falls, and recession can easily tip into a depression.  This suggests that governments must act counter-intuitively: they must borrow, spend, and jump-start the economy, so as to prevent economic collapse and restore growth.  Keynes calls this 'the paradox of thrift'.

It seems to have been forgotten by virtually everyone (or perhaps deliberately overlooked) that it was the government's decision to re-arm for the Second World War in the 1930s which was perhaps the biggest single factor in the emergence of Britain from the years of austerity.  This re-armament was financed out of a public purse which ordinary people had been led to believe was empty.  This programme of public expenditure not only enabled Britain to resist Hitler, but provided the stimulus which put the nation back to work. 

It has to be said, sadly, that even the Labour Party (with the exception of a few individuals), has utterly failed to challenge Cameron's basic approach.  Its message seems to echo that of the coalition government, arguing only that we should go slower and to a lesser degree.

I believe that Cameron's approach is doctrinaire.  He has, after all, called himself the 'Child of Thatcher' in the past.  He and Osborne discern, in the present economic climate, an opportunity to bring about a fundamental shift in our national economy towards a free-market, and much more laissez-faire environment.  In her book, The Shock Doctrine (2007), Naomi Klein gives a long list of examples of politicians all over the world, in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Poland, South Africa and Russia, consciously and deliberately using adverse economic conditions, often actually confected by Friedmanite economists themselves, to bring about drastic shifts of a kind that enable the rich to exploit the poor.  The International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation have been willing accomplices in this exploitation of people's misery in these countries; indeed, in most cases, they have made financial aid  to impoverished countries dependent upon the adoption of a political system designed to faciliate the looting of their countries by predatory capitalists.

These shifts have served to widen immeasurably the gulf between rich and poor.  In our own country at the present time, it is the pooerst who are bearing the brunt; it is those most dependent on support of various kinds who are feeling the pinch and paying the price of a crisis caused by greedy individuals in the banking sector and elsewhere.

Those shopping in the Lakeland shop last weekend seemed immune to the supposedly straitened circumstances.  When the economy emerges into better times, the tills will truly be groaning, whereas our public services and the pensions of ordinary working people will have seen an unparalleled curtailment.

Human Resources?

Led by commerce, personnel departments have generally been re-named as 'Human Resources'.  This change has been far-reaching indeed; the term personnel has all but disappeared, and the new designation is ubiquitous indeed.  Even in the Church of England (I say 'even' but it's hardly surprising), HR departments have sprung up everywhere.

It strikes me that this redesignation is a real retrograde step; or it is as far as 'persons' are concerned.  I imagine the term HR is a form of accountant-speak in which everything is reduced to a matter of pounds and pence.  The problem with the term is that it is, in a sense, de-humanising.  It implicitly (explicitly?) reduces persons (with all that the term implies in terms of inalienable rights and the like),  to mere 'resources'.  Human-beings, in this new milieu, are effectively reduced to merely instrumental value, like the photocopier or the fax machine.  As resources, they can be called upon, deployed, exploited (even in the best sense) in the furtherance of an end beyond themselves and in which they may have no share.  A resource is something essentially inert, and of no value until it is utilised.

The word 'personnel', by contrast, explicitly reminds those in positions of authority, that they are dealing with persons and not mere resources.  Persons have views, opinions and values.  Their very presence and status as persons serves as a reminder that the true value of any work or human enterprise derives from the value of those for whom that work is undertaken, an insight articulated memorably by Pope Paul VI in a homily on the feast of the Holy Family way back in 1964.

Persons, then, have  an intrinsic value.  Indeed, they are the end to which all human endeavour is oriented.  Resources have an instrumental, or relative, value.  Those who would wish to suggest that, over the past thirty years, most people's working lives have worsened in so many ways, might well argue that the change from 'personnel' to 'human resources' has the character of an uncorrected Freudian slip.

The Moral Life and the Metaphysics of Participation

Last Sunday, the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, the lectionary presented us with two scripture readings which are closely related.  The first was an extract from the so-called 'Holiness Code' of the book of Leviticus, which represents a landmark in the development of Jewish thought.  There is an analogical relationship between the character of the obedient Israelite and God's own nature:  Israel is called not simply to 'do this' or 'avoid that', but rather to reflect in its own collective life the pattern of God's holiness.  'Be holy', says the Lord, 'for I, the Lord your God, am holy'.  Then, in the reading from St Matthew's Gospel, the themes are pressed further: Jesus tells the disciples that they are to 'be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect'.  Those who follow Jesus are called to embrace an ethic that goes way beyond the call to love one's neighbour; they are to love their enemies, too.  In striving to do this, they reflect God's nature, albeit to a limited degree.

On the face of it, the call to perfection seems unrealistic and impossible.  But Christian salvation, in all its fullness, means to share the very life of God.  The Christian belief in the possibility of eternal life is a belief that our true and final destiny is perfect communion with God for all eternity.  Christians believe that they participate in this gift, to a limited degree, here and now, through baptism, eucharist and in the sacramental life generally.  Even more fundamentally, since not all people avail themselves of the sacraments, humans and creatures generally participate in the life of God through our very being, since we cannot bring ourselves to life and to birth.  Our very life is a participation in the life of the God who alone can give life.  The sacramental life of the Church builds up and nourishes this supernatural life in us. There is a very real sense in which we already reflect something of God.  So, for example, when a human being shows  genuine compassion, something of God's compassion is revealed.  Of course, God's compassion is of a higher order altogether, but the point is that our compassion is not wholly unrelated to that of God.  There is an analogical relationship between God's compassion and our own.

The two biblical passages are set firmly in the moral arena, though this arena should not be thought of as an enclosed realm, somehow separated from the generality of life.  One of the reasons we find the call to perfection conceptually difficult is that, in the West since the Enlightenment, morality has come to be seen as being to do with right and wrong action.  So our focus tends to be on what people do, or don't do, in a given situation.  From this, we see a convenient separation made all the time between the public and the private, as if the living of a kind of schizophrenic life is somehow normal.  This is evidenced by the argument prevalent today about how it doesn't matter what a public person is like in their so-called private life, so long as they do their job properly.  It's as if there is never, and can never be, any meaningful connection between these two apparently separate realms; there is an apparently wholly-acceptable caesura interposed by modernity right down the middle of the individual moral life.  So, on this basis, an acceptable public life could simply amount to a carefully-cultivated public life lived by someone whose so-called private behaviour is completely reprehensible.

Ancient Greek ethics was completely unlike this.  Rather than focussing on action, right and wrong, the focus was on the development of a person's character.  This character was built up patiently by the practice of the so-called virtues, such as bravery, self-control, gentleness, friendliness, truthfulness, justice and so on.  Practising these qualities, or excellences, would build up a person's character so that they would live (and act) virtuously because of the sort of person they were, or had become, or were becoming.

Christian morality has a similar background, except that it is recognised that we do not possess, in and of ourselves, the capacity to be good, unequivocally.  We are indeed, as humans, basically good (because we have been created by God), but we have marred his image in us through sin.  So, as St Thomas Aquinas taught, in the thirteenth century, we need grace in order that our nature may be perfected, by God.

So, through God's grace, we participate in God's life which, in turn, means that we participate in his perfection.  The call to perfection that Jesus issues is, then, not unreasonable and unrealistic, since it is clear that we cannot perfect ourselves, any more than we were able to bring ourselves into being in the first place.  It is a work of God in us.

Closed Shops

I imagine that most people of a certain age, say fifty or over, can remember the closed shops operated by the trades unions in the 1970s.  These meant that all the employees at certain factories had to belong to the particular union operating there in order to work there.  Even though this arrangement with the employers contributed much to the improvement of the lot of employees, there was the sense among many people that this was a good example of a restrictive practice.  In the early 1980, Margaret Thatcher's new government, in raft of anti-union legislation, made the union closed shop illegal.  It's fair to say that the government had widespread public support for this.

After its election to in 1997, new Labour did nothing to overturn any of the anti-union laws brought in by Mrs Thatcher's government, even though the rights of working people had been curtailed substantially.

It is easy to see the class-prejudice behind all this, since the anti-union legislation was predicated upon the idea that the closed shop had a restrictive effect on business - it could be seen to tie the hands of employers; and, in some cases, this was so.  But what it certainly meant was that employers could not simply ride rough-shod over their employees.  Where the class-prejudice becomes clear is that there is no such governmental objection to the closed shops and the consequent restrictive practices of the professions.  These have been left untouched by any inhibitive legislation at all, so that the professions can charge the rest of us what they like for their services.  Indeed, it seems to me that, if anything, they are thriving more now that at any time in the past.

I was speaking to someone recently who told me that he had consulted a solicitor and been charged £150.00 for a not-very-involved letter.  We have recently had a bill for £331.00 for some not-very-extensive vet treatment for a cat.  A few years ago, my NHS dentist decided that he was going to operate only under the Denplan scheme - this meant that instead of paying around £35.00 annually for my dental treament (nearly always only check-ups) I was now going to be asked for a monthly sum which I calculated would represent a 550% increase in the cost to me.  For this, I would be allowed to attend every three months instead of every six; but given that I hardly need to go every six, represents a fatuous offer indeed.  The same dentist recently charged an elderly and not very well-off woman I know £900.00 for some treatment and then told her not to worry because she could pay in instalments.  I told this dentist to keep his Denplan, and decided instead to go to a private dentist where I just pay at the time for the treatment I have; and whilst this has so far been cheaper to me than Denplan, I've only had check-ups.  I'm sure that if I needed say, a crown, I would have to save up for it.  At my last examination, I was in the chair for around ninety seconds (yes, I timed it) and then discovered that the fee had risen to £30.00 (it was £15.00 when I started there four years ago) - nice work if you can get it.  Our parish architect has an hourly rate of £77.00 for his services, merely for consultation.

I could, of course, go on.  I cannot escape the impression that, even as most people are really feeling the squeeze, the members of the various professions are getting richer and richer.  Their practices are restrictive, in that their basic fees are set down by their respective professional bodies, so that, if (for example) I decide to use a different vet next time, I shall find the same fee-rates wherever I go.  The inescapable truth is that the professions operate far more effective and tighly organised closed shops than the trades unions ever did; and not only do they do it with impunity, they do it with the support and encouragement of successive governments. 

Funerals and Death

I have just written, as I do every year, to our local funeral directors to inform them of the revised fees for funerals in the church building.  Funeral fees come in two parts: there is the statutory part, fixed centrally, of which the funeral directors are informed from 'the centre'; then there is the parochial part, fixed locally, and which covers such costs as organists, vergers and the like.

In addition to imparting this information, I also made a plea this year.  Over recent years, and probably traceable back to the time of the funeral of Princess Diana, there has been a move towards the description of a funeral service as 'A celebration of the life of...'  There has been an increase in the number of humanist/secular funeral services for people who want to avoid any religious context for the laying-to-rest of their loved ones.  I have no complaint about this; whilst I would like people in our culture to be fervent in faith, I recognise that this is generally not so, and that a non-religious service is more appropriate and has greater integrity for many.  But a service which is simply 'a celebration of the life' of a person is, in fact, a very different thing from a Christian funeral service, in which the departed person is commended to God in faith, accompanied by prayers offered in the Christian hope of God's mercy.  There is a 'vertical' dimension to any religious service which is absent, by definition, in a secular rite.

So my plea to the funeral directors was to avoid the phrase 'A celebration of the life of..' whenever they are asked by a family to prepare an order of service (such 'orders of service' are generally not orders of service at all; they just contain the words of the hymns chosen).  Instead, I've asked them to describe the service according to what it actually is: a 'Funeral Service for..'.  I understand that the 'celebration of the life of' model is now prevalent everywhere, even within the church, though i have to say that it amazes me that the Church so easily lapses into a secular default position instead of upholding its principles.

'A celebration of the life of...'speaks to me of the secular understanding of death as the complete negation of what 'life' is about, and of the way in which death remains a kind of taboo subject in modern western culture.  This understanding, incidentally, also underpins the common practice in our hospitals of pumping into terminally-ill patients large doses of very aggressive (and expensive) chemotherapy with no prospect of cure but only the hope of a slightly lenghthened life lived in misery because the treatment is so unpleasant.  For Christians, though, death is understood as a part of life and as the gateway to the ultimate fulfilment of life.  This doesn't mean, of course, that there is no place for sorrow when a loved one dies; but it does throw the emphasis upon the virtue of hope in the midst of sorrow, loss and death.  Happily, it is nearly always the case that there is a place for thanksgiving (to God) for the life of a person who has died, and this should and must find a place in the funeral rites.  But there is a lot more to a Christian funeral service than this.  To describe such a service as a celebration of the life of a person is reductive in the extreme, and a tendency that all Christian priests, ministers and people should resist.