How might the world be different

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In three recent blogs – The Biology of Compassion; Life is a Master-class in Cooperativeness; and The Battle for Darwin’s Soul – I have argued that a capacity for Compassion (kindness; love) is deeply embedded in our psyche. We should have far more faith in ourselves, and in “human nature” in general.  Here and in future articles I want to ask, how would the world be different if we took this idea seriously, and acted upon it?

This whole website is intended to develop, elaborate, promulgate, and generally promote just a few very simple ideas. But, I suggest, they are ideas which, if applied, could yet save the world from meltdown. In particular:  

1: We, humanity, need to define and agree our Goal – what we should be trying to achieve, and why. And, I suggest, our Goal should be “to create convivial societies, with personal fulfilment, within a flourishing biosphere”. 

All three are important: society as a whole; individuals; and the living world. There is no hierarchy. If any one of the three falls short, all are compromised. 

All our policies and action should be geared towards this Goal. Whatever nudges us closer to the Goal can properly be called “Progress”. Whatever detracts from the Goal or gets in the way is retrogressive. (We do need to leave plenty of time to relax, however – or as they say in The Idler, to be idle. Fun is vital – provided it’s not the kind that messes up the lives of other people, or destroys our fellow creatures. There are plenty of options.)

Most of what is happening in the modern world is retrogressive, including many of the policies and technologies that big governments like ours put their weight behind, and banks and corporates and venture capitalists put their investors’ money behind. 

No wonder the world is in a mess. 

2: To achieve the Goal we need to embed everything we do and think about in the Bedrock Principles of Morality and Ecology. 

Morality – moral philosophy — aspires to tell us what it is good to do. 

Ecology can in principle tell us what we need to do in order to achieve the Goal; and what it is possible to do within the limits of this finite world – which means within the “laws” of physics and the realities of biology. 

To anticipate: I don’t see how any political or economic system can hope to operate for the general good, or sustainably, unless it is rooted, explicitly or implicitly, in the bedrock principles of morality and ecology.  To root all our endeavours in an ultra-competitive drive to increase our own material wealth or – more abstractly – to increase GDP, seems a kind of madness. Yet it has become the norm. No wonder the world is in a mess. 

3:The three principal Bedrock Principles of Morality are the Virtues of Compassion, Humility, and the Sense of Oneness. 

Compassion implies true concern for the wellbeing of others, rooted in the mysterious but real quality of compassion: the capacity to feel the suffering of others, and to care about it. There is good evidence that other species also have this capacity – some perhaps more than we do. Compassion should be extended to all human beings, and beyond humanity to include all living creatures. (See also on this website: “The biology of compassion; work in progress”; “Life is a master-class in cooperativeness”; and “The battle for Darwin’s soul”). 

Humility implies modesty – but also, much more than that, it is the opposite of and the antidote to hubris, which to the Old Greeks was the greatest folly and sin of all. Hubris to the Greeks implied that we, human beings, presumed to usurp the power of the gods.  In the modern world, buoyed up as we are by the insights of science and by the power of modern technologies, hubris is writ large. Modern science and tech are indeed wondrous but they leave us far short of God-like omniscience. In the end, for all our science, life and the universe are way beyond our ken. Yet we assume nonetheless that we have the knowledge to re-shape the world as we choose; that we know what we are doing. We assume furthermore or at least the world’s most powerful people do – heads of state, bankers and captains of industry, and the super-rich in general – that we have a right to do more or less whatever we want to do. 

Empires and wars are founded on hubris.  So too, and in the end most destructively, is our treatment of the natural world and our fellow creatures. The natural world should be seen as a miracle and a gift yet we bash it around not simply to meet our needs but also, insouciantly, just to satisfy our whims, and particularly the whims of the very rich.  

Oneness is the feeling and the conviction that all human beings and indeed all living creatures are part of the same all-embracing whole — a whole which the English scientist James Lovelock called Gaia. 

These three virtues between them are “the Bedrock Principles of Morality”. Unsurprisingly therefore, and encouragingly, they are also at the heart of all the global religions and of many and perhaps most traditional belief systems too – and to this extent they may reasonably be said to be more or less universal. To be sure, the various religions differ somewhat in the emphasis they place on the various virtues. In particular, the Eastern religions place more emphasis on the idea of Oneness than Christianity usually does. But all the global religions stress, in particular, the importance of Compassion. (Christians commonly prefer the term “Love”, which is not perhaps identical but is certainly in the same family.) 

Most of the perceived differences between religions and denominations that have so often led to strife are matters of manners or custom, or theological nicety, rather than of deep moral principle. 

4: Human beings, emphatically, are not the exclusively self-centred, venal and untrustworthy creatures that philosophers, theologians, and, of late, some evolutionary biologists have been wont to tell us.  We can all behave badly from time to time. But I reckon we should take heed of the 14 or 15-year-old Anne Frank. In 1941 or thereabouts, as she and her family hid from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam, with the Gestapo knocking at the door, she wrote in her diary:

“… in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” 

There are many reasons to believe that this is so – not least the way that local people in English towns, of all religions and none, rallied to repair the damage to a mosques and hotels and streets after the riots of August 2024; and people the world over risk their own lives to save others whenever disaster strikes. Indeed, as I argued in my recent blog (“The Biology of Compassion: Work in Progress”), a capacity for compassion is deeply embedded in our psyche and in our biology. It is lacking only in psychopaths. That we should be compassionate is indeed a Darwinian prediction – though this is not what is generally believed, or taught. It is unfortunately the case, however, that some of the most influential people in the world, including the Far Right leaders who organized the August riots, and some of their associates now in parliament, and quite a few heads of state, and some financiers and captains of industry, are psychopaths, at least when judged by normal standards. (See “Idiots and Gangsters”, posted January 12 2023.) 

Humanity’s main fault, I suggest, is not that we are bad, but that we too easily allow ourselves to be led and dominated by those who are. We are primates, after all, and primates in general have a great propensity to follow charismatic leaders. Some charismatic leaders are good, sometimes very good indeed: Jesus, Martin Luther King, the present Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu come readily to mind. But there are no guarantees. Bad people may be very charismatic too. 

The vox pops that feature in TV news are very revealing. To be sure, some of the interviewees express unsavoury views about whatever minority they have decided to scapegoat. But most say only that they want to live at peace with their neighbours, and keep the natural world in good heart, and get on with their own lives. Yet people nonetheless seem to have been persuaded by all the rhetoric from on high that we need “strong leaders” to keep us from each other’s throats. Even if we ourselves are “nice”, the message has it, others are not, or cannot be trusted. Entire nations are condemned out of hand – the Germans, the Russians, the Chinese, the French, the English – depending on the latest twist of diplomacy. So it was that in the two World Wars British and German schoolteachers and plumbers were roped in to shoot German and British schoolteachers and plumbers in defence of a ruling class who in normal times would hardly have given them the time of day; and the same principle applies now in Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and the plethora of other trouble spots. In times of peace people who in times of war try to kill each other can be the best of friends. But wars are made by governments, not by people at large. 

Truly, we need to make democracy work so that what we, the bulk of humanity, actually do reflects our true feelings, and we don’t simply march to the drum of some ideology or the fancies and ambitions and whims of whoever happens to have their hands on the levers of power. But for this to happen, we need to have more faith in ourselves, and in other people. 

5: We, human beings, as intelligent creatures, have choice; and as Cardinal John Henry Newman commented in a letter to a friend in 1848: 

“We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe.”

I do feel though that “believe” is too big a word. I suggest we should say, rather, 

“Everyone can choose what ideas to take seriously”. 

I suggest that if we really did gear all our thoughts and efforts to the Goal, and if we really did root all our polices and actions in the Bedrock Principles of Morality and Ecology, then we and our fellow creatures could still be looking forward to a long and glorious future – the next million years for starters. If we do not – if we continue as we are – then we will simply lurch from crisis to crisis and will be lucky to survive till the end of this century in a tolerable form. For many millions of people life is already intolerable, or indeed impossible, and many or most of our fellow creatures are in imminent danger of extinction. The stakes could hardly be higher – and the choice is ours. 

Most of us – all who are not psychopaths – would surely prefer to live convivially and securely, and would surely prefer to be living in a flourishing biosphere, and this, surely, should be well within our capability. Only psychopaths positively enjoy strife and destruction and revel in other people’s suffering, So why not take the idea seriously, and go for it? 

I want to discuss all that this implies in practice in a series of blogs over the next few weeks or months or as long as it takes – and would be very pleased as always if people offered comments. To provide some structure to the whole endeavour, I will group my own and other people’s contributions under four main headings: 

GOAL

ACTION

INFRASTRUCTURE

MINDSET

The whole series could be grouped under the grand title of, say, “How might the world be different” (unless anyone can suggest anything better). To kick things off I have written a piece under ACTION called “Technology — and especially Farming — for a Kinder World”, as follows. Others in the series will follow as and when. 

The overall intent, and the raison d’etre of this website  is to help to create a coherent philosophy as a contribution to a global movement – a movement that is already well in train – that will shift the global Zeitgeist, and lay the foundations of a much and urgently needed Renaissance (as outlined more fully in my latest book, The Great Re-Think).  We really do need to re-think everything, and re-structure where necessary, if we’re to save the world from meltdown. 

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