A Good Society

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Listen to any talk of plans on how to restructure our world, our communities, our collective way of life, and it’s the political and economic arrangements that everyone talks about.  Our thoughts naturally settle on such things – trade, elections, policies, debt recovery, monetary agreements, global financial controls.  It’s only natural, but there’s more to it.

All such things are superstructures, not the fundamentals.  They are built upon something in the hearts and minds of people – on ethical, intellectual, inclusive and spiritual foundations capable of supporting all the changes.

Every great accomplishment we have reached as a people came about as the result of compromise – it was never unanimous.  The Canadian Charter, American Constitution, Magna Carta, United Nations Charter, France’s 1793 Constitution – these and countless more were achieved with purpose but never from just one single point of view.  

Commentators give countless reasons for such achievements- all valid – but ultimately, they came down to the nature of those crafting and supporting their conclusions.  Opposition was fierce.  Outcomes were hardly a sure thing.  Once signed, cultural acceptance had to be shaped, and the ability of citizens to both accept and socially enable those decisions was essential for success.

All this is just another way of saying that if leaders and their people lack the ethical and intellectual fibre to build such documents into the future of their respective societies, all the efforts going into the accomplishments would have been wasted.

Every politician faces two problems.  The first is building a political organization that is actually capable of making the nation better without becoming preoccupied with fighting other political parties – an almost impossible task in today’s political climate.  But the second is far more vital and difficult – to lead your constituency in a fashion that draws them outside of their concerns and draws them into the larger world of humanity.  Then comes the great question: do the citizens possess the moral, intellectual, and, yes, statesmanship abilities to construct a better future that includes the betterment of all?  If not, then nothing can be done.

In a world full of everyone who seems in it for themselves, where the individual is the prime agent of humanity, it takes more than Facebook friends or Twitter followers to build that more inclusive world.  It takes a sense of right and wrong, the admission that one’s sincere opinion is not necessarily a fact, humility, and the ability to get beyond oneself, place another person in your place, and derive the ability to walk in their shoes. 

However one derived such character-building traits – religion, meditation, education, trials, solid family and friends – they are the stuff of refined citizenship and the foundation of future hope.  Without them, it remains hard to build anything that can last or get us out of our present predicaments.

We must all be better, do better, to get this world to the next step of its development.  The Great Wall of China, 23,000 kilometres long, was constructed as a fortification to gain security for the Chinese people and was deemed impregnable.  Yet, within a few years, it was breached on three different occasions – not by breaking it down but by bribing the guards.

This is ever the way with civilizations.  They can’t maintain the strengths that built them in the first place.  People become complacent.  Leaders eventually serve themselves.  And citizens sacrifice their guardianship for greed.  The answer to such things isn’t a better economy but better people – leaders, citizens, companies, organizations, churches, everyone.  The greatest fabric of any nation is neither its might nor its wealth but its character.  If it is principled, humble, compassionate, outward-looking, it will grow from strength to strength, even following a pandemic.  If it has grown complacent, distracted, apathetic and self-serving, it remains incapable of building a better future.  The choice of decline or progress, as always, is ours. It’s not about what we can do, but who we are.