Civilization

I am one of those who is concerned for our market democracies, for our values, and for the continuation of the progress humanity has made over the last number of decades, in living standards, life expectancy, in equality. I am concerned because we presume the values and norms and rules from which we have all benefited will last. I worry we are complacent, and that we don’t know how to reverse the trend. I am not the only one to be concerned. It is widely shared. But the challenge is not the analysis the solution. It is how to shift the odds in favour of continued growth, prosperity, peace.

I was discussing this with Jeremy Greenstock, our well known Ambassador to the UN for a long time. I said I was probably being pessimistic but we are seeing in countries to our east and to our west rising intolerance, challenges to fairness and to equality, and an erosion of standards of probity.

Jeremy rather theatrically looked out of the window of what was the my nice office over looking Whitehall and said. Well of course it has happened before. Then the Romans left, London collapsed and it took 500 years to get back to where it was. His advice? Fight this now.

So what is happening?

A surprising proportion of populations believe things some straightforward critical thinking should cause them to dismiss. We see a disappointing proportion of societies having no improvement in their standard of living over many years. We see a concentration of the advantages of globalisation in cities, hence also rural depopulation and urban growth. We see how easy it is to, almost, bring down a democracy by insurrection. The core issue is cohesion. We saw it with Brexit. Cities and villages voting different ways. Young and old by

and large going different ways. Degree holders going one way and so on Germany, France, India, the US. We all have the issue. In different ways.

If erosion of cohesion is the first issue, shrinking participation is another. I was at a conference in Edinburgh of university staff from across the UK and the moderator asked me ‘do you feel let down by our politicians’. Now the chief executive of the British Council was not going to say yes to that question. But what is interesting is what I found myself saying. Which was that I admire politicians. They work hard, they go out on a wet Thursday canvassing and worrying about the potholes on the roads in the estate I never visit. They engage. I don’t. So I cannot complain a particular party is not like me because I am not in it. If we, the lucky the educated, the talented are not in there can we really complain?

The third thing we see is that norms are being ignored. Norms can be broken but there is a price. Here the government can demand the price of supporting a well know British institution through the financial impact of Covid is the right to appoint the ceo and half the trustees but should it? Jobs should not go to cousins, contracts to friends, patronage to members of the tribe.

The other guard rail is acceptance of legitimacy. The opposition is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition not the enemy. Republicans and Democrats are not Capulets and Montegues. Private and public are not uniformly good or bad. The next thing we see is an imbalance in governance. An over powerful central state, or a weak state with weak institutions. An unclear vision of how local and central operate, and inter operate. Courts which are being weakened by attacking their autonomy deliberately or by starving them of resources neglectfully. Media which is critical or questioning being seen as working against the state rather than being an essential if annoying aid to transparency and accountability. Universities being seen as nests of liberalism or orthodoxy as the mood strikes.

So I do not trust my opponents. I don’t trust the media, science, the church, the council, the courts, the neighbours. And I definitely don’t trust the ‘other’ who I have not met and don’t know. Which brings me back to the job I do running a research centre on Trust, Peace and Social Relations. Business needs a trustful system. We need partners we have relationships with, markets which we can rely on, standards we uphold, specs we adhere to, rules which we follow and know will be followed. Some of the trust we can build ourselves, some relies on the state. How the state goes about that is an interesting question.

If you sit in class learning theory of international relations you learn that there are essentially three world views. The first is so-called realism. It is anarchy out there, the world is a dangerous place, you cannot trust the neighbours so you need a big military backed by a big economy. The second is Institutionalism. We are more secure if we pool sovereignty and tackle issues of mutual interest, set up a rules based international system, and have institutions to back that up. The rules based system needs trust to function.

And the third is constructivism. We are products of our experiences. If you want to move on from the past to build the future, change experience in the present. It pays to invest in building trust. All three theories are true in part and at times, and are best seen as lenses to look through. This is what we research in my research centre. How to engender trust and build the inter and intra-society conditions for a business or a state to succeed and for peace to exist.

Sustaining our position in the competitive world means yes having a strong UK, yes having the right membership of the right multilateral clubs, but the UK being out there, connected,

understood, liked, experienced is down to people. Our artists, our professors, our young people, our traders should travel. We know trust in the UK goes up by half and propensity to trade similarly when people experience the UK, educationally, culturally, scientifically.

So what do I think we should all do individually?

My first proposal is that we encourage political participation by our friends, our colleagues, our staff. People, including me, should join a party, a sensible party, and make at least the community we live in better. The second is that business collectively does need to champion cohesion and inclusion, standards and ethics, in the communities we work in, home and abroad. We should do that mostly by expecting it of ourselves of our partners and of government.

Because the cost of not doing so, just like the cost of not being ready for a pandemic is a lot more that the cost of the insurance policy. If you will forgive an engineering metaphor. There is a thing called a Kano diagram. It is a graph of how good you are doing something against the kudos you get for that. Think about a car. The more miles you get per gallon the happier you are. It is linear. Think about your first CD player in your car with the CD rack in the boot. Not great but the fact you had one at all was a source of joy – it is an excitement feature, not great but high kudos. But then there is the other type. You can be brilliant at it but kudos is limited. But if you fail at it you are out of the game. The wheel of our new cars never fall off when you are driving. Not a compelling argument for a sale. But if the wheels do fall off sales will fall off a cliff.

And that is the problem with our market democracies. We have forgotten what those things are which set the conditions for success. They are not the exciting new feature. They are not the standard performance issues. They are the underlying conditions for success. The deep capabilities of our societies. We are not managing them, investing in them and building up our societal capital. This is not directly the role of individual businesses. But business needs it. And if we loose it business is in deep mire. We might like to think it is not our job but it is collectively – because we benefit most and have most to lose. I believe our democracies will prevail. We will adapt, learn and recommit. But it is the future we need to guard against.

That means participation, in means calling out the transgressions, it means working to strengthen the guard rails of forbearance and legitimacy. It means partnering to make our communities thrive. It means not leaving it to others. All it needs for evil to triumph if for good people to do nothing. But it is not all gloom. We will I suspect be fine.

Civilisation or at least progress might end shortly. But if we as individuals and as business engage – It won’t.

Sir Ciaran Devane
Executive Director
The Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations

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Civilization

I am one of those who is concerned for our market democracies, for our values, and for the continuation of the progress humanity has made over the last number of decades, in living standards, life expectancy, in equality. I am concerned because we presume the values and norms and rules from which we have all benefited will last. I worry we are complacent, and that we don’t know how to reverse the trend. I am not the only one to be concerned. It is widely shared. But the challenge is not the analysis the solution. It is how to shift the odds in favour of continued growth, prosperity, peace.

I was discussing this with Jeremy Greenstock, our well known Ambassador to the UN for a long time. I said I was probably being pessimistic but we are seeing in countries to our east and to our west rising intolerance, challenges to fairness and to equality, and an erosion of standards of probity.

Jeremy rather theatrically looked out of the window of what was the my nice office over looking Whitehall and said. Well of course it has happened before. Then the Romans left, London collapsed and it took 500 years to get back to where it was. His advice? Fight this now.

So what is happening?

A surprising proportion of populations believe things some straightforward critical thinking should cause them to dismiss. We see a disappointing proportion of societies having no improvement in their standard of living over many years. We see a concentration of the advantages of globalisation in cities, hence also rural depopulation and urban growth. We see how easy it is to, almost, bring down a democracy by insurrection. The core issue is cohesion. We saw it with Brexit. Cities and villages voting different ways. Young and old by

and large going different ways. Degree holders going one way and so on Germany, France, India, the US. We all have the issue. In different ways.

If erosion of cohesion is the first issue, shrinking participation is another. I was at a conference in Edinburgh of university staff from across the UK and the moderator asked me ‘do you feel let down by our politicians’. Now the chief executive of the British Council was not going to say yes to that question. But what is interesting is what I found myself saying. Which was that I admire politicians. They work hard, they go out on a wet Thursday canvassing and worrying about the potholes on the roads in the estate I never visit. They engage. I don’t. So I cannot complain a particular party is not like me because I am not in it. If we, the lucky the educated, the talented are not in there can we really complain?

The third thing we see is that norms are being ignored. Norms can be broken but there is a price. Here the government can demand the price of supporting a well know British institution through the financial impact of Covid is the right to appoint the ceo and half the trustees but should it? Jobs should not go to cousins, contracts to friends, patronage to members of the tribe.

The other guard rail is acceptance of legitimacy. The opposition is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition not the enemy. Republicans and Democrats are not Capulets and Montegues. Private and public are not uniformly good or bad. The next thing we see is an imbalance in governance. An over powerful central state, or a weak state with weak institutions. An unclear vision of how local and central operate, and inter operate. Courts which are being weakened by attacking their autonomy deliberately or by starving them of resources neglectfully. Media which is critical or questioning being seen as working against the state rather than being an essential if annoying aid to transparency and accountability. Universities being seen as nests of liberalism or orthodoxy as the mood strikes.

So I do not trust my opponents. I don’t trust the media, science, the church, the council, the courts, the neighbours. And I definitely don’t trust the ‘other’ who I have not met and don’t know. Which brings me back to the job I do running a research centre on Trust, Peace and Social Relations. Business needs a trustful system. We need partners we have relationships with, markets which we can rely on, standards we uphold, specs we adhere to, rules which we follow and know will be followed. Some of the trust we can build ourselves, some relies on the state. How the state goes about that is an interesting question.

If you sit in class learning theory of international relations you learn that there are essentially three world views. The first is so-called realism. It is anarchy out there, the world is a dangerous place, you cannot trust the neighbours so you need a big military backed by a big economy. The second is Institutionalism. We are more secure if we pool sovereignty and tackle issues of mutual interest, set up a rules based international system, and have institutions to back that up. The rules based system needs trust to function.

And the third is constructivism. We are products of our experiences. If you want to move on from the past to build the future, change experience in the present. It pays to invest in building trust. All three theories are true in part and at times, and are best seen as lenses to look through. This is what we research in my research centre. How to engender trust and build the inter and intra-society conditions for a business or a state to succeed and for peace to exist.

Sustaining our position in the competitive world means yes having a strong UK, yes having the right membership of the right multilateral clubs, but the UK being out there, connected,

understood, liked, experienced is down to people. Our artists, our professors, our young people, our traders should travel. We know trust in the UK goes up by half and propensity to trade similarly when people experience the UK, educationally, culturally, scientifically.

So what do I think we should all do individually?

My first proposal is that we encourage political participation by our friends, our colleagues, our staff. People, including me, should join a party, a sensible party, and make at least the community we live in better. The second is that business collectively does need to champion cohesion and inclusion, standards and ethics, in the communities we work in, home and abroad. We should do that mostly by expecting it of ourselves of our partners and of government.

Because the cost of not doing so, just like the cost of not being ready for a pandemic is a lot more that the cost of the insurance policy. If you will forgive an engineering metaphor. There is a thing called a Kano diagram. It is a graph of how good you are doing something against the kudos you get for that. Think about a car. The more miles you get per gallon the happier you are. It is linear. Think about your first CD player in your car with the CD rack in the boot. Not great but the fact you had one at all was a source of joy – it is an excitement feature, not great but high kudos. But then there is the other type. You can be brilliant at it but kudos is limited. But if you fail at it you are out of the game. The wheel of our new cars never fall off when you are driving. Not a compelling argument for a sale. But if the wheels do fall off sales will fall off a cliff.

And that is the problem with our market democracies. We have forgotten what those things are which set the conditions for success. They are not the exciting new feature. They are not the standard performance issues. They are the underlying conditions for success. The deep capabilities of our societies. We are not managing them, investing in them and building up our societal capital. This is not directly the role of individual businesses. But business needs it. And if we loose it business is in deep mire. We might like to think it is not our job but it is collectively – because we benefit most and have most to lose. I believe our democracies will prevail. We will adapt, learn and recommit. But it is the future we need to guard against.

That means participation, in means calling out the transgressions, it means working to strengthen the guard rails of forbearance and legitimacy. It means partnering to make our communities thrive. It means not leaving it to others. All it needs for evil to triumph if for good people to do nothing. But it is not all gloom. We will I suspect be fine.

Civilisation or at least progress might end shortly. But if we as individuals and as business engage – It won’t.

Sir Ciaran Devane
Executive Director
The Centre for Trust Peace and Social Relations

Previous article

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