21st Century Virtues: How Are They Failing Our Democracy – Lucinda Holdforth
21st Century Virtues: How Are They Failing Our Democracy by Lucinda Holdforth is an important book for all who are concerned about the future of democracy, and even more important for those who aren’t.
Once upon a time there was a belief that we lived in a society or community. We had obligations to ourselves and our family, of course, but we also had an obligation to the society in which we lived.
Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that “there is no such thing as society” might be excused by those who agree that society is an abstract concept, like the army, but most people generally believed that society did exist in a real, experienced sense and that it was in the interests of all of us to defend it.
What has happened since Thatcher made that statement is that for many people society has ceased to be a focus of their thoughts and we have become increasingly obsessed by the self. We have done this at a time when neoliberalism has encouraged us to focus on ourselves rather than focus on changes taking place in society which have led to greater inequality. But hey, society doesn’t exist, so what does that matter?
Instead, we have created a series of virtues for the 21st century. These are different from the ones that went before, and the main difference is that they focus on the individual. Authenticity, empathy, humility are 21st century virtues and they all focus on the individual. So is self-care and vulnerability.
What each of these virtues ignore is the self as part of a wider community. More significantly, that the self as a meaningful being can only exist in a wider community. The more we focus on ourselves, and we ignore the world and, in doing this, we open the door to totalitarianism and a loss of democracy.
There is an emphasis on making sure that people are not offended, but, as Holdforth explains clearly, it is a condition of democracy that we speak with people with whom we don’t agree and listen to views which we often find unpleasant. A democracy could not survive without such discussions.
At the same time, we focus on ourselves we seem to have a desperate urge to share the experience and use social media as a means of showing others that we have virtues, that we are authentic and empathetic, and we can be humble.
The fact that we seem to have an epidemic of eating disorders, depression, loneliness, and performance anxiety are not, as social media would have us believe, because we are not being authentic or empathetic or humble. It is purely a product of neoliberalism, which has turned us all into consumers who live in a world where the wealthy rule and where our capacity to act collectively has been removed.
Lucinda Holdforth succinctly looks at these changes in our lives and underlines the dangers which the move towards self-centredness, however it is portrayed in TED Talks and LinkedIn, creates and the threat which it makes.
If we are all focussed on ourselves, how can we defend democracy when it is under attack? If we see no further than ourselves, or if we insist on seeing the world solely through our own focus how can we defend ourselves – and others – from the rapacious requirements of business.
This is a book which should be read widely and talked about even more.
