Last night I spoke at the East London Three Faiths Forum on the theme of whether society is losing touch with morality. My dialogue partner was Rabbi Alex Chapper of the Ilford Federation Synagogue, who is also a local magistrate.
My contribution to the evening can be found below. By contrast to my input, Alex argued that a sense of personal responsibility has been lost within society and cited the example of those that he encounters in his work as a magistrate as examples of this phenomenon. Our contributions kickstarted a lively debate exploring the issue further and focusing, in particular, on:
- whether morality is rules-based or character-based;
- the interplay between personal and social morality, in particular whether responsibility for obesity lies with those individuals consuming it or the companies that manufacture and promote it, or both; and
- whether distinctions can be made between universal moral principles - such as the Golden Rule - and changing ethical norms in specific societies and cultures.
Has society lost touch with morality?Morality simply put is about codes of conduct which are put forward by a society, a group, a religion or are accepted by an individual for his/her own behaviour. All human beings and the groups we form are characterized by a worldview, however poorly articulated, and that view of the world that we hold generates patterns or codes of behaviour that we tend to follow because they are the outworking of our beliefs about the world.
Incidentally, I think that this is as true for those who are atheists or humanists as it is for those who follow a particular religion. Two implications of this are that our different worldviews generate different codes of conduct (different moralities) and that our different worldviews are each based on unprovable assumptions about the world which we believe to be true. Therefore, all worldviews are ultimately based on faith (whether religious or not) and all worldviews generate codes of conduct or morality.
As a result, I think it is a fallacy to ask whether society has lost touch with morality. Morality is always particular to a society or group or religion and therefore rather than suggesting that there is a definitive morality with which we can lose touch, we should instead ask whose morality it is that we are discussing.
For each of our religions there have been periods in our respective histories when the morality of our religion has been the dominant morality in particular countries or among particular racial groups, as well as periods where the morality of our religions has been a minority morality. It seems to me most likely that for each of our religions in contemporary Britain our experience is that of our morality being in the minority.
We may want to debate later whether that is actually the case. If we agree that it is, then we might debate whether that is a good or a bad thing (there are pros and cons to both) and how we might respond either by seeking to gain or regain dominance for ‘our’ morality or some other approach. However, if accepted, what it does not mean is that, as a result, Britain has lost touch with morality. All societies have some form of generally accepted code of conduct which forms their sense of morality, even when that is not predominantly formed by one or the other of our religions.
We should also note that morality or codes of conduct are rarely clear-cut or pure. If it is accurate to say that contemporary British morality is not predominantly being shaped now by our three religions, we should recognize that our religions do nevertheless influence contemporary codes of conduct as can be seen, for example, in the legislation which has been introduced to outlaw discrimination on the basis of religion or belief in the workplace.
It would also seem accurate to suggest that the morality of a particular religion is also influenced and affected by the codes of conduct inherent in the wider society. I want to suggest that the dominant morality in our society is a consumerist morality and that Christianity, the religion I know best, has not been unaffected by this morality.
Having been thinking along these lines in preparing this talk, it was then fascinating to find a
feature article in last Saturday’s
Times arguing that we live in an age of turbo-consumerism; of instant gratification; of a voracious appetite for ‘stuff’; of living to shop. The article argues that “shopping has become the premier leisure activity” and that we have “gladly boarded the work-to-spend treadmill, the insatiable pursuit of “more”, which resulted in there being, for example, 121 mobile phones for every 100 people in the UK by 2008.”
One of those quoted in the article is
Neal Lawson, a political commentator and author of a book called
All Consuming. He argues that turbo-consumerism fosters a “new selfishness”:
“For the shopper there are no obligations to others, no responsibilities, just rights. If the consumer is king, the concept ‘because I’m worth it’ translates into a world where we are the centre of our own universe.” He adds, “Personal freedom to shop, to own, to do what you want is the guiding principle of our age.”
One example of this new selfishness that is given in the article is of a woman returning a dress to a fashion chain. Is there something wrong with it, she is asked. “No, I just got it home and changed my mind.” Then she asks if the reporter will use a pseudonym in the article and confides: “I’ve already worn it, actually, but everyone does it.” Does what? “You wear it once then take it back for a refund.”
As the article notes,
“A consumer society can’t allow us to stop shopping and be content because then the whole system would die. “Instead it has to sell us just enough to keep us going but never enough that our wants are satisfied,” [Lawson] says.”
He calls it “the heroin of human happiness” and it doesn’t take the Times’ reporter long to find those who are addicted:
“A young woman rushes by at a semi-trot. On her shoulder is an eco tote bag bearing the slogan: “All You Need is Love.” But she evidently doesn’t subscribe to this ideology; she is laden with branded carrier bags — Mango, Urban Outfitters, New Look. What she really needs, it seems, are more shoes, skirts, scarves, belts. How often do you go clothes shopping, I ask when I catch her up. Most lunch breaks and every weekend ideally, she says. Why? She eyes me dubiously: “Because I love it.””
She speaks to Karen and Abi staggering under the weight of their carrier bags: “Will they go home now and put their feet up? “No, we’re taking these bags home in a taxi,” Abi says. “Then we’re coming back to do another hour before the shops close.””
Lawson says: “The more we consume the less space there is to be anything other than consumers. The space to be citizens and make decisions equally and collectively about the world around us is diminished.” This is a consequent effect of consumerism and generates the new selfishness that he argues we are seeing as our world comes to revolve around the search to satisfy our own desires through consumption and at the expense of those unable to consume.
In these, and other ways, consumerism generates a morality, a code of conduct, for those of us who are consumers but it is a very different morality from that which has traditionally been associated with the major world religions. However, we should not be naïve and assume that we are in someway removed from this or holier than others. I can only speak of the Church culture that I know and am part of, which certainly does uncritically reflect aspects of the consumerist culture around us.
This is the latest issue of
Christianity magazine, of which I am a subscriber. It’s lead article is about the cost of living in terms of the recession’s effect on the poor but it is also filled with more than 30 adverts aimed at encouraging me to spend money on the products being promoted together with references to or reviews of another 17 new books or CDs that I could buy. The advertising revenue received by the magazine keeps its cost affordable for me and enables me to read about the effect of the recession on the poor while continuing to consume. We are by no means immune from a consumerist mentality or morality.
How should we respond? What I don’t think will be effective is for each of us to promote the morality of our religion or the strand of our own religion with which we agree most vehemently. To do that would be to accept the morality of the marketplace; competing products and consumer choice. Instead, I want to suggest that there is a different kind of morality that can emerge from the activity that we are all engaged in this evening; inter-faith dialogue.
This is a suggestion that I have drawn, in part, from the writing of
Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi. In
The Dignity of Difference he writes:
“We must learn the art of conversation, from which truth emerges not, as in Socratic dialogues, by the refutation of falsehood but by the quite different process of letting our world be enlarged by the presence of others who think, act, and interpret reality in ways radically different from our own.”
When we do this, when we “recognize God’s image in someone who is not in my image, whose language, faith, ideals, are different from mine” then we are allowing God to remake us in his image instead of making God in our own image. And to do so has moral outworkings, as Sacks notes when he writes:
“I believe that we are being summoned by God to see in the human other a trace of the divine Other. The test – so lamentably failed by the great powers of the twentieth century – is to see the divine presence in the face of a stranger; to heed the cry of those who are disempowered in this age of unprecedented powers; who are hungry and poor and ignorant and uneducated, whose human potential is being denied the chance to be expressed. That is the faith of Abraham and Sarah, from whom the great faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, trace their spiritual or actual ancestry. That is the faith of one who, though he called himself but dust and ashes, asked of God himself, ‘Shall the judge of all the earth not do justice?’ We are not gods, but are summoned by God – to do His work of love and justice and compassion and peace.”
We are, I believe, seeing something of this possibility emerging from the development of inter-faith dialogue. For example, the
Christian Muslim Forum has recently published
ten ethical guidelines intended to enable Christians and Muslims to talk about their faith to each other in ways that are just, truthful and compassionate.
Faiths in London’s Economy recently developed a
'Shared faiths response to the credit crunch' which calls for: non-interest bearing transactions; mutual societies; business accountability to a wider range of stakeholders than shareholders alone; transparent and ethical business practices; and recognition of the role that artists and communities play in generating real wealth. The
Greater London Presence & Engagement Network is making
resources on inter-faith dialogue available free of charge to Christian congregations in order to provide a biblical, theological and philosophical grounding for such dialogue in the Christian tradition.
These are just three of many initiatives – reflecting those that I know best – which are essentially seeking to develop codes of conducts or morality from the experience of inter-faith dialogue. These initiatives, if developed and affirmed, can become part of a search for a morality that we can all share and within which the particularity of our own faith and its morals will be valued and affirmed.
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The Waterboys -
Old England.
