Fixing a 'broken society'

 

“Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For 30 years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose”. Tony Judt; Ill fares the Land

Salvador Minuchin, the originator of structural family therapy, considered that, in order to function healthily, a family needs structures, boundaries and rules.

Within the wider family system, sub-systems work together, and complement each others roles.  The boundaries of a subsystem are the rules defining who participates, and how. For example, the boundary of a parental subsystem is defined when a parent tells an older child, “You are not your brother’s parent. If he is watching something on TV he shouldn’t, tell me and I will take care of it”.

For proper family functioning, the boundaries of subsystems must be clear and defined well enough to allow subsystem members to carry out their functions without undue interference, but they must allow contact between the members of the subsystem and others.

In addition to clarity of boundaries, most families can be conceived of as falling somewhere along a continuum of whose poles are the two extremes of diffuse boundaries and overly rigid boundaries. These two extremes of boundary functioning are typically called enmeshment and disengagement.

Members of enmeshed subsystems or families may be handicapped in that the heightened sense of belonging requires a major yielding of autonomy.  In contrast, members of disengaged subsystems or families may function autonomously but have a skewed sense of independence and lack feelings of loyalty and belonging and the capacity for interdependence and for requesting support when needed.

The clarity and range of boundaries within a family are useful parameters for the evaluation of family functioning, but is this the case in a broader society?

Where does a society begin and end?  What sort of boundaries delineate any given society and its sub-systems and are they permeable or rigid?

If our society was a family, my sense is that we have an extremely small subsystem that is very much disengaged from the remaining subsystems. The extreme level of disengagement, along with the disparity in size and wealth between this subsystem and the remaining societal sub-systems is toxic.

This toxicity leads to what David Cameron described as a 'broken society'; lack of social cohesion, poor health, increased dependency on drugs and alcohol and crime. In contrast, societies that have more equality seem to do better.Richard Wilkinson   a researcher in social inequalities in health and the social determinants of health in a 1997 paper published in the British Medical Journal suggested that “one reason why greater income equality is associated with better health seems to be that it tends to improve social cohesion and reduce the social divisions”.

He later went on to suggest that “the psychosocial effects of relative deprivation are unlikely to be confined to health… where death rates from accidents, violence, and alcohol related causes seem to be particularly closely related to wider income inequalities, the predominance of behavioural causes may reflect changes in social cohesion”.

From a structural therapy point of view, a family that has serious problems needs to be restructured. If we think at a societal level, this would involve changing the structure of the society, making it more functional by altering the existing hierarchy and interaction patterns.In a recent TED lecture, Wilkinson argues for a fairer, progressive tax system to address inequalities.

However, a more comprehensive solution to the problem of restructuring our society has been addressed by Tony Judt, who argued that the whittled-down Left squandered a huge opportunity to show the mainstream that new ways of seeing and thinking are desirable. In the aftermath of recent financial crises, it’s pretty much impossible to argue that financial markets properly regulate themselves.

Judt advocates a revival of the central values of American liberalism or European social democracy. He calls for the beneficent authority of a welfare state (in one form or another) to redress the excesses of unregulated market forces; a course that emphatically rejects both dogmatic socialism and unrestrained capitalism.

His version of social democracy (or, for Americans, liberalism) envisages a society less materialistic, less individualistic and more community-minded than the present one, based on an economy in which capitalism, while by no means abolished, is on the other hand firmly tamed and regulated.

In light of these great upward shifts of wealth, Judt (who died in 2010) felt that, at that time, no civic movement had gained mainstream influence. Perhaps the #occupy protests are the beginning of this very movement?

Judt. T. (2010). Ill fares the land. London; Penguin.

Minuchin, S. & Fishman, H. C. (2004). Family Therapy Techniques. Harvard: Harvard University Press

Wilkinson, R. G. (1997). Socioeconomic determinants of health: Health inequalities: relative or absolute material standards? BMJ 314: 591

The context of crime, neglect and ill health

In the news recently has been coverage of the story of the sad death of seven year old Khyra Ishaq, who may have died of starvation. Her mother and stepfather will be charged with neglect, a criminal offence.

Several sources recognise that poverty and neglect are linked, and it can be argued that poverty is not a matter of choice, but neglect is. Also linked to poverty are issues of crime, drug and alcohol use and obesity, all of which are considered major topical social issues, and all of which have an element of choice to them. But is it that simple?

I have often considered that crime and ill-health are linked by wider contexts, yet politically, both are treated as very different issues.

In the UK our jails are full; the population bulletin for May 16th 2008 states the population in prisons in England and Wales stands at 82,682. This represents around 148 per 100,000 of the national population. In contrast, the United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 738 per 100,000.

Some people argue that we should be increasing our capacity to incarcerate criminals, for example Stephen Pollard writing in the Spectator suggests: “Britain certainly imprisons a higher percentage of its population. But this is a meaningless measure, since it takes no account of the proportion of the population who commit crimes. Allow for the extraordinary proportion of the UK population which commits crimes, and Britain has a low imprisonment rate. Whereas Britain imprisons 12 people per 1,000 crimes, Spain imprisons 48 and Ireland 33”

Taking Pollard’s argument further, we would need to quadruple the amount of incarceration, having spaces for a third of a million inmates, representing around 590 prisoners per 100,000 of the national population.

This raises a question for me. If it is true that such a large proportion of the British population commits crimes, why is this so?

Our understanding of crime itself may lead to problems. Crime is not the name for an action – it is the name given to a class of actions performed in a particular context. Some of these actions are directed at the authorities who forbid them. The punishment of the actions will not remove the context that characterise those actions. You can’t stop someone from being a criminal by punishing what he or she does. If that was the case, we wouldn’t need larger prisons. If punishment was a viable solution, crime would have ceased thousands of years ago. In the film KPAX, when the character Prot is asked by his psychiatrist why they don’t have laws on his planet, he replied ‘Because every sentient being in the universe knows the difference between right and wrong’.

Most humans know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, so why do so many choose to do what is wrong? More importantly, what is the context that these actions take place in? I would argue that it is the same context that gives rise to drug and alcohol problems, obesity and neglect. Nacro’s 2006 briefing paper suggests crime impacts upon health, which may be true, but they miss the point that crime is a symptom, as is poor health, of a wider contextual problem. And the context isn’t simply inequalities, social exclusion or poverty; in fact, these are as much symptoms as crime or illness.

What then, is context is it that gives rise to the symptoms I have described? Part of the context is our way of thinking, characterised by ideas that ‘more is better’ in terms of money, material possessions and power. To begin to challenge the global high rates of crime and illness we urgently need to think differently about ourselves and the worlds we inhabit, and, as Bateson put it, make steps towards an ecology of mind.

In the United States at the end of 2001, 10% of the population owned 71% of the wealth, and the top 1% controlled 38%. On the other hand, the bottom 40% owned less than 1% of the nation's wealth. Similar distribution patterns are found in other countries. Those people that control the wealth also control the media, at the very least have a major influence upon governments, and they control the prices we pay for everything, from food to petrol.

Unfortunately, those with power tend to want to retain it. They have absolutely no reason to change the way they think; after all the current mind-set works for them. This is western democratic society and it is the context that inculcates crime and preventable illness; a combination of our epistemology, one that values power, and a society that manifests power through wealth.

Putting myself in opposition with Gregory Bateson who was an atheist (I would call myself agnostic), I also believe that as spiritual beings (even atheists might appreciate the sacred), we may be able to challenge this context through a quiet revolution, a revolution of showing love, kindness and forgiveness. The wealthy cannot take their money or their power with them on the next stage of their journey, and I doubt that any of them will be much happier; that is assuming that they are happy at all.