www.theRSA.org

Matthew Taylor

The RSA has a new strapline

and that strapline is 21st Century Enlightenment.

The original Enlightenment in the 18th century

was not, of course, a single cohesive movement.

It didn't have a simple start and finish.

So when we think about the core ideals of the Enlightenment

it is not simply a kind of historical process.

It's in a way when we think about how those ideals

shaped modern values, norms and lifestyles.

It is a kind of process of cultural psychotherapy.

We are delving into what has shaped

the collective consciousness of modern people.

And that enables us to explore critically whether those values

and what they have come to mean to us, still work for us

and whether they meet the challenges that we now face.

So, whereas I don't underestimate

the ability of human beings to invent and to adapt

in the end, on balance, I do favor the view

that we do need to live differently in the 21st Century.

And as the architects of the Enlightenment understood

to live differently involves thinking differently,

involves seeing the world and ourselves from a new perspective.

In critically examining

what Enlightenment values have come to mean to us

what we can now bring to bear is

powerful new insights into human nature

insights that have emerged from a variety of scientific disciplines

social sciences over the last 20 or 30 years.

Copernicus, Galileo and Newton

helped to lay the ground for the Enlightenment

by revealing that the laws of nature

not only failed to conform to religious doctrine,

but also they failed to conform to intuition.

So, the Pope might have said the sun went round the earth.

It might have felt like the sun went round the earth,

but science showed otherwise.

And I think that insights into human nature have a similar double impact,

also unsettling our intuitive sense of ourselves in the world.

Most of our behavior, including social interaction

is the result of us responding automatically to the world around us

rather than the outcome of conscious decision-making

and in this sense, it's more realistic to see ourselves

as integrally connected to the social and natural world

rather than as a separate, wholly autonomous entity.

The research is clear, if you want to be a happier person

don't read a self-help book. Just have happier friends.

And, there are other lessons that we can learn

from the more subtle and holistic model of human nature now emerging.

You know, we're not very good at making long-term decisions.

We're much better at understanding relative than absolute values

and as we found out in the credit crunch

we are enthralled to what Keynes called "animal spirits".

Perhaps even more startlingly

we are very, very bad at predicting what's going to make us happy

and we're even bad at describing what made us happy in the past.

So, I would argue that the moral and political critique of individualism

now has an evidence base

and it's with this in mind that I argue

the 21st Century Enlightenment should champion

a more self-aware, socially-embedded model of autonomy

that recognises our frailties and limitations.

Now this does not mean repudiating the rights of the individual

and nor does it underestimate our unique ability

to shape our own destinies.

Indeed, it's actually by understanding that conscious thought

is only a part of what drives our behaviour

that we become better able to exercise self-control.

All of this can enable us to distinguish our needs from our appetites

and our amazing human potential from the hubris of individualism.

It's the basis for self-aware autonomy.

The developmental psychologist Robert Kegan argues

that successfully functioning in a society

with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles

requires us, in his words, to have a relationship to our own reactions

rather than be captive of them.

I quote "To resist our tendencies to make right or true

that which is nearly familiar

and wrong or false, that which is only strange."

Now, the good news, and it is really good news, is that there is

every reason to believe that we can expand empathy's reach.

Despite major departures from the trend, most terribly in the 20th Century

the history of the human race

has been one of diminishing person-to-person violence.

Since the advent of modern civil rights

we've seen a revolution in social attitudes based on race, gender, sexuality.

Furthermore, real-time global media

brought the suffering of distant people into our living rooms

and immigration, emigration and foreign travel

all provide us with opportunities to put ourselves in other people's shoes.

There are reasons to ask whether the process of widening human empathy

has stalled, and at just the time when we need it to accelerate.

After 4 decades of post-war progress

levels of inequality have risen in the rich world.

Tensions between different ethnic groups persist

and have taken on new dimensions. Anti-immigrant sentiment has grown

arguably reflecting a failure by policy makers

to balance the imparities of globalisation and the idea of universalism

with the empathic capacity of the communities most affected by change.

From gangs to the impact of violent video games

there are worries about young people.

Globalisation and public deficits

may mean that future generations in the West

face tougher challenges than their parents.

So the stalk of global empathy upon which democratic leaders can draw

has to grow, if we are to reach agreements

which put the long-term needs of the whole planet

and all its people ahead of short term national concerns.

But the chain linking inter-personal, communal

and global scale empathy is complex.

Intellectuals, politicians and interest groups and think tanks

spend an enormous amount of time

debating what should be the content of universalism.

Which rights? Which entitlements? Which capabilities?

But shouldn't we perhaps just spend a little more time

exploring the foundation of universalist sentiment?

What is it that enhances, and what is it that diminishes

our empathic capacity?

Policy implications range from a

continued emphasis on the earliest child-rearing

to developing schools as intelligent communities

to exploring the way popular culture inclines us to think of other people.

For example, a culture which prized empathy

would be one which distinguished the healthy activity

of public disagreement from the unhealthy habit of public disparagement.

It's become a cliche that education

is the most valuable resource in a global knowledge economy.

I would argue that fostering empathic capacity is just as important

to achieving a world of citizens at peace with each other

and with themselves. But

even were we to have more self-aware and more empathic citizens

they would still face dilemmas and differences of opinion.

I want to encourage us to recognise that the question

"What is progress?" raises substantive and ethical questions

which we should be more willing to acknowledge

to honour and to debate how are we to make those decisions.

Of course, the utilitarian answer lies in maximizing human happiness

and if the progress is measured in those terms

we have done well since the Enlightenment. There is little doubt.

The poorest citizens of the developed world now have better health

longer life spans and many more resources and opportunities

than those who would have been considered well-off a century ago.

But sometimes

sometimes it feels as though the idea that

progress should be designed to increase happiness

has turned into the assumption that pursuing progress

is the same as improving human welfare.

The success of the Western post-Enlightenment project

has resulted in a society like ours being dominated by 3 logics:

The logic of science and technological progress

the logic of markets and the logic of bureaucracy

And the limits of the logic of science and of markets

lie in their indifference to a substantive concern for the general good.

If something can be discovered and developed, it should be discovered and developed.

If something can be solved, then it should be solved.

And the problem for bureaucracy is the tendency

to put the rationality of rules above the rationality of ends.

And so, it is in this context

that the 21st century Enlightenment project demands a re-assertion

of the fundamentally ethical dimension of humanism.

How can we make it easier to ask "Is this right?"

Is it to be a world where so many of us feel that the shape of our lives

is dictated not by the idea of a life fully lived

but by social convention and economic circumstances?

Why should we cram education into the first quarter of our lives

desperately balance work and caring in the 2nd and 3rd quarter

and then feel that we're going to suffer second class status

and the fear of neglect in the final quarter?

You see, rationality can tell us how best to get from A to Z

but without ethical reasoning, we cannot discuss where Z should be?

So what we aim for

can be as important to our well-being

as what we achieve.

As Michel Foucault says of Kant's own description of the Enlightenment

"It has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos

a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are

is at one and the same time the historical analysis

of the limits that are imposed on us

and an experiment of the possibility of going beyond them.

To be responsible, to create a big society, to live sustainably

this not simply a matter of will.

The 21st Century Enlightenment calls for us to see past

simplistic and inadequate ideas of freedom, of justice, and of progress.

Perhaps it's time to stop chasing those myths

to stop being transfixed by abstractions

and instead to reconnect a concrete understanding

of who we are as human beings

to political debates about who we need to be

and philosophical and even spiritual exploration of

whom we might aspire to be.

Creative people who want to make a difference

have a million and one opportunities and distractions.

To engage them means an ethic which is intolerant to negativity

rigid thinking and self-promotion

and instead keeps people constantly in touch

with the words of the anthropologist Margaret Mead

true to the spirit which created the Enlightenment

true to the spirit which moved the founders of the RSA, 256 years ago.

Margaret Mead said simply this:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens

can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."