No pressure: How societies become happy
#301
My Dear Friend of Democracy,
What rules should society give itself? So that life can be a good one in this society.
If I had to pick few words that describes best what this blog is looking for, it would be precisely these: the rules of good social coexistence.
But, again, what should these rules look like? Should rules serve social goals or individual goals? And what goals should they serve anyway?
The matter seems complicated, but at least in principle, it is not.
The thesis I will argue here is that focusing on the individual is the prerequisite for a successful society as a whole.
I want to explain what I mean by using the example of motherhood.
For a society, it is essential that children are born. Without the next generation, society will perish.
Societies have, therefore, always found ways and means to encourage people to have offspring. With pressure and with narratives about the importance of motherhood.
As a result, there is still a widespread belief that being a woman without being a mother is less valuable.
Such thinking is the result of social pressure. With all its negative effects on women who do not have children.
Many societies function this way. Pressure is more or less obviously exerted on individuals to achieve a social goal. At the expense of the individual. The individual is pressured into a behaviour (having children) they may not prefer.
But how to change for the better?
An answer must be found to the following question: How can individual freedom be reconciled with social goals?
The answer is with positive incentives rather than social pressure.
In the case of motherhood, this would mean that society promotes the opportunities to carry a child and raise it as best as possible. Financial support for parents, daycare places, free schooling. Things like that.
✊ That is the core of good social rules: to promote individual wishes and goals as best as possible and, where social goals are not achieved, to work towards these goals with positive incentives rather than pressure. Then, being a woman without motherhood is one of many other equal and accepted ways to live in society.
See you in Democracy,
Johannes
You are raising an interesting question!
And while I mostly go along with your train of thought my emphasis would be a little bit different. The balance between social and individual goals in current western societies is a bit lopsided: The sense of individual rights and entitlement has grown out of proportion! This trend has been reinforced by our economic model, at the extremes exemplified by "Greed is good!" "Me, Me, Me!" As long as somebody else pays the price. Be it other people, other regions, other generations.
Our western societies have started to fall short of the sense of the common good, of "Gemeinsinn". The sense of the common good has fallen prey to the "Tragedy of the Commons" (Das Problem der Allmende).
And the scope to be considered is not only the family of local community. It is necessary to consider mankind and our whole precious planet.
With this I am not arguing against your point, but in favor of rebalancing a bit towards more appreciation of the common good. This is particularly true for most western societies. In other societies the rebalancing needs to go the other way.