The greater good. . .

There is a lot of power in this simple phrase, its usefulness has been well understood and used excessively in the past and is being heavily used now. I don’t mean to imply that it is a dangerous concept “for the greater good” the phrase alone cannot influence an individual or a population without a certain level of incentive to back it up, an implied level of “or else” to hammer the message home. The unpleasant reality of this phrase is that it can be used as a tool to get people to do something they wouldn’t normally want to do, to take a risk or even suffer, for the benefit of everyone else. The identification of a burden you now carry that you were not previously aware of.

This concept of the greater good forms part of the societal idea of collectivism – the belief that the individual exists for the sake of society, that it is the role of the individual to support the structure of society and not the other way round. It is made all the more challenging because society is a concept, not an actual thing (living or otherwise), so improving it or supporting it is tremendously difficult to illustrate. Collectivism is a fundamental belief to the political ideologies of communism, fascism and socialism as they were once known and is more becoming a mainstay of so-called democracies. You can look up Democracy: “a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation.” Remember that being the case? Neither do I.

One of the greatest proponents of collectivism once wrote “the common good before the individual good”, his name was Adolf Hitler. He was not the only unfortunate proponent of such an approach, many others have followed it too including Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung -  a rogues gallery of political misfortunes.

So how does such a seemingly decent and upstanding principal become associated with societies that have had less than successful outcomes?

In its simplest form, this approach might work in a small community where the outcomes of individual actions are seen to everyone – putting a little time aside every week to clean the streets; providing support and shelter for the homeless of the community; improving the standard of education in that community; adding additional police to make the streets safer at night; adding jobs to the community etc.. all these actions, at the level of that community, are seen by everyone. If the actions have a negative outcome, the community sees it and can act – there is no need to translate the outcome, it is by its very nature evident to all. At this level of transparency, benefits and drawbacks are visible to all and form the basic rules within a successful community.

Now, let’s take the approach for a society and by that I mean jumping from several hundred to several million people. It is now possible for the greater good to address something individual communities cannot see the impact of, due to some concepts being broader than their community boundaries - we are venturing into the murky world of population statistics. An example might be a 5% improvement in healthcare or lifespan, not in an individual community but on average and across several communities using a specific process of measurement. Can it be challenged? Not by an individual community. It must be managed by some form of unified governing body that oversees these communities, which has a greater vision for everyone and that must uphold those community and new societal values. This governing body needs funds from the communities through taxes to enable both their own systems and also roll out actions for the benefit of society.

Our modern governments all operate at this level, too far removed from the impact of decisions to actually see the outcome (or to be directly impacted by them), it must be implied by a series of observations or even models of potential outcomes. What is the test of appropriateness of the actions any government takes? Throughout the 1900s (and probably before) it was whether the actions withstood public scrutiny, the press would question any and all actions they could gain information on (freedom of the press), although there were many actions they were not allowed access to, not because it was unsafe, but because the public reaction could easily be ascertained, the actions violated our own community and societal values. I’ve heard it described that governments take actions that would be deplorable to an individual because governments cannot think or act as individuals.

The 2000s will eventually be seen as the century when governments finally determined what it would take to control the press, media and tech companies that manage the distribution of information to the masses, to turn them into mostly propaganda rather than actual news. The main challenge to governments has been the free and unregulated sources of information, those not under the censorship of governments and media groups, which through necessity must be labelled as fringe, conspiracy and misinformation regardless of how accurate some of them turn out to be. True free speech being relegated to the outskirts of information credibility where it will no doubt rub shoulders with views that are more easily disproved.

The reason our major governing bodies need to manage information and change is that it is becoming increasingly more challenging to maintain that community and society value set whilst staying in power. Our leaders have demonstrated repeatedly that their judgement is fundamentally flawed, especially where their own gain is concerned – honesty is optional. We have bounced from one global threat to another, each one granting ever more control over populations to governments: the threat of global nuclear war; the war on terror; weapons of mass destruction and now a global pandemic. Each time we have had to give up some level of personal freedoms to allow our governments to protect us through being able to observe and track us more closely; the ability to detain us and suspend our human rights or being able to curtail free movement for selected groups of people. Not everyone is obliged to follow these rules, especially those in positions of power or wealth which once again violates that level of trust by communities.

The largest tool in the box to enforce any of these measures is fear, which if it doesn’t work is usually followed up with violence. Societies have seemingly devolved rather than evolved whilst trying to protect its citizens. If you were told openly that your government was going to protect its citizens by using tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on them, you would think it a poor joke and yet it continues. From my perspective it merely indicates that our governments know that fear tactics are not working.

So instead, we must face the prospect of “the greater good” as a means to enforce compliance, if through authority you cannot control the population, then they must be made to control each other. Now we see a new approach whereby anyone who does not comply with the governing edict is putting the lives of everyone else at risk. Seemingly out of nowhere, everyday citizens have become the enemy of everyday citizens. Goethe wrote “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” I am sure if he was still alive he might question his own quote, I don’t think our global citizens believe they are free, they are being convinced that they are being kept safe through compliance. I much prefer Benjamin Franklin’s quote: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

So we are at an impasse, a large proportion of society does not believe the fear governments and their media outlets have been spreading, they will not view their fellow citizens as a threat to their existence and will not be cowed by tear gas, water cannons or rubber bullets. Even stopping travel without government compliance hasn’t achieved the desired outcome. We head inevitably to “that point”, where the two sides will realise where the lines have been drawn – between governments and their citizens. I don’t doubt our governments will cross their Rubicon, go past the point of no return, whether it is through forced vaccination of our children or forced vaccination of the public. For a body that is funded by the people to serve the people, we will reach a point where our community existence will have far greater appeal with local governance rather than centralized governance from detached national leaders.

It is not all doom and gloom, I believe an alternate form of government will be for the benefit of everyone, something more aligned with the good of everyone, a society that supports the individual not the other way around. It has happened before.