Why things can still be very bad today despite there being so much to celebrate

nick cowen, 26 August 2008

To claim, as some leading Tories recently have, that ours is a broken society involves their making two tacit assertions. One is about human societies in general; the other about ours in particular.

The general assertion tacitly contained in the claim that ours is a broken society is that, in an unbroken condition, every human society comprises a set of parts that stand in some determinate set of mutual relations that confer upon the whole that they make some recognisable functional order.
The specific assertion tacitly contained in the claim that ours is a broken society is that, as a result of certain of its parts having ceased to stand in certain mutual relations in which they traditionally have stood, our society no longer performs some vital function societies have been created to serve.
What functions have human societies been created to serve?
Two and a half millennia ago, the philosopher Aristotle gave an answer that still stands true:
‘While the state came about as a means of securing life, it continues in being to secure the good life’.
To claim, therefore, that ours is a broken society involves claiming that, as result of some breakdown in the order between its parts, fewer of its members are able to lead as good lives as they would have been able to had that social breakdown not occurred.
In today’s Times, David Aaronovtich takes issue with the claim that ours is a broken society. He asks: ‘If things are so bad, why are they so good?’
To illustrate just how good things presently are, he cites two facts. The first is the much improved performance of British athletes at the just finished Beijing Olympics. The second fact is a recent apparent fall in the crime rate.
How can our society possibly have become more dysfunctional under New Labour, wonders Aaronovitch, when, in these two respects, there are discernible signs of it having got better?
From the previous account of what is involved in the assertion that ours is a broken society, the answer to Aaronovitch’s questions should be obvious.
Things could have got worse overall in Britain these last ten years despite certain things having improved if during this period, on balance, it has become harder for people in Britain to enjoy a good life than it was ten years ago.
Recent reductions in the crime rate do not signify any overall improvement in the quality of life, if, as also seems true, the cause in that reduction lies in greater numbers of criminals being incarcerated in prison. For their incarceration hardly yields them a good life, however socially necessary and desirable it might be in face of their criminality. Far better were they never to have turned to crime in the first place.
An increased yield of Olympic medals, a just cause of national celebration though that might be, hardly signifies any overall social improvement these last ten years, when set beside apparently much greater rates of alcohol consumption, drug taking and violent crime among young people.
Serious social analysis needs directing to the question of why these forms of social pathology might have increased, as apparently they have.
The claim that family breakdown is at the root of much of this increase remains a very plausible one. It strongly suggests that the present government’s persistent refusal to acknowledge the vast superiority of the traditional two parent family as the domestic environment for the having and raising of children enables them to continue to exacerbate the malady while merely addressing the symptoms.
In the Conservative promise of restoring the institution of the two parent (biological) family to favour in terms of social policy lies the greatest current hope for social redemption. In this respect, unwillingness by the present administration to recognise the social superiority of the traditional two parent family to all other social arrangements remains its greatest blind-spot and failing.
As to the question of who may be deemed to have originated the metaphor of modern society having become broken, rather than David Cameron or Andrew Lansley, credit for the notion must surely go to Bob Dylan. Not only did he name the phenomenon in a song on his 1989 album, ‘Oh Mercy’, he also drew attention to its cause. Suitably entitled ‘Everything is Broken’, the lyrics of the song run:
Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken.
Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.
Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground
Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin’,
Everything is broken.
Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face
Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.