What is a good society?

Our answers to this question will always draw upon our personal values and describe the kind of society in which we could feel a sense of well-being.

But there is more to a good society than the sum of the values or the sense of well-being and happiness of each individual. As we each individually pursue what makes us feel good, we affect the lives of others. A good society has procedures for making collective judgments about how these effects are to be managed.

Understanding what makes family life or working life good - or not - can help answer the question of what makes a good society. In these settings, we soon learn that self-interest will not work well or for long, unless it is coupled with some understanding of, and sympathy for, the interests of others.

Since public schools have featured most heavily in my working life, I will make that my starting point. Public schools are, after all, microcosms of society

There is much evidence that children and young people learn best in schools where they have a sense of belonging; where they have opportunities to learn things that they value; and where they experience personal achievement and progress. They will not generally prosper in schools where they feel like 'outsiders'. They will not engage in learning if they feel that the odds are rigged against their being able to succeed.

Schools or school systems that make the opportunities to achieve so unfair that some students are always the 'losers' will create fear, cynicism and alienation among those students. Schools that provide no challenge or reward for high achievement by groups and individuals will create boredom.

So far, I have argued that a good society - like a good school - requires a continuing effort to manage the tensions between the democratic values of liberty, equality and solidarity.

Like a good school or a good family, a good society makes it easier rather than harder for us to be our best selves, to be 'good' persons and to live 'good' lives. Other writers here have already said, in a myriad of ways, that a good society is one in which most individuals consider it rational to treat each other in the way they themselves would want to each be treated by others when presented with similar circumstances: a society where people aspire to 'do' as they would be 'done by' and to live good lives that serve good ends.

The ends which people want to achieve are determined by three things, according to Hugh Stretton and Lionel Orchard (Public Goods, Public Enterprise, Public Choice. Theoretical Foundations of the Contemporary Attack on Government, 1994, p.262-3).

These include their desires and their capabilities. Stretton and Orchard remind us that our desires are not all greedy or antisocial; and that capabilities can only be exercised in the circumstances in which they find themselves.

As well as their desires and capabilities, Stretton and Orchard remind us of the Aristotelian principle 'that human beings enjoy the exercise of their realised capacities (their innate or trained abilities), and this enjoyment increases the more their capacity is realised, or the greater its complexity.

In their view, which I share, a good society is interesting. It satisfies our desire for variety and novelty of experience, it has room for feats of ingenuity and invention, and the pleasures of anticipation and surprise.

My understanding of a good society is one that is open to new and different ideas. One enemy of openness to ideas is the tendency to create false dualisms and unnecessary dichotomies. We can see it in education - the foolish arguments that create a dichotomy between content and process; between excellence and equity; between the ability to recognise individual words and to read for meaning.

Dualism has flourished under the Howard Government. You either support the completely unregulated entry into Australia of all foreigners, or you support Howard's detention centre policy with all its inhumanity and irrational procedures.

It is the mark of an educated mind, according to Aristotle again, to be able to entertain a thought without necessarily accepting it. And that is also a mark of a good society. In such a society we would give priority to those forms of education that, rather than relying on doctrine and dogma, encourage competition among ideas in their students.

This notion that an interesting society is one that ensures its continuing renewal and advancement through openness to new ideas came up when I was deep in discussion last week with CPD regular, Jane Caro, about how to tackle the subject of this article. When I raised the question of what happiness is, Jane observed that happiness for an individual is being able to find your own preferred place on a continuum between boredom and fear.

We could say the same thing about societies. Pervasive fear is surely a hallmark of the worst kind of society. We have had much evidence of this in the past century; and have seen truly repressive societies that have managed to combine pervasive fear with pervasive boredom. The worst thing is that this can sometimes result from trying to create Utopia.

Peter Singer warns of the search for Utopia. In an article entitled 'New Ideas for the Evolutionary Left' (Australian, 17/6/1998, p.49) he urged the Left to replace utopian ideals with a coolly realistic view of what can be achieved, having regard to the tendencies inherent in human beings.

Although a tendency to utopian visions does not seem an imminent danger in Australian society, the balance between fear and boredom is at risk. This can be seen from the Federal Government's ideological mission to give priority to creating a high-risk economy by unpicking forms of protection built up over the past century. Its argument is that governments should 'get out of the way' of those with entrepreneurial flair.

This will increase the level of fear even among the high flyers, let alone among those who face severe penalties for their lack of desire, opportunity or capability to demonstrate such flair.

In a 'good' society, this increase in risk and fear would be balanced by a greater, rather than lesser, governmental role and acceptance of responsibility in guaranteeing the conditions that allow people to protect and secure themselves against exclusion and hardship. It is imperative that these conditions include universal, high quality education and health systems.


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Human rights and democracy
The election of a government promising fairness and dignity for all provides the best opportunity in a long time for the reinvigoration of our democracy. At the heart of this endeavour is the recognition, codification and protection of human rights.
Over the last period of conservative government, Australia's democracy has drifted off course, partly due to our failure to make the transition from the traditional but no longer adequate common law approach to rights, to a new model better suited to the times. In a world where waves of refugees and asylum seekers continue to flee wars and devastation, and where the weak, the indigenous, the mentally ill, and Islamic and other ethnic minorities are subjected to harsh and inhumane laws and policies, we need effective statutory protections.

Australia has not yet followed the example of the rest of the democratic world; it has not carefully reviewed how human rights fare in contemporary Australian society, and has not as yet used the legislative power of parliament to enact the modern human rights protections that should form part of a fair and egalitarian democracy.

The ACT and Victorian governments have accepted this responsibility, with other states set to follow, but at national level, we have a vacuum.

It was in answer to this growing need, and the passivity of political leadership in the face of much human suffering in our country, that a citizens' campaign for a Human Rights Act for Australia, known as the New Matilda campaign, sprang into life.

It started just two years ago. Readers and contributors to New Matilda magazine challenged policies that kept sick children and frightened asylum seekers imprisoned behind barbed wire, and put mentally ill Australians in jail, or illegally deported them. The absence of basic services for our indigenous communities accumulated massive damage.

Social Development Theory

Importance of Theory
The formulation of valid theory possesses enormous power to elevate and accelerate the expansion and development of human capabilities in any field, leading to fresh discoveries, improvement of existing activities and capacity for greater results. Science is replete with examples of theoretical formulations that have led to important breakthroughs, such as the discoveries of Neptune and Pluto, electromagnetic waves, subatomic particles, and new elements on the periodic table. Today scientists are discovering new substances on computer by applying the laws of quantum mechanics to predict the properties of materials before they synthesize them. In fact, a broad range of technological achievements in this century has been made possible by the emergence of sound theoretical knowledge in fields such as physics, chemistry and biology.
As management expert Peter Drucker put it, “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.” Valid theory can tell us not only what should be done, but also what can be done and the process by which it can be achieved.
Social development can be summarily described as the process of organizing human energies and activities at higher levels to achieve greater results. Development increases the utilization of human potential.
In the absence of valid theory, social development remains largely a process of trial and error experimentation, with a high failure rate and very uneven progress. The dismal consequences of transition strategies in most Eastern Europe countries, the very halting progress of many African and Asian countries, the increasing income gap between the most and least developed societies, and the distressing linkage between rising incomes, environmental depletion, crime and violence reflect the fact that humanity is vigorously pursuing a process without the full knowledge needed to guide and govern it effectively.
Advances in development theory can enhance our social success rate by the same order of magnitude that advances in theoretical physics have multiplied technological achievements in this century. The emergence of a sound theoretical framework for social development would provide the knowledge needed to address these inadequacies. It would also eventually lead us to the most profound and practical discovery of all – the infinite creative potentials of the human being.

Hierarchy of learning
Social development consists of two interrelated aspects – learning and application. Society discovers better ways to fulfill its aspirations and it develops organizational mechanisms to express that knowledge to achieve its social and economic goals. The process of discovery expands human consciousness. The process of application enhances social organization.
Society develops in response to the contact and interaction between human beings and their material, social and intellectual environment. The incursion of external threats, the pressure of physical and social conditions, the mysteries of physical nature and complexities of human behavior prompt humanity to experiment, create and innovate.
The experience resulting from these contacts leads to learning on three different levels of our existence. At the physical level, it enhances our control over material processes. At the social level, it enhances our capacity for effective interaction between people at greater and greater speeds and distances. At the mental level, it enhances our knowledge.
While the learning process takes place simultaneously on all these planes, there is a natural progression from physical experience to mental understanding. Historically, society has developed by a trial and error process of physical experimentation, not unlike the way children learn through a constant process of physical exploration, testing and even tasting. Physically, this process leads to the acquisition of new physical skills that enable individuals to utilize their energies more efficiently and effectively. Socially, it leads to the learning and mastery of organizational skills, vital attitudes, systems and institutions that enable people to manage their interactions with other people and other societies more effectively. Mentally, it leads to organization of facts as information and interpretation of information as thought.
The outcome of this learning process is the organization of physical skills, social systems, and information, which are then utilized to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of human activities. It is a cyclical process in which people are continuously learning from past experiences and then applying that learning in new activities.
This learning process culminates in a higher level of mental effort to extract the essence and common principles or ideas from society’s organized physical experiences, social interactions and accumulated information and to synthesize them as conceptual knowledge. This abstract conceptual knowledge has the greatest capacity for generalization and application in other fields, times and places. The conceptual mind is the highest, most conscious human faculty. Conceptual knowledge is the organization of ideas by the power of mind. That conceptual knowledge becomes most powerful when it is organized into a system. Theory is a systematic organization of knowledge.
A comprehensive theory of social development would provide a conceptual framework for discovering the underlying principles common to the development process in different fields of activity, countries and periods. It would also provide a framework for understanding the relationships between the accumulated knowledge generated by many different disciplines. If pursued to its logical conclusions, it would lead to not just a theory of social development, but a unifying theory of knowledge—which does not yet exist in any field of science or art.

Development as self-conception
Material and biological sciences focus on the interaction of physical conditions, materials and forces to generate results. The tendency to view social development in the same way has led to a host of mathematical equations seeking to define and predict the consequences of combining different external variables in different proportions and under different conditions. The underlying assumption of this approach is that social development is determined by external conditions.
The hypothesis on which our attempt at theory is based is that social development is determined by human beings, not external conditions. External conditions certainly can and do influence the process. People may even act and react in predictable ways to a given set of external conditions. But the results of any development equation cannot be reliably predicted on the basis of external factors. Human development is determined by human responses based on choices made by people. To our knowledge, external forces alone have never unleashed a process of social development, but there are countless instances in which external agents have failed to do so.

Human development is a function of human awareness, aspirations, attitudes and values. Like all human creative processes, it is a process of self-conception. As the writer, artist, composer, political visionary and businessman conceive of unrealized possibilities and pour forth their creative energies to give expression to them, the social collective evolves a conception of what it wants to become and by expressing its creative energies through myriad forms of activity seeks to transform its conception into social reality. The only major difference is that while the individual sometimes (but not always) is conscious of the conception he or she is trying to express, the society is usually (not always) unconscious of the idea and the urge that move it to create something more out of its own latent potential.

Society is a subconscious living organism which strives to survive, grow and develop. Individual members of society express conscious intention in their words and acts, but these are only surface expressions of deeper subconscious drives that move the society-at-large. The consciousness of a true collective organism is not merely the sum of its individual parts, but acquires its own identifiable character and personality. This is why the USA has been able to assimilate such large numbers of immigrants, yet retain its distinctive (but constantly changing) national character. Immigrants are moved by the values of the collective to share in the national aspiration for greater individual freedom, practical organization and material progress. In a similar vein, the feverish collective behavior of the stock market, fashions and pop culture are subconscious social collectives that acquire their own distinct personalities.

Role of the Individual
Society has no direct means to give conscious expression to its subconscious collective aspirations and urges. That essential role is played by pioneering conscious individuals–visionary intellectuals, political leaders, entrepreneurs, artists and spiritual seekers who are inspired to express and achieve what the collective subconsciously aspires and is prepared for. Where the aspiration and action of the leader do not reflect the will of the collective, it is ignored or rejected. Where it gives expression to a deeply felt collective urge, it is endorsed, imitated, supported, and systematically propagated. This is most evident at times of war, social revolution or communal conflict.
India’s early freedom fighters consciously advocated the goal of freedom from British rule long before that goal had become a felt aspiration of the masses. The leaders spent decades urging a reluctant population to conceive of itself as a free nation and to aspire to achieve that dream. When finally the collective endorsed this conception, no foreign nation had the power to impose its will on the Indian people.

Process of value creation
During the World Academy of Art & Science’s meeting on development theory in Washington DC in May 1999, there was a broad consensus of participants that the formation of values was a critical aspect of the development process. In this paper, we propose to re-examine the process of development as a process of value formation.
If gross physical actions are the most visible and tangible form of human initiative, the creation of values is the most subtle and intangible. Yet human existence is powerfully determined by the nature of its values. Physical skills, vital attitudes, mental opinions and values represent a gradation of internal organizing principles that direct human energies and determine the course of individual and social development.
All human creative processes release and harness human energy and convert it into results. The process of skill formation involves acquiring mastery over our physical-nervous energies so that we can direct our physical movements in a precisely controlled manner. In the absence of skill, physical movements are clumsy, inefficient and unproductive, like the stumbling efforts of a child learning to walk.

Human beings acquire social behaviors in a similar manner. Here, apart from the physical skills required for communication and interaction with other people, vital attitudes are centrally important. Each social behavior expresses not just a movement, but an attitude and intention of the person. Acquiring social behaviors requires gaining control over our psychological energies and channeling them into acceptable forms of behavior. Change the attitude and the behavior changes. The developmental achievements of modern society are founded upon such intangible social attitudes as confidence in the government, trust in other people, tolerance and cooperation. Without such attitudes, our money would become valueless paper and our institutions would cease to function.

The same process takes place at the mental level. The mind’s energy naturally flows as thought in many different directions without any structure to contain or organize it. The acquisition of knowledge involves construction of a mental structure of understanding that is analogous to the structure of skills and attitudes that govern expression of our physical and vital energy. It forms an organizational framework for learning and application of what is learned.
Human values are formed by a similar process and act in a similar manner. Although the word is commonly used with reference to ethical and cultural principles, values are of many types. They may be physical (cleanliness, punctuality), organizational (communication, coordination), psychological (courage, generosity), mental (objectivity, sincerity), or spiritual (harmony, love, self-giving). Values are central organizing principles or ideas that govern and determine human behavior.

Unlike the skill or attitude that may be specific to a particular physical activity or social context, values tend to be more universal in their application. They express in everything we do. Values can be described as the essence of the knowledge gained by humanity from past experiences distilled from its local circumstances and specific context to extract the fundamental wisdom of life derived from these experiences. Values give direction to our thought processes, sentiments, emotional energies, preferences and actions.

Centuries of experience have been distilled by society into essential principles. Values such as hard work, sense of responsibility, integrity in human relations, tolerance and respect for others are not just noble ideas or ideals. They are pragmatic principles for accomplishment which society has learned and transmitted to successive generations as a psychological foundation for its further advancement. The values of a society are a crucial aspect of its people’s self-conception of what they want to become.

Because values are intangible to our senses and their formation is the result of a very long process, we tend to overlook their central role in development. Social values constitute the cultural infrastructure on which all further social development is based. In this sense, values are the ultimate product of past development and the ultimate determinant of its future course.

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Summary of social development principles
1. We define social development in its broadest social terms as an upward directional movement of society from lesser to greater levels of energy, efficiency, quality, productivity, complexity, comprehension, creativity, choice, mastery, enjoyment and accomplishment. Development of individuals and societies results in increasing freedom of choice and increasing capacity to fulfill its choices by its own capacity and initiative.

2. Growth and development usually go together, but they are different phenomena subject to different laws. Growth involves a horizontal or quantitative expansion and multiplication of existing types and forms of activities. Development involves a vertical or qualitative enhancement of the level of organization.

3. Social development is driven by the subconscious aspirations/will of society for advancement. The social will seeks progressive fulfillment of a prioritized hierarchy of needs – security of borders, law and order, self-sufficiency in food and shelter, organization for peace and prosperity, expression of excess energy in entertainment, leisure and enjoyment, knowledge, and artistic creativity.

4. Development of society occurs only in fields where that collective will is sufficiently strong and seeking expression. Development strategies will be most effective when they focus on identifying areas where the social will is mature and provide better means for the awakened social energy to express itself. Only those initiatives that are in concordance with this subconscious urge will gain momentum and multiply.

5. Development of the collective is subconscious. It starts with physical experience which eventually leads to conscious comprehension of the process. Conscious development based on conceptual knowledge of the social process accelerates development and minimizes errors and imbalances.

6. Society is the field of organized relationships and interactions between individuals. Only a small portion of human activity is organized for utilization by society, so only a small portion of development potential (of technology, knowledge, information, skills, systems) is tapped.

7. Every society possesses a huge reservoir of potential human energy that is absorbed and held static in its organized foundations—its cultural values, physical security, social beliefs and political structures. At times of transition, crises and opportunities, those energies are released and expressed in action. Policies, strategies and programs that tap this latent energy and channel it into constructive activities can stir an entire nation to action and rapid advancement.

8. The act is the basic unit of social organization. The evolution of more complex and productive activities woven together by people to form systems, organizations, institutions and cultural values constitute the fabric or web of social organization.

9. The essential nature of the development process is the progressive development of social organizations and institutions that harness and direct the society’s energies for higher levels of accomplishment. Society develops by organizing all the knowledge, human energies and material resources at its disposal to fulfill its aspirations.

10. The process of formation of organization takes place simultaneously at several levels: the organization of peace and physical security in society, the organization of physical activities and infrastructure, the organization of productive processes through the application of skills and technology in agriculture, industry and services, the organization of social processes we call systems, laws, institutions and administrative agencies, the organization of data as useful information, the organization of knowledge through education and science, and the organization of higher social and cultural values that channel human energy into higher forms of expression.

11. Each of these levels of organization admits of unlimited development. Each of these levels of organization depends upon and interacts with the others. Elevating the organization at any of these levels increases the utilization of resources and opportunities and accelerates development.

12. Development requires an enormous investment of energy to break existing patterns of social behavior and form new ones. Development takes place when surplus social energies accumulate beyond the level required for functioning at the present level. The social energy may be released in response to the opening up of a new opportunity or confrontation by a severe challenge.

Where different cultures meet and blend, explosive energies for social evolution are released.

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13. Expression of surplus energy through existing forms of activity may result in growth—a quantitative expansion of society at the existing level of organization. Channeling the surplus energy into more complex and effective forms of organized activity leads to development—a qualitative enhancement in the capabilities of the society. The fresh initiatives that lead to this qualitative enhancement usually occur first in the unorganized activities of society that are not constrained and encumbered by the inertia of the status quo.

14. The rate and extent of development is determined by prevalent social attitudes which control the flow of social energies. Where attitudes are not conducive, development strategies will not yield results. In this case the emphasis should be placed on strategies to bring about a change in social attitudes—such as public education, demonstration and encouragement of successful pioneers.

15. The social gradient between people at different levels of power and accomplishment in society represents a ‘voltage differential’ that stimulates less accomplished sections of the population to seek what the more accomplished have achieved. The urge to maintain this voltage gap compels those at the top to seek further accomplishments. At the same time, the overall development of society is determined by its ability to make accessible the privileges and benefits achieved by those at the top to the rest of its members.

16. Development proceeds rapidly in those areas where the society becomes aware of opportunities and challenges and has the will to respond to them. Increasing awareness accelerates the process.

17. Social progress is stimulated by pioneering individuals who first become conscious of new opportunities and initiate new behaviors and activities to take advantage of them. Pioneers are the lever or spearhead for collective advancement. Pioneers give conscious expression to the subconscious urges and readiness of the collective.

18. Development occurs when pioneering individual initiatives are imitated by others, multiplied and actively supported by the society. Society then actively organizes the new activity by establishing supportive laws, systems and institutions. At the next stage it integrates the new activity with other fields of activity and assimilates it into its educational system. The activity has become fully assimilated as part of the culture when it is passed on to the next generation as values through the family.

19. Development is a process, not a program. Development is an activity of the society as a whole. It can be stimulated, directed or assisted by government policies, laws and special programs, but it cannot be compelled or carried out by administrative or external agencies on behalf of the population. Development strategy should aim to release people’s initiative, not to substitute for it.

20. All resources are the creation of the human mind. Something becomes a resource when human beings recognize a productive or more productive use for it. Since there are no inherent limits to human inventiveness and resourcefulness, the potential productivity of any resource is unlimited.

21. Human beings are the ultimate resource and ultimate determinant of the development process. It is a process of people becoming more aware of their own creative potentials and taking initiative to realize those potentials. Human awareness, aspiration and attitudes determine society’s response to circumstances. Development occurs only at the points where humanity recognizes its power to determine results.

22. The development of social organization takes place within a larger evolutionary context in which the consciousness of humanity is evolving along a continuum from physical to vital to mental. This evolution expresses as a progressive shift in emphasis from material resources to technological and information resources; from the social importance of land to the importance of money and knowledge; from hereditary rights of the elite to fundamental rights for all human beings; from reliance on physical forms of authority to laws and shared values. As society advances along this continuum, development becomes more conscious and more rapid.

23. Infinity is a practical concept. Human potential is unlimited. Development potential is infinite.

24. The same principles and process govern development in different fields of social life – political, economic, technological, scientific, cultural, etc.

25. The same principles and process govern development at the level of the individual, the organization and the society.