http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/8234/
David Willetts is one of today's very few intellectual
parliamentarians, which makes the fact that he has now written a
neo-Malthusian, generation-bashing book all the more depressing.
by Frank Furedi
Febrauary 2010
The poverty of contemporary political discourse is conspicuous in the
run-up to the UK General Election. There are very few politicians
today who have the intellectual presence of a Gladstone, Lord
Salisbury, Churchill, Crosland, or even a Denis Healey. Increasingly
the search for policies is outsourced to think thanks and public
relations companies, who are assigned the task of spotting the next
'Big Idea'.
In such an intellectual desert, the Tory shadow minister for
universities and skills, David Willetts, stands out as one of the few
parliamentarians who combine intellectual eloquence with an ability
to communicate complex ideas clearly. It is unfortunate, then, that
his latest offering, The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their
Children's Future, and Why They Should Give it Back, seems to show
how difficult it is for any individual, even someone like Willetts,
to transcend the intellectual wasteland that surrounds parliament these days.
Willetts' book addresses a very important issue in British society:
the erosion of meaningful contact between generations and the
menacing crisis of adulthood. The roots of this crisis are moral and
cultural, but sadly, in line with current think-tank wisdom, The
Pinch relies on demographic, naturalistic and socio-biological
explanations to account for the crisis.
Willetts uses the metaphor of the clash of generations to explain
many of the cultural and socio-economic ills afflicting contemporary
society. Apparently, the baby boomers those born in the post-Second
World War baby boom have been far too selfish and self-centred to
pay any heed to the needs of future generations. The sheer
demographic weight of the boomers has led to, and exacerbated,
Britain's economic ills and threatens to compromise the welfare of
generations to come, says Willetts. Here, classical environmentalist
guilt-tripping of the elderly for threatening the wellbeing of the
planet and of unborn generations is recast in the form of a
socio-economic generational analysis. The book's subtitle 'How the
baby boomers took their children's future' hints at the
guilt-tripping to come.
In an age when neo-Malthusianism has an unprecedented influence over
Western public life, it is not surprising to discover that the dismal
Reverend Thomas Malthus himself (1766-1834) is the hero of Willetts's
drama. Willetts writes of the 'ingenious application of the insights
of Malthus' to explain why we live so long, and criticises those who
dismiss fears about the future with 'the charge of neo-Malthusian
pessimism'. His book is based on a depletionist theory of economic
history. In line with the Malthusian model, The Pinch presents
resources as being entirely fixed and all variables as more or less
constant, except, of course, population growth. From this
perspective, one generation utilises resources at the expense of the
next generation. Willetts concedes that the boomers 'continue to do
some great things', but 'now the bills are coming in' and 'it is the
younger generation who will pay them'. This outlook also underlies
today's view of the ageing population as a potential 'social
catastrophe', where the costs of looking after elderly boomers are
seen as an unfair burden on the income of younger and future generations.
Here and there, Willetts tries to modify his depletionist thesis. 'We
certainly recognise that the innovative power of the almost seven
billion humans alive today is a resource which dwarfs all others', he
writes yet he then goes on to dismiss such an optimistic
perspective. Sadly, he is drawn towards a model that presents people
as predominantly the consumers of resources rather than the creators
of resources. Such an analysis overlooks the fact that the boomers
were, and remain, highly innovative people who created far more
wealth than was left to them by the previous generations. If today's
and future generations of young people make good use of the
intellectual, scientific and cultural legacy that they inherit, they
are likely to be even better off than their parents were. The only
limit they face is their own imaginations.
In line with the advance of neo-Malthusianism, The Pinch seeks to
extend its analysis to explain a variety of socio-economic and
cultural trends. Numerous problems are recycled as essentially
generational problems. Generational segregation which is a very
real problem, but not for the reasons Willetts puts forwards is
described in The Pinch as a consequence of the 'economic gap' between
generations. The alleged failure of the baby boomers to act
responsibly towards future generations has also given rise to the
crisis of citizenship, apparently. It is also claimed that the
demographic weight of the boomers was responsible for the rise of the
1960s counterculture, which in turn promoted individualism divorce,
abortion, and so on and anti-family values. Even the failure of the
market and of the financial system is blamed on the boomers, who have
apparently 'been pinching too big a share of the wealth'. So economic
stagnation and low levels of investment are not so much failures of
markets as the consequence of greedy boomers wanting to have it all.
At times, The Pinch uses a shockingly crude form of generational
determinism to explain events. Willetts argues that 'being a big
generation gives you a lot of power'. And accordingly, the boomers
rule the world: 'Your large cohort will dominate marketplaces. You
will be kings and queens among consumers. Elections will be pitched
at you you will be able to spend your life in a generational
bubble, always outvoting and outspending the generation before and after you.'
But do generational consciousness and behaviour have the power and
influence that Willetts believes they do? And is there anything
unique about generational relations in the early part of the
twenty-first century?
Generational analysis
According to Willetts, 'generational analysis' begins with the
nineteenth-century sociologist August Comte and was first
systematically set out by Karl Mannheim in his 1928 essay 'The
Problem of Generations'. Actually, anxiety about generational
tensions goes back to the beginning of human history. Since early
human civilisation, young people were reminded, through proverbs and
myths, of their obligation to obey authority.
In ancient Mesopotamia, instructions on obedience were communicated
through cuneiform script. According to a study of Sumerian proverbs,
one of the aims of these proverbs was to promote the ideal of
respecting parents and elders. So in a typical proverb a son is
instructed to pay heed to his father's commands as if they were the
words of God. There were similar proverbs and myths in Ancient Egypt
and Greece. In 2450 BCE, in one of the earliest attempts to codify
personal conduct, Ptah-hotep, a vizier of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt,
proclaimed the necessity for the young to heed 'the thoughts of those
who have gone before'.
Of course, sometimes the assertion of authority invariably invited
the contestation of authority. It was in ancient Greece that the
generation gap emerged as a topic for political debate and
philosophical reflection. The defeats suffered by Athens during the
Peloponnesian War unleashed a tirade of criticism by the younger
generation of the mismanagement of the campaign by their elders. This
denunciation of the wisdom and influence of the elders provoked a
furious backlash. In subsequent years the older generation sought to
restrain the pretensions of the young through associating such
pretensions with immaturity and destructive behaviour. The charge of
'corrupting the youth', levelled at Socrates, indicated how serious
the potential for generational conflict was taken. As far as Plato
was concerned, generational conflict undermined the authority of the
elders and led directly to anarchy. Those who misled the young were
denounced for threatening the future of Athens.
Throughout history, the authority of the older generation over the
young was taken for granted in all cultures. All traditional
societies can be characterised as gerontocracies. That is why the
rebellions against traditional authority that did occur were not only
directed against the old way of doings things but against the old
themselves. Frequently, such revolts were driven by the animus that
sons felt towards their fathers and their way of life. By the
nineteenth century, the young often expressed their aspirations
through a distinct form of generational consciousness and a rejection
of the old. The emerging cult of the young communicated the idea that
the elders were not to be trusted.
Until the twentieth century, any questioning of the power of elders
focused on the manner in which authority was exercised. Youthful
critics pointed to the failures, betrayals and cowardice of older
generations, but they did not question the right of elders to possess
authority. Over the past century, by contrast, the criticism of adult
authority has acquired a more ideological streak, leading to what has
been labelled as the 'de-authorisation of elders'. Never mind the
question of whether they exercise authority in a good way or bad way
today elders are no longer seen as possessing any real moral or
cultural authority. Indeed, in recent times it is not only the
authority of the old that has been called into question, but also the
authority of all adults.
Yet there is something very distinctive in the way that generational
tension and conflict are understood and discussed today. Until
recently, criticism of the elders expressed the frustrations of young
people, who were determined to acquire some of that authority and
status associated with being a grown-up. By contrast, today such
criticisms are promoted by members of the older generations
themselves, who are uncomfortable with exercising adult authority.
Catastrophic accounts of the pensions crisis or the idea that
grown-ups are responsible for the destruction of the environment
speak to an alarming loss of faith in adult authority itself. A
process that I have described elsewhere as 'socialisation-in-reverse'
teaches young people the idea that they are morally superior to their
polluting parents. An example of this project of de-authorising
grown-ups can be seen in 'A letter to your father' written by the
Australian climate alarmist Clive Hamilton. 'There is something you
need to know about your father', wrote Hamilton in his public letter
to Australia's youth, telling children that their dad is 'helping'
companies pollute the environment, which will mean that 'lots of
people, mostly poor people, are likely to die'.
There are many problems with relying on a generational analysis to
interpret broad socio-economic trends. The concept of the generation
is an abstraction. Most people do not identify themselves as members
of a particular generation. Indeed, identities based on ethnicity,
class, religion and lifestyle almost always override the identity of
generation. Sociological research suggests that generational
consciousness was, and remains, extremely feeble. As the American
critic Harold Rosenberg noted, 'belonging to a generation is one of
the lowest forms of solidarity' (1).
So why is there so much discussion about generational conflict today?
What distinguishes today's problematisation of the authority of the
elders is that it is principally promoted from above rather than
below it is the elders themselves who are questioning their own
authority. This indicates that the issue at stake is not so much the
greed of the boomers as their confusion about how they should relate
to the younger generations.
Naturalising human behaviour
Contemporary neo-Malthusianism continually draws on the intellectual
resources of sociobiology and naturalistic models of human behaviour.
In recent years, the British political class has invested heavily in
ideas about sociobiological behaviour, borrowing liberally from brain
research to explain socio-economic and moral issues.
The Pinch wholeheartedly embraces this naturalisation of human moral
and social behaviour. Thus, readers are informed that the phenomenon
of vampire bats sharing blood with one another shows that even a
competitive environment can encourage cooperation, indicating the
potential for reciprocal altruism. Experiments involving rhesus
monkeys apparently demonstrate that these animals have a capacity for
empathy. It seems that capuchin monkeys can also exhibit reciprocal
altruism, thereby creating hope for us humans, too.
From this naturalistic worldview, any idea of moral reasoning, of
engaging people in a serious debate about society and morality,
becomes severely denigrated. Instead, policymakers are encouraged to
influence citizen's behaviour by appealing to their narrow
self-interests and to instrumental reasoning. 'I believe [that a]
naturalistic account of morality is increasingly going to contribute
to public discourse about the many ethical issues in public policy',
writes Willetts. From this perspective, even the Ten Commandments can
be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis. So the call to honour thy
father and mother is here justified instrumentally apparently you
will benefit if you honour your parents because you are more likely
to be honoured, too. There is little room for moral autonomy and
decision-making in a world where our choices are apparently
programmed by our brains and our short-term self-interests. It seems
that 'neuroscientists have indeed established that the same bit of
the brain which makes decisions on inter-temporal choices is used for
altruism and fairness', says Willetts. So it is a bit of your brain
rather than moral reasoning that accounts for your altruism or lack of it.
In the world of The Pinch, when human behaviour is not determined by
biology it is dominated by some pre-existing force. So even those
Germans who acted bravely by sheltering Jews during the Nazi era were
not really acting as morally autonomous agents. Willetts cites a
researcher who apparently found that all these Germans 'had one thing
in common they all came from strong families'! Does that mean that
Germans born into 'weak families' lack the moral capacity for heroism
and sacrifice? When even people's sense of duty and sacrifice is
apparently pre-programmed, it is not easy to have any real confidence
and belief in the human potential.
And that is what The Pinch is really about. Do we believe that future
generations can carry on and develop human civilisation by developing
science, technology, the arts and culture? Or do we simply see the
future as an era of limits, where we will gradually exhaust the
planet and fail to create and construct a better world? Our
children's futures have not been stolen by the baby boomers. The
future is there for the taking if the world of adults takes its moral
responsibilities more seriously, and properly prepares young people
for their freedom and authority.
--
Frank Furedi's latest book, Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating, is
published by Continuum Press.
--
The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And
Why They Should Give it Back, by David Willetts, is published by
Atlantic Books. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)
--
(1) Harold Rosenberg (1959) The Tradition of the New, (New York;
Horizon Press) p.244
.
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