Ideals give us something to believe in. They inspire, motivate, and make life meaningful. By joining with others to pursue an ideal we build community and push back against alienation. So ideals are useful and worthwhile, regardless of the ideal or whether society and events are moving in their direction.
Ideals are the carrot that motivates the donkey forward, while the stick of cost-benefit practicality and necessity pushes it from behind.
But if we can’t agree on whether market capitalism, authoritarianism, or utopian socialism is the best direction, is there something we can agree on? Maturation. If society is metamorphosing through its adolescence, can we agree we need to grow up? It’s an optimistic aim we can all embrace. The world needs an optimistic and hopeful belief system we can all agree on, and maturation fits that need. Events will determine whether this means restructuring in one direction or another, but one way or another we will be doing so if the societal adolescence hypothesis is correct.
Maybe we can imagine such an ideal, to help guide and inspire us, like the carrot does for the donkey. Or maybe we can simply agree on incremental steps in that constitute an improvement and therefore progress in some sense. The ideal of societal maturation is probably the maximally general among all such objectives.Not every child wants to grow up and many try to extend their youth as long as possible. Some have commented that contemporary middle class consumerism and self-centeredness are adolescent values all too pervasive in modern life. But embracing adulthood is the right thing to do, so let’s lean into it and help society grow up.
Ideals are real, omnipresent and a fact of life. Everyone has their own ideal toward which they strive, consciously or unconsciously. Question is to what extent individuals sublimate their personal ideals for the sake of a group ideal.
We all know the old saw, presumably holding a grain of truth, that a stubborn donkey can be urged forward by either a stick to its rear or a carrot tantalizing it out front, a physical pain or an intangible hope. Cost-benefit economic calculation is the material stick that propels societal development from behind, while ideals are the intangible carrot the inspire hope. Portrayals of heaven and hell have served similar purpose. Either carrot or stick can move the donkey; using both is unnecessary. With a donkey, the stick is more used and presumably more effective. On the other hand, a dog is better trained and motivated by the imagination of treats, than by punishment. Both types of motivation their place. My purpose here is to entice society forward toward realization of its mature potential.
How do we navigate the chaos? We choose a fixed point to believe in, as an anchor.
Does societal maturation occur spontaneously, drafting individual leaders and actions to its cause, or does progress require our decisive action or vision contributed freely? Have we any moral obligation to help society along in this maturation process, by direct action or by illuminating the way forward? These are separate and philosophical topics I do not explore. Susan Neiman in “Moral Clarity”[1] argues that it is natural and moral to both imagine ideals and strive for their realization, and that society’s progress results from the accumulated efforts to reach out toward such ideals. She argues that the Enlightenment values of freedom, equality and brotherhood that emerged as the ideal basis of society’s governance in the 1700’s at the beginning of the industrial age should continue to form that basis, and she urges we should continue to uphold these values as principles by which to guide and evaluate progress. Individuals will disagree as to what these values mean in practice, but a discussion of ideals is appropriate as a means of helping society forward in its developmental metamorphosis and transformation toward maturity.
[1] Susan Neiman, Moral Clarity, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009)