The problems of philosophy of politics at the present time are multiple, difficult and diverse. They begin with an historic anomaly: the collapse of all previously credible world-views and universal codes of behaviour.

This is a uniquely troubling situation.  Such codes were the glue which used to hold society together. There are no longer any ideologies or religions with anything like unquestioned confidence in their own validity. It follows that there are no longer any societies which are fully glued.  

Today’s nation states may be divided into three categories: (a) open democracies, (b) totalitarian regimes, (c) theocratic regimes. Of these (b) and (c) look — at first glance—  most stable, but they are also brittle, because they depend on forcibly imposed ideologies or religions which have long since lost (or never had)  the reputation of unqualified (self-evident) validity.  Their populations can be kept in order by juntas which ruthlessly manipulate the day-to-day media, the police, the prisons, and public order, but these juntas usually depend in the last analysis on the say-so (ego) of a unique person, who may die or go ga-ga at any moment.

The open democracies are less stable than the totalitarian and theocratic states, and they are now, in many cases, in a state of deep neglect, political confusion and civic disarray.  They urgently need a democratically agreed, working, rigorous code of behaviour. But there is no sign of this. There is not even any sign of work actively going on the fill this role.

Every citizen in an open democracy should be socialised into a full, wholehearted recognition that everyone has considerable obligations to the state and the commongood. (This is a no-brainer, the state provides every individual with countless opportunities.)  It is an obvious truism that this essential working code is not currently in place. It is not even regarded as a “problem“ which needs to be fixed.  On the contrary, there are many egoistic individuals who try to make out that its absence is a kind of “emancipitation” and “progress”.  Public-spirited attitudes have been  scorned and put down as “do-goodery” and have almost vanished. RESULT: There are no national infrastructure projects today which do not immediately provoke a damning NIMBY reaction.

There are, thankfully,  here in the UK, quite extensive minority family-kinsfolk networks and jurist/royalist networks which are holding society together, after a fashion. But there are also millions of people in the open democracies who show very little, if any, such civil commitment. This means that the common bonds which ought to be holding society together are badly weakened. The intensely hostile reactions shown to Covid Lockdown in both China and the US show how deep this problem is. Quite large numbers of people in both countries have resorted to absurd conspiracy theories about Covid, rather than recognise the simple truth that an epidemic like this can only be beaten via rigorous solidarity.

The stability of the USA is a particular worry, because they have a demagogue who is unconsciously setting atrocious basic standards of (absent) personal loyalty, civility and veracity… all in the supposed cause of <<making America great again>>. The USA peculiarly lacks —as Neil Postman observed thirty years ago— a distinctive, entrenched civic, secular culture. In other words, it has a void where a national civic culture should be. This vacuum has been filled by corporate business and a dog-eat-dog free market economy.

So what can possibly be done to remedy this situation?  How can we renew previous —now lost— standards of rigour,  culture and civic responsibility?  They have been dissolving in front of our eyes.

In the case of America, some of them never established a presence,  partly, perhaps because because religion was supposed to do the job.

The big answer is of course that we need a radical reform of education. We need a school system which firmly instils into youthful minds the commongood sentiments and values which are coming to be dangerously absent in today’s adult society.

Getting a ‘radical reform’ of such intensity and potency is, however, a very nearly impossible ask.  It seems to imply that the current system is not the “best of all possible systems” the bland presumption on which it unconsciously operates and takes for incontrovertible truth.  (It is an anti-intellectual regime reacting against the folly of progressivism which failed in the 1960s.  This reliance on unconscious, unspoken, assumptions, gives it something like invincibility: because the slightest hint of disquiet would throw doubt on the value of the work the students had done.)

 It seems likely however that the substandard behaviourist-style education which still rules supreme in the USA and the UK, will eventually be widely seen to be the disaster area it has already been for forty years. It has suffocated the minds of millions of young people, including the parents of today’s pupil cohort. (Its poverty mirrors the void of civic narrative in the USA.) It will, if left in place, eventually bring about the collapse of society, because there are minimal levels of competence needed to keep the show on the road. This could arrive earlier than we are apt to suppose, because the dire effects (poor attention spans, ennui, mental health, drug abuse, etc.) of this anti-educational so-called ‘education’ are beginning to bite.

In other words, behaviouristic education cannot go on for ever, because by the nature of the case, it will dumb-down the human race, and bring about the downfall of anything worthy of the title ‘civilisation’.

Of course it is likely that before such a cataclysm actually arrives, a slow reactive switch away from behaviouristic education will begin to emerge. This may not be enough, though, in itself, to repair the cave-in of intellectual confidence in society.  A long-term solution will only come along when the educated consensus becomes absolutely clear that anti-maths is the BI we need to face down this currently over-hyped, over funded, over-swallowed, hallucination-prone AI. AI is generating “aberrant information”. It is dangerously increasing a deepflake element in society which is bemusingand confusing millions of ordinary people. It should give way to BI (the potential ‘Boundless Insight’ resulting from anti-math). This is the new,  wholly unexpected, authoritative, effective way to understand ourselves and the universe. It will no doubt eventually arrive. It can provide the theoretical foundations for a new, secure, humane, socially just, future society.     

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CHRISTOPHER ORMELL 1^st July 2024