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What, if anything, unites us a nation? And does it even matter?

Following on from the success of our last ‘long–read’ series, The Mighty and the Almighty, we have asked a number of leading theologians, philosophers, sociologists, historians, and writers – some Christians, others not – to think out loud on the topic. First up, philospher Julian Baggini:

One thing many of us appear to believe today is that a quick Google search will answer any question. As I discovered when trying to find out what we believe today, you don’t even need to do the search. Just type in the first few words and see how the algorithms complete it for you. So it was that the phrase “believe in” was completed by – as I suspected – “yourself”.

This little exercise may not prove anything but it lent support to my sense that although we live in a pluralistic society in which many of us believe very different things, the dominant object of faith is the individual.

This is, in a sense, an uncontroversial claim. Time magazine named Millennials – those born in the last two decades of the 20th century – the “Me Me Me Generation”. Various psychologists have suggested that these people are more narcissistic and have a greater sense of entitlement than any that preceded them. However, they did not emerge in a vacuum. Rather, they are the full flowering of an individualism that has been growing at least since the dawn of the Enlightenment and arguably since the birth of Christianity, with its unprecedented emphasis on personal salvation and God’s relationship with the individual.

However, I think that the true nature of this individualism is not properly understood. First and foremost, it is not the same as selfishness. In many ways, our society is more altruistic than any before us, particularly if you take concern for others outside our immediate circle as a barometer of kindness. Consider how a Labour government first pledged to raise the UK’s overseas aid budget to 0.7% of national income and the Conservatives have maintained that, despite the 2008 financial crisis and increased pressures on public spending. This represents an extraordinary and unprecedented public consensus around the moral importance of overseas development.

Concern for others is also expressed in numerous other ways. A few generations ago, few gave any thought at all to the pay and conditions of people in poorer countries who supplied us with imports. Now numerous high street chains make great efforts to avoid suppliers who use sweat shops, and fair trade is now so mainstream that most of the best–selling chocolate brands are FairTrade certified, such as Dairy Milk, KitKat and Maltesers.

Nor is it the case that we have become incredibly “atomised”, living in our own private bubbles, not mixing with others, as a stroll down any town centre at midnight on a Friday night will confirm. The atomisation thesis is largely a scare story based on a misunderstanding of how people use social media and mobile technologies. For instance, studies have shown that children who use social media the most also have more in–the–flesh social interactions. Younger people do not look at their mobile phones instead of talking to real people, they use their mobile devices to stay even more in touch with their friends than they did before. Yes, more people than ever are “bowling alone” but such solitary pursuits define the lives of a small minority.

The core feature of contemporary individualism is neither atomisation nor selfishness. It is rather a belief that each individual is the sole legitimate author of his or her life. The twentieth century saw declarations of the deaths of both the self and the author, but in fact sole self–authorship is the defining belief of contemporary Western society.

Take the arena of religious belief, or lack of it. It has been widely noted that the old assumption that we are on an inevitable road towards almost universal atheism has been discredited. Most people have some kind of belief in a God, a spiritual realm, or something vaguely “other”. However, behind these differences lies a commonality: that whatever you believe, you choose to believe for yourself. Hence there has been a very marked decline in people identifying with any organised religion. When people embrace an identity that they did not create, it has to be clear that it is of their own choosing.

This attitude is perhaps most clearly expressed in the hostility many now have to any kind of “label”. A fascinating example of this is a YouGov survey in 2015 which suggested that only half of young people identified as heterosexual. This number far exceeds the proportion of the population that actively chooses bisexual or homosexual lifestyles. It seems that the finding simply reflects a reluctance among young people to take on any kind of “label” at all, as this is seen as restricting their freedom to be who they want to be.

In some respects, it is a good thing that people are increasingly willing and able to take ownership of their own lives. No one would want to go back to the time when your station in life was determined a birth, destined to till the land, go down the mines, or lord it over those who did either. It is also good that people understand that their own identities are not set in stone at birth and that we have some power to fashion our own lives and selves.

The problem is that these truths have become simplified and exaggerated in the collective common sense. The modest “I can be more than I now am” becomes the unrealistic “I can be whatever I want to be”. The desire to push our limits becomes the refusal to accept we have any. There is now an unrealistic and ultimately unhelpful overestimation of the desirability and possibility of truly being authors of our own selves and lives. This lack of realism has several downsides.

The first and perhaps most obvious is that it creates expectations that can’t be met. Time and again we hear people who have succeeded telling others that with enough belief (and sometimes, but not always, hard work too), you can achieve anything that you want to. This is palpable nonsense. It is mathematically impossible for more than ten people to be the top ten in the world at anything, for example, so the idea that with enough self–belief anyone can win Wimbledon is nonsense. That’s even before you take into account that talent is just not evenly distributed, as my own sporting endeavours have sadly demonstrated.

The myth that belief leads to success leaves the unsuccessful feeling inadequate and the successful smug. It prevents both from acknowledging the role of luck in life. But then fortune is an imposter in a world view that sees individuals as capable of writing their own lives. To acknowledge that fortune is important in life ruins the illusion of sole self–authorship.

This illusion fuels the understandable desire to take control of our lives. Again, in many ways this is a good thing. But the benefit curve starts to dip down into negative territory when we try to take control too far. This makes us unwilling to confront the contingency, imperfection and uncertainty of many important areas of our lives. The paradox of control is that to exercise as much of it as we can, we need to be highly aware of what we cannot control. To take a relatively trivial example, if you want to take control of your diet you need to reorganise that resisting immediate temptation is very difficult and even if you succeed, there is evidence that it will leave you with less energy to tackle other difficult tasks. So to take control, you first recognise where you don’t have it, and so design your lifestyle so you don’t have biscuits in the cupboard or large servings on your plate.

A more complex and important example is intimate relationships. These differ so much that any generalisations are bound to have exceptions. However, I think it is generally true that making them work requires being open to the possibility that love might come from an unexpected source, that relationships develop in different and unpredictable ways, that they bring out our own flaws as well as those in others, that when we make a commitment we give ourselves wholeheartedly not provisionally.

All of these things become harder to do when we overestimate the extent to which we can and should be authors of our own lives. What happens then is that we approach love as consumers. We assess potential partners in terms of how they match our list of demands, we want to be in strict control of how the relationship develops and, perhaps most significantly, we adopt an attitude of “try before you buy”, in which we can return the goods at any time, with as long a warrantee period as possible.

The dating culture that has emerged is too often like this. Of course, I am not saying that people ought not to take active steps to find a partner, such as by using online dating. And of course, there is always a period when you get to know someone when you are checking each other out, seeing if you suit each other. But we need to be careful that this does not turn into an excessively consumerist attitude in which the desire for control keeps us from entering fully into the uncontrollable complexities of a deeply engaged human relationship.

More generally, buying into the myth of sole self–authorship leads to hubris. We come to believe that all that we are, all that we have and all we believe is the result of our actions alone. Furthermore, we see other people in the same way, meaning that we come to believe everything is the consequence of choices people did not need to make. This makes it much harder to achieve an empathetic acceptance of difference. When we look at others with different beliefs that we think are clearly wrong, for example, we do not have the sense that if life had been different we could have ended up believing the same thing. In contrast, when we understand that there is a deep contingency in who we have become, that fosters a kind of modesty. Reduce that sense of contingency and you reduce the modesty, potentially fostering arrogance.

The way to avoid the problems associated by belief in sole self–authorship, however, is not to entirely reject the ideas behind it. At its root is the true belief, expressed most explicitly in existentialist philosophy, that there is indeed a sense in which we do have to take responsibility for our own lives and create our own meanings. The wrong turn society has made has been to overestimate both how much is under our authorship and the extent to which we can write unaided. The idea of absolute freedom, popularised by Sartre, is exhilarating but false. It remains the case, however, that no one else can hand us our meanings and values on a plate; that we become who we are by what we do and do not come into the world with fully formed, unchanging essences; and that we ultimately must take responsibility for our choices and actions.

The shift to belief in sole self–authorship was not a step in the wrong direction but a step too far. That is why it is misleading to describe what we believe in today as individualism. The Enlightenment emphasis on the rights and responsibilities was progressive and we should not seek to reverse it. All we need to do is to accept that this was never meant to be a new religion in which humans became gods. Sustainable individualism requires us to accept that our individuality is only made possible by the society we grow up and live in. We should indeed strive to be the authors of our own lives, but we must acknowledge that the setting and the other characters are not under our control and that even we were sketched out before we could start to write our own scenes.

In place of the myth of sole self–authorship we need a different creative metaphor, perhaps that of jazz musicians, who must try to forge their own creative paths but are never anything like the sole authors of their lives. In such a life there are chances for individuality to shine, through solos and compositions. But even these are not isolated achievements. Every performance comes in the context of a history, a tradition, a discipline. To play is almost always to play with others, and to get the best for yourself you need them to get the best for themselves too.

What’s also nice about the metaphor is that in the jazz world, people play different roles. Some are more creative, leading bands and writing music, while others play a more supporting role, laying down a groove for the more exhibitionist leads to build on, for instance. This is a refreshing alternative to the idea of self–authorship, which can seem to place an unrealistic burden on everyone to live creatively.

Surprisingly, this also provides a useful way of thinking about politics and society. The jazz world, like the social world, is a complex ecosystem, always evolving, always diverse. It has its factions, all–too–keen to denounce others as not playing “real jazz” but, ultimately, it is an inherently pluralistic sphere in which purists are always discredited in time. It is global and inclusive, always willing to absorb influences from “world music”. Perhaps most importantly, it is a world that values both tradition and innovation, being rooted in the past but not trapped in it. It promotes respect for elders while encouraging the young to forge their own paths.

All metaphors break down if pushed too hard, but there is much in this one that fits. The jazz musician is neither an obedient orchestra member, playing notes that were all written by others, under the baton of the conductor, nor a solitary writer filling a blank page. Jazz musicians walk the strange line between freedom and constraint, expressing themselves but also helping others to express themselves, keeping alive tunes and traditions they did not create but need not slavishly follow either. They do not just express themselves, but work on themselves to discover just what it is they can express that is worthwhile. As a model of mitigated individualism, I find that both realistic and attractive. Life is not something we write alone but is a series of jam sessions we take part in with others.

Julian Baggini is a philosopher and the author of The Edge of Reason: A rational sceptic in an irrational world (Yale University Press, 2016)