Dizzy has a fantastic post today in which he accuses us all of collective Nihilism and blames this lack of a collective belief structure for the phenomenon the Conservatives like to call ‘The Broken Society’. It’s a central tennet of opposition to focus on the negatives, in the same way as the government must always keep trying to remind us of the positives (I’m sure there are some about, somewhere). His argument is that “’society’, if you can call it that, has gone from believing in something collectively to simply believing in nothing collectively, and so, ’society’ becomes broken. Individualism in the 80s and moral relativism in the 90s has brought about nihilism in the 00s.”
I wonder what Dizzy would describe Cameron as? As far as philosophical labels make sense (which is not very far, in my opinion), he seems to be somewhat nihilistic – leading to the criticism that he has no ‘overall theme’ to his strategy. A degree of nihilism is, I would argue, a good thing in a political party – it allows them to solve problems without the dogmatic approach which so often accompanies an ideology.
Cameron’s speech had tints of Thatcher’s ‘…there is no such thing as society’ reply.
Labour appeals to the socialist bit in all of us; helping the most vulnerable and needy around us obviously is appealing. Labour attempts to address a problem by creating laws, rules, regulations, and more laws to regulate the rules. These are supposed to safeguard the stricken but instead they create a bureaucratic barrier which is nigh on impossible to surmount for those who are in most need.
Having lived through several Labour and Tory governments it is notable that my sister has had better facilities and treatment under the Tories than Labour.
It is also notable that today there has to be someone to blame. We are in a ‘there is no such thing as an accident’ culture – someone else has created your problem. That might be true in many circumstances but how many time have you received a straightforward mea culpa and an apology? I would accept that and move on in most cases but I don’t know if that’s due to my age, or upbringing, school and whatever else Cameron mentioned.
The cost of both employee and public liability insurances have shot up as a consequence, passed on to the customer, of course, as have your rates due to LAs not contesting small claims whilst not accepting liability. Perhaps LAs and large companies should fight every case and make people think twice before making a bogus claim.
I’m fed up with the obese being talked down to, much in the same way as smokers are (is Dave still lighting up?), when anorexic teenagers are a target of sympathy. There are plenty of addicts who don’t get a stern lecture about self-responsibility because their addiction may not manifest itself so obviously.
By all means, alert people and offer help, then they can choose to talk to their GP. All sorts of groups exist to help addicts, and most are free or very cheap. So much money has been made through diet books, health spas, and companies such as WeightWatchers, and it is reported that up to 50% of the population may be on a diet at any one time. They don’t generally work because they don’t begin to look at the underlying reasons for weight gain -it’s not in their interests.
Non-smokers get cancer, slim people get diabetes, head-cases get to be leaders of nations. It’s not a perfect world though Hitler thought he had a solution.
I’m all for self-responsibility but can we try to understand those who actually need a bit of help? It’s an idea, rather than an ideology.
Tizzy
July 9, 2008 at 3:16 am