Camp Dawkins & End of Fair Society

Two articles in this week Sunday Times caught my attention:
The first reports on Richard Dawkins's attempt to set up an atheist camp in UK for young children.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6591231.ece

This one has a decent joke as well which brought out a smirk:
How many atheists does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to change the bulb and the other to film the work being done so the fundamentalists won’t claim that God did it.

The second article is a brilliant one. It tries to see how a cross section of the British society view the gap between the haves and have nots in these times of recession. Some telling lines,

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6591250.ece

Rowntree’s research, among more than 1,000 adults of all income groups, shows that more than two thirds of them admire the rich, and assume that their high salaries are a proper reward for ability, effort and performance. On the other hand, they are largely contemptuous of the poor, especially those who live on benefits. Those people are routinely described as scroungers.

And though most people described themselves as very concerned about inequality, it wasn’t the gap between rich and poor they cared about. It was the gap between the top and themselves that they wanted to see narrowed.

We’re told we live in a meritocracy, so despite the evidence around us, we pretend it’s so. Anything else would be too painful to bear. We can tolerate the comfortable or luxurious lives that some people live only by telling ourselves that they are deserved. These people must work much harder than we are prepared to, or have skills we cannot dream of.

In the research sessions, participants projected all kinds of virtues – dedication, private study, willingness to tolerate stress – onto those with high salaries. Equally, we might find the grim poverty or simple limitations of others’ lives indefensible unless we told ourselves that these people had a choice, and it’s wilfulness or laziness that keeps them as they are. The idea that our life chances are radically unfair is more than we can admit.

Our need to believe in the worth of those above us might give us a different explanation for the anger over bankers’ salaries and MPs’ expenses. It isn’t the fact of their high incomes that enraged us. It was that their selfishness and incompetence destroyed our illusions about their worth. Our faith required us to believe that they deserved what they got. Having their faults exposed has made us uncomfortable.

This mass delusion doesn’t mean that attempts to make Britain more equal are doomed, but it does show that those who think it desirable have to take a different approach. Expecting most people to care about inequality as an abstract concept is pointless: they don’t. They think that quite a lot of it is fair. But the Rowntree research does show a way forward.

The research group were asked which of three societies they would rather live in – a traditional free-market one, with few protections; an egalitarian one that cut the gap between rich and poor; or one that gave priority to improving everyone’s quality of life.

Almost nobody, not even the rightwingers, opted for a society that made economic growth and standards of living a priority, especially if these were accompanied by greater insecurity. Yet this is pretty much what Labour has offered in the past dozen years – increased wealth but much more precarious lives. If that bargain ever was appealing, it isn’t any more.

Only a small number opted for the egalitarian choice. The overwhelming majority chose the third.

Under the banner of quality of life, people were happy to work and consume less, and pay more tax, if it meant they had less pressure in their lives and better public services. They agreed that they wanted to “reduce social dysfunction and move away from market values”, live in a less divided society, experience less crime, and invest in preventive help for children and young people in need. In other words, the kind of society most people thought would make them happier also happened to be a rather more equal one. But that was a byproduct, not its central appeal.
The political party that can recognise this mood and respond to it will be facing an open goal. People can see the point of a fairer society if it’s principally something that will improve their lives too. Tragically, new Labour never had the imagination to seize this ground; it was too busy counting targets and letting markets rip. Is it even remotely possible that the Tories can make enlightened self-interest a powerful cause?