In anticipation of our panel “The Measure of Our Success: How Do We Define and Attain the Good Society,” we’d like to hear from you. What do you think makes for a good society and quality of life? Share your thoughts on our blog by leaving a comment as we start this inter-disciplinary conversation.
The Center for European Studies will host a panel on Friday, November 13, 2009 from 2:00-4:00 pm to consider this topic and present two important new publications. The first is the ‘Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report’ commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France that looks at how policy makers might go beyond GDP when measuring the well-being and quality of life of their people. Two of the authors, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi (via teleconference) will discuss the findings. Professors Peter Hall and Michèle Lamont will then discuss their new book Successful Societies: How Institutions and Culture Affect Health, that integrates recent research in an effort to answer the question of why some societies are more successful than others at promoting individual and collective well-being.
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November 4, 2009 at 11:06 am
Anna Popiel
Treating members of the society as citizens rather than customers helps constituting a healthy society. No one in the US is really talking about what the health reform should be like, everyone concentrates on how it is going to be paid for, so the real health aspect of the reform is not being discussed.
People, who are currently not covered, are treated as future clients of insurance companies, not like citizens needing health care.
November 4, 2009 at 11:13 am
Leah Dickstein MD MA
ethical leadership is the foundation. that was the title of one of my lectures at the American Psychiatric Ass San Francisco mtg this past May. I’ll be at another mtg on the 13th, but would be pleased to speak to others before or after.
November 4, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Kari Hannibal
A good society needs a willingness to entertain new ideas, to engage in critical debate, to find consensus. It needs to welcome and incorporate into the functioning society the foreigner or those who are different from the existing culture. It also needs a system to sanction or stop those who would do harm to others. It needs to have a way of integrating into society those with disabilities. It should respect the dignity and equality of all people.
November 4, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Art Goldhammer
“In general, the man who is capable of deliberating has practical wisdom” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6). A good society is one in which people are capable of deliberation, by which I mean capable not just of making their own preferences known but also of taking account of the preferences of others and perhaps modifying their own in light of what they learn about the condition of those unlike themselves. A society that is guided by the sum total of existing preferences may be democratic but it is neither wise nor just. A society that seeks by non-coercive means to bring the preferences of its members into a more just harmony can aspire to be good as well as democratic.
November 4, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Gerald Holton
One might include as one of the primary indicators of success: the positioning
of the state of current society to make more likely the success of the successive ones.
November 4, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Roy & Anne Freed
A truly good society comprises adequate opportunities for current open-minded education, preferably free of tuition; access to universal modern preventive and remedial physical and mental health care paid for through progressive income taxes; for diverse employment for reasonable compensation; and respect for differences of views, ethnicities, and life styles; responsible corruption-free local, State, and Federal government agencies that foster the public good in public health, personal protection, transportation, and government services; a political situation free from the corruption of political contributions that promote anti-public special business and ideological interests in contrast to genuine public issues; effective objective media.
November 5, 2009 at 10:27 am
Paul Bernstein, Ph.D.
Improved societies can result when their members become incentivized less by their ego-drives and more by their “enlarged selves”.
However, for such a fundamental shift to occur, both the individuals’ Psychology and the society’s Culture must comprehend and then learn how to actualize the “larger self”. (I can explain further to anyone interested.)
November 7, 2009 at 12:02 am
Alexander Bevilacqua
One measure of the good society is how well a society supports the young in developing talents and pursuing careers. A comparative analysis might ask: Do the young have a sense of possibility? Are sophisticated careers achievable without special family know-how or costly private training? Is public secondary education university preparatory? Do scholarships afford access to higher education to anyone with aptitude but without means? Once they graduate from university, can and do the young perceive delineated career paths, or do connections and insider knowledge seem to be required for entry and advancement? To what degree is social mobility possible without such unfair recourse as expensive foreign degrees?
Honest answers would suggest how far, even in Europe and the United States, we are from achieving truly inclusive communities — not just with respect to political participation but also regarding creativity, productivity and the creation of knowledge.
November 7, 2009 at 9:01 am
Bo Rothstein
A great and very timely topic for CES. FYI, there are at least three working papers dealing with this specific issue at the webpage of The Quality of Government Institute at University of Gothenburg (www.qog.pol.gu.se).
“The Good Society Index” by Sören Holmberg
“Quality of Government: What You Get” by Sören Holmberg, Bo Rothstein & Nahmeh Nasiritoursi (also published in Annual Review of Political Science 2009.)
“Dying of Corruption”, by Sören Holmberg & Bo Rothstein.
November 10, 2009 at 3:33 pm
PH
Before exploring the nature and feasibility of the Good Society, perhaps we should start by asking, What’s wrong with the current one? In fact, until this question is answered, any vision of an alternative society is bound to be little more than idealistic musings which carry no analytical or emancipatory value. Several posts in this thread unfortunately fall in the latter category. Sure, using “non-coercive means to bring the preferences of its members into a more just harmony” sounds like a great idea, and who wouldn’t agree that we should “respect the dignity and equality of all people”? Yet while these phrases suggest that some people in this society have been getting a raw deal when it comes to harmony, dignity, and equality, they offer no specific examples, and more importantly no explanation of why things are the way they are. So instead of engaging in philosophical speculation over the nature of a just society, we should start with a critique of the one in which we actually live.
Most people in this country are not concerned with abstract principles like dignity or harmony but have far more immediate grievances. Ms. Popiel’s observation, that health healthcare reform is driven by profit concerns rather than a desire to improve human well-being, is well-taken in this regard. I would ask an even more fundamental question, namely, Why is a public healthcare option necessary at all? Well, for one, because the ordinary incomes of some fifty million Americans simply don’t suffice to purchase health insurance (or at least doing so would require significant cutbacks in other areas of life). To a rational observer, the fact that working a full-time job all your life (if you’re lucky enough not to get laid-off) does not even buy basic medical protection, would presumably raise a few red flags. This reality appears even more striking if one considers the area of food insecurity. The USDA estimated in 2006 (prior to the recession!) that more than 1 in 10 American households were not able to afford enough food to meet minimum nutritional standards. Given that the productive capacity, technology, and infrastructure needed to alleviate these grievances are readily available, the fact that millions of people are systematically excluded from access to elementary goods like food, housing and healthcare constitutes a truly devastating judgment of this society.
If the goal is to determine how we might “define and attain” the Good Society, then we have to start by identifying the reasons behind existing contradictions like the persistence of hunger in the face of overflowing supermarket shelves. This kind of inquiry is hardly popular, of course, seeing as it might question some of the fundamental institutions on which this society is based, most notably the private ownership of all significant sources of wealth by an exceedingly small minority of individuals. Still, unlike wishful thinking about some ideal society, this approach might actually lead somewhere.
November 10, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Martha Ferede
I imagine a litmus test of a good society would be how it is defined by those at the margins and in the gaps. Would those at these various cross sections – define it as just and good? How permanent and tangible is this “goodness”? Who is it good for?
On a lighter note, I am reminded of a Spock from Star Trek whose Vulcan motto is “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.” Are there always those who “benefit” and those who “sacrifice” in the quest for good societies?
As for quality of life I would include: health, a living wage, a sense of hope, ability to succeed, equality and freedom of expression.
November 13, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Patrice Higonnet
Would the person using my initials, PH (though I much prefer the more genteel PLRH), please identify himself or herself?