I have been holding back from writing this and will probably take a while to publish. People are hurt upset and angry and nobody likes someone telling them some home truths in that situation but there are some that need to be said.
We need to become builders and, unfortunately, our house is in such a state that we are going to have to start at the foundations.
Let me tell the uncomfortable story.
The people who lived through World War II seem to have a very specific focus afterwards. They wanted to make the world a better place for all in society than it was before the war. A place where the need to go through experiences like those suffered by many during the fighting did not reoccur. They sought to build the institutions that would make sure that this happened and those institutions would be so strong that the children would not need to build them again.
Little did they see that their children far from appreciating those institutions would see them as expensive, unnecessary baggage and set about dismantling them. Anyone Baby Boomer or member of Generation X feeling smug about this and thinking I am talking of Millenials, better do a quick rethink. It is us, the Baby Boomer and Generation X who are those children. Baby Boomers were born to those who fought in the war, Generation X are the children of those who grew up during the war. We have had the luxury where of living in a world where no major international powers fought each other. They have held proxy wars, been involved wars in attempts to control other parts of the world and there have been wars between weaker countries
We claimed this as the removal of these institutions would empower people and increase equality. The discourse became ‘institution bad’. The irony was this undiscriminating approach to institutions is that it attacked the most vulnerable institutions first. These were not the big ones that reflected the interests of the powerful but the small ones that voiced the interests of the everyday citizen. The result is today that to control the power within the institutions you either need to have money or friends. What have disappeared or are under attack are those institutions that gave people influence because they existed.
Now I do not want to go back to flawed institutions. We need to learn from the failing of institutions in the past. They built institutions that saw the state providing the mesh that held society together. The Victorians before them built institutions that saw philanthropic paternalism of large total institutions as the solution to societies problems. I do not want to recreate the past but I do want to find a way forward to create a society that has institutions that connect us into a common whole and where people are not allowed to fall through the cracks.
I think I am being rather obtuse and fear that my ignorance about some aspects of contemporary politics may be obscuring my understanding of your inferences here. But your last sentence I do understand and agree with!
Don’t worry it is a fairly early thinking-out-loud post. It possibly makes more sense when seen in connection with the other post listed at http://www.jengiejon.info/?page_id=890 . They are a semi-serial set of blogs trying to look at ways for building a better society.