Ian Boyne, ContributorThe dominance of money as the single most important currency of influence, power and status, and the decline of respectability as a status-defining factor have promoted increased and rampant corruption both in Government and in the private sector corporate world. - Carl Stone
RIGHT AT the start of a new year, I return to the central issue of values and our cultural and moral crisis, which the prominent political leaders and contenders in Jamaica are not paying sufficient attention to.
I told an audience over the weekend that if you want to better understand Jamaica today and the trends for the future, look at the United States. To help us with this task I want to draw on the work of the Princeton-educated Dr. David Callaghan, co-founder of the public policy centre in the United States, Demos, and author of the book, The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans are doing Wrong to get Ahead.
Callaghan notes that the Religious Right and other conservatives have been inveighing against the moral decline of America, but have largely focused on issues of sexual morality - abortion, teenage pregnancy, premarital sex, pornography, divorce, homosexuality as well as drug use, violent video games etc. But the facts show that teenage pregnancy is down, drunk driving is down and so is abortion and then use of tobacco and illicit drugs. Crime is also down.
Callaghan notes that while Americans are apparently becoming more concerned about issues of personal responsibility, "Cheating is up. Cheating is everywhere. By cheating I mean breaking the rules to get ahead academically, professionally and financially".
And the book is filled with graphic and eye-opening examples to prove the thesis. All the major scandals are covered in the book as well as some less-publicised ones which all show an America obsessed with financial rewards and status with money being the main determinant of influence, the consequences of which Professor Carl Stone warned Jamaicans about 14 years ago in a paper titled 'Values Norms and Personality Development in Jamaica'.
A MORAL CRISIS
Says the Culture of Cheating: "America's watchdogs of virtue have been largely silent about the new epidemic of cheating. To be sure, rampant cheating by students has begun to receive attention in the past several years. And the recent corporate scandals induced a media-feeding frenzy. There have also been big stories about cheating by athletes, or tax evasion or plagiarism by journalists."
But Callaghan makes an important point: "Still, there's been very little effort to connect all these dots and see them for what they represent: A profound moral crisis that reflects deep economic and social problems in American society". And this is exactly what the book does: It connects the dots and shows the inter-connections.
The chapter titles themselves are instructive: "Everybody Does it", "Whatever it Takes", "Temptation Nation" and, perhaps the most interesting of all, "A Question of Character".
While Americans have always been strongly oriented toward wealth-creation and personal advancement - to a much greater extent than the Europeans - they have not always been hedonistic and narcissistic, nor have they always been willing to do anything to get ahead. There was a strong emphasis on a "virtuous capitalism" by the early capitalists in America and there was the sense that wealth-building had to have an ethical foundation.
The famous European writer Alexis De Tocqueville, whose well-cited work, 'Democracy in America' recounts his impressions of early America notes in that book, "It is strange to see with what feverish ardour the Americans pursue their own welfare. Everyone wants either to increase his own resources or to provide fresh ones to his progeny. The love of well-being has now become the predominant taste of the nation."
So Americans have always been personally ambitious and materially restless that is why Horatio Alger is a hero. But there were moral underpinnings and a sense of commitment to some values outside of personal aggrandisement. This is what is different with many Americans today, and Jamaica is on the same cultural radar as the United States so we better understand what's taking place there, if we want to understand our people's aspirations and values.
MORALITY AND ECONOMICS
Benjamin Friedman, former Economics Department chairman at Harvard, also explores the values of the early settlers in America in his major work just released, 'The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth'. But Friedman points out how Enlightenment values saw commerce as serving ethical ends and, indeed, strengthening the ethical foundation. The ideological father of modern capitalism, Adam Smith, was a philosopher who understood that capitalism could not be successfully built without a firm moral foundation. (See his Theory of Moral Sentiments, not just Wealth of Nations) Two first-rate American social critics Christopher Lasch in 'The Culture of Narcissism' and Daniel Bell in the 'Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism' saw the trends in the 1970s.
"The Enlightenment thinkers also saw that commerce rewarded such personal traits as reliability, order and discipline, not to mention an inclination to be helpful and friendly toward one's fellow citizens. Rather than worrying about how to suppress individual's insatiable appetites as the Stoics of ancient Greece had done or simply railing against them as countless religious sects did, Smith believed commerce would harness those appetites to serve the society as a whole", says Friedman in the Moral Consequences of Economic Growth. That concept has gone through the door. Now it's a winner-take-all mentality in the United States.
This shift toward a rugged individualism and hedonism is very recent and was solidified in the 1980s as part of the Reagan Revolution. "The move away from an ethos of self-sacrifice to one of personal self-interest-to a 'new society of individuals' triggered a social earthquake in Western nations" says Callaghan in the 'Culture of Cheating'. One group of researchers say, "It was a psychological reformation as powerful and decisive as the religious reformation of the 16th Century". ('The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism').
While the 60s spawned a focus on rights in America, there was an overarching sense of social obligation and social responsibility. That began to change radically in the 1970s, and was cemented in the 1980s. "Young people became more cynical and materialistic. The (post-Vietnam) nation drifted without a strong sense of national purpose - stuck it seemed in an intractable malaise.
"As the race for money and status has intensified, it has become more acceptable too for individuals to act more opportunistically and dishonestly to get ahead. Notions of integrity have weakened. More of us are willing to make the wrong choices at least when it comes to money and career."
THE CHURCH SETS NO EXAMPLE
And religion is not helping. In fact American Protestant religion - mainly the Charismatic and Evangelical variety - has become a reflection of the secular materialistic culture and part of the malaise.
The fastest-growing churches in American and the biggest ministries are those stressing the health and wealth gospel, preaching a rugged individualism where God is merely a servant of the individual who desires success and prosperity and gets it by exercising faith. American Christianity, very popular in Jamaica with cable penetration and mimic men like some of the leading Bishops and preachers here, is a victim of American cultural decline.
The empirical facts detailing the change in values in America are startling. In 1975 less than 20 per cent of Americans identified a vacation home as being integral to "the good life". By the early 1990s the number had jumped to 35 per cent. Less than 15 per cent had a swimming pool in their vision of "the good life" in 1975. By 1991 nearly a third of the American people did.
The Cooperation Institutional Research Program in the U.S. has tracked the attitudes of college freshmen since the 1960s. In the 1960s fewer than fifty per cent saw the goal of being well-off financially as either 'essential' or 'very important'. Students saw education as a means of equipping them to serve some larger purpose than financial advancement, though naturally that was an objective. But "as making money moved front and centre, young people stopped caring about other things. In the late 1960s, believe it or not, the most important goal of a college freshmen was 'developing a meaningful philosophy of life', cited by over 80 per cent of entering students", says 'The Culture of Cheating'. How have values changed in America in a relatively short time!
"Financial goals also began pushing aside other aspirations. The number of Americans who saw the good life as hinging on 'a lot of money' jumped substantially in the 1980s, rising from a minority. Even as more people admitted hankering after swimming pools and vacation homes, they also reported a declining focus on having a happy marriage or an interesting job."
If some American social critics are worrying about the effects on this runaway individualism and hedonism on their society, then what should be our reaction as a poor developing country struggling with huge debts, deficits and high inflation and with a lopsided, structurally imbalanced economy?
But the politicians seem to be blissfully unaware of these issues, concentrating on symptoms and pipe dreams instead. They need to enter the serious discourse taking place about cultural shifts if they are to be taken seriously as people concerned about national development. It's time the discussion on corruption move into a wider context of concerns.
Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can email him at ianboyne1@yahoo.com
