Worldview

Beliefs and principles matter: they are what we make our future with. My beliefs and principles begin with our earth, photographed from space: the blue planet. The universe is vast. Our planet and its solar system are grains of sand scattered in a quiet corner: insignificant in terms of mass and energy; but to us, they matter.

The watery, temperate and fecund blue planet is perhaps not unique in the universe, but certainly unusual. The life forms which have evolved on it seem likely to be unique in the universe.

Homo sapiens sapiens is the dominant life form on the blue planet, despite the recent evolutionary appearance of this species. Populations of this species vastly outnumber those of all other primates combined. We are a sudden and major event in the evolutionary cycle. More, indeed: we constitute a new epoch in geological time (the Anthropocene, following the Holocene) and our presence is bringing about something which only natural phenomena of extraordinary drama have been able to achieve before: an extinction episode.

How should we respond to this? What follows is my response.

Credo

We are one. No human life is more important than any other.

We are one. No evolved animal species is, morally, more important than any other species (though evolution is by definition dynamic and not static, and the mechanisms of evolution involve struggle between species).

The health of the planet is paramount, and of more consequence than the health of individual species. No species, in any case, is likely to survive the entire course of evolution. We will face extinction at some point. All life on earth will cease in 3.5 billion years.

The two challenges

I believe that the world faces two overwhelming challenges.

The first challenge is population growth. Homo sapiens might now be regarded as a plague species. For this reason, I welcome birth control initiatives, declining fertility rates and the full cultural acceptance and celebration of homosexuality. Birth control initiatives, declining fertility rates and reproductive silence may mean personal grief and transitional economic challenges, but these are morally preferable to other means of controlling human populations, such as disease, famine and war (which carry a much greater burden of suffering and injustice). They are also less random and potentially more effective.

The second challenge is the environmental degradation and damage caused to the planet, its atmosphere and its life forms by human activity. I support all initiatives designed to limit and, if possible, reverse this damage.

These two challenges in practice fuse into one. We cannot, for example, hope to meet the challenge of climate change without reducing the human load on the planet. Population reduction is an urgent environmental priority.

Horizon: the view from here

I question the assumption that growth is always an absolute good. There are times when managed decline is preferable. An incipient extinction episode may be one of them.

I am a moral relativist. Moral relativism leads to conflicts in duty and behaviour which cannot in some instances be resolved, but it is less likely to lead to murder and genocide than moral fundamentalism or absolutism. (Moral relativism does not, of course, equate with moral laxitude: the moral struggle is vitally important for individual human psychological health as well as the health of human societies.)

I respect all religions for their championing of love, compassion and charity. Sectarianism, fundamentalism and the literal interpretation of ancient religious texts, however, seem to me to be a perversion of the highest religious ideals, and dangerous both for other human beings and for the planet. Religious irresponsibility (concerning human population growth, for example, or narrowly defined spiritual rectitude in the face of human diversity, sexual identity or the competition for physical or spiritual resources) can quickly become a force for evil.

The nation-state seems to me to be a political entity whose use is passing, though historical and cultural nostalgia prevents us from recognizing this. Our security and thus our prosperity depends primarily on the strength, adaptability and resilience of international bodies and institutions, and on the willingness of nations to uphold international law. This will become increasingly true as oil, gas and food resources dwindle in the future.

I am a pragmatic, non-dogmatic socialist in the following simple sense. Human beings are social animals, and I see the most endearing and precious aspect of human culture as being the provision of mutual aid and support to other humans for no pecuniary or material gain. I support any political system which embraces and nurtures such a social spirit. International organisations and systems of international and national law prove their worth, inter alia, when setting limits and constraints on capitalism and the free market. Without limits and constraints, capitalism and the free market become de-humanising forces. With limits and constraints, capitalism and the free market can bring great benefits to human societies, but it is the society rather than the market which is primordial.

I support non-violent means of achieving change. Violence begets violence. Two of the greatest human achievements of my lifetime have been the ending of communism in Europe without violence and the ending of apartheid in South Africa without violence. The resort to violence always indicates failure: victories achieved by violence entail a karmic deficit (they are spiritually contaminated), even when the cause is a just one. Nonetheless I accept that failure in human conflict resolution is so widespread, and power so often clasped in the hands of torturers and murderers, that recourse to violence is sometimes the only hope of ending injustice and tyranny. The gravity of violence, however, is always underestimated -- not least because all human history has been written by the survivors of conflicts (and their offspring) rather than by the millions of slain. The millions of slain (and their unborn children) might, perhaps, have written another history, and might with some justice have considered the recourse to violence which ended their lives unnecessary and misguided.

I lament the tyranny of popular culture in western, media-dominated societies. It strikes me as a form of voluntary brainwashing, and its corrosive and stupifying effects impoverish and damage the human spirit. Much the same seems to me true of fashion in all fields, and not simply the obvious ones. Both illustrate how easily human individuals and communities may be manipulated -- and underline the vital importance of dissidents to the intellectual health and well-being of those communities.

I do not know if God exists or not. Any workable definition of God delivers an improbable entity, but the enveloping wonder remains.

The sense of humour seems to me to be one of the most precious human attributes. Humour failure is a certain prelude to death. (And if God does exist, sexual reproduction is proof that He or She has a sense of humour.)

Chance

In all human lives, chance is the main force creating outcomes. In other words, most of what happens to us is a matter of chance.

Those living in prosperous, developed nations tend to downplay this, ascribing success, wealth and health to personal achievement. This is almost never true. Success, wealth and health are overwhelmingly accidents of birth and circumstance, and thus due to chance. “Who” I am, and anything I have been able to “achieve”, is above all the consequence of my having been born and educated in a prosperous area of Western Europe. If “I” had been born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, my life would have been a very different one even if I had lived it with identical effort and assiduity. I would also probably be dead by now. This would also be true had I been born to different family circumstances in the same place.

Even within the small circles of nation and peer group, chance also plays a much greater role in our lives than any of us readily concede. The others who people our personal lives, for example, are all there by an extraordinary succession of chances, yet the texture of our lives, and the tally of happiness or misery within them, is in large part due to those others and our relationships with them. In most professions, those who occupy the most lavishly rewarded posts, or those which entail the most fame or prestige, do so by chance rather than merit. (It is, after all, a matter of chance as to whether one is ambitious or not. The unambitious cannot learn ambition.) Some deserve their success; many don’t. Good physical and mental health is obviously and fundamentally a matter of luck, too: the luck of the genes, the luck not to be accidentally or deliberately maimed, the luck of having enough to eat.

Naturally, one can make the most of one’s luck, or endanger it or destroy it by cavalier behaviour. The margin of manoeuvre, though, is far narrower than our notions of ‘personal freedom’ encourage us to think.

The material circumstances of our lives, therefore, are what chance has allotted us, rather than what we deserve. Indeed what “we” are in in large part a construct of those circumstances, though our vanity encourages us to think otherwise. Our essence or self is in fact a void which is filled by a corpus of circumstances (the world without) and givens (our gene pool, and its physical and mental consequences), lent shape by our moral being. If “I” had been born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, “I” would be somebody so different as to render any comparison or link meaningless.

Facing the fact that almost everything in life is a matter of chance is uncongenial to us. It feels disempowering. How should we respond?

Acknowledging the primordial role of chance in life is not to encourage fatalism: there is nearly always some small margin of manoeuvre open to us and successful efforts within that margin can improve the quality of life (though by how much is a matter of chance).

Acknowledging the primordial role of chance in life creates solidarity between the fortunate and the less fortunate, and between the living and the dead who have gone before us. It predisposes individuals to compassion, and lends perspective.

Acknowledging the primordial role of chance in life promotes mental and spiritual flexibility and suppleness, and an athletic and responsive mental outlook.

Acknowledging the primordial role of chance in life encourages fortitude and stoicism.

Acknowledging the primordial role of chance in life leads us towards the realisation that the stable and unchanging self is a fiction, that the pursuit of self and selfhood is a trap which can only entail disappointment, and that fulfilment and contentment are to be found in moving beyond the self via physical, mental and spiritual efforts.

These are social as well as personal assets.

Other campaigning issues

I support: