The Virtuous Economy and The Good Society

Being the seventh of an eight part series on the Virtuous Economy and the Common Good.

The Good Society is one with a vision that is shared by all citizens and in which all are participants and is one that is founded on longstanding social and moral values that are endorsed both individually and collectively.

It is a society that operates through a virtuous economy, enhancing the common wealth and the common good for all of its citizens, present and future. And in their turn, each generation, individually and severally considers anew - and acts upon - the question: “What is required of us to contribute to the common good and to sustain the good society?”

At a more local level, the good city within a virtuous economy can be described in the following way: it is a city which has restored values - the values and principles upon which its success was built - that enable it to enhance the common wealth and the common good and to seek the harmonious common and sustainable life - and where there is a citizenry of good intent.

The good society is a cohesive society in which all see themselves as participants and having a spirit of mutual respect and openness. People work together for understanding, respect, justice and peace, for a clean environment and sustainable communities.

The good society is one which succeeds in valuing all people, both their innermost aspects and their relationships one with another. The good society is one in which it is realised that: 'No man is an island', it being understood that people are mutually interdependent - all are responsible for all.

The good society is one where each individual can, if so disposed, make a difference (a positive contribution to the common good) through their own abilities and personality and is encouraged - and enabled - so to do.

It sees that everyone, can make a difference every day by the way that they live, recognising personal responsibility and the ability to affect beneficial change through their relationships both professional and personal, through their conduct as consumers, through lifestyle changes, through being active and engaged in their communities and in society as a whole.

Within an accepted context, a spirit of good citizenship sufficiently imbued and accepted on the foundation of common values, will bring forward the offers of time, energy and resources that will make these differences possible.

Beyond the individual, clear roles exist for the family - nuclear and extended - mainstream religious organisations and educational institutions in sustaining this process.

People may think that what they can do as individuals is but a drop in the ocean of need. But in terms of this often used and uninspiring metaphor, it should be remembered that without the drops there would be no ocean.

Therefore in putting service before self, it is also recognised that small service is true service and that what matters most in solving the problems faced today is what individual people do in their communities and in their daily lives.

An action is said to be virtuous if it has characteristics that will unambiguously enhance the common good. There are many virtuous characteristics, but in this context they will certainly include the following:

Living with integrity and being honest and truthful in both private and public conduct.

Seeking harmony and consensus, striving to unite rather than to prevail over or to partition.

Being loyal and respecting loyalty in everyday life, business and government.

Showing respect for all individuals in society and recognising their worth and their unique personal and moral qualities and potential.

Acting, where possible, to give meaning and purposefulness to the lives of individual people and enhancing the possibilities for fulfilment.

The good society should be concerned, wherever possible, with the conservation - or indeed where possible with the generation of - natural resources rather than the current, failing, exhaustive focus on their exploitation and depletion regardless of the impact on and the requirements of future generations and the human and environmental costs.

In this it is vitally important to recognise that the earth is not a possession that belongs to us. Rather, we belong to the earth.

For their part, the great religions should interpret religious tradition to create an ‘autonomous space’ for the common values of our society. Secularists (here meaning the benign, civilised and more traditional variant of secularism) for their part should appreciate that religious sensibilities could give much needed moral depth to enterprise and direct it away from perilous private adventures and towards the common good.

Good governance is a necessary virtue, aiding and abetting the achievement of common goals and involving itself actively in this process. It would aid the replenishment of social capital, but this also requires the relearning of personal responsibility and the principle of service before self.

The more difficult times get, the more we hear talk about leadership (usually by those privileged or otherwise self-interested individuals who see in themselves the requisite qualities) and its claimed merits. This notwithstanding the fact that 'leadership' of similar ilk in both business and political spheres presided over the road to the present austerity.

But now more than ever new foundations for the concept of leadership are needed. This in order to bring about a type of leadership that realises that it assumes its authority from other people and which changes, or preserves things on their behalf rather than for their own aggrandisement or the private enrichment of themselves or their advisers and acolytes.

It is a leadership that seeks to work with, rather than act upon, citizens. It realises that its power is temporary and that it is a trust that is not to be used purely for sectional, let alone personal interests. And it is a leadership that has as its driving energy the vision shared by society as a whole.

But given the regrettable experience that we and other countries have had in recent decades in both business and government, it is clear that stewardship is a far more urgently needed and important quality than what has been presented as leadership. The two are not mutually exclusive of course, but seem rarely to be combined these days.

Stewardship is something in which we can all engage every day, for example by taking care of our local environment, looking out for and not seeking to exploit each other, safeguarding what is left of our industry and commercial assets and preserving the values on which have served our society so well.

A citizenry of good intent, the virtuous economy, the concept of stewardship, commonly held moral values and, with due consent, the many areas of leadership, are the foundations of the good society and the basis on which its aims are realised.