My Review* of Jonathan Sacks' "Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times"

I vs. We

 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, has written an important book to help us understand and improve upon our very divided society. He cries out for the need for society to establish a common set of moral values that were once established by religion because without a shared morality there is no society.  It is no accident that encomiums from Jonathan Haidt and Robert Putnam appear on the book jacket as Rabbi Sacks cites their path breaking works at length.

 

The crux of his argument is that society has moved from a “we” centered one to an “I” centered one. This is a result of the outsourcing of basic needs to the market and the state with little room left for civil society. The market is all about economic advantage and the state is all about political power. Individual interactions with the state and the market are short-term transactional. In contrast interactions with civil society are long-term relational.

 

Rabbi Sacks notes the works of Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, Smith, and Marx among others. Importantly he notes that Adam Smith wrote “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” before he wrote “The Wealth of Nations.” To Smith in order for capitalism to work it has to be underpinned by a strong sense of morality a factor that is all too forgotten by those who worship at the altar of the market.

 

Along with his commenting on the works of the great philosophers of the past, Sacks laces his book with an extraordinary amount of pop culture references. It here where he goes astray. He blames the individualistic counterculture of the 1960s for much of the troubles society now faces. To him that is when the “I” dominance began its great ascent. Afterall one of the mottos of that era was “do your own thing.”

 

I think he is wrong here; it really began in the 1970s. Tom Wolfe wrote one of his most famous essays entitled “The Me Decade” in the April 23, 1976, edition of New York Magazine. To Wolfe the 1960s were “communitarian” when the civil rights, women’s and anti-Vietnam War movements were built. There was quite a bit of “we” there. In contrast Wolfe noted the 1970s were all about “atomized individualism,” Sack’s “I” if you will. Simply put the 1970s were all about the self.

 

Rabbi Sacks is especially critical of social media which reinforces social isolation and makes it easy to say outrageous things that you would never say face-to-face. I am certainly guilty of that with the full knowledge that such interactions taken in the aggregate coarsen society as a whole. He is not a believer in multiculturalism. The role of identity politics is to build walls around people furthering the division of society by fostering the concept of rights over responsibilities. Rabbi Sacks views multiculturalism as a hotel where people live in separate rooms when it would be far better for disparate groups to live in home where their lives are shared.

 

Thus, in order to build a shared morality society civil institution where relationships can be fostered have to nurtured and created anew. Religious institutions used to serve that role in the past, but with the decline of religion other institutions have to rise to take its place. We need a return to “we.”

*- Amazon has yet to post this review. Amazon just posted the review 1/15: I vs. We (amazon.com)