Liberty, community and safety - a think-piece

Liberty, Equality and Community

At the core of what most in the West regard as a good quality of life is ‘freedom’. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is a phrase at the heart of the US Declaration of Independence. France’s Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, which roughly translates to 'Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood', or ‘Freedom, Equality, Community' has also been widely adopted elsewhere, including in India’s constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). So have we clarified ‘liberty’? No.

Judging from Wikipedia, the Universal Declaration is far from universal. It seems many Islamic countries consider it to present a secular, Western perspective that is in conflict with Sharia. Amnesty International and others feel it should embrace the right to refuse to kill. Some feminists have issues with terms used, such as ‘brotherhood’ and ‘himself’. Others propose an alternative approach whereby collective objectives recognising the interdependence of people within societies come before personal objectives. One also has to look at the list of signatories to the UDHR. China with one fifth of the global population, many Islamic states and more besides are not on it.

Of course, today’s second most populous country, India, is a signatory to the UDHR, but this then raises further questions about the point of it all. This is because we all ‘know’ that India is such an unequal nation. We ‘know’ this from the statistics we read about India, the anecdotes of travelers and from what we have seen in the media, including the film, Slum-dog Millionaire. We know that Indian cities harbour masses in extreme poverty, in sight of some of the richest people on the planet. So clearly, India signing up to the UDHR and even embracing the concepts of liberty and community in its constitution, actually means little.

Without reliable access to the basics such as food water and shelter, to which some might also add, education and basic medical care, and others, dignity, and so on, there is little in the way of appreciable 'liberty' (In fact some destitute people commit crime so as to be jailed). In the last blog post there was a reference to a report published by The High Pay Centre, which indicated that the gap between highest and average earners had grown massively recently. Its analysis of OECD figures also suggests that the poorest fifth of the UK population are the poorest in Western Europe. Even though the UK are signatories to and have ratified the UDHR, many of its poor and vulnerable live, day to day, in fear. We fight for liberty as a nation, but we all seem to be pulling in different directions.

The ‘Gini Coefficient’ 

The Gini Index is a benchmark for the inequality of wealth distribution within a nation. Like any such index whilst prone to controversy it can deliver ‘workable’ results. Numbers can be relative to each other both over time and from country to country. Higher scores indicate greater inequality. As deployed in the CIA World Factbook, a score of 100 (impossible) would denote ‘perfect inequality’.

The CIA data as just reviewed for this post showed Lesotho to have the highest index score (63.2, based on 1995 data). Next came South Africa (63.1 with 2005 data) then Botswana (63.0, 1993 data). You may be surprised to discover that the United States ranked on this table of 141 nations at #41 (45.0, 2007) way above India at #80 (36.8, 2004) and the UK at #104 (32.3, 2012) with Sweden at #141 (23.0, 2005 - What would its score be without that chap from Ikea, ABBA and Bjorn Borg?!)

‘Liberty’, an essential element of security and safety, is tied closely to the concept of equality and this is eroding almost everywhere, fast. Many readers (as I was) were probably startled to realise that the USA had such a higher Gini score than India. What is worse, is that the USA data shown above was calculated for 2007, before the housing and financial crises, and India’s for 2004, before it became the “I” in ‘BRICS’ and the world’s call centre, software house and owner of Jaguar Land-Rover. The gap will have widened. I also question the data for the United Kingdom. Equality has been getting a lot worse lately, particularly for the nation’s most impoverished 20%

Wrapping this piece up.

There are many more schisms undermining security and safety across the UK than that between people considering themselves part of or outside of The Establishment. Whilst much of this has a sociological flavour: an area this blogger DOES NOT want to get into, there are aspects that merit exploration in due course. Pedestrians, Motorists and Cyclists (And bus and cab and lorry drivers too) do not have to be at war. Sub-communities should not have to be fearful of each other. The old and the young could both benefit from investing time into seeking to understand each other’s perspective on the world. ‘Outliers’, both rich and poor also need to be more tied firmly into the wider community. The changes we need are cultural rather than legislative. Contrary to historical views about how long cultural changes can take, in this era of the Internet such changes can also come about blindingly fast. All we need to do is to find and promote the right viral 'memes' (check out the concept on Wikipedia) and the people that matter on each occasion will hopefully adopt them. This is not coercion (or 'Nudging for that matter) but what might be termed 'crowd-enlightenment'. As trite as it may seem, by finding and developing ‘community’, we also build security and safety.