Society needs to find shared values again

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/21/society-needs-shared-values

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Warren Vaughan, who runs parenting classes for Lighthouse Kidz, a non-profit community service company, likes to ask the mothers and fathers a question: “What do you value? And it can’t be a person or a thing.” It leaves them stumped. In 12 years, no one has said “tolerance”, “patriotism” or even “love”.

Captured Isis fighters had a hard time answering questions about sharia law

Abstract discussion of values has virtually disappeared from our lives. We know what is “inappropriate” but not what is wrong – or, at least, what we can publicly denounce as wrong in front of our neighbours. We’re no better at describing what is right. When politicians or churchmen talk about “values” – as David Cameron did, when he appealed first to “British” and then more recently to “Christian” values – we cringe.

Middle-class embarrassment and liberalism have made us wary of words and concepts that have dominated philosophical discourse throughout the history of civilisation. “Values” reminds us of “Victorian values” and their Thatcherite reincarnation. As for “virtue”, it reeks of the pulpit. Significantly, the term “value judgment” has acquired pejorative overtones. As a result, judgments involving values are simply not made.

To speak of single parents abusing the benefits system sounds presumptuous. Where other cultures are involved, liberal squeamishness has stopped us from addressing the scandals of forced marriage, gang grooming and Muslim girls being “disappeared” from secular British classrooms.

The sexual attacks on almost 100 young German women at Cologne railway station by men they described as north African have provoked heated debates about what the west stands for – and driven home the realisation that few can actually articulate our values.

Examine the young people who have rejected the relativism of liberal society in favour of fierce doctrine, and they do not seem committed to robust values of any sort. When Lydia Wilson interviewed half a dozen imprisoned Islamic State fighters last year in Kirkuk, Iraq, they had a hard time answering questions about sharia law and even the caliphate; their lives both before and after their conversions were hollowed out by the absence of the sorts of ties – with friends, neighbours, colleagues – that once sustained communal kindness.

Can those bonds be reconstructed? Politicians across the mainstream spectrum are now anxious to do so. Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, plans to introduce “character and values” in schools across the country; a move that shows a consensus is beginning to emerge. For if we are confused about what constitutes values, we are clearer that the absence of values is poisoning social relations

Where can we hope to find a remedy? We might start with the particular, identifying those institutions and initiatives that embody altruistic instincts and especially the mission to help the most vulnerable. Consider the following examples.

In Swindon, Shirley Ludford, a former BBC producer, has set up 105.5, a community radio station that concentrates on local stories – bus routes, small businesses, property development – while offering training and work to ex-offenders and townspeople affected by autism, trauma and sight impairment. The station acts as a community drop-in centre, with Shirley on hand to offer counselling.

PhysioNet, set up by Peter Thompson in a couple of disused farmhouses in Yorkshire, sends hospital equipment (beds, commodes, perching stools) to hospitals and children’s care centres in, among others, Ukraine, Sierra Leone and Benin. Eighty volunteers work together to find the used equipment, pack it, deliver it – and overcome cross-border corruption.

In Brighton, Rosa Monckton is launching Team Domenica, a three-tier operation that includes a working cafe, run by people with learning disabilities; a Skilled for Life education course tailored for students with learning disabilities that offers qualifications; and, upstairs, an employment agency that will challenge local businesses to hire candidates with learning disabilities for 16 hours a week (any more, and the candidate would lose their benefits). The charity provides a volunteer to shadow the candidates on the job; the hope is that after three months, the company will hire the tried and tested candidate.

Finally, at Lighthouse Kidz, Warren Vaughan invites parents to unearth their own values through readings and discussions. He advises the couples, who come from mixed socio-economic backgrounds, to see their families as “schools for values”. “When they reach a certain age, your children will stop listening to you,” he says. “But they’ll never stop learning from you.”

These projects cannot be dismissed as ideological or proselytising. They embody an unspoken consensus about what is good for society: self-sacrifice, help for the vulnerable, strong ties between people. They point to a concept of values that people of different backgrounds can sign up to.

Defining and codifying these values will not be easy – but we can no longer fall back on platitudes from right and left about “tolerance” and “thrift”. The demographic instability of the early 21st century could destroy our society in any number of ways. It is time to return yet again, with renewed urgency, to the question of shared values.

• Cristina Odone is director of the Centre for Character and Values at the Legatum Institute