Life has improved dramatically over the past few centuries, for almost everyone everywhere. We are living longer, becoming better educated and enjoying unprecedented access to fresh water, food, energy and resources. We live in a time of abundance unprecedented in human history.
And yet, they say that we are in the era of “permacrise”. The era of decline, scarcity and an alarming future. Our people feel destabilized, anxious and vulnerable. Our democracy is fragile. “The absence of the West”, that’s what some chroniclers call it. We have lost confidence and are unsure of the foundations we are relying on.
No one is offering viable answers to the challenges we face. We are at a critical juncture, but too often in public life we focus on technocratic solutions rather than fundamental questions. We have spent our time focusing so rigidly on the what that we have lost all sense of the why.
It’s time for us to tell a better story about who we are and what we stand for.
The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship will hold its inaugural conference in London at the end of October. We will bring together hundreds of policymakers and thinkers from around the world to seek a better vision of the way forward. Speakers at the conference include not only important political leaders from across the Anglosphere and Europe, but also some of the world’s leading public intellectuals, from historians such as Tom Holland and Niall Ferguson to psychologists ranging from Jonathan Haidt and Erica Komisar to Jordan Peterson. They will help us defend our way of life and articulate a positive vision of our values.
Our central theme is to ask what it will take to reinvigorate a hopeful vision in an age of permacrisis and declinism. Is it possible to find a better story? Our ideology has been shaped by previous generations, but our connection to its origins is rapidly being destroyed. We must remember who we are. Drawing on our classical, liberal, Judeo-Christian roots, we will find a new vision of human flourishing.
Take for example the family. Too often we neglect its value. And yet, family is our first bond in life and often our last. Evidence suggests that there is no better model than the family for our fundamental human relationships. But policymakers and the media have forgotten its central role in identity, stability and accountability.
The last 200 years have been filled with astonishing innovation and creativity, thanks to the power of free markets. Liberal democracies were supported. But we need a better story for business and the role it has played in society. This must, in part, involve solving today’s problems – from the growing monopolies of big tech companies to the failure to provide opportunities to those who feel left behind.
At the heart of our effort is this simple belief: we have so much to be grateful for in our heritage. An economic system that encourages creativity and fosters abundance, a legal system that begins with the presumption of innocence and guarantees a fair trial, a press free to tell the truth, democratic accountability and feedback loops, a set of virtues and values that encourage integrity. , humility, decency and honesty.
Looking to the future, will we be able to build on the rich heritage we have inherited? We are at a civilizational moment – our universities teach criticism but not how to build, and the younger generation risks inadvertently setting aside their heritage. We are failing to convey the fundamental principles that have animated the spirit of democratic capitalism for generations. At the same time, the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic model depends on the continuity of the economic model which promotes just results. Failing to hear the cries of those left behind breeds discontent, polarization and a decline in institutional trust.
Ultimately, a flower detached from its roots may persist for a while, but it will eventually wither and die. The world cannot afford the decline of the West. This is the time to relay our foundations and to deeply question the value of our heritage. It’s a time to remember who we are and tell a better story.
Baroness Stroud is Chief Executive of the Legatum Institute