A few years ago, this author wrote an article looking at the rise of (clinical) narcissism over the last thirty years or so, and the concurrent development in the rise of consumerist culture in the world. Last year, the author wrote a piece on how crime developed in human society over time, looking at the effect that changes in industrialisation and modern Capitalist society have had on how humans interact (and become more anti-social).
About five years ago was when the author first looked at how changes in modern society have made people more individualistic and narcissistic; linked to this is anti-social behaviour and, at the extreme end, psychopathy.
In this article, I want to try and bring some of these threads closer together.
Any criminologist knows that the majority of crime is carried out by those who are uneducated, from unstable backgrounds, and are impoverished. This is just a fact. Gang members, for example, exist as a coherent social unit as an indirect result of the lack of cohesive community and family identity. From a social point of view, "gang culture" exists due to a failure elsewhere. The recent spike in violent crime in Britain, and in London in particular, is a sign of that failure.
Socially-conservative voices will talk of the failure of the family unit in creating the moral vacuum that allows gang culture to flourish; but at the same time, these voices will talk of a collapse in "individual responsibility", while promoting a social view that emphasizes individualism. But these voices are trying to have it both ways. If the family unit is to be promoted then this is, by definition, against the individualism they also want to promote. From a social point of view, you can either be pro-family (and pro-community), or pro-individual. Logically, you can't be both - pro-social on one hand, but anti-social on the other.
This hypocrisy is typical of the right-wing since the rise of Libertarian values with Reagan in the USA and Thatcher in the UK, both ideological disciples of Ayn Rand. This ideology took control of conservative politics in the Anglo-sphere around forty years ago, and has been able to maintain the loyalty of more traditional "pro-social" conservatives due to a kind of "devil's bargain": Libertarians would make all conservatives rich, while peddling a fiction that the lower classes could also get rich quick in a deregulated market economy.
The reality of their ideology was that it massively widens inequalities (the statistics support this), creating a "dog eat dog" society which makes it more and more difficult for those on lower incomes to manage. In short, the poorest ten per cent are now poorer in real terms than they were forty years ago, while the top ten per cent are massively richer. And yet, the peddled fiction of more wealth for all is maintained because GDP has increased.
What this means for the poorest in social terms is that the community and family bonds are stretched to breaking point. The Libertarian outlook on society is one where society is atomized.
At the family "micro" level, the kind of insecurity created by a deregulated market leads to insecure working conditions. This leads to numerous side effects on the family such as deprivation, families being encouraged to drift apart through the need to look further afield for work opportunities, which thus increases family breakdown (see: adoption, and its often under-examined social impact). Other related factors are the insecurity and deprivation creating relationship and marriage break-up (with the obvious negative psychological consequences on any children), with the more general human knock-on effects of insecurity such as abuse of alcohol and drugs, psychological and physical violence in the home etc. etc. which are all heightened when all these factors are grouped together in the lowest segments of society.
At the community "macro" level, the need for workers to work further afield, and in more unstable working conditions, leads to a breakdown in community cohesion. Neighbours no longer see each other regularly; it becomes more difficult for a sense of social community to develop; small animosities develop between neighbours of different circumstances, and so on. In this environment, crime and "gang culture" become more difficult to combat, as crime becomes an expression of selfish, anti-social narcissism, and "gang culture" becomes the replacement of community and family for those anti-social misfits that have lost their connection to society. They commit crime because they no longer give a damn about anyone else, except perhaps their gang, if they are in one.
Looking through these two perspectives - micro and macro - it is easy to see how society becomes atomized, how the bonds that hold society together fall apart, and how Libertarian values engender anti-social behaviour. When the social bonds that hold people together are broken down, the result is crime.
The England riots of 2011 were an example of selfish anti-social behaviour out of control. The Conservative government's instinctive reply to blame it on them as individuals, which was as predictable as it was depressing. While there was some blame passed on to the parents of those involved (which itself was not exactly helpful), there was no serious attempt to look at the underlying causes, and to think about why England, and why not elsewhere, such as in other European countries? What marks England different from other countries of similar levels of development, for example, are the levels of much higher inequality, itself a result of the Libertarian ideology that had been at the heart of government since Thatcher.
Also in the UK, the Conservative government's policy of "austerity" is part of the wider Libertarian agenda. The soaring levels of violent crime, homelessness and mental health issues can all be pinned - either directly or indirectly - on the government's policy of "austerity", which has seen police and prisons funding slashed and local government funding (which is responsible for community and social care issues) cut drastically. When these agencies no longer have the funds available to police or care for society as they once did, the result isn't hard to predict.
The simultaneous "reforms" being carried out to welfare provision (i.e. to reduce spending) have the same effect on a "micro" and "macro" level. More families are destitute, child poverty has more than doubled thanks to "austerity", while the effects on mental health are similarly predictable. The family unit becomes more and more strained, with the effects on the wider community that have already been mentioned. Crime, again, is the predictable result, one way or the other.
Libertarian ideology is bad for society's health because it is fundamentally "anti-social" in its perspective.
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