A Platform — Moral and Spiritual Values

The brief which I was given for this chapter included the words: ‘a moral and spiritual platform’. The word ‘platform’ conjures up in my mind an oil rig, or to be more specific, a mobile, floating platform, operating in a gale in the middle of the North Sea. It is operational, pumping oil, receiving helicopters, and providing a floating home; it is reasonably stable, but the sea is turbulent, and it could drift, or even capsize. At least life feels like that at the moment for most of us, and we are reliably told that we are going to have to live with that sort of turbulence for the foreseeable future. A turbulent world and the uncertainties that come with it are the context of the deliberations of this book. Such turbulence is probably not the best context in which to look for the enhancement of the moral qualities of civic responsibility and generosity. To change the metaphor slightly: such a turbulent context would move us rather towards ‘battening down the hatches’ and riding the storm out, as best we can, everyone for themselves. And I do wonder whether in fact such an attitude underlies much of the individualism which now pervades our society.