Opinion & Commentary
Just one value will do fine - live and let live
The current debate over citizenship and ‘Australian values’ makes me wish our political leaders had learned a little basic sociology in their youth.
The problem John Howard and Kim Beazley are grappling with is the core sociological problem of how to ensure that everyone who lives here recognizes some common sense of membership and identity so that we can get along with each other without resorting to violence.
Classical sociologists grappled with precisely this problem of ‘social cohesion’ more than one hundred years ago. Faced with a ferment of change created by the industrial revolution, sociologists like Emile Durkheim asked how social stability could be restored without harking back to an old, feudal order whose time had long passed. Traditional authority had been weakened or destroyed, so how could modern, diverse, dynamic societies hold together?
Durkheim’s answer had little to do with citizenship tests or loyalty cards for visiting backpackers. His crucial insight was that modern societies no longer need the level of moral conformity imposed in more traditional societies. We can get along with each other today without being forced to think in the same ways or believe the same things.
In simple, traditional societies, small bands of people could easily be self-sufficient, which means there was little to stop them drifting apart or even warring with each other. Diversity represented a threat to the very existence of these societies, and enforcement of a strong collective morality from above was the only way to ensure people stuck together.
In modern societies, however, diversity is a strength, not a weakness, for it allows for specialization and innovation. Trying to make everyone think and act the same would be hugely counter-productive in the modern world, for it would choke off the spirit of independent inquiry and free thinking on which modernity depends.
Moral conformity is also unnecessary in modern societies, for in a world where we all depend upon the contributions of others to survive, breaking away is no longer an option. If people start trying to detach themselves from society, or attacking it, everybody loses. Like it or not, we have little choice but to get along with each other.
Durkheim accepted that national symbols like flags and anthems can help foster a sense of common identity in modern societies, but his basic message was that it is a mistake to try to create a cohesive society by getting everyone to subscribe to the same values and march to the same tune. Imposition of a collective morality won’t work any more, nor is it necessary.
What is necessary, though, is that everyone respects the right of others to be different. Durkheim called this the core value of individualism – the distinctively modern idea that individuals have a right to their own beliefs, that they should be allowed to pursue their own version of the good life, and that they should allow their neighbours to do likewise.
The problem that western societies are now facing, of course, is that radical Islamic movements are implacably hostile to this core western value of individualism. Threatened by the spread of modernity, Islam’s holy warriors want to return to a time when collective morality was repressively imposed from above. Like the traditional rulers of old, they see diversity as a threat, and they are unwilling to tolerate a free-wheeling individualistic spirit of live and let live.
So how can a modern country like Australia respond to this fundamentalist challenge from the seventh century? Official multiculturalism is no answer, for this requires us uncritically to embrace a repressive ideology which would overturn our one core value of individualism. But proposals for citizenship tests and statements of Australian values do not provide an answer either, for these seek to prescribe a common set of beliefs when it should be no business of government to tell us what to think.
The attempt by our politicians to identify ‘Australian values’ is degenerating into a farcical stand-off between those who insist that immigrants should know the rules of cricket and those who want them to understand the history of trade unionism. What neither side in this debate understands is that we do not need a prescribed set of values for everyone to sign up to.
To live peaceably in Australia , it is not necessary to understand cricket, celebrate trade unionism, or even call people your ‘mate.’ Nor does it matter if you are a Catholic or a Protestant, a Muslim or a Christian, a conservative or a socialist. All that matters is that you should respect other people’s right to be different from you.
Arguing about whether this or that value is essential to an Australian identity is therefore pointless. All that needs to be said (and reaffirmed repeatedly in all our schools) is that in Australia you can believe what you like, but using force to impose your morality on anyone else puts you beyond the limits of tolerance. As a society of modernity, we must tenaciously and unambiguously defend our commitment to the core ethic of individualism, nothing more, nothing less.
Professor Peter Saunders is the social research director at The Centre for Independent Studies
