Social order and happiness
A good social order is normally expected to lead to human happiness. Political crisis or economic deprivation may lead to anomie, prostitution, suicides and starvation (Sharma, 1980). However, the relationship between the two is far from being perfect. Since these lectures combine a quest for individual happiness and perfect order one may ask: will a man be happier in a more perfect society? The answer is: may be or may not be. History shows that all revolutions have failed their supporters. Quite often revolutions have produced a situation in which those who assumed power after revolution implemented their own agenda, though for some time employing the revolutionary phraseology. This even demoralized the protagonists of revolution and several of them were isolated, arrested or killed. This is true not only about Bolshevik revolution, Maoist revolution, and Islamic revolutions in different countries but also about national independence struggle in India under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. Does it make sense to refer to Gandhi here who said that to live in Swaraj (that is to be happy) is to control sense organs? One who does so lives in Ram Rajya irrespective of what the external circumstances are. It is very much easier to be happy than to have perfect society because the visions of perfect society are conflicting and uncertain.
It is good to end this lecture with a long quote from Etzioni’s essay “The Good Society”:
The civil society thesis addresses the fear that social formations of the good will be imposed by the state on a wide front. It does so by advocating a great restriction of the public realm, and by opposing collective fostering of virtues (all those not directly subservient to the civic society or liberal state). The crisis that modern societies increasingly have had to face for the last generation is that of the moral vacuum, an emptiness that religious fundamentalism has sought to fill. This challenge is variously referred to as the loss of meaning or virtue, the crisis of culture, and the deterioration of values. This spiritual void, however, cannot long be left unfilled. If not addressed by values that arise out of shared moral dialogue, it will be filled, as we have already seen in large segments of the world, by command and control theocracies. Democratic societies can be expected to continue to be vigilant against the return of overpowering secular governments--a threat countered by a rich fabric of civil institutions. However, given the challenges posed by fundamentalism in the Moslem world, in Israel, and by various Christian, right-wing movements, concerns for the civil society may well need to be supplemented by concern about the nature of the good society. If societies must uphold some substantive values, what will these be beyond the narrow band of largely procedural commitments that civil society presently entails? This is the question the next generation faces, a question flagged by the concept of a good society, a society that fosters a limited set of core values and relies largely on the moral voice rather than upon state coercion.
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