This morning, I listened to The Laura Kuenssberg Show, featuring Labour leader, Kier Starmer, and I have slightly moderated the views I outlined in my last blogpost. In that post I attacked the Tories for their ideological stance on the NHS and Brexit. The opposite position to ideological dogma is pragmatism, which is the idea that we don’t impose ideas onto reality but respond to the world as it really appears to be.
In his interview, Starmer said that his values, in respect of the NHS, were to oppose further privatisation, but that the practical reality he is likely to have to engage with, if he became Prime Minister, would be that he would have to reduce hospital and doctors’ patient waiting times, and that would mean having to use private health services. I can’t criticise the Tories for their idealism and lack of pragmatism, while at the same time insisting that Starmer stick to his principles. So perhaps I should give him more of a chance.
Not sure that his pragmatic approach to Brexit was quite so convincing though. When the British people voted for Brexit, they weren’t given the option of whether they thought we should leave the Single Market, the Custom’s Union or whether they thought we should allow free movement. Yet we left all of these, which were driven through by the Tory ideological zealots with, a kind of, winner takes all mentality, regardless of the impact they might have on ordinary peoples’ lives or on the economy. Why did Brexit happen? The only possible driver for Brexit could have been the intuitive drive to promote British sovereignty and its perceived status in the world, underpinned by feelings of patriotism, but what is patriotism and why is it there?
As human beings we seem to have an instinct for what scientists call in-group/out-group behaviour, and patriotism is a manifestation of that fundamental human instinct. We divide us, Britain, from them, the EU and all those other funny foreigners. The problem is that the instincts that underpin our behaviour evolved during the emergence of our species, when we were living in tribal units in a world very different to the one we live in today, and under the auspices of the mechanistic forces of nature, like Darwinian natural selection, and selfish genes, that have no moral dimension nor any bearing whatever on what we want, or should want for ourselves. The consequences of the behaviour of the simple-minded ideologs, like Brexiteers, could have even more profound and dangerous consequences:
We evolved; we are a species of social primate with a suite of behavioural attributes. If we are to understand what it is to be human, we must learn what these instincts are, the context in which they evolved and to confront them where necessary. This has important implications for philosophy, our view of ourselves, and by extension politics.
In the final episode of my series of podcasts, I pose the question “Could our species be terminally ill with the genetic disease of patriotism?” In a world bristling with nuclear weapons, it may turn out that Brexit is the least of our worries.
Find out more by listening to my podcasts: https://podcast.peterdfisher.com/share
Peter D Fisher 