What freedom can't fix, hope can
Freedom is at times taken to be the ultimate goal of politics, but it is a corrosive idea that looks different from where you start. For a drug addict, the last thing you need is more freedom when what you really crave is peace.
Ex hoc, omnia alia sequuntur. From this thing, all other things follow. This concept is at the heart of the stupid, reductive political ideology that overwhelms our politics to the extent that it has actually become true. Or nearly.
Neoliberal capitalism was invented in America and has a really crushingly simple internal logic – if you secure three fundamental things, all other things sort themselves out. Those things are freedom, profit and self-interest. And it has become true; so religiously have we followed these rules that most of what we see around us is indeed a direct consequence.
That means things like climate collapse, poverty, suicide, drug deaths and alcoholism. Plus bad jeans, chatbots, saturation advertising, wall-to-wall pornography, gambling addiction and a list so long it would take up the whole article.
So what if fixing some of these things means actually giving up on the assumption that progress can only flow from our Neoliberal Trinity? What if there are things that can't be fixed with more freedom, more profit and more self-interest? Because there really are. Like drug deaths. That's what I want to show in this article – our politics can't solve drug deaths because they cause them.
It was me who did our Daily Briefing on drug deaths this week and it upset me. Politicians talk about 'deaths of despair' but never the causes of despair. They want to solve suicide, alcoholism and drug addiction without talking about pain and fear. For all their practiced empathy they can't see this as anything other than bad personal choice made via a 'freedom' frame.
That is the trap built into neoliberalism. The right to do anything you want has totally different outcome for someone who is rich than for someone in poverty who has faced abuse. The first one can choose anything, the second one has a disastrously short range of options – like suicide. That's a free choice, isn't it?
The key issue here is our veneration of 'freedom'. At university I did one of my dissertations on utopias, and there was a fascinating finding; that in most utopias there is a trade-off between freedom and happiness. While oppression clearly doesn't make us happy, in itself, freedom doesn't either.
This is then borne out in real world data. The happiest profession of all is the clergy and monks and nuns. After that comes things like firefighters, gardeners and psychologists. Are they the freest people in society? Definitely not – but they have other things in common. Above all, these professions all have a moral purpose.
The firefighter risks their live to save others. The clergy dedicate their life to a greater cause. The gardener is in a deep, lifelong symbiotic relationship with nature. Psychologists help people who need it most. Purpose will make you happier than freedom every day of the week.
But joiners are quite happy too, as are artists and authors and software engineers. Why? Because, more than freedom, they have control. They get to shape their day to day lives them. And why are gardeners so high? Similar reason as clergy – nice work environment. One works in nature which we know is good for wellbeing, the other exists in a respectful, like-minded community.
And why are so many creatives in the list? A gardener is creative, so is a joiner and a software engineer as well as a painter and a novelist. Because there are real, visible, meaningful outputs. You not only achieved something, you can see the thing you achieved and it has value.
Happy countries? It's the Nordics with a number of Latin American countries on the rise. The Nordics are wealthy, but a much better predictor among these countries is philosophical and about relationships. The Nordics all have their version of 'moderation' as a virtue – something like the opposite of freedom. In a Nordic country you are free to take all the tapas for yourself at dinner – but you are judged negatively for it.
The other thing that makes Nordics happy is tax, sacrifice for the collective good which creates strong social services and good infrastructure. And outside Europe the big happiness winner is Costa Rica, a country which has become the fourth happiest in the world through a consistent philosophy of 'Pura Vida'. This is a mindset which prioritises simplicity, appreciation of nature and social connection over material wealth.
I can do this for hours and hours, going back to Aristotle who clocked this two and a half millennia ago when he argued that hedonic pleasure (immediate gratification) makes us miserable in the end where as eudaimonic (meaning, purpose, self-realisation, love) is what really makes us happy.
So lets get back to drug deaths. They are by definition the result of a failure in happiness but clearly not of freedom. More freedom, more profit, more self-interest wouldn't resolve the difficulties addicts face. But all of the above shows us what could – structure, moderation, community, stability, achievement, purpose.
Over and over again what drug addicts report (along with many caught up in the criminal justice system) is chaos, lack of structure, isolation, fear. It is why a depressingly large number of them actually see prison as a comparatively positive destination precisely because it provides consistency and structure, some kind of community and a degree of safety, of protection.
“The solution to the problem is to offer people the opportunity to sacrifice some of their own freedom in return for structure, safety, calm and simplicity”
In Islamic scholarship this is captured in the phrase “Better one hundred years of the Sultan's tyranny than one year of people's tyranny over each other”. At least you can get a sleep in prison without the neighbour playing loud dance music at three in the morning.
The problem is that our dreadfully limited politicians don't learn knowledge like this but do learn that freedom comes first, because it has been drilled into them. It shows in the SNP and Labour responses to this – basically the SNP position is cynical (as long as they don't die they're not in the statistics, hence risk management) whereas Labour is sanctimonious (help them be abstemious and then thrown them back to the wolves of poverty).
The solution to the problem is to offer people the opportunity to sacrifice some of their own freedom in return for structure, safety, calm and simplicity. 'Would you like to live a life of peace, security, safety and happiness – but there are some rules?'. Many would say 'yes'.
This is why from time to time we at Common Weal bring up therapeutic communities, a personal obsession of mine and one I hope to do some proper policy work on when we have a gap in the schedule.
A therapeutic community is a residential facility that operates like a little village but with some structure and rules and a lot of support. The first role of these communities is to get people who have lost control of their lives out of chaotic systems and into stability. That alone achieves a lot.
Next comes security – you get somewhere to live and you get fed. There is no daily panic working out how you'll eat or where you'll sleep. Then comes safety – there are rules about behaviour such as a total prohibition of violence and a requirement to contribute. You get fed, but you also learn how to cook so you go on the rota for preparing the food for everyone.
And then you embed the hard stuff – addiction counselling, withdrawal support, psychological services. And then gently you start offering paths forward – skills training, helping people get qualifications, apprenticeships, and a load of life skills not limited to cooking.
Nor is this just for addicts. This is a model I would offer to anyone in a chaotic lifestyle, whether that is someone who is subject to domestic abuse, a petty criminal who is in and out of prison, someone whose mental health has broken down, even someone with eating disorders.
The overwhelming message you will hear from them all is they want an exit, and escape from a life they can't cope with because often it is simply too much for anyone to cope with. If there is no exit there is always the option to destroy yourself with drink, drugs or self-harm. So let's offer an exit.
I'd compulsorily purchase a grouse moor. If there is some mature forestry, so much the better. I'd build some pleasant cabins for people to live in and communal space like a canteen and a social centre. I'd then start with my first cohort. Along with all the support they would do a few hours of contribution a day – learning woodland management and harvesting, how to process logs, how to build a cabin, how to grow food, how to cook, how to rewild, how to support others.
These communities can then become self-sustaining, each generation building more accommodation for the next. It is important they are villages not towns because community is key, but there are so many variations in need that I imagine dozens of little villages, each specialising in different kinds of care.
This would be so much cheaper than the costs we currently bear. With a little subsidy these communities could become virtually self-sustaining barring the social services. They would transform the land around them into a living environment, a purpose, a tangible outcome, a meaning.
Where I differ a little from the usual model is that personally I see no reason why anyone should have to leave one of these communities if they don't want to. The ideal outcome is someone stabilises their life and gets a trade or qualifications for college or university and returns to mainstream life in a positive way.
But I imagine that you could have levels of these villages and eventually, if you didn't need the therapeutic support any more but you felt a peace you'd never felt before and felt fear at the thought of losing it, I would create permanent living communities among these villages where people could go. By that point there is actually all kinds of positive economic activity that you could build in.
I don't see this as a failure but a perfect realisation of Costa Rica's Pura Vida, a simply life of community and connection to nature. Honestly, I could move there myself very happily indeed.
If only we could drop our knee-jerk recitation of US political philosophy and listen instead to countries which are happy. It would help us to solve our deepest problems like deaths of despair, by offering peace, structure, security, sufficiency, meaning, purpose, community and achievement.
And then, Ex hoc, omnia alia sequuntur. From these things, all other things follow.