The choices human beings make today will determine the world in which they live tomorrow.
—Des Jardins
This book is written during Trump’s second year in office. Some readers may be Trump supporters, some may not. Political stripes actually don’t matter. What matters is how someone who causes such division in America and the rest of the world has managed to secure a role that is so influential. You can blame it on the evangelical Southern Baptists, the white nationalists, or the rich oligarchs in Russia, but not all Trump voters are racist. Not all Trump voters are haters. The vast majority of Trump voters are ordinary folk, getting on with getting on. They could be labeled as those people who had enough. The “had enough’s” work hard and feel somehow like those in power have let them down. Their bills are going up, their security is tenuous, and they suffer from immense inequality in terms of effort-reward. The majority of people who voted for Trump were more likely to be seeking change and many of them didn’t like Trump, but they liked Clinton less.
In the UK the same equation played out. The media made much of the retired white people voting against immigration and blaming it somehow on seeking a return to glory days. First, it seems to ignore the fact that that same group of people likely voted the UK into Europe in the first place. Second, a lot of people who voted against the EU had had enough of being told by bureaucrats what they should and should not be doing. It’s all very well for the “elites” to argue logic and rational arguments of something as complex as the UK’s relationship with the EU but what they fail to understand is that when someone has had enough, rational logic doesn’t apply because they have been playing sensible and the result still smarts.
Inequality isn’t logical. It doesn’t make sense that with enough food in the world, half the world starves while the other half throws food away. Logic fails when some folk live in big houses with more rooms and bathrooms than they can possibly use, while down the street people are living on the street. Rational thinking can’t explain how the human race has developed cures to the most complex of diseases and yet in some parts of the world people are dying unnecessarily because of lack of basic health care. Most people have compassion. Most people care, even Trump. The beliefs and values that someone has will determine how they approach solutions to the problems in the world. Just because beliefs differ, it doesn’t mean they lack care for the problem, they just see that there is a different way to get there.
Our Role in Perpetuating Inequality
Temperatism is based on the idea that humanity has the potential to cooperate, collaborate, assist, and contribute to the greater good. Doing Good isn’t a new concept, it has been part of business ethics since the 1960s and has fed into the debate regarding the responsibility of organizations to contribute to “non-economic areas of society that include the welfare of the employees, customers, other stakeholders of the entire business system, and environmental concerns” (Ghazzawi and Palladini 2014). However, an underlying truth of Temperatism is that by our actions we all contribute individually to inequality in society, wittingly or unwittingly.
It is possible to say that we have had enough, but our problems are caused when societal norms are dictated by the competitive mindset that puts pressure on individuals to keep up with the Jones’ and seek abundance at the cost of others. The challenges that we face today, “population growth, globalization, world health crisis, poverty, the crisis of the environment, natural disasters, climate change, water and food shortages, and diseases” effect all of us (Ghazzawi and Palladini 2014). Equally all of us add to the size of the challenge by failing to change our own behaviors and take responsibility for making the necessary changes. Profit, growth, and abundance should be the result of doing the right things, rather than an outcome pursued for itself. We are responsible for pursuing this agenda in our own lives, in choosing to “make a living” that makes us miserable rather than pursue a course, which may provide for all we need for a comfortable and good life, but little more in terms of material wealth. This responsibility is a choice between pursuing an agenda, which has no possible end, as acquisition and want are endless, or to stop when our needs are fulfilled. Of course for many in the poverty trap, capitalism doesn’t provide them with a choice. They are forced to work longer and endure exploitation to try and meet their basic needs of food and shelter. But for those at the top it is ridiculous that top executives are working one hundred hour weeks in order to afford large estates and fast cars and pay for holidays that they don’t enjoy because they can’t switch off from work. Furthermore, they dream of “retiring” to a more relaxed pace of life, while barely living during their working lives. Although Capitalism has succeeded in achieving immeasurable levels of wealth creation, it has failed to create the civilized utopia that was predicted by Keynes and Smith and has left our society worse off and more morally bankrupt than ever before.
Populist leaders such as Trump, Farage, and Marine Le Pen were made possible because of the cult of celebrity. Even in Christian circles, the mega churches and evangelical Southern Baptists follow the cult of celebrity preachers, prophets, and healers. Readers who are not Christians may not be familiar with the cause célèbre in the evangelical world, anymore than someone who avoids celebrity magazines may be unfamiliar with the Kardashians or the Real Housewives, but in every circle of society, such as business, politics, medicine, conservation, and so on, there are “names” who have fans, who travel miles to hear them speak, who devour their latest books, or who listen to their latest recording, be it TV, radio, or podcast. At the heart is people believing that an individual is more powerful than the collective. It is capitalism personified. Everything centers on the individual and we begin to believe that if only we were more like, or copied, or followed that our problems would disappear. Our societal value structure puts more value on the singular great I am, rather than the power of the collective.
The inevitability of inequality in human society is a core tenant of capitalism, but historically it is equality that is the norm:
For over 90 per cent of our existence as human beings we lived, almost exclusively, in highly egalitarian societies. . . . A number of psychological characteristics would have been selected to help us manage in egalitarian societies. These are likely to include our strong conception and valuation of fairness, which makes it easier for people to reach agreement without conflict when sharing scarce resources. Visible even in young children, our concern for fairness sometimes seems so strong that we might wonder how it is that social systems with great inequality are tolerated. (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010)
The focus on maximizing profit in organizations has a detrimental effect on the ability of society to promote more altruistic motives, and instead create a divide between the haves and have nots.
Pursuing equality is not the same as pursuing an agenda of sameness and attempting to get everyone to fit into the same-sized Temperatist mold. Difference is still celebrated, most notably in the uniqueness of each and every individual on the planet. Equality in Temperatism is linked to the pursuit of Basic Goods and Doing Good and the requirement that we do value each human life equally and that every individual’s potential is equally important to that of someone else. Concerning infrastructure, Temperatism aims to help make things more equal in regard to opportunity, education, and necessities we need in life to pursue our potential, to reduce the gap between the haves and the have nots, with the objective of producing an outcome where we all have. What has been interesting about the historical demise of communist and socialist states is that the perception of those outside of a capitalist system, or those who live in poor societies rather than the “rich” West, is that they compare and contrast what they have or don’t have with other people and nations. When the wall came down in East Germany and later when Eastern bloc nations joined the EU the belief was that the citizens of those countries would see an end to poverty and want. Socialism didn’t fail just because it was a bad system, it failed because it didn’t account for self-interest.
Perhaps the greatest failing of humanity is the fact that unequal wealth distribution has led to a situation where there is unnecessary suffering in the world. In regard to food production, today, there is enough food in the world to enable each person to have what sustenance they need and to avoid starvation. We can view the plight of the hungry as a result of scarcity of resources in their country and shrug our shoulders in a manner that suggests that it is a sad but true fact that some people will starve. Or we can take a wider view and question how it is that in the West we have an epidemic of obesity, while children die for lack of a decent meal. Believing that there is nothing we can do about it is not an acceptable response. Instead, we should ask ourselves how we can address the problem of lack and want to ensure that no one suffers from starvation while there is enough food available.
In the West the advantages we enjoy compared to those living in third world countries are those things that we take for granted:
We live in houses where clean water gets piped in—we do not need to remember to add Chlorine to the water supply every morning. The sewerage goes away on its own—we do not actually know how. We can (mostly) trust our doctors to do the best they can and can trust the public health system to figure out what we should and should not do. We have no choice but to get our children immunized – public schools will not take them if they aren’t—and even if we somehow manage to fail to do it, our children will probably be safe because everyone else is immunized. . . . And perhaps most important, most of us do not have to worry where our next meal will come from. In other words, we rarely need to draw upon our limited endowment of self-control and decisiveness, while the poor are constantly being required to do so. (Banerjee and Duflo 2012)
From the basis of those steeped in the doctrine of laissez-faire, Temperatism can be criticized for being overly paternalistic. It is easy for those who have wealth and an army of people to take care of their every whim to preach about the importance of people taking responsibility for their lives. But responsibility is not the same as opportunity. Temperatism is focused on providing what is needed to allow people to have the opportunity to be all that they can be. In the West we benefit from infrastructure, which takes care of our Basic Goods to such a degree that we don’t even notice that it is being provided. When bad weather or system failure leaves us without electricity, running water, or access to the Internet we bleat about the length of time it takes for government and service providers to get things up and running because it interrupts our ability to function. Yet we continue with the belief that those living in third world countries should be able to take responsibility for grasping opportunities for their own lives, without access to the same infrastructure that we can’t live without.
Remembering that capitalism is a way of thinking or acting rather than a thing in its own right is important to understanding our role and responsibility in the way things are today. Nonet et al. (2016) use the concept Response-Able to define our ability to “respond in an aware and conscious manner, encompassing interaction, knowledge-gathering, and decision-making. . . .” We may not have created the system, we may not even actively take part in it, but the way businesses operate, the way we live our lives, and our values and our beliefs are shaped by the economic system that operates in Western society. Businesses need to incorporate socially responsible behaviors to ensure that individuals within the organization are self-aware of their personal impact and “guided by clear moral values, as well as the courage to stand for them.” (Nonet et al. 2016)
The issue is that today self-interest is no longer just the pursuit of the greedy. Somewhere along the way in the last 30 years we have slid from being in a position where “being selfish” was morally reprehensible and peer pressure put paid to excesses of self-interest to it not only being acceptable to pursue self-interest but actively encouraged. The responsibility for the state of the nations is not purely limited to those at the top but the responsibility of us all for making it okay. It is important that each individual takes responsibility to be respectful of and seek to understand others. Business has a key role in developing a response which is
practiced in a way that is economically vibrant enough to address the real needs of billions of people, yet ecologically informed so that the earth’s capacity to support life is not diminished by that activity, and ethically sensitive enough that human dignity is not lost or violated by the process. (Ghazzawi and Palladini 2014)
Being participative, inclusive, and empowering isn’t just an employment engagement requirement, but a determination to hold everyone to account for our shared responsibility both at an individual and organizational level.
The truth is that human beings are both selfish and selfless. We are both. For all the positive things that can be attributed to the human race, so too the opposite is equally true—good and bad, violent and gentle, social and antisocial. What makes humanity different is that we have an ability to choose. Where our culture lies is a choice. It represents a chosen reality and whether we like it or not we all have a responsibility for where our society lies right now. It may be that we are not active in pursuing self-interest and harming others, but our responsibility may lie in our inactivity and passivity in the face of societal ills. Most individuals when reading about Temperatism will agree that Doing Good is a good thing. The premise of putting people first chimes with our embedded morality of our notion of what it means to be human. There may be some, a minority, who find the notion of Doing Good abhorrent and incomprehensible, but regardless of rank, status, or culture, Doing Good appeals to human beings. If the heart of Temperatism chimes with most humans, and there is agreement that it is the right thing to pursue, then a concerted effort is required to lift the ideology from the pages of this book and transform it from rhetoric to reality.
There is a lot of wealth in the world; poverty occurs not because of lack of resources, or a lack of possible sources of provision, but rather because of an unequal distribution of wealth. The way in which we make our living is an expression of our values and the value that we place on other human beings. The choices we make in regard to what we consume is an indication of whether how we use our wealth is good or bad. The purchasing of products which have been manufactured in sweatshops or through the exploitation of child labor is not worth the low price we pay and many consumers try to make ethical choices. But very often we deny our values and our ethics pursuing a course of action which cause suffering and harm, much in the same way that a smoker chooses to deny the damage they are doing to their body. We shake our heads at the terrible tragedy of child poverty, famine, or victims of war and yet think nothing of how our choices contribute to the continuation of harm and hurt.
This does not mean that we all need to walk around in sackcloth and live on gruel. But it does mean that there needs to be a change in attitude in regard to the role of wealth and money in our society. Temperatism challenges us to closely examine the way that we choose to live and demand better of ourselves. We can continue to live under the yoke of oppression determining to believe that we are, as the Capitalists claim, at the mercy of our basic instincts to hunt or be hunted. Alternatively, we can choose to live out the belief that civilization proves that humanity can rise above our base animal instincts and choose to overturn our baser instincts of self-interest. A belief that if lived fully will not just be about faith but a walking out of humanity living the truth of its nature.
The potential for humanity to cooperate, collaborate, assist, and contribute to the greater good is unique to our species. In the animal kingdom there is little capacity for the weak to be given support from the strong. Survival of the fitness is more than a handy footnote in the description of the theory of evolution, but when applied to humanity we defy the rules of nature. We can and we choose to care about other members of our society, to provide protection to those in need and refuse to accept that we have to be diminished by our circumstances. Seu (2018) argues that
the public’s connectedness with humanitarian issues can be sustained through appropriate emotions, understand, and ways of caring that they are familiar with and which they practise in their daily lives . . . long-term psycho-social connectedness should be emotionally manageable, cognitively meaningful and morally significant.
Although we have potential to be cruel and aggressive, our need to protect is a strong driving force behind the human psyche. Our dependency on others, both in regard to our own growth and development and also in regard to our levels of well-being, requires cooperation and mutuality to be part of a repertoire beyond simple self-interestedness. When it comes to pursuing the betterment of humanity we have the potential to be our greatest ally and our greatest enemy. The hurt and pain that inequality inflicts on individuals and groups in society through exclusion and neglect is in conflict with our natural sense of affinity, collaboration, and intrinsic sense of fair play and justice. The dysfunction that we are currently experiencing in our society is a direct result of the inequality within our society. We don’t have to live in a society that is fearful of the future, but instead, together we can realize the very best of humanity.
Building the Momentum for Change
History teaches us that momentum for change doesn’t happen overnight. Even seemingly sudden acts of revolution are in fact a result of an evolving mindset change that has occurred over a period of time. Doing Good isn’t going to happen overnight, it won’t happen on Monday because everyone in humanity will wake up with the same thought that today is the day. Instead, it will take many small acts of Doing Good by individuals and enterprises to build momentum for change. Like a smile which is infectious, it begins with one person deciding to do something. The truth is that Doing Good happens all the time. The public are generous and genuinely engaged in helping others in need. Disaster relief, or responding in times of crisis, such as individuals opening up their homes, or driving people home after the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, or the wave of donations which poured in to support survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire, is not unusual. They are a common occurrence. The issue of course is that they are in response to something terrible happening and once the initial disaster response is over the support tails off. Temperatism is about engaging individuals in maintaining a meaningful connectedness with humanitarian issues over time. The difficulty is that in a time of 24/7 media coverage of disasters compassion fatigue sets in. As the chapter is being written the volcano in Hawaii is forcing many residents to flee their homes and lose their livelihoods. It is not clear if there is any disaster relief or charitable support going on; there is a presumption that there is, but there is no call to action to get involved. The ongoing war in Syria barely gets a mention and yet millions of people have been traumatized and replaced, and if anything the propaganda war has meant that many are suspicious of any claims of chemical weapon attack. The outrage at such a tragic loss of human life, at the huge amount of destructions just is not present. It is barely registering with human consciousness, because it has been going on for so long.
The key consideration is where responsibility begins and finishes. Seu (2018) posits that for many people there is a requirement that they are protected emotionally. If we examined disasters, crisis, and crimes against humanity in too much detail it would be devastating. However, there are also differing perspectives about where responsibility for others lie, “members of the public also differed in term of where they felt their responsibility stopped. Some felt that only they, their close family and their community were their responsibility; others believed in universal responsibility and brotherhood” (Seu 2018). However, responding to need isn’t just about crisis but about everyday actions and choices that we make as individuals, whether it is choices we make in regard to our own behaviors to ensure we treat people with kindness, are socially responsible, and reduce our own individual impact on the environment or making choices that invite others to play their part. Whether as an employee or as a consumer, as individuals it may be that we think we can have little impact, but if each individual makes a choice that places an onus on organizations to step up and be socially responsible then our small part has contributed to the bigger picture significantly. Small changes made over a long period of time have resulted in what Barkoski and Shahzad (2017) identified as “corporate social performance,” going on to say that
firms are confronted with the delicate balancing act of adequately addressing demands of the primary stakeholders of the firm—shareholders, employees, buyers, suppliers and local communities—to ensure a smooth bi-directional flow of resources, while designing and acting upon policies and processes to tackle social issues which are important, and even noble, goals for the firm.
The current blinkered approach to solving our problems, with the emphasis being on redesigning capitalism to be “good” while still pursuing a destructive profit agenda, is something that we must all challenge. The senselessness of growth and acquisition as a purpose in and of itself is our responsibility to challenge and change—and if it doesn’t the instability and inequality within our society will only increase. Our reliance on the market to save us from austerity neglects the possibility of each individual being able to contribute their part in bringing about real change that will last beyond the next economic cycle of boom and bust. Morality and the human condition continue to be excluded from the agenda. Purposefulness is dismissed as little more than a fairground sideshow, with scant regard of social cohesion at a local, national, and global level. Yet within all this frippery is a deep desire for something better.
Tackling Inequality Is Everyone’s Responsibility
The current cultural assumption, which suggests that self-interest is the only thing that we can pursue, is wrong. Capitalism claims to have improved the material conditions of our life, but one unexpected outcome of the system, at least for Adam Smith, is that want is insatiable. Reiter (2016) states that “Some of the largest and most successful corporations and their executives have been accused of focusing on financial performance at the expense of social welfare or the preservation of the natural environment.” The government and organizational position of “growth” is good and the acquisition of more material goods and more money has become the central pillar of society in which we reside. But the pursuit of money as an end in itself cannot be considered a serious or permanent endeavor because the only purpose of money is to spend it. The public is often aware that organizations break the law or that actions are deplorable. The question we should be asking ourselves is what will we spend our money on. It is our actions, our greed, and our insatiable appetite for material possessions that fuels and drives the capitalist ideal. The credit crunch demonstrated more clearly than ever before that the capitalist system generates little more than a morally bankrupt pursuit of acquisition developed from a motive of greed. It is easy for those impacted by the austerity measures currently being applied by Western governments to blame the banks for our woes, but it is the customers of banks that gave the banks “toxic” debts and mortgages, it is the people who allowed themselves to borrow money that they could not afford to repay, to buy “things” that provided the platform for wealth and poverty to develop like a cancer in the system.
Not that long ago “never a borrower or lender be” was a central societal norm. In countries such as Belgium the amount you can borrow is tied very strictly to your earnings ratios. But since the 1980s there has been a change in attitude where the Wall Street “greed is good” has embedded itself into our thinking and our actions. In our history the love of money was abhorrent and was rightly believed to be destructive. Stories such as those of Midas serve as a warning to society of the problems that the love of money can create. What is fascinating when studying poverty is not so much that poverty exists but the choices those in poverty or indebtedness make which exacerbates their situation.
Fortunately the generation that has watched in horror as their parents have worked themselves to exhaustion during the 1980s and 1990s is beginning to make different choices. Many of the younger generation entering the workforce today are choosing a balance between work and enjoying more leisure time, women are learning that they don’t have to have it all, but instead are able to choose between work or being a stay-at-home mother, fathers are breaking out of the shackles of career provider and realizing that they can take an equal role in childcare, and many families are “downsizing” so they don’t have to work every hour God sends to afford unnecessary luxuries.
But these choices are not available to those at the bottom end of the spectrum. What is apparent for those at the bottom end of wealth distribution is that they are required to work longer and longer hours simply to stand still and avoid falling into poverty, the poverty trap is most notable for those working in service industries or in our inner cities where living costs are higher than that which can be afforded by the minimum wage. It is in these areas of societies’ poorest and most vulnerable that big cultural shifts need to take place and where Doing Good can make the biggest difference to everyday life experience.
The individualistic economics that Thatcher and Reagan introduced forever changed the responsibility toward the most vulnerable in society and the responsibility mentality of those in the welfare trap. In the UK there are two sides to the Welfare coin. There is disgust at those who live “on benefit” as a lifestyle choice, because to leave the benefit system they will find themselves worse off than living on the state. There is a sense of entitlement and belief that there is a “right” to living in state-provided housing and receipt of benefits without ever having worked or contributed to the system from which they take. On the other side the welfare state doesn’t provide enough to keep the old and infirm or the most vulnerable safe, secure, and with the requirements for a healthy and good life. One of the biggest moral shames of the capitalist society is the lack of care and consideration of the most vulnerable in society, most notably of children, the elderly, and those with mental health problems. Recent changes in the UK benefit system target the most vulnerable in society. Individuals who are too sick to work have been forced to go through a system of review that has left many without the income they need to live; the result is a rise in the reliance of individuals on nongovernment charity such as food banks and soup kitchens. While the “elites” think nothing of claiming for taxpayer-funded expenses for lunches and breakfasts that they can more than afford on their salaries, the same amount spent on a single lunch is being taken from a disabled individual’s monthly benefit forcing them into food poverty. It is true that there are people who scam the system, but punishing everyone for the failure to manage the few and creating a false narrative over the benefit cheats forces those in genuine need into even greater peril when they are at their most vulnerable.
If average wages were to rise, as a result of employers giving employees a fair share of profit generated, then there would be less chance of people looking to the state to provide for their basic needs. In work poverty levels are scandalous. If working fulltime hours does not provide someone with a living wage, then something has certainly gone wrong with the system. It’s not a case of low skilled versus high skilled, it is a case of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. If the agenda in organizations and society as a whole were Doing Good, then mechanisms would be in place to aid people in transition from unemployed to employable. Organizations are in an absurd situation where they bemoan the education system and lack of skills, yet don’t invest in training their employees for fear that individuals will take their skills and knowledge they have acquired to a competitor. Individuals can’t afford to invest in themselves or don’t have the job security to engage in long-term skills and knowledge development, but equally they don’t receive the training that they need to update the skills and knowledge they need to progress in an organization to get to a career level that will ensure that they receive training investment. A possible approach using Temperatsim, would take a framework different from the current form of state-provided training that employers bemoan does not provide individuals with the skills they need to fill vacancies but instead organizations creating programs for the unemployed and vulnerable, which means that they get not only gainful employment but also the training and support needed to make them productive members of society. In return the organization will get the skilled employee it needs and achieves the purpose of Doing Good.
Zero unemployment was abandoned as an economic policy in the 1980s, but the focus on individualism had the reverse effect on welfare to that which was expected. As the quality of welfare provision shifted from a universal to a market-based model, the growth in those dependent on welfare has increased. The dispossessed, homeless, and criminal classes have also experienced a period of growth. The traditional societal support mechanisms were lost as centers of employment changed and were replaced by a belief that the wealth would “trickle down” from the rich to the poor. The problem is that 30 years later it is apparent that the poor have got poorer as the rich have got richer; but the rich do not see it as their “job” to help those who are worse off than they are. Social exchange theory demonstrates that the justice climate that we find ourselves in impacts overall group behavior. If groups are treated unfairly they begin to believe “that they are undervalued . . . and engage in retaliatory or retributive behaviors” (Thornton and Rupp 2016). Unfairness and injustice therefore contribute to society experiencing a greater degree of deviant behaviors. Conversely, fairness and just treatment results in pro-social behaviors. By enabling more people to become productive members of society, through support mechanisms both from the state and from organizations it is possible to eradicate the race to the bottom that Western society is currently engaged in, in regard to deskilling and devaluing the productive potential of all individuals within society. At the same time, individuals must begin to understand the responsibility that they have in releasing their own potential and becoming a productive part of a society that values them and their talent potential.
The inequalities within the education system are probably the basis for the greatest level of wasted potential than in any other part of society. Despite the best efforts of teachers, the school system in the UK is riddled with inconsistencies in regard to provision of facilities and opportunities for children to learn about their true potential. In schools, which provide education to the wealthy, the children of rich children are afforded every opportunity to explore their true potential. But in the schools in the poorest areas in our country, there is a struggle to provide education to even the most basic standards. The amount of talent wasted in the early years of life, through individuals not being engaged with the system of learning offered and being dismissed through misjudgment, is criminal. Parents may be unable or unwilling to support children in their learning, teachers write off difficult pupils, or students used to rejection decline the hand of support offered by teachers attempting to reach out. The shame of the situation is that those pupils who drop out could have been the person who had a significant contribution to make for the betterment of humanity. For each victim of an unequal social and education system we may have lost one of the greatest minds and talents of their generation. But we don’t know whether this is the case, because we have created an educational infrastructure where we will never find out. What is worse is that the positions they may have filled, had they been offered the opportunity to reach their potential, are taken by individuals who may lack talent to do that job and that is assuming that dropouts manage to find work and become productive members of society, rather than becoming involved in criminality or living on benefits.
For many in the wealthy echelons of society, there is a concern that Doing Good and contributing to social good will result in laziness for those on the receiving end. The biggest fear of many in regard to suggestions of a social-interest rather than a self-interest approach is that of motivation and recognition of “social loafing” (Smith and Haslam 2012) when individuals do not pull their weight or do their “bit” in regard to contributing their effort to that of “Doing Good.” The bitter recrimination is whether organizations and individuals within a society should support those who are unwilling rather than unable to look after themselves.
The Temperatism ideology, however, finds that a social psychology perspective is useful. Our behavior is a result of our own mindsets, but cannot be separated from the social context in which we find ourselves. We identify with the social cues in regard to what is or is not acceptable, as well as subscribing to individual notions of acceptability based on faith, political affiliations, or social groups to which we belong. The problem of “taking advantage” is a capitalist problem caused by the capitalist pursuit of self-interest. As individuals turn inward rather than consider the external costs of their behavior, in the same way that organizations turn inward and ignore the external costs of their operations, the only person who the individual needs to worry about is themselves. In the UK, in recent years this has resulted in a sense of individuals having the right to welfare support, benefit, and social housing without any of the responsibility of contributing to the society from which they are taking.
Temperatism centers on the moral duties that we have toward each other. Doing Good creates a social context in which the individual must consider their actions in the wider context in which they reside. Creating a context where everyone has responsibility as well as providing the individual right to basic “Good” ensures that what is taken must be balanced with what is being given in return. The internal and external costs become part of the same balance sheet.
During the Victorian era there was an assumption that discipline and motivation were all that was needed in order for individuals to work their way out of poverty. But it is too easy to dismiss the impact our current circumstances have on our ability to help ourselves. For those of us that live in the West, it is all too easy to sit on the sofa, where we are protected and secure in our centrally heated homes, and blame government corruption and ineffectiveness of overseas aid as a reason why we shouldn’t try to make things better. In our own country we demonize the unemployed and benefit claimants as lazy and avoid the homeless as drug-addled or drunken outcasts, while all the time excusing our inaction as the problems of poverty not being our responsibility. However, it is difficult for those at the bottom of a pit to climb out and begin running, if they lack the means or the energy to do so because they are busy just trying to survive the day. If we want each person to take responsibility for their place in society, then it is our responsibility to care enough to take action to help them get to the starting line.
Temperatism is based on the premise that sustainable growth is possible if humanity is given the best opportunity to be all that it can be. It assumes that when everyone has access to education, have their basic nutritional needs met, are given opportunities to have their health care needs fulfilled and enjoy security, then the confidence will be there to enjoy the fruits of releasing the full potential of humanity. There is unlikely to be any singular moment where an explosive ignition of human potential and societal cohesion will occur, but rather a gradual but deliberate convergence of social capital that delivers a result greater than the individual parts. Criminality, violence, and pain are unlikely to disappear, but there will be an erosion of its dominance in our lives. We may never be the recipients of a return on investment of the actions we take in Doing Good, but we will experience Good as a result of Doing Good ourselves. A kinder society seems at first like a fanciful notion based on an utopian society, but we have all been on the receiving end of kindness and know the impact that it has in that moment of time. To live in a world where kindness is not random and not unusual but part of who we are benefits not just those who are in desperate need of kindness in order to live but also those who have plenty but live in fear of having nothing.
Poverty is not a new phenomenon; it has been part of human society since the beginning of civilization. In this respect, the agenda for Temperatism is based on the long game. If we each take responsibility for Doing Good and determine to change our own pursuit of material wealth then change stops being theoretical and begins impacting lives positively, definitely, and without borders. Collectively we are capable with the depth of human creativity, inventiveness, and adaptability at our disposal to adjust our attitude to seek wealth not just for ourselves but for others too. We know that Temperatist attitudes already exist in society; philanthropy, charity, community spirit, and so on are already in abundant supply, especially at local levels. The requirement is to invest that spirit of togetherness in the everyday, to pervade society at every level of society, to invade boardrooms and change the purpose of organizations, and change the hearts and minds of the money changers and the movers and shakers. It may be sometime until Temperatism reaches a societal zenith but it is in the ascendency. People are craving for change and have demonstrated a willingness to join together and contribute to a significant moment in history where society changes forever. It begins with small acts of Doing Good to build momentum. Ideas may be big, or they may be small, but each of us, individually, can take responsibility for our own part in working toward a fairer and more equal society where Doing Good is just the way things are.