It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

the challenge of finding our ethical bearings in a fragmented world

Sometimes, the complexity of modern societies can be a bit overwhelming. As sociologist Georg Simml observed, modernisation has brought with it a proliferation of social affiliations. You can be a university lecturer, a member of a gym, a member of a political party, a “cosmopolitan” zooming with colleagues on the other side of the world, a churchgoer, a citizen of your city, a citizen of your region, a citizen of your nation, and on and on. But where is the anchor that prevents this dizzying array of identities and loyalties from causing a rupture in your sense of self? Where is the ethical mooring that prevents you from feeling completely at sea in a fragmented world?

Any large and complex society is composed of a wide plurality of social groups, each with its own distinctive normative order – rules, customs, shared narratives, role models, and so forth - oriented toward its own distinctive mission or ends. Associations come in all shapes and sizes, from cities and towns to schools, businesses, and chess clubs, so it should come as no surprise that society is a patchwork of heterogeneous normative orders interacting across a shared social space.

But if society is a patchwork of heterogeneous associations, many of which cater to very partial goods, such as excellence at a game or craft, or the fine-tuning of a technical skill, or the provision of healthcare, then it is not obvious how such a society can support rounded human development and a coherent sense of self. For rounded human development cannot be understood as a mere aggregate of heterogeneous goods: it must involve some form of coherent ordering of goods, or an intelligible conception of a well-lived human life.

For example, a human life exclusively constituted by the virtues and rituals of chess-playing may turn out to be a truncated life lacking in warmth, or intimate friendship, or knowledge of the world beyond chess. Similarly, a life devoted exclusively to finance or sales would hardly be a life in which a person’s full human potential is developed in a rounded or balanced fashion. Something more is required than a mere plurality of goods to build the tapestry of a flourishing human life. Goods must be integrated and ordered around fundamental ideals and values. But how is this possible in a social space cut up into diverse and heterogeneous normative orders?

There are two answers we can give to this conundrum.