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The Great Disruption

The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order

by Francis Fukuyama

Free Press, New York, 1999, 354pp
ISBN 0-684-84530-X

(Review also published in Policy, the journal of the Centre for Independent Studies, Spring 1999)

 
Fukuyama’s latest book is a modern approach to the ages-old debate between moral values and moral relativism.

It is not a book of abstract philosophy. Rather, it marshals the findings and methodologies of disciplines including sociology, genetics, management theory, anthropology, law, economics, psychology, criminology, demography, and politics.

Fukuyama’s bottom line – that all this shows there is a continuing rational, biological and evolutionary role for moral norms, including many (but not all) of the norms that prevailed in Western societies prior to the 1960s.

The 1960's disruption of values

Fukuyama contends that, starting in the 1960s, there has been a radical change for the worse, a "Great Disruption", in social values and conduct in Western societies, and that this change is "intimately connected" with the shift from the industrial era to an "information era".

Around the Western world, as Fukuyama demonstrates with a vast array of statistical citations, there have been rising crime, falling fertility and marriage rates, rising divorce and illegitimacy rates, and a shrinking circle of trust. These factors have had an adverse impact on social relatedness, educational outcomes, child raising, support for the elderly and neighbourhood life.

This Great Disruption was not caused by poverty or income inequality, or conversely by growing wealth. Policing and welfare policies may have had some effect, but they are not a full explanation. A cultural shift is part of the explanation, but it does not explain the timing and speed of the disruption.

Explanations of crime such as urbanisation, ethnic minorities, and (save in relation to child abuse) family breakdown are also rejected. Cultural differences between societies may go to timing, but do prevent change in the long run.

Further, the Great Disruption could not have been prevented by government programs, nor by "hectoring and appeals to the right sorts of values" regardless of economic incentives.

Rather, just as the Industrial Revolution broke up the norms of the tightly knit community (gemeinschaft) and led to the development of the more formal and impersonal rules of society (gesellschaft), so it has been the "creative destruction" needed in the current information era which has dramatically disrupted social relationships.

A society built around information tends to produce more freedom and more equality, and to cause political and corporate hierarchies to crumble. Individualism, needed in the marketplace and laboratory, has corroded authority and weakened the bonds holding families, neighbourhoods and communities together.

As well, the changing nature of work has substituted mental for physical labour, propelling women into the workforce and undermining the traditional understandings on which the family was based. Birth control and increasing longevity have diminished the role of reproduction and family in people’s lives.

Humans need moral rules

However, human beings are by nature social and political creatures. Our most basic drives and instincts lead us to create moral rules that bind us together in communities. If our rules are disrupted by external events, we will over time create new ones.

We can do this both rationally and "arationally", and both spontaneously in the course of the myriad interactions of individuals, and hierarchically through governments and religions.

In terms of spontaneously generated rules, recent developments in game theory show that, if people have opportunities for repeated dealings, and especially if information about a person’s past conduct can circulate to others, there is a benefit for people to have a reputation for honouring their obligations. It can also be rational for people to be altruistic to others, in the expectation that others will be altruistic to them at some other time.

Given this, there is a logical basis for humans to develop in the course of their dealings with one another all sorts of informal rules and protocols governing their interrelationships and dealings, including ones which define the "altruistic" obligations which others can be expected to honour.

In addition, rules and norms can have value as "rules of thumb" which reduce decision-making costs. ("Never buy on impulse" may cost you the occasional bargain, but give you better shopping results in the long run.)

New research in evolution and biology is also showing that the human mind at birth is not just a blank slate waiting to be filled up with whatever norms are put into it during life. Rather, it comes with specific inclinations and skills oriented towards social interaction, derived from years of evolution.

Thus, contrary to the assertions of relativist philosophy, "there is, in other words, such a thing as human nature."

What does this human nature consist of? It includes a propensity to favour close kin, but it also includes instincts and cognitive skills that reinforce mutually beneficial co-operative behaviour even amongst strangers and help distinguish honest and dishonest behaviour in others.

Emotions regarding norms, such as guilt, anger, pride and shame, are evolutionary equivalents to maxims such as "never buy on impulse" – they avoid the need for complex case by case decision-making regarding behaviour, by reinforcing the long run rational interests of people in having themselves and others comply with social norms. Hence, for example, the passion with which people can want to see justice done and the law upheld, even though the case in question has no direct effect on them whatsoever.

What determines norms?

What are the processes and conditions that lead to the creation of particular norms in particular circumstances? In general, the larger and more complex the society, the more likely it is that rules will need to be hierarchically developed, or at least enforced. On the other hand, the information era is increasing the importance of social capital – of trust and co-operation based around informal understandings – in productive activity.

Capitalism is not necessarily destructive of social capital, as evidenced by the virtues of industriousness, honesty, self-discipline, punctuality and prudence which capitalism fosters.

On the other hand, capitalism can be destructive of social values through the erosion of professional ethics by competition, through the market catering to demand even for damaging products (such as sexual and violent entertainment) and through increasing economies of scale destroying the personal connections of small retailers.

On balance, however, capitalist economies should be able to generate sufficient social capital to meet their needs.

Nor is capitalism alone in being able to both create and destroy social capital. The government sector can also do both, for example through the values which are taught through the education system.

The success of "Victorian" values

Looking at the history of Western society over the last 200 years or so, we can see that a dramatic improvement in social indicators took place over the second half of the nineteenth century.

This improvement was driven by the emergence of "Victorian values", which were a radical reaction to the social problems of the time, and were part of the religious revival which swept Europe and the United States from the 1830’s.

This nineteenth century experience shows that a society can "re-norm" itself so as to rebuild social capital.

The new values emerging

In fact, a trend to re-norming in our own times is already underway, starting from the early 1990’s and evidenced by falls in crime, divorce and single mother births.

Fukuyama predicts this re-norming will continue, as people become more aware of the evidence of the damage that self-centred and anti-family values can cause. As well, public policy can help, through initiatives such as community policing and increased action against minor street offences which can destroy social capital in neighbourhoods.

A major change in sexual morality is unlikely, because artificial birth control and the greater capacity for women to support themselves remove or diminish the rational basis for previous limitations on sexual activity. However, realisation of the benefits to young children of their mothers being at home, coupled with technology reducing the importance to both men and women of continuous careers, are likely to result in more mothers of young children choosing to stay at home.

There may be a religious revival of sorts, but more out of people seeking a sense of tradition, belonging and shared values than out of actual belief or religious fervour.

There should also be a continued long-term trend towards liberal democracy, provided that moral relativism does not extend so far as to destroy the moral and political consensus in favour of liberal democracy itself, and provided technological change does not outpace people’s ability to create social capital.

Social problems have social causes

To this reviewer, Fukuyama’s book serves two valuable purposes. The first is to demonstrate soberly, calmly, and comprehensively that the various social problems we face today are primarily attributable to changes in social values and norms. In the course of doing so, Fukuyama provides a wealth of valuable material for public policy debate.

The second is to show the necessary grounding of social norms of all descriptions – laws, customs, manners, and conventions – in human nature. Much as we might like to, we are not free to define morality to be whatever we want it to be. If individuals or communities insist on framing social norms which are contrary to human nature, the consequences will be unavoidable and painful.

The Great Disruption is written in many ways like a good piece of popular science writing. It is clear, direct and readable in style, taking the reader steadily through the chain of reasoning in each chapter, with authorities copiously footnoted.

However, the lay reader is not in a strong position to question Fukuyama’s assertions about evolution, biology or other specialist disciplines with which he or she is not familiar.

Questionable aspects

There are, however, several aspects of the book that can more readily be questioned. These include inapposite references to the "production" and "consumption" of social capital, the primacy which Fukuyama attaches to technological and "information era" explanations of the "Great Disruption", his understanding of the nature of religious belief, and the absence of an express moral framework for his own normative statements and asides.

Particularly puzzling are Fukuyama’s concluding remarks on the future of liberal democracy.

In making his point that moral relativism may threaten that future, Fukuyama gives only one specific instance, namely the threat of the "active celebration and promotion" of multiculturalism.

This is a surprising instance particularly to an Australian reader, since our experience of multiculturalism has been an overwhelmingly positive one of enjoyment of cultural and culinary diversity within a framework of near universal acceptance of democracy, openness and the rule of law.

Even given that Fukuyama is referring to a perceived risk of the development of ethnic enclaves that reject such a framework, both the Australian experience, and many decades of American experience, suggest that so long as liberal democracies remain positively committed to such a framework, the framework is likely to be embraced, rather than rejected, by migrants of all backgrounds.

The threat of moral relativism

Instead, the real risk to liberal democracy would seem to be the broader threat which moral relativism and its consequences pose to support for and participation in the democratic process by citizens in general.

Were a re-norming of society not in fact to take place, and were instead the unravelling of social norms to continue, there would be a grave risk that the culture of self, and the ever narrrowing circle of trust, would eventually undermine support and participation to such an extent that liberal democracy would gradually slide into dictatorship through apathy.

However, if re-norming is to occur, there has to be a rejection, conscious or unconscious, of moral relativism. Without such rejection, there can be no basis on which citizens can expect others to comply with emerging social norms (or, indeed, with existing norms).

The puzzle is that Fukuyama does not pick up on this broader issue, which would seem to follow inexorably from his own research and reasoning.

Despite these and sundry other criticisms which one can level at The Great Disruption, it remains a book of remarkable breadth, bringing recent learning and insight to bear on a issues which are as old as humanity but which our modern generation is beginning to revisit afresh.

Robert Clark.