characteristics of good society essay

Essay on Good Society

Students are often asked to write an essay on Good Society in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Good Society

Introduction.

A good society is one where everyone is treated equally and can live peacefully. It is a place where everyone’s rights are respected, and people work together for the common good.

In a good society, every person, regardless of their background, has equal opportunities. Everyone is treated fairly, and there is no discrimination.

A good society is peaceful. There is no violence or conflict, and people live in harmony with each other.

Respect for Rights

In a good society, everyone’s rights are respected. Everyone has the freedom to express their thoughts and opinions.

Common Good

In a good society, people work together for the common good. They help each other and contribute to the community.

A good society is an ideal place to live. It is where everyone is treated equally, lives peacefully, rights are respected, and people work for the common good.

250 Words Essay on Good Society

Defining a good society.

A ‘good society’ is a broad concept, often associated with notions of justice, equality, and harmony. It’s a utopia where every individual enjoys freedom, prosperity, and peace, while also contributing to the collective welfare. However, the definition of a good society is subjective and varies depending on cultural, social, and personal perspectives.

Characteristics of a Good Society

In a good society, equality is a fundamental principle. Every member, irrespective of their race, religion, gender, or social status, is treated with equal respect and dignity. This equality extends to opportunities for education, employment, and personal development.

Moreover, a good society is marked by a sense of community and cooperation. Individuals are not isolated entities but part of a larger whole, contributing to communal welfare, sharing resources, and helping those in need.

Role of Institutions

Institutions play a pivotal role in shaping a good society. They establish rules and norms that guide behavior, ensuring fairness and justice. These institutions include government, education, and cultural entities, all of which should function transparently and responsibly.

In conclusion, a good society is an amalgamation of equality, community, and robust institutions. It’s a society where individuals are free to grow and contribute, where institutions function with integrity, and where a sense of community prevails. Achieving such a society requires collective effort, patience, and a shared vision of a better future.

500 Words Essay on Good Society

A good society is a broad concept, encompassing a variety of factors that contribute to the welfare, happiness, and prosperity of its members. It is an amalgamation of social, economic, and political structures that work together to ensure equity, justice, and freedom for all individuals.

A good society is characterized by several key attributes. Firstly, it champions the principle of equality. All members, regardless of their race, gender, age, religion, or socioeconomic status, are treated equally and have equal access to opportunities. This principle is enshrined in laws and policies that prohibit discrimination and promote inclusion.

Secondly, a good society values and promotes human rights. It ensures that its members can exercise their fundamental rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and security of person. It respects and upholds civil liberties, such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

Thirdly, a good society fosters social cohesion. It cultivates a sense of belonging and unity among its members, encouraging mutual respect and understanding. This is achieved through social and cultural activities that celebrate diversity and promote intercultural dialogue.

The Role of Education

Education plays a significant role in shaping a good society. It equips individuals with knowledge, skills, and values that enable them to contribute positively to society. It fosters critical thinking, encourages empathy and compassion, and promotes respect for diversity and human rights. Therefore, a good society invests in quality education for all its members, ensuring that they are equipped to navigate the complexities of the world.

Economic Prosperity and Sustainability

Economic prosperity is another defining feature of a good society. It ensures that all members have access to the resources they need to lead fulfilling lives. This includes access to quality healthcare, decent housing, and meaningful employment. However, economic prosperity should not come at the expense of environmental sustainability. A good society recognizes its responsibility to protect the environment and promotes sustainable practices.

In conclusion, a good society is one that values equality, human rights, and social cohesion. It invests in education and ensures economic prosperity and environmental sustainability. It is a society where all members can thrive and realize their full potential. Achieving such a society requires collective effort and commitment from all stakeholders, including governments, civil society organizations, and individuals.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Gender Roles in Society
• Essay on Family in Modern Society
• Essay on Social Service

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Question of the Month

What would make the best society, the following answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book..

The closest to perfection would be an interdependent Confederation of societies, each containing between one and two hundred citizens, depending upon factors such as location and climate. These villages would be more or less evenly distributed across the globe, having access to roughly equivalent amounts of arable land. Thirty per cent of all land would be designated wilderness, and no societies would be allowed to colonise these areas, but antisocial individuals would be free to inhabit the wilderness following a life-style of total lonesomeness.

Each society would be run according to a consensus of members, on a Rousseauian model of full participation of all members over 14 and council decree. Dissenting members will be invited to move to alternative societies, set up their own on land proportionate to the size of the dissenting group, or to take to the wilderness. Councils may legislate on shared interests, but there will be no laws restricting private activities provided these do not infringe upon the same freedoms of others.

Whilst each society would decide its own rules, the Confederation would respect a universal constitution according to which no-one can own anything they have not made. Communal products could be exchanged freely amongst individuals or between societies. There would be no money, and no hoarding of mutually-owned resources, on pain of banishment to the wilderness. Every year there would be a Global Festival of Gratitude and Giving, during which gifts would be freely exchanged and art, music, dances and games would celebrate and renew the freedom of the Earth from human domination.

According to the constitution, animals culled from the wild may be eaten during the winter in cold climates and during illness. But there would be no domestication or other infringement upon the freedom of animals. Killing would be allowed only if human life is in danger, or to stabilize populations and environmental harmony. All waste would be recycled, and energy derived only from renewable sources such as wind and tide.

If one society threatens aggression against another, the Global Confederation would boycott it for 50 years. Members would be invited to join alternative societies, but may emigrate only to one that has received no other members of the rogue society. All political relationships will be entirely internal to each society and there would be no alliances formed between societies. Societies attempting to form political allegiances or extend their power beyond their own members will be boycotted. Individuals would be free to travel to and form relationships with individuals of other societies, but any group growing too large for its arable resources would have to redistribute.

Helen Williams, Coley Sirgar, Swansea

The perfect society would be one in which everybody got whatever they wanted. Obviously, this is impossible to achieve. So we can only strive for the best possible society. This logically would be the one in which everyone got as much of what they want as it is possible to equitably achieve. Achieving this would be the equivalent of finding the lines of best fit through a series of points for various graphs. For example, if we all have different opinions about the ideal length of a working day, then in the best society the length of the working day would be the mean of all our ideals. Generally, in the best possible society, all parameters would be set at the average of our individual ideals about that thing. It won’t be the perfect society for anyone, but on the whole, it’ll be the least bad for everyone.

Clearly, there are some huge practical difficulties to achieving this society – so huge as to render the full achievement of it an impossibility. Nevertheless, it is an ideal we can work towards. Indeed, it would seem that society is slowly moving in this direction. The biggest step we have taken in many countries towards this society of the average is the democratic election of leaders – and as our administrations become more transparent and accountable, populations are able to exert greater pressure on their governments to act more in line with the collective will. We can imagine in the not too distant future being able to register our views online and by phone; and thus we will be able to easily and rapidly vote on many more issues than we do currently. Just as we now vote on X-Factor , we might soon be voting on important political issues: where reality TV is currently leading the way, genuine reality will follow on behind. So the best society would involve a whole lot more reality TV.

Kevin Andrew, Tadcaster, North Yorkshire

There will be no government as we currently know it. Government is overkill. We’ve tried it, and for the most part it has failed. Mostly, government is about manipulating political and economic power. It does not produce a good society. To quote Henry David Thoreau in On Civil Disobedience : “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically… [further] ‘That government is best which governs not at all’.” There may be courts to mediate disputes. These disputes will be limited to the basics: the only laws needed are laws concerning basic decency and respect, following this formula: No killing or hurting another person or damaging their property. This would included ecological destruction, which damages everyone.

Each local community will cooperate with as many or few other communities as it chooses: nothing will ever be forced. Each communities will produce what it needs. Factories will be owned by the workers, and excess profits will go to support the needed services and the well-being of the community, further excess going to greater projects benefiting the wider world. No community should number more than a few thousand. Any system over a million people will always fail; a community kept under 10,000 will likely succeed. No community will be able to possess the manpower or wealth to threaten other communities.

Kraig Mottar, by Email

The best society would not penalise people, working or not, for disabilities or mental illness. This is not their fault. It would transform its idea of beauty from the Platonically idealistic, discarding ‘ideal forms’ for forms that are both realistic and which embrace humanity’s highest aspirations. Life chances would be evenly distributed rather than a concentrated in the 20-65 age range. No longer would people be thrown on the scrap-heap for being ill, disabled, too old etc: rather, there would be a just way of distributing resources to all. This could be implemented in various ways to adjust to society’s changing needs.

This society would be rights-based but not ignore the need for cultural deviation from norms. Democracy would be a norm; but global society would be wide enough to embrace it in different forms. There may need to be an anarchic element; but educational systems should also help people through life at every step. Big Business would be required to act with equity with regard to product quality and customer service. It would not be so easy to inflict disabilities on people via various ‘suffering pipelines’ such as the army, drug damage, etc: but neither would unjust blame be put on people/companies/societies. Unfortunately, suffering would still exist because the physical world is in a fundamental state of increasing entropy, ie disorganisation.

The general principle is that there would be a massive healing of society in terms of its function and functionality . However, social function would be tempered with endless creativity and lots of fun. Society would not be cut on ‘utilitarian’ lines, in the sense of people being shoehorned into the most financially profitable but emotionally profitless careers; instead everybody would be able to develop their capabilities and talents. Thus in this society people would be able to fulfil roles at their level of abilities without ruling out their potential to completely jump out of the box!

Kate Hillier, Colchester, Essex

The best society would be run by nurses. Nurses are the caring profession; theirs is an ethics of caring that will see you from the cradle to the other place.

Just think – all of them with PhDs in caring, taking collegiate responsibility for everything. Thus all waste products wiped up efficiently and carefully disposed of. Similarly, firstly there will be potty training of the finest calibre (warm but directive) even for the potential obsessives in adult life, who will have the best in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, possibly even by the same nurses – like learning, caring is a lifelong thing, a vocation! And for the psychological dissonances, there will be an empathic ear, an emotional ‘hand’ held tightly, unconditional positive regard!

Nurses, of course, need not be paid handsomely. Having long allowed their consciences to go beyond things like money or self-advancement, they would be the mainstay of a low-cost society. All care would be delivered in the local community, but given sufficient numbers of nurses, bicycles should be all that’s necessary. This would also have the beneficial effect of inducing contentment by provoking images of ‘the good old days’.

It might of course be crossing your mind to ask, What about the non-nurses? Well, in a post-capitalist, Nursist world it only remains for people to be cared for – indeed, to have an entitlement to it: most will carry a ‘cared for’ ration book to be filled in with dates, types, and depths of caring, when last cared for, and so on. The awkward question of what people care about has not yet been resolved, but is being fully discussed by the Nursing Administrative Board.

Due to the huge increase in the techniques of caring, plus, it must be said, a smidgeon of threat – ie, “there’s more than one way in which we can ‘care’ for you” – non-compliance in the new society would mostly be a thing of the past. For the small few who insist on self-assertion, there will be well-developed virtual reality alternatives. Here recalcitrants can be placed in a virtual helmet, where they will remain sweet. Consistent with virtual ethics, they must not be abandoned to their ‘other world’, and specially-trained carers will always be at hand to coax them back to reality. Nobody goes without in nursing world.

Liam Clarke, Brighton University

What would make the best society? An aggregate of people living together in a harmonious community with common values and customs . But although this appears an acceptable definition, harmony is a difficult if not impossible state to achieve in society, and the maintenance of harmony invariably impedes the achievement of individual ideals. So this definition is nothing more than an unachievable ideal.

Philosophy has long been a defender of this impossible ideal, yet it seems that many are still confused by the nature of the notion: an ideal may be desirable but wholly unobtainable, especially if it concerns social matters. Plato reported such an unreachable ideal in the Republic , as did More and Bacon; and it is disparaging to their works if one thinks they were so na ïve as to believe that what they wrote could be actualised. Yet people still criticise their work on just this basis.

Maybe a poet could better portray the way things are. D.H. Lawrence says of love: “We have pushed a process into a goal.” Love is an ideal we all wish to acquire; but as Lawrence says, it’s a process not a goal, and to believe it is something to acquire is actually a fallacy. We do not fall in love to reach something and then stop: love is ongoing. So too must we understand social improvement as a process, for if we begin to view the ideal society as a thing we can create, then we’re accepting that we’ll reach a point at which we can go no further, no longer improve. Instead then, we must formulate an ideal and work towards it, knowing that its perfect implementation is unattainable. At least we will be moving in the right direction.

With all this in mind, I offer up the suggestion that we work towards a society where due to advances in technology no one works any more – allowing us to sit around discussing philosophy, eating fine food and drinking fine wine!

Christopher Burr, Southbourne, Dorset

There are two broad categories of society: narcissistic and outward-looking . The first typically involves a search for peace, harmony and pleasure. Fine as these are, the prospect of nothing else until the Heat Death of the universe lacks something. I prefer the more outward-looking search for meaning . This has been approached through religion, which is unfortunately stuck in the Middle Ages. Philosophy has made some technical advances here, but on the big questions we have not advanced beyond the ancient Greeks, who were also the inventors of every modern political system. Advances in art follow technology: a Stone Age Beethoven would not have produced symphonies, as he lacked the orchestra, whose instruments are the products of technological knowledge.

In fact, the only direction in which any substantial advances have been made is through science: so the best society would be one conscientiously advancing through science. This not a new departure, as we are already doing this to some extent – we have already split the atom and put men on the moon.

Science advances through individuals: the Newtons, Darwins and Einsteins formulating new ways of looking at the world; followed by periods of consolidation, which form the basis for the next genius to emerge. There is no formula for producing geniuses, who seem to appear at random, but history does give us a lead. They do not often come from the governing classes, who are busy politicking to maintain status. They do not often come from the bottom of society either, as these are too busy struggling for survival and usually lack the education. Innovation is a middle class affair, and to a great extent so is the consolidation process. The Western mode of society has a proven track record in providing a middle class environment, so its world-wide introduction would therefore be recommended. Unfortunately, ecologists tell us that we’d need the resources of three Earths to bring our present six billion up to a Western lifestyle – so to speed the plough of progress we need to remember Malthus and put quality of life before our present witless chase of quantity.

G.E. Haines, Woodbridge, Suffolk

The best society would exist when a common concern for the collective became intrinsic to individual priorities and choices. It would also be in harmony with the environment. Poverty, disease, warfare and crime would be things of the past.

Such a society would be the result of a collective freedom of thought that had disentangled itself from doom religions, dead philosophies and greedy politicians. The conscious and subconscious fallacies embedded in the primitive mind by the assertions of those taken to be superior would be finally put to rest, especially in the discovery that man’s natural state is not one of war, and neither is Armageddon inevitable. Principles would transcend the national, cultural, religious and political. However, the chief characteristic which would make it better than all the societies we may compare it with, is that it could only exist because it has defeated the possibility of just getting worse .

What makes the best society is also determined by number. A society of one can be the absolute best. A society of two could also be the best. It may be that the best society is determined by the number of good relationships which can exist within it. So before we can say anything about what would make the best society, we must first determine the number of people in it.

Nick Kelly, Eastbourne

In thinking about the best society, I thought of the many noble attempts at creating utopian societies. They range across left- and right-wing, scientific and counter-cultural, and religious concepts. Whether it’s a Brook Farm, a phalanstere or a kibbutz, they all share a common trait: failure.

What of the great attempts by intellectuals to offer models of the best society: Plato’s Calliopolis; More’s Utopia and Marx’s communism, or Bellamy, Morris, St. Simon, Heinlein and Buckminster Fuller? Whatever their merits, they all seem radically and deeply flawed, most significantly, by lacking any truly practical way of instituting the necessary changes to bring those dreams into reality. Even the dystopian cautionary voices and visions of Huxley, Wells, Orwell, Atwood or Lowry seem to be practically far removed from actuality (thankfully).

And then it happened. Something strange occurred to me after watching Pixar’s Wall-E : perhaps humans are the central problem in our inability to realize a utopia. We are the whole reason for utopia – yet we also seem to be the reason why no such attempt is ever realized.

I am uncomfortable with this conclusion because it smacks of misanthropy; but the common element to all the above failed utopian (and dystopian) communities is that they are human-centered. Perhaps, then, the best society isn’t even human. Take this aggressive, self-centered and most destructive species out of the mix, and what’s left? Peace? Utopia? A technoutopia of machines could exemplify the very best of universal moral qualities such as courage, honesty, and, above all else, love. All this from robots. We humans have been building our utopian visions out of the wrong stuff.

Perhaps we need to rephrase the question from “What is the best society?” – a utopia – to “What is a good society?” – an eutopia . What would a good society look like? I submit it would be something like the one Socrates outlined in Book 3 of Plato’s Republic – its members living in harmony with nature and one another. But, as beautiful as that bucolic vision may sound, remember Glaucon’s retort: “Socrates,” he said, “you’ve fashioned a city fit for pigs.” Well, perhaps not pigs, but maybe machines.

Patrick Standen, Burlington, VT

Some suggestions:

1. Population propagation will need to be controlled.

2. There will be workable old and new ways to provide necessary and desirable goods and services.

3. There will be leaders and doers who try to arrange a just distribution of these resources and goods.

4. There will be leaders and doers who try to minimize wars and other conflicts, and also crime.

5. People will sometimes ill-treat others (unfortunately).

6. People will sometimes treat others well.

7. People will sometimes try to develop desirable intellectual and emotional abilities.

8. Wise people will accept stoically what they cannot change, change what they should and can, and strive for wisdom to know the difference.

9. Wise people will tackle conflicts between religious, political, philosophical and scientific beliefs with good will and tolerance, and be stoical when such conflicts seem ineliminable.

I set out to describe a better society (not the best one, if there is such a thing). However, I seem to have described societies we already have. So maybe this is the best of all possible worlds that could exist, here, now and forevermore?

Gordon Fisher, South Salem, NY

One of our readers ‘2bsirius’ asked the same question on her YouTube channel, provoking a range of video answers. To watch them, go to youtube.com/user/2bsirius , click on ‘videos’ and go to ‘What would make the best society?’

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• Inciting Democracy
• Excerpt from the Preface
• Summary of Each Chapter
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Sidebars
• Acknowledgments
• Download (pdf)
• Purchase a Copy
• Questions and Concerns

Inciting Democracy: A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society

Chapter 2: elements of a good society.

Download this chapter in pdf format.

In This Chapter:

Basic Elements of a Good Society

Rudimentary democratic consent, universal access to human essentials, access to other desirable items, freedom and liberty, equity and fairness, environmental sustainability, additional characteristics of a good society, humane and compassionate, democratic and responsible, tolerant and wise, not paradise, a comprehensive mix of four components, examples of a good society, family, children, and social interaction, cities, neighborhoods, and transportation, foreign policy and national defense, democratic structures, decision-making system, addictions and drug policy, making this vision possible.

What would a “good society” look like?

Since every person has her own definition of a good society, there cannot be a single, universal standard — there are at least as many definitions as there are people. Only in a dictatorship could one person unilaterally decide what constituted the elements of a good society and impose this definition on others. Certainly, most people would agree that having one person dictate to everyone else is not acceptable in a good society.

However, this point does indicate one area of agreement: most people probably concur that a good society must be responsive to the people who live in that society. Further, most people probably agree that a good society must be an amalgam of everyone’s best ideas. Hence, the first element of a good society must be rudimentary democratic consent: everyone must at least passively accept how the society is constituted and agree that it basically conforms to their own conception of a good society.

The good of the people is the highest law.

— Cicero

I also believe virtually everyone can endorse the principle of the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” A good society would treat every human being in the same way each of us would like to be treated — with fairness, kindness, consideration, forgiveness, support, generosity, and love. [1] From this fundamental principle, there are several basic elements that most people would readily agree must be present in a good society. These are described below. [2] The next section then lists a few additional elements that I believe also follow from the Golden Rule and belong in a good society though they currently are not as widely endorsed. Of course, the actual good society that would emerge from progressive transformation would be determined by everyone using consensual procedures.

Appendix A lists some specific, near-term policy changes that could begin the shift toward a good society.

In a good society, everyone must at least passively endorse the basic structure. At a minimum, everyone must agree that the primary elements are configured in a sensible and just way.*

* I hope that in a good society, people’s consent would be far stronger. Preferably, the vast majority would feel that most aspects of the society were not only reasonable, but actually desirable — they would not just tolerate their society, but actually like it.

Every human being requires certain things to live: air, water, food, protection from harsh weather (clothing and shelter), and safety from harm. In a good society, everyone would have her basic human needs met.

If there are homeless people on the streets while rooms in mansions sit empty, we do not have a good society.

If children go hungry while others eat, we do not have a good society.

If some are idle while others work too much, we do not have a good society.

This seems elementary, but some philosophers and politicians have argued that satisfying everyone’s basic human needs is not critical. They argue that some greater virtues can only be achieved by allowing or forcing some people to be destitute. They value these greater goods more than universal access to necessities.

But these thinkers are almost never themselves lacking essentials, and they do not offer to relinquish them for others. In stark contrast, those people who are destitute almost never believe they live in a good society — their definition requires that they rise out of poverty. Clearly, everyone needs the basics and a society that does not provide them is not very good.

I’m not at all contemptuous of comforts, but they have their place and it is not first.

— E.F. Schumacher

There are other basics that nearly everyone desires: tasty food, comfortable housing (with furniture, running water, and electric lights), transportation, a clean and healthy environment, healthcare, meaningful work, regular exercise, rejuvenating leisure, fulfilling relationships, family, and a close-knit community. People also want material goods like basic household appliances (such as a stove, refrigerator, kitchen tools, broom, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, clothes dryer, bathtub, shower), other basic items (like paper, pencils, books, magazines, newspapers, a bicycle), and luxuries (like an automobile, television, VCR, sound system, and a computer). People also desire good literature, music, theater, poetry, sculpture, and the other arts.

None of these is essential, but life without at least a few of them is not much fun.* To me, a good society would enable most people to have most of the basic desirable items and would allow everyone to have at least a few luxuries.

* Some of these items may seem essential, but consider what you would be willing to relinquish if it meant that a loved one could have enough to eat. Forced to make such a choice, all of these items would clearly be desirable, but not essential.

Society Out of Balance

• In 1998, the average full-time worker in non-agricultural industries worked an average of 3.1 hours overtime per week — the equivalent of about 7.0 million full-time jobs. [3] In the same year, there were 6.2 million unemployed people. [4]
• The typical American worker worked 163 hours more in 1987 than in 1969 — the equivalent of one month more. [5]
• Every European economy except Italy and the United Kingdom requires employers to offer annual paid vacations to their workers of from four to six weeks. The United States requires none. U.S. workers average just over three weeks of paid vacation. [6]
• In 1990, Americans spent an average of 3.7 hours just commuting to and from work each week. [7]

Motor Vehicle Accidents

• In 1997, there were 13.8 million serious motor vehicle accidents in the United States, which killed more than 43,000 people. More than 6 million people were injured. [8]

Poverty and Homelessness

• In 1999, despite record employment, 32.3 million people (11.8 percent of the total U.S. population) lived in poverty. This included 11.5 million children under age eighteen (16.3 percent of all children). The poverty rate for African Americans was 23.6 percent. The poverty rate for American Indian and Alaska Natives was 25.9 percent. [9]
• “Even in a booming economy, at least 2.3 million adults and children, or nearly 1 percent of the U.S. population, are likely to experience a spell of homelessness at least once during a year.” [10]

Poor Health Coverage

• In 1999, despite record employment, 42.6 million people (15.5 percent of the total U.S. population) did not have health insurance. This included 10.0 million children under age eighteen (13.9 percent of the total). Nearly one-third of Hispanics were uninsured. [11]
• The World Health Organization (WHO) reports “the U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries” in overall performance. [12]

In a good society, seldom would anyone be dominated, oppressed, or thwarted by another person or group. Whenever someone was oppressed, most everyone else in the society would immediately work to end her oppression. People would also be free from intrusion into their private behavior. People would be free to think, do, and believe whatever they wanted as long as it did not hurt others.

The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.

— Emma Goldman

Of course, in any society where people live near one another and interact, they will inevitably conflict with each other. However, in a good society, people would do their best to stay out of each other’s way. When people did conflict, they would use rational debate, appeals to conscience, mediation, nonviolent struggle, amiable separation, or other conflict resolution measures to resolve their differences.

In a good society, children would learn to respect others and would learn how to restrain themselves from hurting others. They would also learn how to work together cooperatively and to resolve conflicts graciously so that, when they grew up, their conflicts would be minimal.

Still, in a few cases, people’s freedom and liberty must be restricted. There must be some way to prevent those who have transgressed against others from doing it again — methods like required emotional counseling, jail, or banishment. But these methods must be used sparingly and employ a bare minimum of force so as not to harm or dehumanize the transgressors.

If women are afraid to walk outdoors at night, we do not have a good society.

If dissenters fear speaking out, we do not have a good society.

Life is not fair and there is no way for a society to be completely equitable. But to me, a good society cannot be grossly imbalanced, and it certainly would not encourage or allow anyone to prosper at the expense of others through fraud, deception, corruption, intimidation, domination, or oppression. [13]

In a good society, everyone would at a minimum have equal access to information, resources, and opportunities. As much as possible, everyone would also have roughly the same amount of the material goods listed above, and no one would have significantly more than anyone else. How much is “significantly more” would, of course, need to be determined by everyone in society — again, everyone must give rudimentary consent. The methods used to ensure equitable distribution (investigation, reporting, regulation, enforcement) must also use a bare minimum of force so as not to harm anyone.

Society Out of Balance (continued)

The Environment

• The United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population and uses 26 percent of its oil. In contrast, India has 16 percent of the world’s population and uses 3 percent of its oil. [14]
• In 1998, about 40 percent of U.S. streams, lakes, and estuaries that were assessed by the EPA were not clean enough to support uses such as fishing and swimming. [15]
• Eleven of the world’s fifteen most important fishing areas are in decline and 60 percent of the major fish species are either fully or over- exploited. [16]
• On average, U.S. children eat a combination of twenty different pesticides daily. [17]
• Nearly 46 percent of the nation’s federally subsidized apartments (870,000 units) are within a mile of factories that produce toxic pollution. [18]
• In the November 1996 presidential election, only 49.0 percent of adults voted. In the November 1998 federal election, only 32.9 percent of adults voted. [19]

Foreign Policy

• The United States has not signed a number of human rights treaties signed by most other countries of the world. These include:
• International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights
• Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women
• Convention on the Rights of the Child [20]

Humans have evolved for thousands of years closely linked to nature. We are adapted to the earth’s environment and can live quite well in it. A good society would mesh seamlessly with the natural environment, maintaining and supporting natural systems. We would live in consonance with all other species.

There are unavoidable conflicts in society — conflicts between self-interest, the common good, the natural environment, privacy, personal liberty, and equity. Differences invariably lead to conflicts. For example, there will always be some people who want to engage in behavior that others find lewd or disgusting. A good society would balance everyone’s interests and resolve these inherent conflicts in ways that a sensible person would find acceptable.

Don’t judge a person until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.

— Proverb

For example, the right of people to make loud sounds (music, construction noise, and so on) must be balanced against the needs of others for quiet. A sensible solution would allow anyone to make as much sound as she wanted when no one else was around, a certain amount of sound during the daytime when others were not likely to be bothered, and very little during the night when others were sleeping.

Similarly, people could engage in any kind of private behavior they wished as long as it did not hurt anyone else. However, in public, society might expect them to stay within certain bounds. Society might also try to limit self-destructive private behavior (like riding a motorcycle without a helmet or smoking tobacco) that would ultimately affect the society (when they needed medical care to treat their accident or illness).

In like manner, a good society would fashion a balance between the inherently conflicting needs of people for stimulation and relaxation, sensuality and propriety, spontaneity and deliberation, impulsive drive and caution, indulgence and moderation, exhibition and modesty. A good society would also reconcile end values with process values (such as justice with compassion) and would reconcile conflicting process values (such as democracy and expediency, acceptance and dissent).

Forging a sensible balance is difficult, but is almost always possible when undertaken by people of goodwill.

Childrearing

• The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children be breastfed for at least a year. However, in 1995, only 59.4 percent of women in the United States were breastfeeding at the time of hospital discharge, and only 21.6 percent were still nursing six months later. [21]
• “87% of parents of children aged two to seventeen feel that advertising and marketing aimed at children makes kids too materialistic.” Also, “almost half of all parents report that their kids are already asking for brand name products by age 5.” [22]
• There are approximately 192 million privately owned firearms in the U.S. — 65 million of which are handguns. [23] An estimated 39 percent of households have a gun — 24 percent have a handgun. [24]
• The overall firearm-related death rate among U.S. children under age fifteen is nearly twelve times higher than among children in twenty-five other industrialized countries. [25]
• In 1999, there were 1.3 million people in state and federal prisons — more than five times as many as in 1970. An additional 606,000 people were held in local jails. [26]
• In 1997, there were 5.7 million adults in prison or jail, on probation, or on parole — about 2.9 percent of the total adult population. [27]
• The 1999 United States’ rate of incarceration of 682 inmates per 100,000 population was the second highest reported rate in the world, behind only Russia’s rate of 685 per 100,000 for 1998. [28]
• If incarceration rates recorded in 1991 continued unchanged in the future, an estimated 5.1 percent of all persons in the United States would be confined in a state or federal prison during their lifetime. A man would have a 9.0 percent chance of going to prison during his lifetime, a black male greater than a 1 in 4 chance, an Hispanic male a 1 in 6 chance, and a white male a 1 in 23 chance. [29]

What I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master’s man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all — the realization at last of the meaning of the word commonwealth.

— William Morris

Beyond these basic elements, I imagine a good society would also be:

People and institutions would be sympathetic towards, appreciative of, and considerate of other people, other species, and the overall environment. The primary goal of the society would be to support all people to live enjoyable lives and to achieve their full potential as human beings. Human welfare would take precedence over money, property, and power. Society would generously offer extra help to those who had suffered from disability, poor upbringing, illness, injury, or some other misfortune. Society would also encourage altruism and cooperation.

As part of their everyday daily lives, people would have permission, would be encouraged, and would actually be active participants in governing and controlling all aspects of their society — political, economic, social, and cultural. It would be a society truly of the people, by the people, and for the people. No person or group would dominate decision-making.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

The society would value citizen involvement and would try to inform, educate, and empower each person to be a full participant in societal decision-making. Everyone in society would be encouraged and expected to take personal responsibility and initiative, not only for themselves but for the whole society — each person obligated and entrusted to look out for the common good and to set right anything that was amiss. Moreover, this responsibility and care would not be limited to a citizen’s particular neighborhood, city, state, or nation, but would extend to the whole world. People would consider themselves global citizens.

To support democracy and responsibility, society would encourage people to be truthful and deal with each other in an honest and straightforward fashion. To further make democracy possible, society would also encourage people to work to heal their internalized emotional problems and overcome their fears and addictions.

Moreover, all the main institutions of society (government, schools, business, news media) would be responsive to the people in the community (not responsive only to shareholders). These institutions would treat people not just as voters, taxpayers, consumers, or spectators but primarily as citizens who ultimately “own” their society. As citizens, people have the right to be treated well and supported by all institutions. Moreover, as citizens, people have the right to know the truth about all aspects of society.

World Imbalances

From Human Development Report, 1999 , United Nations Development Programme: [30]

• In 1997, the richest 20 percent of the world’s population had an annual income that was 74 times that of the world’s poorest 20 percent, up from 30 times as much in 1960. The most affluent 20 percent of the population of the planet consume 86 percent of the total goods and services in the world. The poorest 20 percent consume about 1 percent. [p. 3]
• In the past four years, the world’s 200 richest people have seen their net worth double to $1 trillion. Meanwhile, the number of people surviving on less than $1 a day has remained unchanged at 1.3 billion. [pp. 37, 28]
• In 1998, the top 10 companies in telecommunications controlled 86 percent of this $262 billion global market. The top 10 companies in pesticides controlled 85 percent of this $31 billion global market. [p. 3]
• “In 1995 the illegal drug trade was estimated at 8% of world trade, more than the trade in motor vehicles or in iron and steel.” [p. 5]
• “The traffic in women and girls for sexual exploitation — 500,000 a year to Western Europe alone — is one of the most heinous violations of human rights, estimated to be a $7 billion business.” [p. 5]
• “At the root of all this is the growing influence of organized crime, estimated to gross $1.5 trillion a year, rivalling multinational corporations as an economic power.” [p. 5]
• In 24 countries, life expectancy is estimated to be equal to or exceed 70 years, but in 32 countries life expectancy is less than 40 years. [31]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

— The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, July 4, 1776

A good society would value the wisdom of every person. Every decision-making institution would invite a wide range of perspectives and truths. Society would encourage people to be respectful, tolerant, and understanding of others. Society would value dissent and diversity. Schools and other institutions would not teach people to be docile or to accept dogma and authority passively, but instead would encourage them to be creative and flexible and to think rationally for themselves.

Furthermore, people would be encouraged to challenge conventional wisdom whenever they believed it was outmoded. Societal norms would also encourage people to open themselves to other beliefs and perspectives and to let go of their own limited or obsolete ideas. People would be guided and helped in their efforts to resolve their conflicts without resort to physical violence, threat, or attack and with a minimum of social coercion. The society would have sensible mechanisms for rationally sorting out different perspectives and disseminating the distilled wisdom to everyone, especially to young people. As a result, individuals would continually learn and grow, and society would steadily improve.

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

In a good society where everyone’s basic needs were met, people could devote time to endeavors such as music, theater, art, adventure, travel, and self-education. Instead of narrowly focusing on work and constantly rushing around, they could contemplate truth and beauty, they could develop their creativity, and they could build close relationships with others.

A good society would allow and encourage people to live exciting and joyful lives. Secure and unafraid, people could be as passionate, playful, outrageous, and funny as they wanted to be. Every day, people would sing, paint, dance, write poetry, explore, lie under trees, play with children, and gaze at the stars.

A good society enables and encourages everyone to practice her best behavior.

Overall, I imagine that in a good society, people would labor out of their love for their fellow human beings and for the joy they derived from tackling difficult challenges, they would play because it’s fun, and they would laugh for no reason at all.

Lessons from Young Children

Young children are energetic and joyful. There is much we can learn from them.

• What if we enjoyed exuberant play every day, exercising and feeling our body strength — walking, running, skipping, bicycling, skating, dancing, hiking, skiing, swimming — without trying to compete with anyone else?
• What if we spent time each day exploring, investigating, and making sense of our world?
• What if we spent time each day making silly statements, telling jokes, and laughing with our friends?
• What if we spent time each day cuddling with our friends?

The good society described here may seem like a blissful paradise, completely free of suffering or discord. However, as noted in the Preface , there will always be conflict and pain in this world — we cannot escape the realities of life. Still, in the good society I envision, people’s difficulties and sorrow would be greatly reduced and their love and joy would outshine their woes and disputes. It would be a far more productive and pleasant society than our current one.

Achieving a society with these positive characteristics does not require perfection. Rather, a good society needs only a comprehensive mix of these four components:

• Individuals who are (1) educated and informed enough that they understand their connection and responsibility to others, and (2) emotionally healthy enough that they generally act well and seldom behave in irrational or destructive ways.
• A culture that largely promotes socially responsible behavior such as honesty, cooperation, tolerance, altruism, nonviolent conflict resolution, and self-education.
• Structures of incentives — rewards, penalties, and forms of accountability — that ensure people generally find it in their best interest to behave well.
• Institutions (political, economic, and social) that promote education, individual emotional health, and a socially responsible culture, and that implement structures of incentives for positive behavior.

These components can be incomplete and imperfect, as long as together they are sufficiently positive to offset their flaws and reinforce the best in the other components.

Based on these principles, what would a good society look like?

Reporter : Mr. Gandhi, What do you think of Western Civilization?

Mr. Gandhi : I think it would be a good idea!

Fortunately, dreamers and visionaries have thought about this a great deal. There are many books and articles with innovative ideas about particular aspects of a good society and several novels that depict comprehensive visions of desirable societies.* Though some of these visions are ridiculous, some are truly sensible and practical. Many of the ideas have been tried successfully on a small scale.

* See Chapter 12 for a list of visionary books.

Below, I describe in general terms how a few important institutions might look in a good society and how society might deal with some age-old problems. Please view these descriptions only as tentative examples. Invariably, as society improves, people will come up with better ideas.

If suicide and depression are common, we do not have a good society.

Since humans are social beings and need warm affection every day, in a good society most people would live in close connection with others. Many would live in traditional extended families (children, parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles under one roof or living close by). Others might live in configurations more common today: nuclear families (children and one or two parents), same-sex partnerships, co-housing, cooperative households, and communes. Others might even try unusual arrangements like group marriage or line marriage. [32] Some people would live alone. But everyone would have many ways to connect intellectually, emotionally, and physically with other people whenever they wanted.

To best provide for children’s needs, they would generally live in some configuration where many able adults provided nurturance, guidance, and support (in contrast to today’s single-parent and nuclear families where there are only one or two adults). By having many adults around, children would receive more attention, support, and affection, and they could learn from many approaches to life. All adults in the household would be encouraged to take on a proportional share of parenting responsibility, and they would have time in their lives to do this.

Unbearable Lives

• Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death in the United States, and is the third leading cause of death for young people aged 15–24.
• Suicide took the lives of 30,535 Americans in 1997 (11.4 per 100,000 population).
• From 1952 to 1995, the incidence of suicide among adolescents and young adults nearly tripled.

— Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [33]

Parents and other adults who spent time with children would be taught the basics of compassionate childrearing including essential skills like how to change diapers, interpersonal skills such as counseling someone through grief, and parenting skills like how to teach and guide an inexperienced child. In addition, they would be coached by more experienced elders such as grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Trained counselors in each community would provide additional therapy and support to children or adults in distress. Conflict resolution facilitators would offer mediation for parent/child disputes.

To allow the development of normal self-esteem, parents would treat children as full human beings (albeit smaller, less knowledgeable, and less mature than adults). From birth, each child would be allowed and encouraged to develop her own selfhood, not treated as her parent’s property or servant. Parents would be encouraged to practice democracy within their household and include the children whenever possible in making decisions that affected them.

As children matured and demonstrated they could take on more responsibility, they would be given more control over their lives until they graduated into adulthood. When young adults demonstrated that they were responsible enough to nurture, guide, support, and live cooperatively with others, they would be encouraged to bear their own children.

In a good society, there would be fewer spectator events than now and many more cultural events geared toward bringing people together and participating such as dances, rituals, songfests, and cooperative games. These social events might be facilitated by trained social directors who knew how to encourage positive interaction. Young people would have special safe, structured venues for interacting with potential mates, and they would be offered clear and supportive guidance for dealing with the strong emotions and difficult issues that surround love and sexuality. In addition, people would be encouraged to perform community service tasks that would help the young, sick, or infirm and engender compassion for and connection to others in society.

A society that supported its children well, taught them personal responsibility and democracy, and preserved their self-esteem would eventually grow into a society of capable, self-assured adults who looked out for others. These adults would be emotionally healthy and could get along with their family and neighbors. If this society also provided connection and support, far fewer people than now would be isolated or feel lonely or unloved. Problems of alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, sexual abuse, domestic violence, suicide, and teenage pregnancy would be far less common, perhaps even rare.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

— Victor Hugo

Like now, schools in a good society would offer information about how to do useful things (read, write, compute, and so on). Furthermore, they would offer a range of perspectives and ideas, explain the merits and pitfalls of each, and help students evaluate each perspective for themselves. Schools and other cultural institutions would encourage people to think for themselves rather than blindly accepting what they are told.

Additionally, schools would address everything children need to learn to be happy and responsible citizens including human values and rights, interpersonal relationships, emotional counseling, nonviolent conflict resolution, democratic decision-making, economics, health, leisure, music, drama, visual arts, sex, and spirituality. Students would also learn about other people and their religions and cultures to help prevent racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and so forth.

In addition, schools would teach democratic ideals by example: the schools themselves would be organized as democratically as possible, giving substantial power to students on issues that concern them. Students would work cooperatively together and teach each other.

For much of their education, students would go out into their communities and learn by watching, querying, or working with adults. When they were mature and skilled enough, students might also research critical community concerns and publicize their findings. Not only would they learn research and evaluation skills — important skills for any citizen — but they would provide a useful service to their community.

In a good society, businesses would produce only useful goods and services, and they would produce these items in a way that is not destructive either to the people who do the work or to the environment. Businesses would prosper only when they provided useful goods or services to people, not through luck, dishonesty, corruption, intimidation, or pandering to people’s addictions. Furthermore, decisions about what is produced and how it is produced would be made democratically, and the proceeds of production would be equitably distributed to everyone.

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.

— Will Rogers

For example, several utopian novels describe economic systems that mostly achieve these goals:

In Edward Bellamy’s 1888 novel Looking Backward , everyone — whether working or not — is issued a “credit card” at the beginning of each year. Each of these cards has the same value — thus ensuring equal consumer power for every person. Each person is free to buy whatever goods and services she wants throughout the year — thus ensuring privacy and liberty. To provide these goods and services, everyone is required to work a certain amount each year until retirement at age forty-five.

In Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia , all production must adhere to strict environmental requirements. Moreover, in this people-oriented society, service workers insist that every customer treat them as peers, not as machines performing a service.

On the planet Anarres in Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed , there is no money. Raised to value their fellow citizens and to take responsibility for their planet, everyone just takes what they need to live a simple life from storage warehouses and does the work that is required to stock the warehouses. Everyone does both manual and intellectual labor.

Most current economists see competitive markets as efficient ways for consumers to express their individual needs and desires, for producers to satisfy these requests cheaply, and for entrepreneurs to address unmet needs by starting new businesses. Markets enable individual parties to accomplish this all privately by directly bargaining between themselves. However, most progressive economists also support strong government regulation to protect the environment, to protect worker health and safety, and to prevent concentration of power in powerful monopolies. In addition, they support strongly progressive taxation to redistribute income and wealth more equitably. Most progressive economists also support worker- and consumer-owned cooperatives.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

— Sir Maynard Keynes, economist

Some progressives go further. For example, Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, in Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty First Century , propose a radically cooperative and non-hierarchical economic system that emphasizes treating everyone well. In this system, information about the value and cost of goods and services would be exchanged directly between consumers and producers. Both groups would mutually make decisions about what and how much was produced. Everyone would consensually decide the appropriate level of overall production.

In this system, every adult would be a member of two committees: a committee comprising every person at a workplace and a consumer committee made up of every person in a neighborhood. Workplace committees would decide what that workplace produced or what service it provided. The committee would also decide how people produced the product or service and who did each job task. Every person in a workplace would make work decisions on an equal footing with everyone else. Moreover, each job would consist of a balanced set of tasks — some conceptual, some manual, some fun and empowering, some boring and rote — so that everyone shared the good and bad, and everyone developed confidence and skills in all areas. Job tasks would be optimized to be efficient, enjoyable, and educational (rather than optimized for profit). Products and production would also be adjusted to reduce pollution and preserve natural resources.

At the receiving end, every consumer would get roughly equal shares of the total production of society. Each person could decide individually which of the particular goods and services produced she wanted for herself. Each person would decide with her neighborhood committee which community facilities to build (like new housing or medical facilities) and — with everyone in society — which national and international facilities to build.

Through ever-larger councils of these committees, everyone in their roles as consumers would negotiate with everyone in their roles as workers to decide for the society exactly how many goods and services would be provided each year. There would be an extensive, iterative process, guided by skilled facilitators that would start with the previous year’s levels and then adjust them to reflect current desires. Proposals for particular consumption levels made by individuals, neighborhood committees, and workplaces would be summed through the councils until there was an overall societal balance between production and consumption. Then each workplace would produce or provide whatever it had agreed and consumers would receive whatever they were promised.

As a society, people could decide that everyone would work hard throughout the year and receive many goods and services or that they would all work less and have less. They could also decide to use large amounts of natural resources, or they could choose to conserve resources and minimize the impact on the environment.

As consumer desires or production techniques changed, workplaces would change the work they performed. When an item was no longer needed, the work group that produced it would switch to producing something else.

In this system, no one would be rich, and no one would be poor. Every able-bodied person would work, but no one would be exploited. Children and those who were disabled, sick, or infirm would all receive their fair share even though they might contribute less time or work. Everyone in society would have roughly equal power and wealth.

When human rights conflict with property rights, I must choose humanity.

By providing the essential basics and an equitable distribution of some luxuries to everyone in society, this system would encourage cooperation, altruism, and mutual aid and discourage greed and possessiveness. Since no one would fear economic disaster, there would be no need for personal savings or insurance. Since all children would be provided for, there would be no need for inheritances. There would also be no need for advertising to convince us to buy things we do not need.

No one would pay taxes since every service now provided by government would be provided by a work group just like any other important service. Also, there would be no large corporations threatening workers with job loss or manipulating government agencies.

Albert and Hahnel lay out a detailed plan covering the making of decisions and the provision of goods and some services. Less developed are their ideas about how services like long distance freight hauling, news reporting, housework, education, and emotional counseling would be provided. It is also unclear how decisions would be made about who did the work and how hard people worked. Albert and Hahnel do not even begin to address more difficult areas such as how society would decide who would do theoretical research, produce fine art, or provide entertainment. Clearly, these subjects need more development.

Still, a society based on their ideas would be far superior to our current system. It would eliminate poverty, encourage cooperation, and encourage full democratic participation in economic decisions.

The exact nature of the economic system in a good society must be decided consensually. It is possible that different regions would make different decisions and, accordingly, a good society would include a variety of cooperative economic systems.

The Mondragon Cooperative

The large, long-lived Mondragon cooperative in Spain provides a real-world example of an alternative system that incorporates many social goals. [34] Mondragon, started in the mid-1950s, is a network of more than 170 worker-owned cooperatives serving 100,000 people and employing 21,000. It includes a worker-controlled bank, a chain of department stores, high-tech firms, appliance manufacturers, and farms as well as housing, education, and research and development organizations.

Though certainly not ideal, Mondragon has forged innovative and mostly responsive democratic decision-making structures and encouraged participation and community. For the most part, people decide cooperatively how to allocate capital and which products to manufacture.

A good society would husband its resources carefully by re-using and recycling materials whenever possible and only mining, logging, or tilling when it was absolutely necessary. To minimize damage to the environment and to human health, a good society would only produce and apply fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides when there were no other options. Plants would be bred primarily to be healthy, tasty, and disease-tolerant and only secondarily for appearance and long shelf life.

A society that honored good citizenship more than consumption would encourage people to spend their time helping their neighbors and looking out for the common good instead of shopping for and showing off possessions. A good society would also encourage low-impact fashions and lifestyles. For example, computers could be manufactured so that it was easy to dismantle them and recycle all their components. Clothes would inflict a much smaller toll on world resources if they were made to last for many years, they were made from easy-to-grow materials like hemp, and they were dyed only with biodegradable dyes. If designed well, these simple clothes could still have flair and flatter their wearers. People would need fewer kitchen and household items if they lived in larger households (as in extended families or co-housing) or if they shared more with their neighbors. Video conferencing could replace a large percentage of business travel. Vacation travel would be less necessary if neighborhoods were desirable living places and work were not so onerous.

Figure 2.1: Good Responses to Conflict Situations

Conflict is inevitable between people unless they are all perfect or identical. However, conflict does not necessarily mean that people must fight with each other in horrible ways. In a good society, people would employ positive responses to conflict such as the ones listed here.

Figure 2.1 Good Responses to Conflict Situations (Continued)

Cities would be planned by city planners (with input from and ultimate control by the residents) to make them as livable as possible — rather than planned in the ways they usually are now: by real estate developers and builders who are trying to maximize their profits. Communities would be designed so that people could live near their workplaces and their friends as well as near stores, health clinics, theaters, and parks. Then most people could walk or ride a bicycle for the majority of their daily needs and desires, and they would spend much less time and far fewer resources commuting. Automobiles would only be needed to visit rural or distant places, and buses or trains could satisfy this need. Much of the half of all urban land now devoted to automobiles (for roads, parking lots, gas stations, new/used car lots, and so forth) [35] could then be used for other purposes or left as open space.

Currently, people often move to rural or suburban areas to escape from noise, pollution, and crime, or they move to rich neighborhoods with good schools and relatively low property taxes. Several changes, positive in their own right, would eliminate these reasons for abandoning cities:

• Schools would be improved so that each was as good as the best are today and all would be essentially equal in quality.
• Industrial plants would be cleaned up so that they did not emit noxious fumes and chemicals into the air and water around them. Sound-absorbing barriers or hedges would be constructed to keep industrial noise away from nearby residential areas.
• Houses would be built solidly so neighbors could live near one another without being bothered by each other’s noise.
• Street crime would be vigorously pursued so that no area became dangerous. Eliminating poverty and drastically reducing child abuse would also end the underlying impetus for most crime.

U.S. Militarism

“The American military is, at this moment, more powerful relative to its foes than any armed force in history — stronger than the Roman legions at the peak of the empire, stronger than Britannia when the sun never set on the Royal Navy, stronger than the Wehrmacht on the day it entered Paris… The United States of the year 2000 is the greatest military power in the history of the world.” — Gregg Easterbrook, “Apocryphal Now: The Myth of the Hollow Military” [36]

The United States has essentially no military enemies. Moreover, there are virtually no countries even capable of attacking U.S. territory. Still, the U.S. military controls vast resources — enabling it to dominate the world.

Military Budget

• The U.S. military had budget authority of $311 billion in FY 1999 — about 41 percent of the total federal funds budget. [37]
• The United States and its close allies spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined, accounting for 63 percent of all military spending. The United States by itself spends 36 percent of the world’s total military budget — up from 30 percent in 1985. [38]
• The U.S. military budget request for FY2001 is more than five times larger than that of Russia, the second largest spender. It is more than twenty-two times as large as the combined spending of the seven countries identified by the Pentagon as likely adversaries (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria). It is about three times as much as the combined spending of these seven potential enemies plus Russia and China. [39]

Military Might

• In 2000, the United States military included:
• 12 Navy aircraft carrier battle groups
• 10 Navy air wings
• 12 Navy amphibious ready groups
• 55 Navy attack submarines
• 12 Air Force fighter wings
• 163 Air Force bombers
• 10 Army divisions
• 2 Army armored cavalry regiments
• 3 Marine Corps divisions
• 3 Marine Corps air wings
• It also included thousands of support ships, vehicles, and aircraft as well as over 5,000 nuclear warheads on submarine- and land-based ballistic missiles and thousands of conventionally armed missiles. [40]
• “The U.S. Navy boasts more than twice as many principal combat ships as Russia and China combined, plus a dozen supercarrier battle groups, compared with zero for the rest of the world. … America today possesses more jet bombers, more advanced fighter planes and tactical aircraft, and more aerial tankers, which allow fighters and bombers to operate far from their home soil, than all the other nations of the world combined.” [41]

Military Personnel

• At the end of FY1999, there were 1.4 million active-duty U.S. military personnel, 860,000 reservists, and 700,000 civilians. [42] Over 250,000 of the active-duty personnel were stationed in foreign countries or on ships. [43]

Foreign Deployments

• “America is the world’s sole military whose primary mission is not defense. Practically the entire U.S. military is an expeditionary force, designed not to guard borders — a duty that ties down most units of other militaries, including China’s — but to ‘project power’ elsewhere in the world.” [44]
• The U.S. Army has more than 100,000 soldiers forward stationed around the world — and more than 25,000 are deployed in over 70 countries every day of the year. [45]
• U.S. Navy deployments abroad have increased by 52 percent since 1993. Army deployments have increased 300 percent since 1989. Air Force deployments have quadrupled since 1986. [46]
• The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) provides military training to more than 100 countries annually. [47]

Arms Exports

• In FY1995, the federal government spent over $477 million and dedicated nearly 6,500 full-time equivalent personnel to promote U.S. arms sales overseas. [48]
• From 1995 to 1997, the United States exported $77.8 billion in arms, about 55 percent of the global total. [49]
• From 1995 to 1997, the United States exported $32 billion in military arms to developing countries. 51 percent of these arms went to non-democratic regimes. [50]

Military Industry

• The defense industry now (1999) employs 2.2 million people, about 2 percent of the civilian workforce. [51]

Research and Development

• In 1997, the U.S. Department of Defense spent $33 billion for research and development (R&D), while the Department of Health and Human Services, a distant second, spent about $12.2 billion for R&D. [52]

Waste and Fraud

• The U.S. General Accounting Office reports that no major part of the DOD has been able to pass an independent audit. The DoD is not able to properly account for billions of dollars of property, equipment, and supplies, nor can it accurately report the costs of its operations. [53]

“The information citizens need to know to responsibly govern their society.“

— Masthead Slogan of the (Fictitious) Daily Citizen Newspaper

Without solid information, citizens cannot make good decisions. In a good society, there must be a wide variety of information sources and the main sources must be held to high standards of journalistic integrity. Journalists always bring their own prejudices to their work and have a tendency to support the people they know or like. So there also must be checks and balances to minimize this influence. Some examples of news reporting in a good society:

• There would be many news organizations working independently of each another. At least two or three main news organizations would cover any particular region, and many smaller news organizations would focus on a particular issue or present a particular perspective.
• Funding for news reporting would come from sources other than advertising to eliminate dependence on sponsors. Individuals might pay for their news sources or the government might support them with tax dollars.
• The amount of resources allocated to each news organization (including the number of journalists, the number of TV channels, and the amount of radio spectrum) might be determined each year largely by how many people watched, listened, or read their newspapers and broadcasts. To ensure that dissenting voices were allocated ample resources to express themselves, a group who disagreed with the main news organizations might still be given resources for one year to launch a newspaper, TV show, or radio show. This would give them enough time to win over viewers, listeners, or readers.
• Journalists would be prohibited from accepting gifts or favors from anyone they covered.
• Oversight groups would challenge poor, misleading, or inaccurate coverage or socially destructive perspectives.

A Militarized World

• Since World War II, the world has spent $30–35 trillion on arms. [54]
• Global spending in 1999 on education was $80 billion. Global spending on the military was $781 billion. [55]
• In the wars of one decade, more children were killed than soldiers. Child victims of war include an estimated two million killed, four to five million disabled, twelve million left homeless, and more than one million orphaned. [56]

In this society, it is considered immoral to walk around wearing no clothes, but perfectly acceptable to build weapons of mass destruction.

In a good society, the United States would no longer exploit the resources (oil, minerals, timber, agriculture, and labor) of other countries. This would greatly reduce the need for foreign military bases and for a bloated military budget. The cost of these foreign goods would probably go up, but this would be offset by the decrease in the vast resources now consumed by the military.

As much as possible, the people of the United States would cooperate with the people of other countries and treat them honestly, fairly, and compassionately. People would think of themselves as global citizens in fellowship with all other humans, not as U.S. nationals competing with other countries.

To provide defense against whatever enemies might still exist, everyone would be trained in nonviolent, civilian-based defense techniques and organized into nonviolent reserve militia units. If necessary, the country might maintain some minimally sufficient level of armaments and a small, trained military.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

— President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961

In a good society, government would exist to nonviolently protect and support all people, instead of defending the property, wealth, or ideology of the wealthy and powerful. The government would be responsive and responsible to ordinary people. It would work to eliminate corruption, inefficiency, waste, and dishonesty.

To achieve these goals would require a different governmental structure than our current one — one that vastly reduced the temptations of wealth and power and that had even more checks on power. It would also need to be a more activist government that sought to restrict the concentration of power everywhere in society.

For example:

• The government would have more regulatory agencies with broader power to challenge society’s institutions. Moreover, these regulatory agencies would be regulated by independent oversight agencies that would be made less susceptible to their own misconduct by having only the power to expose corruption.
• When appropriate, decisions that are now made at a global, national, or state level would be decentralized to the local level, thus limiting the power of any individual person or group. Only those decisions challenging another large institution or those requiring a broad response would be made at high levels.

In your public work, don’t be afraid of exposure: If you do it, be proud of it. If you’re not proud of it, don’t do it.

• Regulations would ban all gifts and favors to any current or past government officials. Authorities with broad power would be forced to shift to other work after a time to prevent them from becoming entrenched or susceptible to corruption.
• To prevent unsavory backroom deals, all decision-making meetings would be publicized in advance and open to journalists and citizens.
• The government would also provide a democratic forum for all of us to struggle together — providing skilled facilitators who could help us decide how we wished to balance our conflicting needs and desires with those of others, with those of future generations, and with the global environment. Currently, we are usually only spectators, relegated to watching from the sidelines while wealthy interests dictate our society’s future.

Our current democratic system relies on majority votes to elect representatives who then use majority votes to pass laws. Individuals have little input into the process. To protect them from possible oppression by the majority, minority factions are granted basic rights of privacy and well-being.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

— Johann von Schiller

This system of “majority rule, minority rights” gives too much power to majorities and does not go far enough in protecting the rights of minorities. It assumes and encourages self-interest and competition, which often leads to selfish and anti-social behavior. Under such a system, a group can garner a majority honestly by convincing others of the merit of their proposals. But under this system, a group can also secure a majority disingenuously by misrepresenting their motives or the impact of their proposals or by coercing, bribing, or manipulating supporters. With this ill-gotten majority, they may then grab control and secure benefits for themselves while taking no responsibility for the common good. They may deliberately or inadvertently exploit and oppress individuals or minorities. It is particularly easy for an unsavory majority to ignore or overrule those who cannot participate in the process such as animals, plants, the natural environment, unborn generations, infants, children, and people who are mentally retarded, disturbed, senile, weak, or homeless. Because the current system rewards greed, it can rarely find good solutions or determine a fair allocation of benefits.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

— Joseph Addison

A good society demands a much better system — one that requires the consent of everyone and provides stewardship for those who cannot speak for themselves. Further, such a system must encourage everyone to work honestly and cooperatively with one another to meet everyone’s basic needs and to support everyone fairly. Such a system would seek to provide for community needs without infringing on individuals’ rights.

This type of democratic system can only occur when virtually everyone in the society wants it to work and everyone attempts to look out not only for themselves but also for other individuals and for the society as a whole. They must care about the society and feel a strong sense of responsibility for others — as people often do in a tight community. They probably must also feel a strong connection to one another — much as they feel towards members of their family. Establishing such a system requires people to feel they “own” the society and reap great benefit by being part of it. People must be strong and responsible: adhering to their own beliefs and values as well as supporting community goals.

Rather than a system of winner-take-all elections for representatives who may or may not represent a constituency or may or may not look out for the common good, a good society would have a more direct and participatory decision system. If important decisions were decentralized to the local level, people could meet in relatively small groups to discuss the issues and look for solutions that would best solve society’s problems. This might require a great deal of time, but would result in much better decisions. It would also ensure that society was responsive to the needs of people.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

— George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

Most issues would not require everyone’s participation — only those interested in a particular issue would absolutely need to attend. Some people would likely devote much of their time to civic affairs while others would only participate when crucial issues arose or when they were concerned that poor decisions were being made. To ensure accountability to the whole community, any final decision might require a 95 percent or 99 percent acceptance vote by everyone affected. This would not be a vote of desire or preference but merely an acknowledgment that the decision was tolerable and that a valid body made the decision (one with a large enough quorum and that included all those concerned).

Ensuring Democratic Decision-Making

A good society allows everyone to have a say in the important matters that affect their lives. But to sustain a good society, they must also make decisions that are good for the whole community. This requires that everyone be included in the decision process, have access to all the necessary information to make good decisions, and take responsibility for making decisions that are good for the group. They must have the interest, time, and skills to listen carefully to everyone’s perspectives and concerns, evaluate the truth of each perspective, work cooperatively with others to come up with creative solutions, and finally decide on a solution that best addresses the needs of the group. Anything less will result in poor or irrational decisions or domination by one or a few people. Bad decision processes, like our current system, often simply tally the ignorance, prejudices, and biases of the dominant group or the majority.

Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds.

— J. W. von Goethe

True democracy thus probably requires using some form of consensus decision-making process, practiced skillfully and effectively by those affected. Our current society has prepared us very inadequately for such a task. A good society must devote extensive resources to teaching everyone the skills of cooperative decision-making, providing everyone with the information necessary to make good decisions, and ensuring time to make good decisions.

To encourage cooperation and high principle, there might be a short community-building ritual (like standing in a circle and holding hands with others or reading an inspiring quotation) before each session. When information was needed to inform a decision, researchers would turn to a variety of sources and investigate each thoroughly. Advocates for particular positions could add their information and make their desires known. Then the group would prepare a wide range of options and delineate the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Once the group thoroughly explored all options, most people would probably see that a few were superior and the rest could be eliminated from consideration. Most people would also recognize that none of the remaining options was perfect, but all were acceptable. Then strong preferences for a particular option or a majority vote of those at the meeting could determine the final choice. On highly controversial issues, the group might make decisions by a super majority vote (perhaps 66 percent or 75 percent), or it might defer the decision for a few months or years until a true consensus emerged.

Cooperation would be essential, but dissent would also be accepted and supported. Dissidents would be encouraged to question assumptions, criticize decisions, and closely monitor the effects of policies over time. Lobbying would be tolerated, but discouraged in favor of mutual exploration and a principled search for truth.

National or global decisions could be made by spokespeople from each local area. These spokespeople might be empowered to agree only to decisions that their local group had already endorsed. In cases of impasse, they would attempt to forge new options based on the best ideas of their local groups. Then they would take these new options back for ratification by the local groups. If ratified, they would then meet again with the other spokespeople and make a final decision. This cumbersome process might be expedited by traveling discussion facilitators, video conferencing, electronic mail, electronic bulletin board discussion groups, and other techniques.

Unlike our current society in which war and violence are often glorified, children would be raised so that they considered the idea of assaulting another person repugnant. As adults, they would then have no desire to hurt another person, and they would recoil from any kind of violence. They would also be taught how to resist aggression nonviolently.

A good society would be safe at all times of the day and night. Men and women could walk alone anywhere without fear of assault, rape, or harassment.

It costs the same to send a person to prison or to Harvard. The difference is the curriculum.

— Paul Hawken

Rather than relying solely on police, everyone would be encouraged to recognize destructive behavior and to interrupt it whenever it arose. Individuals working together would use the methods of rational argument, appeals to conscience, mediation, emotional counsel­ing, and nonviolent struggle to enforce community standards. Militaristic ideas of domination, control, hatred, punishment, and revenge would be discouraged. Weapons would be restricted. To handle the worst situations, unarmed police would be trained to intervene and to subdue people without hurting them.

Courts would primarily mediate disputes. They would provide a forum for people to explain how others’ destructive behavior hurt them and ask for restoration. For malicious crimes, specially trained counselors would support and counsel the transgressors to heal them of whatever emotional disturbance drove them to hurt others. Those who could not change would be required to live and work in a special area separate from the rest of society and be continually monitored so they could not hurt anyone. Their crimes would be condemned, but they would not be tormented, rejected, or hated.

A good society would discourage the use of mind-numbing drugs. It would also try to help anyone trapped by an addiction to drugs, alcohol, tobacco, nicotine, sugar, sports, gambling, sex, television, computers, or any other substances or practices around which people develop destructive obsessions. Anyone who wanted help to end her addiction would be assisted by trained counselors and supported by others trying to overcome the same addiction. Only those whose addictions caused antisocial behavior would be prevented from pursuing the addiction.

This is just a preliminary description of a few elements of a good society. The books and articles listed in Chapter 12 are invaluable in filling out this vision and suggesting other possible elements. Appendix A describes a variety of interim measures that could move the United States toward this vision.

Many of the ideas described here seem impossible in our current society and they are. In our current society, power is much too concentrated to allow many of these ideas to work. In our current society, there is so much misleading propaganda that most people are severely misinformed. Moreover, our current society breeds large numbers of angry, misanthropic, cruel, violent, and savage people with whom it is extremely difficult to cooperate or even to co-exist. It is only as our change efforts begin to transform people and society that we could produce sufficiently favorable conditions to allow these ideas to be implemented.

The rest of this book explains how we might go about this task.

Next Chapter: 3. Obstacles to Progressive Change

Notes for Chapter 2

What I call “a good society” is similar to that described by many other authors and given a variety of names. For example:

Activists in the Civil Rights movement of the early 1960s, including Martin Luther King, Jr., called it “the beloved society.”

Charles Derber, in The Wilding of America: How Greed and Violence Are Eroding Our Nation’s Character (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996, HN90 .V5D47 1996), uses the term a “civil society” and contrasts it with “wilding” (self-oriented behavior that hurts others and damages the social fabric):

Civil society is the underlying antidote to the wilding virus, involving a culture of love, morality, and trust that leads people to care for one another and for the larger community. A civil society’s institutions nurture civic responsibility by providing incentives for people to act not just in their own interest but for the common good. (p. 145)

Riane Eisler calls it the “partnership way.” Riane Eisler, The Chalice & The Blade: Our History, Our Future (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987, HQ1075 .E57 1987); Riane Eisler and David Loye, The Partnership Way: New Tools for Living and Learning (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1990, HQ1075 .E58 1990). The Center for Partnership Studies, P.O. Box 51936, Pacific Grove, CA 93950, (831) 626–1004.

http://www.partnershipway.org

For another list of basic elements of a good society, see Lester W. Milbrath, Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1989, GF41 .M53 1989), pp. 79–83. He proposes that a good society (one that would sustain a viable ecosystem) would include the following four core values:

• A high quality of life

• Security

• Compassion

• Justice

These values would be supported by eleven instrumental values:

• Fulfilling work

• Goods and services

• Health

• Freedom (lack of unnecessary restraints and provision of meaningful opportunities)

• Participation in community and societal decision-making

• Sense of belonging to a community

• Powerful knowledge (broad and deep)

• Variety and stimulation (recreation, education, research)

• Peace

• Order

• Equality

These, in turn would be supported and implemented by eight societal processes:

• Sustainable economic system (produces goods and services, provides fulfilling work, maintains economic justice, utilizes resources in a sustainable manner that preserves the ecosystem)

• Health system (medicine, self-help)

• Safety system (police forces, fire protection, defense)

• Legal system (laws, courts)

• Participation system (decision-making processes, community, civic organizations)

• Recreation structure

• Research and education system

• Convenience structure (transportation, compact city design)

The thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , adopted in 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations, also describe the elements of a good society. This document can be found on the United Nations’ website http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html or on this site maintained by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute http://www.udhr.org/UDHR/default.htm .

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in “Human Capabilities, Female Human Beings,” Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover, eds., Women, Culture, and Development: A Study of Human Capabilities (Cambridge: Clarendon Press, 1995, HQ1236 .W6377 1994), pp. 61–104, provides a more rigorous list of eleven basic human capabilities that should be fulfilled in any good society, based especially on her study of women in developing countries:

1. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length, not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.

2. Being able to have good health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter; having opportunities for sexual satisfaction, and for choice in matters of reproduction; being able to move from place to place.

3. Being able to avoid unnecessary and non-beneficial pain, as so far as possible, and to have pleasurable experiences.

4. Being able to use the senses; being able to imagine, to think, and to reason — and to do these things in a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including, but by no means limited to, literacy and basic mathematical and scientific training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing spiritually enriching materials and events of one’s own choice; religious, literary, musical, and so forth. I believe that the protection of this capability requires not only the provision of education, but also legal guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and of freedom of religious exercise.

5. Being able to have attachments to things and persons outside ourselves; to love those who love and care for us, to grieve at their absence; in general, to love to grieve, to experience longing and gratitude. Supporting this capability means supporting forms of human association that can be shown to be crucial in their development.

6. Being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s own life. This includes, today, being able to seek employment outside the home and to participate in political life.

7. Being able to live for and to others, to recognize and show concern for other human beings, to engage in various forms of social interaction; to be able to imagine the situation of another and to have compassion for that situation; to have the capability for both justice and friendship. Protecting this capability means, once again, protecting institutions that constitute such forms of affiliation, and also protecting the freedom of assembly and political speech.

8. Being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.

9. Being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.

10. Being able to live one’s own life and nobody else’s. This means having certain guarantees of non-interference with certain choices that are especially personal and definitive of selfhood, such as choices regarding marriage, childbearing, sexual expression, speech, and empowerment.

10a. Being able to live one’s own life in one’s own surroundings and context. This means guarantees of freedom of association and of freedom from unwarranted search and seizure; it also means a certain sort of guarantee of the integrity of personal property, though this guarantee may be limited in various ways by the demands of social equality, and is always up for negotiation in connection with the interpretation of the other capabilities, since personal property, unlike personal liberty, is a tool of human functioning rather than an end in itself. (pp. 83–85)

About 90.5 million full-time workers worked an average of 43.1 hours per week in non-agricultural industries. U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1999 , “Table 664: Persons At Work, by Hours Worked: 1998,” drawn from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings , monthly, January 1999 issue.

http://www.census.gov:80/statab/www/index.html

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1999 , “Table 649: Employment Status of the Civilian Population: 1950 to 1998,” drawn from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 2307; and Employment and Earnings , monthly.

Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline in Leisure (New York: Basic Books, 1991, HD4904.6 .S36 1991). For more analysis, see Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose, “Overworked and Underemployed: Unraveling an Economic Enigma,” The American Prospect , no. 31 (March–April 1997).

http://www.prospect.org/archives/31/31bluefs.html

Economic Policy Institute, “European Vacations,” Economic Snapshots web page, 10 May 2000 (Washington, D.C.: Economic Policy Institute, 2000).

http://www.epinet.org/webfeatures/snapshots/archive/2000/051000/snapshots051000.html

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1999 , “Table 1037: Transportation to Work: 1990,” drawn from U.S. Census Bureau, Census of Population and Housing , 1990.

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1999 , “Table 1041: Motor Vehicle Accidents — Number and Deaths: 1972 to 1997,” drawn from National Safety Council, Itasca, IL, Accident Facts and Insurance Information Institute, New York, NY, Insurance Facts .

U.S. Census Bureau, Poverty in the United States: 1999 (P60-210) , March 2000 Current Population Surveys.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2000/cb00-158.html

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/povty99.html

Urban Institute, “America’s Homeless II: Populations and Services,” slideshow released 1 February 2000 based on work by researchers Martha Burt and Laudan Aron.

http://www.urban.org/housing/homeless/numbers/sld002.htm

http://www.urban.org/news/pressrel/pr000201.html

For background, see Martha Burt, Laudan Aron, Toby Douglas, Jesse Valente, Edgar Lee, Britta Iwen, Homelessness: Programs and the People They Serve — Findings of the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers and Clients , Urban Institute report prepared for the Federal Interagency Council on the Homeless, 7 December 1999.

http://www.urban.org/housing/homeless/homeless.html

http://www.urban.org/housing/homeless/homelessness.pdf

U.S. Census Bureau, Health Insurance Coverage: 1999 (P60-211) , March 2000 Current Population Surveys.

http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2000/cb00-160.html ,

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthin99.html

World Health Organization, “World Health Organization Assesses the World’s Health Systems,” press release describing The World Health Report 2000 — Health Systems: Improving Performance (Geneva, Switzerland: WHO, June 2000).

http://www.who.int/whr/2000/en/press_release.htm

WHO’s assessment of performance compares each country’s system to what experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country’s system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries. It is based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system’s financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

Iris Young, in Justice and Politics of Difference , (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990, JC578. Y68 1990), defines two basic kinds of injustice:

Oppression : “institutional constraint on self-development” (p. 37), that is, the “inhibition of [one’s] ability to develop and exercise [one’s] capacities and express [one’s] needs, thoughts, and feelings” (p. 40)

Domination : “institutional constraint on self-determination” (p. 37)

She sees oppression as having five faces:

Exploitation : “a steady process of the transfer of the results of the labor of one social group to benefit another” (p. 49)

Marginalization : excluding from the normal system of labor those that the system cannot or will not use and expelling them from useful participation in social life (p. 53)

Powerlessness : “inhibition in the development of one’s capacities, lack of decision-making power in one’s life, and exposure to disrespectful treatment because of the status one occupies” (p. 58)

Cultural Imperialism : “universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm” (p. 59)

Violence : “random, unprovoked attacks on one’s person or property which have no motive but to damage, humiliate, or destroy the person” (p. 61)

BP Amoco Statistical Review of World Energy, 1999 , p. 9.

http://www.bp.com/worldenergy/pdf/oil.pdf

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water, National Water Quality Inventory: 1998 Report to Congress (EPA 841-R-00-001).

http://www.epa.gov/305b/98report/98summary.html

Anne Platt McGinn, “Rocking the Boat: Conserving Fisheries and Protecting Jobs,” WorldWatch Paper 142 (Washington, DC: WorldWatch Institute, 1995).

http://www.worldwatch.org/pubs/paper/142.html

20/20 Vision, 1998–99 Biennial Report (Washington, DC: 20/20 Vision, 2000), p. 7.

Craig Flournoy and Randy Lee Loftis, “Toxic Neighbors: Residents of Projects Find Common Problem: Pollution,” Dallas Morning News , 1 October 2000, p. 1A.

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1999 , “Table 490: Resident Population of Voting Age and Percent Casting Votes — States: 1990 to 1998,” drawn from U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P25-1117 and Statistical Brief (SB/96-2) ; votes cast from Elections Research Center, Chevy Chase, MD, America Votes , biennial; and 1994, Congressional Quarterly Inc., Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report , 53, no. 15, 15 April 1995.

Human Rights Watch, World Report 2001 , “USA Overview.”

http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/usa/index.html

Somalia is the only other country that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

American Academy of Pediatrics, “Policy Statement: Breastfeeding and the Use of Human Milk (RE9729),” Pediatrics 100, no. 6 (December 1997): 1035–1039.

http://www.aap.org/policy/re9729.html

Michal Ann Young, M.D., “Press Statement on American Academy of Pediatrics Breastfeeding Recommendations, 17 Dec. 1997.”

http://www.aap.org/advocacy/washing/brfeed.htm

Center for a New American Dream, “New Poll Shows Marketing to Kids Taking its Toll on Parents, Families,” 6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 900, Takoma Park, MD 20912, July 1999. The study surveyed 400 parents.

http://www.newdream.org/campaign/kids/press-release.html

Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, Guns in America: Results of a Comprehensive National Survey on Firearms Ownership and Use (Washington, DC: Police Foundation, 1997), p. 13 as cited by Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), Washington, DC.

http://www.handguncontrol.org/research/progun/firefacts.asp

National Opinion Research Center, The University of Chicago, 1997–1998 National Gun Policy Survey , September 1998 as cited by Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI), Washington, DC.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Rates of Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Death Among Children — 26 Industrialized Countries,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 46, no. 5 (7 February 1997): 101–105.

http://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Publications/mmwr/wk/mm4605.pdf

The Sentencing Project, “Facts about Prisons and Prisoners,” April 2000, based on Bureau of Justice Statistics, Corrections Compendium .

http://www.sentencingproject.org/brief/facts-pp.pdf

U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1999 , “Table 385: Adults on Probation, in Jail or Prison, or on Parole: 1980 to 1997,” drawn from U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Correctional Populations in the United States , annual.

Thomas P. Bonczar and Allen J. Beck, “Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison,” U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report Number NCJ-160092, March 1997.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov:80/bjs/pub/pdf/llgsfp.pdf

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1999 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, HD72 .H85 1999). http://www.undp.org/hdro

Line marriage is a type of group marriage in which members of the family range in age from children to seniors and a new young person is married into the family whenever an elder family-member dies. Robert A. Heinlein describes this arrangement in his science fiction novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (New York: Ace Books), 1966, especially pp. 31, 209.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Suicide in the United States,” National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Division of Violence Prevention, web page revised January 28, 2000.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm

The homicide rate of children aged 0–14 in the U.S. in 1990–1995 was five times the rate of twenty-five other industrialized countries, and the suicide rate was twice as great. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Rates of Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm-Related Death Among Children — 26 Industrialized Countries,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 46, no. 5 (February 7, 1997): 101–105.

For a good description of Mondragon, see Roy Morrison, We Build the Road as We Travel (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1991, HD3218 .M66 M67 1991).

“Over 60,000 square miles of land in the United States have been paved over. That works out to about 2 percent of the total surface area, and to 10 percent of all arable land. Worldwide, at least a third of an average city’s land is devoted to roads, parking lots, and other elements of a car infrastructure. In American cities, close to half of all the urban space goes to accommodate the automobile; in Los Angeles, the figure reaches two-thirds.” Michael Renner, Rethinking the Role of the Automobile , Worldwatch Paper 84, (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, June 1988, HE5611 .R46 1988), p. 46.

Renner bases the U.S. paved area figure on Richard Register, “What is an Ecocity?” Earth Island Journal , Fall 1987; the global average of land devoted to cars comes from Lester R. Brown and Jodi L. Jacobson, The Future of Urbanization: Facing the Ecological and Economic Constraints , Worldwatch Paper 77, (Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, 1987, HC59.7 .B79 1987). The U.S. urban land use figure comes originally from Martin Wachs, “Policy Concerns,” in Susan Hanson, The Geography of Urban Transportation , 2nd ed. (New York: Guilford Press, 1995, HE305 .G46 1995), p. 270.

Also see Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, HE5623 .K36 1998).

Gregg Easterbrook, “Apocryphal Now: The Myth of the Hollow Military,” The New Republic , 11 September 2000.

http://www.tnr.com/091100/easterbrook091100_print.html

Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), “A Glut of Military Spending,” FCNL Washington Newsletter , 641 (March 2000): 1 based on Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2001 .

Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC, “World Military Expenditures,” website accessed 14 October 2000. http://www.cdi.org/issues/wme/

U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Defense Report, 2000 , “Table 1: Major Conventional Force Elements, FY 2001,” “Table 2: Conventional Force Structure Summary, FY 2001,” and “Table 13: Reductions in U.S. Strategic Nuclear Arsenal Force Levels, FY 1990 Through 2007.”

http://www.dtic.mil/execsec/adr2000/adr2000.pdf

U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Defense Report, 2000 , “Table C-1: Military and Civilian Personnel Strength.”

There were 52,248 active-duty military personnel afloat and 213,270 ashore. U.S. Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country (309A) , 31 March 2000, p. 5.

http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/m05/hst0300.pdf

There were 49,560 direct hire civilians in foreign countries. U.S. Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, Selected Manpower Statistics, Fiscal Year 1999 , “Table 3-1: Total Civilian Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country — Military Functions (309b),” 30 September 1999.

http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/m01/fy99/m01fy99.pdf

U.S. Department of Defense, Annual Defense Report, 2000 , “Report of the Secretary of the Army,” p. 178.

U.S. Department of Defense, Introduction to the United States Department of Defense , p. 15, website updated 3 July 2000. http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/dod101/busiest.html

The report also boasts: “This map reflects our military’s operational tempo from the end of the Cold War through last year [1999] — 99 major commitments of Americans in uniform, both active and reserve, to virtually every corner of the globe.”

— This is Fact 298 gathered by PEN, the People’s Education Network. http://www.penpress.org

U.S. Department of Defense, Defense Security Cooperation Agency, International Military Education and Training (IMET) Program website.

http://www.dsca.osd.mil/programs/imet/imet2.htm

http://129.48.104.198/introsa98/sld016.htm .

For recent levels see the Federation of American Scientists:

http://www.fas.org/asmp/campaigns/training/IMET.html

— This is Fact 191 gathered by PEN .

William D. Hartung, Welfare for Weapons Dealers: The Hidden Costs of the Arms Trade , 1996, World Policy Institute, Arms Trade Resource Center. Note that these figures do not include the billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies involved in the actual financing of foreign arms sales.

http://worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/hcrep.html#unclesam

— This is Fact 134 gathered by PEN .

U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1998 , Table 3, p. 165. http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/bureau_vc/wmeat98vc.html

http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/bureau_vc/wmeat98fs.html

From 1987 to 1997, the United States sold more than $280 billion in arms, about 5.2 percent of all U.S. exports for the period. The United States was one of only three countries in which arms exports represented more than 5 percent of its total exports. Israel and North Korea were the other two countries. — World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1998 , Table 2, p. 158.

http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/bureau_ac/wmeat98/table2.pdf

U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Arms Control, World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1998 , Table 3, p. 165. http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/bureau_ac/wmeat98/table3.pdf

— This is Fact 223 gathered by PEN . The term “non-democratic regimes” is defined by the U.S. Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers and the U.S. Department of State’s Country Reports .

Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC, “Military Industrial Complex,” website accessed October 14, 2000.

http://www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/complex/

U.S. National Science Foundation, Division of Science Resources Studies, Science and Engineering Indicators, 1998 , Chapter 4, p. 4–21.

http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind98/access/c4/c4s2.htm

— This is Fact 435 gathered by PEN .

U.S. General Accounting Office, “Department Of Defense: Financial Audits Highlight Continuing Challenges to Correct Serious Financial Management Problems,” Statement of Gene L. Dodaro, Assistant Comptroller General, Accounting and Information Management Division, GAO/T-AIMD/NSIAD-98-158, 16 April 1998.

United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report, 1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, HD72 .H85 1994). http://www.undp.org/hdro .

— This is Fact 279 gathered by PEN .

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), The State of the World’s Children, 1999 .

http://www.unicef.org/sowc99/feature3.htm

http://www.unicef.org/sowc99/facts3.htm

— This is Fact 84 gathered by PEN .

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), State of the World’s Children, 1995 , p. 2.

— This is Fact 283 gathered by PEN .

Patricia Tjaden and Nancy Thoennes, Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey , U. S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, Research in Brief Series, Report Number 172837, November 1998.

http://ncjrs.org/txtfiles/172837.txt

This report presents the results of a nationally representative telephone survey of 8,000 women and 8,000 men about their experiences as victims of rape, physical assault, and stalking. The survey was conducted from November 1995 to May 1996.

IcD-2-8.05W 4-26-01

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1.2 Understanding Society

Learning objectives.

• Explain the debunking motif.
• Define the sociological imagination.
• Explain what is meant by the blaming-the-victim ideology.

We have just seen that sociology regards individuals as social beings influenced in many ways by their social environment and perhaps less free to behave and think than Americans ordinarily assume. If this insight suggests to you that sociology might have some other surprising things to say about the social world, you are certainly correct. Max Weber (1864–1920), a founder of sociology, wrote long ago that a major goal of sociology was to reveal and explain “inconvenient facts” (Gerth & Mills, 1946, p. 147). These facts include the profound influence of society on the individual and also, as we shall see throughout this book, the existence and extent of social inequality.

In line with Weber’s observation, as sociologists use the sociological perspective in their theory and research, they often challenge conventional understandings of how society works and of controversial social issues. This emphasis is referred to as the debunking motif , to which we now turn.

The Debunking Motif

As Peter L. Berger (1963, pp. 23–24) noted in his classic book Invitation to Sociology , “The first wisdom of sociology is this—things are not what they seem.” Social reality, he said, has “many layers of meaning,” and a goal of sociology is to help us discover these multiple meanings. He continued, “People who like to avoid shocking discoveries…should stay away from sociology.”

As Berger was emphasizing, sociology helps us see through conventional understandings of how society works. He referred to this theme of sociology as the debunking motif . By “looking for levels of reality other than those given in the official interpretations of society” (p. 38), Berger said, sociology looks beyond on-the-surface understandings of social reality and helps us recognize the value of alternative understandings. In this manner, sociology often challenges conventional understandings about social reality and social institutions.

For example, suppose two people meet at a college dance. They are interested in getting to know each other. What would be an on-the-surface understanding and description of their interaction over the next few minutes? What do they say? If they are like a typical couple who just met, they will ask questions like, What’s your name? Where are you from? What dorm do you live in? What’s your major? Now, such a description of their interaction is OK as far as it goes, but what is really going on here? Does either of the two people really care that much about the other person’s answers to these questions? Isn’t each one more concerned about how the other person is responding, both verbally and nonverbally, during this brief interaction? For example, is the other person paying attention and smiling? Isn’t this kind of understanding a more complete analysis of these few minutes of interaction than an understanding based solely on the answers to questions like, What’s your major? For the most complete understanding of this brief encounter, then, we must look beyond the rather superficial things the two people are telling each other to uncover the true meaning of what is going on.

As another example, consider the power structure in a city or state. To know who has the power to make decisions, we would probably consult a city or state charter or constitution that spells out the powers of the branches of government. This written document would indicate who makes decisions and has power, but what would it not talk about? To put it another way, who or what else has power to influence the decisions elected officials make? Big corporations? Labor unions? The media? Lobbying groups representing all sorts of interests? The city or state charter or constitution may indicate who has the power to make decisions, but this understanding would be limited unless one looks beyond these written documents to get a deeper, more complete understanding of how power really operates in the setting being studied.

Social Structure and the Sociological Imagination

One way sociology achieves a more complete understanding of social reality is through its focus on the importance of the social forces affecting our behavior, attitudes, and life chances. This focus involves an emphasis on social structure , the social patterns through which a society is organized. Social structure can be both horizontal or vertical. Horizontal social structure refers to the social relationships and the social and physical characteristics of communities to which individuals belong. Some people belong to many networks of social relationships, including groups like the PTA and the Boy or Girl Scouts, while other people have fewer such networks. Some people grew up on streets where the houses were crowded together, while other people grew up in areas where the homes were much farther apart. These are examples of the sorts of factors constituting the horizontal social structure that forms such an important part of our social environment and backgrounds.

The other dimension of social structure is vertical. Vertical social structure , more commonly called social inequality , refers to ways in which a society or group ranks people in a hierarchy, with some more “equal” than others. In the United States and most other industrial societies, such things as wealth, power, race and ethnicity, and gender help determine one’s social ranking, or position, in the vertical social structure. Some people are at the top of society, while many more are in the middle or at the bottom. People’s positions in society’s hierarchy in turn often have profound consequences for their attitudes, behaviors, and life chances, both for themselves and for their children.

In recognizing the importance of social structure, sociology stresses that individual problems are often rooted in problems stemming from the horizontal and vertical social structures of society. This key insight informed C. Wright Mills’s (1959) classic distinction between personal troubles and public issues . Personal troubles refer to a problem affecting individuals that the affected individual, as well as other members of society, typically blame on the individual’s own failings. Examples include such different problems as eating disorders, divorce, and unemployment. Public issues , whose source lies in the social structure and culture of a society, refer to social problems affecting many individuals. Thus problems in society help account for problems that individuals experience. Mills felt that many problems ordinarily considered private troubles are best understood as public issues, and he coined the term sociological imagination to refer to the ability to appreciate the structural basis for individual problems.

To illustrate Mills’s viewpoint, let’s use our sociological imaginations to understand some important contemporary social problems. We will start with unemployment, which Mills himself discussed. If only a few people were unemployed, Mills wrote, we could reasonably explain their unemployment by saying they were lazy, lacked good work habits, and so forth. If so, their unemployment would be their own personal trouble. But when millions of people are out of work, unemployment is best understood as a public issue because, as Mills (1959, p. 9) put it, “the very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals.”

The growing unemployment rate stemming from the severe economic downturn that began in 2008 provides a telling example of the point Mills was making. Millions of people lost their jobs through no fault of their own. While some individuals are undoubtedly unemployed because they are lazy or lack good work habits, a more structural explanation focusing on lack of opportunity is needed to explain why so many people were out of work as this book went to press. If so, unemployment is best understood as a public issue rather than a personal trouble.

Another contemporary problem is crime, which we explore further in Chapter 7 “Deviance, Crime, and Social Control” . If crime were only a personal trouble, then we could blame crime on the moral failings of individuals, and some explanations of crime do precisely this. But such an approach ignores the fact that crime is a public issue, because structural factors such as inequality and the physical characteristics of communities contribute to high crime rates among certain groups in American society. As an illustration, consider identical twins separated at birth. One twin grows up in a wealthy suburb or rural area, while the other twin grows up in a blighted neighborhood in a poor, urban area. Twenty years later, which twin will be more likely to have a criminal record? You probably answered the twin growing up in the poor, rundown urban neighborhood. If so, you recognize that there is something about growing up in that type of neighborhood that increases the chances of a person becoming prone to crime. That “something” is the structural factors just mentioned. Criminal behavior is a public issue, not just a personal trouble.

Although eating disorders often stem from personal problems, they also may reflect a cultural emphasis for women to have slender bodies.

Christy McKenna – grab – CC BY-SA 2.0.

A third problem is eating disorders. We usually consider a person’s eating disorder to be a personal trouble that stems from a lack of control, low self-esteem, or another personal problem. This explanation may be OK as far as it goes, but it does not help us understand why so many people have the personal problems that lead to eating disorders. Perhaps more important, this belief also neglects the larger social and cultural forces that help explain such disorders. For example, most Americans with eating disorders are women, not men. This gender difference forces us to ask what it is about being a woman in American society that makes eating disorders so much more common. To begin to answer this question, we need to look to the standard of beauty for women that emphasizes a slender body (Whitehead & Kurz, 2008). If this cultural standard did not exist, far fewer American women would suffer from eating disorders than do now. Even if every girl and woman with an eating disorder were cured, others would take their places unless we could somehow change the cultural standard of female slenderness. To the extent this explanation makes sense, eating disorders are best understood as a public issue, not just as a personal trouble.

Picking up on Mills’s insights, William Ryan (1976) pointed out that Americans typically think that social problems such as poverty and unemployment stem from personal failings of the people experiencing these problems, not from structural problems in the larger society. Using Mills’s terms, Americans tend to think of social problems as personal troubles rather than public issues. As Ryan put it, they tend to believe in blaming the victim rather than blaming the system .

To help us understand a blaming-the-victim ideology, let’s consider why poor children in urban areas often learn very little in their schools. A blaming-the-victim approach, according to Ryan, would say that the children’s parents do not care about their learning, fail to teach them good study habits, and do not encourage them to take school seriously. This type of explanation may apply to some parents, in Ryan’s opinion, but it ignores a much more important reason: the sad shape of America’s urban schools, which are decrepit structures housing old textbooks and out-of-date equipment. To improve the schooling of children in urban areas, he wrote, we must improve the schools themselves, and not just try to “improve” the parents.

As this example suggests, a blaming-the-victim approach points to solutions to social problems such as poverty and illiteracy that are very different from those suggested by a more structural approach that “blames the system.” If we blame the victim, we would spend our limited dollars to address the personal failings of individuals who suffer from poverty, illiteracy, poor health, eating disorders, and other difficulties. If instead we blame the system, we would focus our attention on the various social conditions (decrepit schools, cultural standards of female beauty, and the like) that account for these difficulties. A sociological perspective suggests that the latter approach is ultimately needed to help us deal successfully with the social problems facing us today.

Sociology and Social Reform: Public Sociology

This book’s subtitle is “understanding and changing the social world.” The last several pages were devoted to the subtitle’s first part, understanding . Our discussion of Mills’s and Ryan’s perspectives in turn points to the implications of a sociological understanding for changing the social world. This understanding suggests the need to focus on the various aspects of the social environment that help explain both social issues and private troubles, to recall Mills’s terms.

The use of sociological knowledge to achieve social reform was a key theme of sociology as it developed in the United States after emerging at the University of Chicago in the 1890s (Calhoun, 2007). The early Chicago sociologists aimed to use their research to achieve social reform and, in particular, to reduce poverty and its related effects. They worked closely with Jane Addams (1860–1935), a renowned social worker who founded Hull House (a home for the poor in Chicago) in 1899 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931. Addams gained much attention for her analyses of poverty and other social problems of the time, and her book Twenty Years at Hull House remains a moving account of her work with the poor and ill in Chicago (Deegan, 1990).

About the same time, W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), a sociologist and the first African American to obtain a PhD from Harvard University, wrote groundbreaking books and articles on race in American society and, more specifically, on the problems facing African Americans (Morris, 2007). One of these works was his 1899 book The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study , which attributed the problems facing Philadelphia blacks to racial prejudice among whites. Du Bois also helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). A contemporary of Du Bois was Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931), a former slave who became an activist for women’s rights and worked tirelessly to improve the conditions of African Americans. She wrote several studies of lynching and joined Du Bois in helping to found the NAACP (Bay, 2009).

American sociology has never fully lost its early calling, but by the 1940s and 1950s many sociologists had developed a more scientific, professional orientation that disregarded social reform (Calhoun, 2007). In 1951, a group of sociologists who felt that sociology had abandoned the discipline’s early social reform orientation formed a new national association, the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP). SSSP’s primary aim today remains the use of sociological knowledge to achieve social justice ( http://sssp1.org ). During the 1960s, a new wave of young sociologists, influenced by the political events and social movements of that tumultuous period, took up the mantle of social reform and clashed with their older colleagues. A healthy tension has existed since then between sociologists who see social reform as a major goal of their work and those who favor sociological knowledge for its own sake.

In 2004, the president of the American Sociological Association, Michael Burawoy, called for “public sociology,” or the use of sociological insights and findings to address social issues and achieve social change (Burawoy, 2005). His call ignited much excitement and debate, as public sociology became the theme or prime topic of several national and regional sociology conferences and of special issues or sections of major sociological journals. Several sociology departments began degree programs or concentrations in public sociology, and a Google search of “public sociology” in November 2010 yielded 32,000 results. In the spirit of public sociology, the chapters that follow aim to show the relevance of sociological knowledge for social reform.

Key Takeaways

• The debunking motif involves seeing beyond taken-for-granted assumptions of social reality.
• According to C. Wright Mills, the sociological imagination involves the ability to recognize that private troubles are rooted in public issues and structural problems.
• Early U.S. sociologists emphasized the use of sociological research to achieve social reform, and today’s public sociology reflects the historical roots of sociology in this regard.

For Your Review

• Select an example of a “private trouble” and explain how and why it may reflect a structural problem in society.
• Do you think it is important to emphasize the potential use of sociological research to achieve social reform? Why or why not?

Bay, M. (2009). To tell the truth freely: The life of Ida B. Wells . New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

Berger, P. L. (1963). Invitation to sociology: A humanistic perspective . Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.

Burawoy, M. (2005). 2004 presidential address: For public sociology. American Sociological Review, 70 , 4–28.

Calhoun, C. (2007). Sociology in America: An introduction. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Sociology in America: A history (pp. 1–38). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Deegan, M. J. (1990). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago school, 1892–1918 . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Gerth, H., & Mills, C. W. (Eds.). (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination . London, England: Oxford University Press.

Morris, A. D. (2007). Sociology of race and W. E. B. Du Bois: The path not taken. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Sociology in America: A history (pp. 503–534). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Ryan, W. (1976). Blaming the victim . New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Whitehead, K., & Kurz, T. (2008). Saints, sinners and standards of femininity: Discursive constructions of anorexia nervosa and obesity in women’s magazines. Journal of Gender Studies, 17, 345–358.

Sociology Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Good Society

A Good Society is what we strive for and we aim to build it around core values: Equality, Democracy and Sustainability.

Rather than being a specific vision, or end point, the Good Society is a framework that enables us to evaluate political ideas and actions against our core values.

When faced with an issue we simply ask ourselves – does this help us build a Good Society?

For example, does public ownership of railways:

●     Make a public service affordable to those who use it?

●     Make the service accountable to the public?

●     Promote a greener, cleaner transport system?

You can see our recent publications, blogs, events and audio/video content related to this topic on the right hand side of this page.

3 thoughts on “ Good Society ”

• Pingback: What a Good Society for all women would look like | Compass

EQUALITY, EQUALITY, EQUALITY!!

Hi, I believe that all ordinary people want the same kind of society regardless of which country we live in or which point in history we live in and it is only the wealthy and those in power that cause strife and conflict between people.

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The Good Society

WEB PAGES:  www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~akeene  and  www.umass.edu/csl

THIS IS WHAT YOU SHALL DO: Love the earth and the sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyranny and argue not concerning God.

…Walt Whitman

A holistic approach to education would recognize that a person must learn how to be with other people, how to love, how to take criticism, how to grieve, how to have fun as well as how to add and subtract, multiply and divide It would address the need for purpose and for connectedness to ourselves and one another; it would not leave us alone to wander the world armed with plenty of knowledge but lacking the skills to handle the things that are coming up in our lives.

Jane Tompkins,  A life in school: what the teacher learned

In 1992 Business Week estimated that poverty related crime in the U.S. cost the country $50 billion and that productive employment for the poor could generate $60 billion. In that year, additional public transfers of $45.8 billion could have brought the incomes of all families over the poverty line. That 45.8 billion represented less than 1% of the gross domestic product, and about 15% of military spending (Poverty among children could have been eliminated by transfers of little more than half that amount – $28 billion) According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. could easily have raised that amount of money simply by taxing the richest 1% of Americans by the same tax rate effect in 1977.

Nancy Folbre,  The new field guide to the US economy

The ultimate privilege is to be able to avoid a moral test of one s commitments or prejudices.

Robert Coles

In 1916 John Dewey, a leading philosopher of early 20th century defined a central problem of the time as the impact of modernity on the way we as citizens relate to each other, on its role in the disintegration of community and mutual responsibility. He posed the problem as follows: Our concern at this time is to state how it is that the machine age, in developing the Great Society, has invaded and partially disintegrated the small communities of former times without generating a great community. Dewey was hardly nostalgic for the good old days of the parochial and perhaps xenophobic rural village. Dewey was however concerned with how growing alienation of citizens from each other and from the larger institutions of society posed a threat of effective democracy. Dewey s vision of good society began with supporting institutions that enabled people to find and appreciate their connection to each other.

In 1937 the columnist Walter Lipman published a book entitled The Good Society which addressed some of these issues. Since Lipman s book t least two others have been published with the same title, one by the noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith and one by the sociologist Robert Bellah (et. al). These books, along with several others of similar titles (e.g. Charles Erasmus In Search of the Common Good, Noam Chomsky s The Common Good and Herman Daly and John Cobb Jr. s For the Common Good) continue to explore the fundamental questions raised by Dewey at the dawn of the century: how should we live and how should our lives be connected to the lives of others, and, to the degree that such connection is desirable, how may it be facilitated? These questions are certainly no less timely as we begin a new millennium.

The idea of a good society has deep roots in western philosophy. The idea is inherent to biblical writings (both old and new testaments). It occupied Greek philosophers and is central to theories of democracy. But the question, what constitutes a good society is by no means an exclusive preoccupation of the West. We will spend our first few meetings considering how we personally envision the good society and how this vision meshes with the kind of world we want to live in. We will not for the moment worry so much about how to bring that vision about. That will, mostly (but not exclusively), be left for other courses. Certainly bringing such visions about must begin, like any journey, with a single step. And that first step is to articulate our own vision a vision untainted by the cynicism or pessimism of the day. Therefore we do not begin by asking what do we think is possible, but rather, what do we think is desirable or necessary. After we ve shared our own visions we ll return to the ideas of great and not so great thinkers of the modern and the ancient worlds.

It is easy enough to sit in the classroom and engage in lofty discussions concerning how we ought to live. The task becomes more challenging when we must temper these discussions with real life experiences and confrontations with the contradictions between the ideals and the reality of American democracy (or the gap between theory and practice) as well as the contradiction between our own ideals and our daily practice. The class includes a service learning component which requires each student to participate in a term-long service project which will bring you into contact with real needs in the communities surrounding UMass and which will allow you to work side by side in partnership with people who, struggle on a daily basis to persevere in the face of such needs. The practical experience in the community will give each of you the opportunity to apply what you learn in the classroom to the real world and to bring the real world into the classroom. This class will serve as a pilot for an Introduction to Service class for the UMass campus and we will devote roughly half of our time to a consideration of the method, theory, philosophy and practice of service.

Dewey believed that participation, engagement and experience were the key to strong democracy, strong citizenship and effective education. We concur. We welcome you to the seminar. Come prepared to engage, to get involved and to find your connection with the other members of the seminar and with the communities in which you will be working.

Required Readings:  These books are available at Food For Thought Books, 106 North Pleasant Street, and Amherst.

Coles, Robert,  The Call of service,  (1993). Houghton Mifflin: NY. LeGuin, Ursula,  The Dispossessed Heintz, James and Nancy Folbre,  A Field Guide to the U.S. Economy  (2000). The New Press: NY.

Additional Required Readings: The Good Society Reader: A Compilation of Readings for Anthropology 297H. Available at Copy Cat Print Shop, 37 East Pleasant Street, Amherst. Ask for Packet #271

Community Service Learning (CSL).  The Good Society is a CSL course. As such it endeavors to link theory to practice by giving students the opportunity to apply the ideas we explore in the classroom to the real world. CSL classes bring the community to the classroom and the classroom back to the community. Guided reflection both in the classroom and with your field site supervisors helps facilitate this linking. Community service experiences force us to consider issues such as social justice, not as academic abstractions but as ongoing struggles that daily touch our lives, the lives of our community partners and indeed the lives of every citizen of this country. They force us to consider actively what it means to be a citizen and what it means to participate in a democracy.

The Good Society is a relatively new course this is the second time that it is being offered and will serve not only as the gateway course for Citizen Scholars but also as a pilot for the Introduction to Service course, which will hopefully become part of the CSL program at UMass. In these roles the course will consider some of the most fundamental questions concerning service: e.g. what is service, what does it mean to serve and for whom, what are the different motivations for undertaking service, what role can service play in effecting social change and social justice, what is the role of service in the construction of a good society and what kinds of skills and understandings are necessary to engage in successful and meaningful service. The linkage of these two concepts, i.e., service and the good society is no accident. We will explore a number of different visions of the good society this term. What nearly all have in common is an underlying belief that any good society rests on the active participation by and engagement of its members. These visions invoke either explicitly or implicitly a sense of connection, commitment, and mutual responsibility among members of society.

COMMUNITY SERVICE OPTIONS FOR CITIZEN SCHOLARSIN ANTHROPOLOGY 297H THE GOOD SOCIETY Fall 2000

ALL STUDENTS IN ANTHROPOLOGY 297H MUST COMPLETE A MINIMUM OF 30 HOURS COMMUNITY SERVICE IN THIS COURSE. ALL STUDENTS MUST HAVE FINALIZED THEIR SERVICE PLACEMENT BY THE THIRD CLASS MEETING (SEPT 14) AND MUST BEGIN THEIR SERVICE BEFORE SEPT 21. SERVICE CONTRACTS MUST BE TURNED IN AT THE SEPT 14 MEETING.

The three organizations listed below are the core partners of the Citizen Scholars Program. These organizations and the CSP are attempting to establish a long-term partnership in which we work together to create programs that will meet the needs of the community while providing important educational experiences for our students. During the term the directors of each of these programs will join us either in the classroom or at one of our monthly dinners. Community Service is an important part of this course. There may be times when you may wonder, why are we doing service or why with these particular agencies? Here is a short preamble to the answer, which we will explore more thoroughly throughout the term. In this course we attempt to liberate our imagination from what we already know to be true. We ask what does a good society look like? What kind of society might we want to create if we could? What kind of a society do we want to live in? The challenge of creating such a society will be taken up during your last semester in the program. We will not ask therefore, what is possible or how can we do this, but rather, what is imaginable. The task is not as simple as it might seem. Our imagination is always constrained by our culture and by the limits or our own experience. Many of us have had limited experience living with or working with people whose lives, experiences, values and orientations are quite different from our own. We do service for a variety of reasons in this course and we will explore these reasons throughout the term. But one key reason is that it gives us a chance to share in the lives of others who may not be like us. This fundamental anthropological experience is an effective way to free the imagination.

Here are the contacts for our three key partners. We encourage you to get in touch with them immediately. We will entertain specific proposals for service that does not involve our key partners under very special circumstances. Those who wish to propose alternative service need to work this out with Keene prior to our second class meeting. Those who do plan to explore alternative service may wish to attend the VOLUNTEER FAIR at the Campus Center on Monday, September 11 from 11-2.

Amherst Survival Center  provides a variety of services to needy people in the Amherst area including a soup kitchen, a furniture and clothing exchange, emergency food pantry and a variety of referral services. Seventy percent of the people who use the center also volunteer there and the center has largely succeeded in its goal of creating a sense of community among its visitors and volunteers. Volunteers are needed who want to help create and sustain this community. Hours of service are between 9-4, M-F and 4-7 pm on Thursday. Contact: Charlie Walker: 549-3968

Big Brother/Big Sister of Hampshire County  sponsors a variety of mentoring programs for youth at risk. The individual mentoring program has flexible hours, requires a 9 month commitment (we can arrange for you to get academic credit in the spring term) and a car or access to transportation. The after-school mentoring program is based at the Amherst Middle School and is walkable from campus. This was a very popular placement among the first class of Citizen Scholars. Contact: Renee Moss 253-2591 or see Keene for an application. Note: this program requires a background check and interview. Volunteers should contact Renee immediately and ask to expedite the process.

Twenty first Century Schools Program  runs after school programs in 7 different middle schools in the Pioneer Valley providing important diversion activities and mentoring for youth at risk. Volunteers serve as individual and group mentors while supervising after school activities. Volunteers also have the option of planning and running a community service learning project for middle school students (see Keene for details). This would make an excellent team project. Contact: Susan O Connor or Salem at the Hampshire Educational Collaborative: 586-4900.

Course Requirements: Attendance at all classes. Conscientious and timely completion of all readings. Conscientious and timely completion of weekly writing assignments (2-3 typed pages / week due each Thursday). Conscientious preparation for and active participation in the seminar. Conscientious completion of a minimum of 30 hours community service in an approved placement. Completion of a mid-term essay (5-7 pages) focusing on one classic work on the good society. Completion of a final comprehensive reflective essay (approximately 10 pages) linking your service to your course work (guidelines to be provided after the midterm reflection).

Grades:  Much of the work that we are doing in this seminar is not amenable to conventional grading protocols. Because this is an honors class AND a service learning class we expect that everyone who has enrolled will bring with them a high level of commitment and motivation and will do high quality/honors level work. Hence our expectations for you are quite high. All students who fulfill ALL of these expectations and other course requirements listed above will receive a grade of AT LEAST AB . We reserve the grade of A for those students whose work is consistently excellent. We hope that the subject matter itself and the needs of the community will provide sufficient motivation to strive for such excellence.

Weekly Writing/Guided Reflection:  Writing assignments are designed to help you reflect on the relationship between classroom discussions, assigned readings, your real world service and your own life and how you want to live it. Assignments are handed out in class on Thursday and are due the following Thursday. These will consist of two or more questions, one of which will help you reflect on your readings for the week (and will also help you prepare talking points for our in class discussions) while the other will help you reflect on your ongoing service. We ask that you get a three ring binder in which you keep all of your written assignments and all of the materials that we hand out during the term. At the end of the term we will collect all of your weekly written assignments so that we may reflect on the totality of your work during the term.

Attendance:  We place considerable value on attendance and preparation for class. We envision this seminar as a learning community. As such, its success depends on the thoughtful contributions of each of its members. We expect everyone to approach the seminar as a learner and a teacher. We expect everyone to assume responsibility for their own learning AND to hold others responsible for sustaining a strong learning environment. When you miss class, you not only deprive the other members of the seminar of your participation and your unique experience but you potentially undermine ongoing discussions by not being up to speed. Should you have to miss class (and we consider illness or family emergencies the only reasonable reasons for missing class) it is your responsibility to make sure that you are caught up when you return and that your written assignments are turned in on time.

The Course Map

You should approach this calendar of events as a map for the semester. As with any journey, we may decide to stick to the map and take the most direct route to our goal. Or we may choose, from time to time, to leave our plotted route to take an interesting detour that captures our imagination or to simply explore. Any of the lessons noted herein are expendable and may be discarded or postponed in the face of more pressing or more interesting issues. The choice is yours. We need not stick slavishly to the map but it is there to give us some direction when we need it.

A word on organization: This course is in effect two courses in one. The first deals with The Good Society. The other deals with the method and philosophy of service. As we noted above these two topics are deeply interconnected and it would be difficult if not impossible to consider one without the other. Nevertheless, the two topics require us to explore different bodies of literature and to engage in different kinds of in-class activities. We will therefore (more or less) alternate classes devoting one to service and the other to imagining a good society. The transitions may, at times, seem less than perfect, but as the term progresses you will hopefully find increasing opportunities to use one subject to inform the other.

CLASS 1/Sept 7. Introduction: Visioning: Seeking the Good Society:  The idea of a good society has deep roots in western philosophy. The idea is inherent to biblical writings (both old and new testaments). It occupied Greek philosophers and is central to theories of western democracy. Our first task will be to articulate our own vision – a vision hopefully untainted by the cynicism or pessimism of the day. Therefore we do not begin by asking what we think is possible, but rather, what do we think is desirable or necessary.

Some Global Questions? What is a Good Society? What kind of a society do you want to live in? Which of these features currently exist in your own society? What do you imagine are some of the obstacles to fulfilling your vision?

Activities: Small Group work: Build your own society simulation. Review of the Course and its goals. Brief Discussion of Service Placements

Volunteer fair Monday September 11 in the Campus CenterAuditorium, 11-2.

CLASS 2 Sept 12 (TU)) Establishing the Learning Circle and Setting the Agenda Why are we here? What are the questions we want to be able to answer by the end of the term? Who are we and what resources do we bring to the course? What are the expectations that we have of the course and each other? Some additional sharing of our personal visions.

Activity: Learning circle: Introductions, brief critical thinking exercise on liberating the imagination, brainstorming to set a common agenda.  Important: Today we will set the final schedule for potlucks & field trips. Please read the entire syllabus, note the tentative dates scheduled, and bring your calendars to class.

Read: Heintz and Folbre, Introduction and Chapter 1.

CLASS 3 SEPT 14 (TH): Thinking about Service & Doing Service: Participation, Engagement and the Good Society: Today we will explore the role of participation and engagement in creating the good society. We approach this ethically (what is our obligation to others?), philosophically (what are the criteria for good service) instrumentally (how does participation/engagement instill a sense of commitment and how does it sustain democracy) and methodologically (what is necessary to do good service)?

Is service simply a Band-Aid for problems that are better resolved by large institutions? What is the difference between charity and social justice? What does it mean to bear witness? What is ironic about engaging in community service? Where does our own service fit into the continuum?

Activity: Discussion of the difference between charity and justice and of the irony of service. Report on the Status of your service Placements.

SERVICE CONTRACT DUE AT THIS CLASS

Read: From the reader: Morton: The irony of service. Glassman: Bearing Witness Mosle: The Vanity of Volunteerism Heintz and Folbre: Chapter 2

Class 4 & 5 Sept. 19 (TU) & 21 (TH): Imagining the Cued Society: the role ofCross-cultural Studies. How can an exploration of societies other than our own, liberate our imagination and allow us to explore possibilities that might, within the context of American Society, seem unreasonable. Can we use cross-cultural case studies to expand our understanding of what is humanly possible (i.e. our notion of human nature)? How have the cross cultural examples that you read for this week helped you think about your own vision of what is possible and desirable in a new way. Question: What are some of the attractive features of any of these societies that are strikingly different from your current way of life? Why are they present and how are they sustained?

Activity: Lecture/discussion. An intolerably abridged introduction to the Israeli kibbutz. From the reader. Oz: On social democracy Keene: The Language of Disengagement Wright: Family Time

Class 6 Sept 26 (TU) Motivations for Service:  What are the different shapes and forms that community service takes? What motivates people to undertake theses different forms of service? Where does our own service fit into this typology? What makes for effective service? What skills do we bring to our own service work? What skills do we need to develop?

Read: Coles: Introduction and Chapters 1-3. Heintz and Folbre Chapter 3

Activity: Small group work. Discussion of the readings.

Class 7 Sept. 28 (TH): Reflection on the beginning of your service. Read: From the Reader: McKnight Class 8 Oct 3 (TU): Cross Cultural Visions of The Good Society II: The Bruderhof and Camphill Read: Handouts plus Heintz and Folbre, Chapter 4 Activity: Two short videos and a brief discussion

Class 9: Oct 5 (TH): On the importance of being tribal. An exploration of the lessons that tribal society has to offer for those in search of a good society. Some reasons why tribal society does not resemble Survivor. Read: From the reader: Maybury Lewis: On the importance of being tribal Welburn /Mohawk: A summary of the Great Law

Class 10 &11 Oct 10 (TU) & 12 (TH): Who are you to do this? How do we enter another community and what right do we have to do so. What is/should be the relationship between servant and served? What cultural baggage do we bring to our service? What is privilege and how does it impact our ability to be agents of change in our society? Who are you to do this? What right do you have to enter another community and presume to help? What makes a good ally? How do you communicate effectively with those who do not share your background, culture or values? How do these questions inform our larger agenda of imagining, building the good society? Self and other /pitfalls to others and ourselves

Read: From the reader. Macintosh: unpacking the knapsack of white privilege L,azarre: Color Blind Jordan: Report from the Bahamas Coles: Interlude and Chapters 4-5 Heintz and Folbre, Chapter 5

Class 12 &13 Oct 17 (TU) and 19 (TH): Education: What is the role of education in creating and sustaining a good society? What does education for democracy and engaged citizenship look like? What are some of the more common myths about education in America? What are some aspects of your own education that helped or hindered your ability to imagine The Good Society or that helped or hindered your preparation for engaged citizenship?

Read: From the reader: Kozol: Savage inequalities. Kozol: The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society Wood: Secondary schools, primary lessons?

Activity: Discussion of readings and reflection on our own education and on the service that some of us are doing with young people in this community.

Class 14 OCT 24 (TU) MIDTERM REFLECTION

MIDTERM PAPER IS DUE AT THIS CLASS Read: Heintz and Folbre, Chapter 6

Class 15 OCT 26 (TH): Citizenship, Democracy and Economic Justice.  We toss these terms about a lot. With Election Day only a week away we will take some time to consider what they mean to us and to others. What is ideology and how does it affect the way we think about democracy and justice? Read: from the reader. Boyte: Civic Declaration Alger ragged Dick Dalton: Horatio Alger Activity Discussion of the readings and the Robert Putnam Bowling Alone Quiz. Assess your level of engagement and compare it to that of the rest of America.

Class 16 OCT 31(TU): HALLOWEEN COSTUME PARTY AND The Consequences of Service: What is the outcome of the service that we do? Read: Coles, Chapters 6-epilouge Heintz and Folbre, Chapter 7 Activity: Discussion of the readings/measuring them against our own service.

Class 17 Nov 2 (TH): Obedience and Disobedience: What is the difference between freedom and license? Liberty and responsibility? What does it mean to act with integrity? How can we successfully mediate our responsibilities on ourselves and to others? What is legitimate authority ? How should one respond to unjust actions from a government or from an authoritative body?

Read: from the reader. Thoreau: On civil disobedience Milgram: The perils of Obedience

Activity: discussion of readings and, if time permits, in class simulation.

Class 18 and 19 Nov 7 (TU) and 9 (TH): Housing and the Land. An exploration of cohousing and land trusts.

TODAY (NOV 7) IS ELECTION DAY. PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO VOTE!

Are their models for assuring access to decent housing for all members of a society? What stands in the way of fair access to housing? What is the appropriate relationship between people and the land? What is the difference between ownership and stewardship? Do current models of private ownership of the land interfere with stewardship? How much is enough?’ How much is too much? What is the proper scale of the good society? Read: handout on co-housing From the reader: Austin: Redeeming the Land Witt and Swan: Land, challenge and opportunity. Berry: Conserving Community Berry: The pleasures of eating On reserve: Matthei: Economics as if values mattered

CLASS 20 & 21 Nov 14 (TU) and NOV 16 (TH) Pre-Thanksgiving reflection. Revisit the questions: does service enhance democracy? Does service enhance democracy? How does service help us understand the needs for and obstacles to creating an engagedcitizenry? What is the connection between participation and strong democracy? How have the concepts of service and participation changed from the Kennedy era to the Clinton era? Can anything be gleaned about the state of America from the two speeches of these two presidents? Is compulsory service an oxymoron? In what significant ways do the essays that you read for this week differ on the connection between service and strong democracy? Should service be mandatory? What role does/should service play in general education? How does your own service enhance or fail to enhance your education at UMass?

Read: from the reader. Barber and Battistoni, Citizenship and Service Read Heintz and Folbre: Chapters 8 & 9

CLASS 22 : SERVICE AS ACTIVISM. NOTE: WE PROPOSE TO HAVE A POTLUCK DINNER AT 7 PM ON MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, IN LIEU OF CLASS ON THE 21st

THIS WILL POTENTIALLY ALLOW YOU TO HEAD HOME EARLY AND WILL ALSO GIVE US SOME TIME TO CONSIDER SERVICE AS ACTIVISM BY VIEWING A FILM ON THE HIGHLANDER CENTER IN NEW MARKET, TN. ENTITLED YOU GOTTA MOVE.

What is the difference if any between service and activism? When is service part of the problem rather than part of the solution? Is popular education service? What role can/does it play in creating the good society? What is the unique method of the Highlander School and its founder Myles Horton? Read: Heintz and Folbre: remainder.

Class 23 & 24 Nov. 28 (TU) and Nov. 30 (TH) Revisioning and Novel Solutions. Using Fiction to Catalyze the Imagination.  Seeking the Good Society in a fictional U(dis)topia. Or, what would the Israeli kibbutz look like on a global scale. (See study guide).

Class 25 Dec. 5 Health Care and Welfare Reform: Should all members of a good society have guaranteed access to basic health care, housing, food and services for children? Why are such services not offered to all in our own and how does this differ from Welfare States like Sweden? If welfare is not the answer then what is?

Read: handouts Review: selections from Heintz and Folbre on Welfare and Health Care

Class 26 Dec. 7 (TU) To be Announced

Class 27 & 28 Dec. 12(TU) and 14 (TH) Conclusion: Final Student Reports on Service Collectively setting an agenda for where we go from here. Revisit our first reflections. Has our perspective changed in any way over the last 14 weeks? Has our imagination been catalyzed or liberated? Does this make a difference?

Activities: Group reports: Final Class evaluation Brainstorming for next year Closing the learning circle

JOURNAL GUIDELINES

The journal you will keep will consist of a series of weekly typed entries that you will keep in a three ring binder. You will turn these writings in weekly and will receive immediate feedback from the instructional staff (Art, Dave and Dave). Some of these entries will be in response to questions we pose to help you organize your thoughts about the required reading. Others will focus on the activities you do at your service site. We hope that you will be able to see connections between your readings, your in-class discussions and your experiences at the service site. The journal should help you to seek out and explore those connections.

THE PROCESS:  The aim of service learning is to give you an opportunity to link theory and practice, that is, to think about the learning that you are doing in the classroom at UMass and apply that leaning to the real world. Your journal is an important part of that process. We emphasize the word process here because you journal is not simply a product to be done, graded and discarded. Rather, it is a means for you to grapple with ideas and experiences that originate both in the classroom and in the larger social world around you. To put this another way, your journal is a tool to help you become an effective and reflective participant observer – indeed an emerging anthropologist, activist and/or socially engaged citizen within your own society.

We ask that you date every entry with the day and date (e.g. Monday, September 6). You need to interact with your journal on a regular basis. At the beginning of the term we will give you some very specific journal assignments. But you should strive to create a journal entry for every time you work at your service site.

Your entries should be of two types:

Guided Reflections: especially at the beginning of the term, we will provide you with a question or two to get you thinking about the issues we will face during the term. Simply think about the questions and then write an earnest response to them.

Unguided reflections reflections often follow the format,  what, so what and now what.  OR, what have I been doing (description), what does it mean (interpretation) and how does this impact on how I will act (or what I need to know) in the future (a plan for action). Both, so what and now what responses may be in the form of questions that your particular experience or observation posed for you. You may not have the answers right now but the journal can provide a framework for posing questions that you want to pursue later in the term and beyond. Think of the journal as an intellectual sketchbook for working out your ideas about the community, the world, and your place within it. Prior to entering the community you want to think about the issues raised in class and extend them to the world around you and to your experiences within it. Once you are in the community you want to describe your activities and your observations with as much detail as possible and then process what they mean. You can use your journal to help you sharpen your observational skills, help you w see important detail in the seemingly obvious.

It is important that you record your reflections while they are fresh in your mind. For most of us, reflection is not a skill that we have developed. It does not come naturally but takes a lot of practice. Please do not put off writing in your journal until the weekend or worse yet until the day before it is due. You will find that if you do that it is not much use to you and that writing in it is a chore rather than a pleasure. But if you develop this reflective skill and practice it you will find it to be a helpful tool for seeing the world with greater clarity.

Mid Term Writing Assignment: Visions and Manifestos

These selections were chosen because they were relatively short and offer for the most part a clear vision of the authors conception of a good society. Together they comprise a very diverse set of visions though the majority take a liberal-progressive slant (perhaps because the notion of The Good Society has been central to liberal and progressive discourse, less so to conservative writings). Some are outright manifestos while others require a bit (though not s lot) of interpretation. Nevertheless, you need not stick to the list. Just be sure to clear anything not on the list with Art or Dave before you proceed.

THE ASSIGNMENT:  Read one of the selections on the list below. Please try to choose something that you have not read already though this is not an absolute requirement. Please read the work in its entirely although if you have chosen an exceptionally long work, like Bellah et. al. read it selectively but carefully. Then write carefully crafted and elegantly written essay of 5-7 pages in which you do the following:

Provide a clear summary of the author s vision of The Good Society, carefully outlining the key elements and their relationships. Be sure to discuss any underlying theory and or philosophy that informs the author s vision. Then provide a personal commentary, offering your own reaction to this vision. You may wish to discuss why you find certain elements of this vision appealing or not. Please try to be specific in your discussion. We will take all of these essays and place them in a binder in the anthropology lounge so that other members of the seminar can read them if they desire. In this way we can cover a lot of the classics on the Good Society without devoting a substantial part of the term to that body of literature. Please remember that readers of your essays will most likely not have read the work that you are discussing. Please take this into consideration as you compose your essay. Be clear and specific and provide examples when they will be helpful.

Arnold, Eberhard 1995 Why we live in community. Plough Press. A commentary on the faith of the Bruderhof and the theology that leads them into the fellowship of community.

Bellah, Robert et. al. 1986 Habits of the Heart: Reflections on individualism and its role in shaping modern America. U. Cal Press: Berkeley.

Bellah, Robert et. al 1991 The Good Society. Knopf, NY.

Bennett, William The book of virtues. Biehl, Janet and Murray Bookchin 1998 The politics of social ecology. Libertarian municipalism. Black Rose Books. (Selections). In this book Biehl makes accessible Bookchin s treatises on libertarian municipalism, a combination of anarchism and radical ecology and adds a feminist s spin as well.

Berlin, Susan 1984 Ways we live. This small book is a companion to the 10 part CBC television series of the same name. In brief chapters it explores how belonging to a community makes our lives better and as well as how communities can be built and sustained.

Buber, Martin 1996 Paths to Utopia. Syracuse University Press.

Callenbach, Ernest Ecotopia

Chomsky, Noam 2000 The common good. Odonian Press, Monroe, ME. (selections)

Day, Dorothy Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, wrote extensively on the links between faith, community and social justice. Read a couple of several appropriate articles from the on-line library at  www.catholicworker.orp-/dorothyday/index.cfm

Galbraith, John Kennth 1997 The good society: the humane agenda. Houghton Mifflin: Boston.

Goodwin, Neva et. al. 1996 The Consumer Society. Island Press Washington. D.C. (selections). Not really a treatise on the good society but a series of reflections on the role of consumerism in shaping the quality of life. Poses the question, how much is enough?

Jefferson, Thomas, Joyce Appleby and Therence Ball 1998 The political writings of Thomas Jefferson. Cambridge University Press. (Pick a few.)

Kanter, Rosabeth 1976 Community and commitment. Harvard University Press.

Marx, Karl The Communist Manifesto.

McLaughlin, Corrine and Cordon Davidson 1994 Spiritual Politics. Changing the World From the Inside Out. Ballantine. One New Age vision of how the world should be.

Norwood, Ken and Kathleen Smith 1995 Rebuilding community in America. Shared Resource Center. Berkley, CA. (selections). This book explores the role of architecture in shaping a more connected and just society.

Parker, Julia 1998 Citizenship, work and welfare. Searching for the Good society.

Plato The Republic.

Putnam, Robert 2000 Bowling Alone. The Collapse and revival of American Community. Simon and Shuster.

Rand, Ayn 1984 Capitalism, The unknown ideal. New Americas Library. 1999(reissue) Anthem. Plume, NY. Ayn Rand’s novels and essays advocated forcefully for a philosophy, which she called objectivism, which advocated for selfishness as the most effective route to producing well.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques 1999 The Social Contract.

Sahlins, Marhsall 1976 The Original Affluent Society. In Stone Age Economics. Aldine; Chicago. An essay exploring what we have lost in the pursuit of civilization . A nice companion to Maybury-Lewis.

1977 Schmookler, Andrew 2000 Debating the Good Society: The quest to bridge America s moral divide, MIT Press.

Schor, Juliet 2000 A sustainable economy for the 21st Century. Seven Stories Press, NY,A prescription for how we can attend to the common good by living within our means.

Sivaraksa, Sulak 2001 Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society. Parallax Press, Berkeley, CA. (selections).

Skinner, B.F. Walden Two

Tolstoy, Leo 1998 (1893) Walk in the Light while there is light. In Walk in the Light while there is light and twenty-three tales.. The Plough Publishing House: Farmington, PA. Pp. 3-68, Tolstoy s short story explores the vision of the early Christian Church and the vision of the original disciples on what constitutes a good society.

Wolff, Robert Paul 1998 (1970) In defense of anarchism. U Cal. Press: Berkeley, CA.This little tome explores the role of moral autonomy and political authority in democracy.

Anthropology 297 Art Keene The Good Society

2000The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Leguin Study Guide

We end the semester as we began, by returning to the imagination and considering what a good society might look like if we were freed from the political and economic and even historical constraints that we currently face. What kind of society would we choose to live in? This term we have regularly encountered imaginative inhibition; a reluctance to let go of the familiar in order to pit something truly different. I have been surprised by how uncomfortable we sometimes are with the prospect of change and that the idea of radical changes in what we have now is perhaps morefrightening than the current state of social injustice. We began the term by trying to unfetter our imagination. We end with a novel, one person s fictional account of what a good society might look like in the hope of serving that same purpose. And so I encourage you one more time to free your imagination and yield to it. This novel presents us, not with a utopia but rather an imperfect society with rough edges and contradictions, a society inhabited by real people with real flaws. As you read please try to banish the question would I like to live here? from your mind and ask instead whether this society works for the people who live in it and in what ways? Prior to asking whether the settings are believable (which you of course will want to ask) ask first whether they are desirable or whether they pose interesting questions for what a good society must do? Are issues of justice accommodated more effectively for more people on the planet of Annares? How do you account for the difference between the two planets and what guarantees are there for justice on each?

ADDITIONAL STUDY GUIDE:  You can find a comprehensive (8 page) study guide and summary of the novel on the net at  www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/science_fiction/dispossessed.html  . The Study Guide, written by Paul Brians, a Professor of English at Washington State University contains provocative questions and hints to help you get the most out of the reading.

Here are some questions to help guide you through your reading. Please note that this is not only my favorite novel (and hence you should take the time to read it carefully) but also a framework for examining how some of the theoretical issues we raised at the beginning of the course might play themselves out on a global level. I hope you will read the novel carefully and analytically and come prepared for a detailed discussion. Please consider how all of the questions raised in the study guide for Unit I apply to The Dispossessed. Then consider the following:

1. Playing the anthropologist, how would you characterize the societies on the two planets (re: economy, social organization, gender roles, religion etc.)? How is the social order maintained and reproduced? Shevek is, to some extent the anthropologist on Urras. What does he see, what has he come prepared to see and what can he not see.

2. What are the historical conditions that gave rise to Annares (to the best of your ability to piece the story together)?

3. Why does (or does not) the revolution succeed on Annares? Do you find this situation plausible? Where has this society been most successful re: its original revolutionary goals. Where has it been least successful?

4. What does Pravic, the language of Annares tell us about Annaresti society? Did the colonists need to invent a new language?

5. This book raises the question about possibilities for a truly communal, egalitarian and anarchistic society. Conventional ethnography tells us that these characteristics are not compatible with industrialization or even intensive agriculture. Why do they seem to work on Annares?

6. It has been argued that government, class structure, hierarchy etc. are necessary as society grows larger… simply to hold the society together and to insure that all essential work for the common good gets done. We refer to this pressure to build hierarchies, as society grows larger as scalar stress. How do the folk of Annares overcome scalar stress?

7. Other misc. questions: Do people on Annares have differential status (what is status)? Do they have differential rewards? What constitutes rewards in a non-propertarian society? Where does acquisitiveness come from – what makes us propertarian? Are equality and property contradictions? Re: making the revolution work… how did the pioneers overcome all of the cultural, historical baggage they brought with them from their previous capitalistic existence? Shevek comments that Annaresti must cooperate and work together out of necessity and that luxury is not possible in their harsh environment. Could this revolutionary experiment succeed in a more benevolent environment? Would the social organization change, or come under stress as (or if) they succeed in taming the planet (or the external threat of Urras). (Similarly, why does the experiment of the kibbutz deteriorate once the standard of living is improved? Do socialism or communism or equality or justices demand poverty?)

8. How can anarchistic or egalitarian societies deal with selfish, or non-productive or anti-social individuals? How was this done on Annares (on Urras)? Was there personal freedom on Annares (don t answer too quickly)? How about justice?

9. How did Annares change since the days of the pioneers (again, you ll have to reconstruct this)?

10. Consider the conditions that gave rise to the Odonian revolution and its successful perpetuation. In what ways was it similar to socialist revolutions in our own time? Why did the Annaresti succeed where others failed?

11. In what ways is Annares similar to the Kibbutz? In what ways does it differ?

12. All told, can such communal values (as evident on Annares or the Kibbutz) be global values?

13. Leguin found it necessary to resettle her anarchists on a new planet away from the corruption and distraction of capitalist society. This was necessary to the interests of both the anarchists and the capitalists. What do you think of this? Is Leguin saying that we would need to relocate on a deserted island to create a good society? What do we need to do to overcome the hegemony of popular culture and apathy?

14. Is Annares the good society? (Remember – it is not meant to be the PERFECT society). In what ways does it succeed and in what ways does it fail. Cite specifics from the reading to support your argument.

15. Now that you have completed the novel consider what it has to say about some of the issues that we raised throughout the course of the term concerning the possibility of creating a good society? What parts of the novel spoke most clearly to you about the prospects of building a good society? How specifically does the novel resonate with the discussions we had in class about the state of things in America today?

GOOD SOCIETY SERVICE CONTRACT

PHONE NUMBER:

I will be doing my service with the following agency:

The name of my supervisor is:

Please note the following:

When will you begin your service?

When and how often will you work?

Please provide a brief description of your duties.

Please describe any special circumstances that we might need to know about.

How to Be a Good Person Essay

What does it mean to be a good person? The essay below aims to answer this question. It focuses on the qualities of a good person.

Introduction

What does it mean to be a good person, qualities of good person, works cited.

The term “good” has relative meanings depending on the person who is defining it. Several qualities can be used to define what constitutes a good person. However, there are certain basic qualities that are used to define a good person. They include honesty, trust, generosity, compassion, empathy, humility, and forgiveness (Gelven 24).

These qualities are important because they promote peaceful coexistence among people because they prevent misunderstandings and conflicts. A good person is fair and just to all and does not judge people. He or she is nice to everyone regardless of religion, race, social and economic class, health status, or physical state (Gelven 25).

A good person treats other people with respect, care, and compassion. Respect shows that an individual values and views the other person as a worthy human being who deserves respect. Compassion is a quality that enables people to identify with other people’s suffering (Gelven 27). It motivates people to offer help in order to alleviate the suffering of others. A good person has compassion for others and finds ways to help people who are suffering. Showing compassion for the suffering makes them happy.

It promotes empathy, understanding, and support. In addition, good people are forgiving. They do not hold grudges and let go of anger that might lead them to hurt others. They think positively and focus their thoughts on things that improve their relationships (Needleman 33). They avoid thinking about past mistakes or wrongs done by others. Instead, they think of how they can forgive and move on.

A good person is honest and trustworthy. This implies that they avoid all situations that might hurt the other person, such as telling lies, revealing secrets, and gossiping (Needleman 34). As such, their character or personality cannot be doubted because they do not harbor hidden intentions.

They act in open ways that reveal their true characters and personalities. On the other hand, good people are kind and respectful. They offer help voluntarily and work hard to improve the well-being of other people. In addition, they treat all people equally despite their social, physical, or sexual orientations. Good people do not discriminate, hate, deny people their rights, steal, lie, or engage in corrupt practices (Tuan 53).

Good people behave courageously and view the world as a fair and beautiful place to live in (Needleman 40). They view the world as a beautiful place that offers equal opportunities to everyone. Good people believe that humans have the freedom to either make the world a better or worse place to live in. They act and behave in ways that improve and make the world a better place.

For example, they conserve the environment by keeping it clean for future generations. A popular belief holds that people who conserve the environment are not good but just environmental enthusiasts. However, that notion is incorrect and untrue. People conserve the environment because of their goodness. They think not only about themselves but also about future generations (Tuan 53). They are not self-centered and mean but generous and caring.

Good people are characterized by certain qualities that include trust, honesty, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, respect, courage, and goodwill. They do not steal, lie, discriminate, or deny people their rights. They think about others’ welfare and advocate for actions that make the world a better place. They promote justice and fairness because they view everyone as a deserving and worthy human being.

Gelven, Michael. The Risk of Being: What it Means to be Good and Bad . New York: Penn State Press, 1997. Print.

Needleman, Jacob. Why Can’t We be good? New York: Penguin Group US, 2007. Print.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Human Goodness . New York: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008. Print.

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How to Write the National Honor Society Essay + Example

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National honor society: four pillars and essay, five tips for writing your nhs essay, nhs essay example, time well spent.

What do former first lady Michelle Obama, actor Chadwick Boseman, singer-songwriters Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood, and baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr. have in common?  They were all members of the National Honor Society (NHS).

As you apply for membership in this national organization, remember NHS membership is based on meeting criteria in four areas that the NHS calls its four pillars: Scholarship, Service, Leadership, and Character .  

Scholarship 

The first pillar, scholarship , requires that a student earns a minimum cumulative grade point average (GPA) of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale or equivalent. Many high schools set a higher GPA bar for their school’s chapter. If you meet your school’s academic requirement, congratulations, you’ve passed the first hurdle. 

Now it’s important that you carefully complete the application and write a compelling essay.  Most high schools require students to write a 300-500 word essay that showcases their commitment and accomplishments in the other three pillars.

Service refers to the contributions you make to your school and or community on a volunteer basis, without receiving any compensation. For your most significant service activities, be sure to explain why you choose to support certain organizations and why you chose specific roles. 

Showcase your leadership in your school and or community while working with or for others. Remember, stating that you are the captain of a team, president of a club, or supervisor of a shift does not prove that you are a leader. A leader makes things happen, sets a good example, and inspires others to give their personal best. Clearly state why you were selected to hold a leadership position and how you effectively lead. There are many successful leadership styles. Communicate your unique brand of leadership. 

Character is how you conduct yourself with high standards of honesty, reliability, and respect for others. Many attributes define good character, and they all reflect a personal commitment to ethical and compassionate interactions with others as well as how you treat yourself. Results are only part of the story.  How you achieved them is critically important to communicate.

Think about how many NHS applications your school counselor reviews each year. Not every student who completes an application is selected for the honor. So how do you make your essay stand out?  Here are five strategies:

1. Make it Personal and Individual  

Your application form provides the facts about the scope and range of your involvement and contributions to your communities. Be sure that you write your essay in a way that brings this data to life. A compelling essay enables the reader to feel a strong connection to you. Express your unique values, aspirations, and priorities. State the motivation behind your choices and the trade-offs you’ve made. Be honest about challenges and what you have learned through your mistakes. And be sure the tone of the essay sounds like you and nobody else. 

2. Share Your Stories

People love to hear and remember stories, not simply facts and figures. Express themes and points that you want to share by relaying stories that bring these concepts to life. Stories can be poignant, funny, suspenseful, or surprising. Any approach that makes a reader want to continue reading is a great one.

3. Be Humble and Bold

Many students find it hard to express their hard-earned accomplishments without sounding boastful. Proudly stating your achievements without sounding brash is possible and important. Clearly state your motivations, your challenges, your vulnerabilities, and your mistakes to mitigate any concerns.  

4. Follow Tried and True Essay Guidelines

Channel all the advice you’ve received over the years about how to write a great essay. Do you have a clear thesis around which you have organized your thoughts? Compelling topic sentences to hook your reader? Strong supporting sentences to back up your reasoning? Have you avoided clichés? Do you vary your sentence structure and word choice? Does the text flow and keep the reader engaged? Last, but not least, have you checked and double-checked your grammar, punctuation, and spelling?

5. Draft, Edit, Edit, Edit, Polish

Writing is an iterative process so give yourself the time necessary to land on the best approach for explaining why you are deserving of the NHS honor. There are many ways to tackle an essay. Try a few to determine which is the most effective. Then, when you determine the best approach and are satisfied with your latest draft, share it with someone whose opinion you value. 

Looking for someone to read over your essay? Check out Collegevine’s free essay help ! Our peer review system will help you get feedback from other students so that you can improve your NHS essay and college essays.

While there is not a single template for a strong essay, here is an example of an NHS essay written by an 11th-grade student who was accepted into NHS.

Success is not only about improving yourself, but also about improving life for others. While my GPA shows my commitment to academics, how I spend my time and conduct myself outside of school reveal my commitment to making the world a better place, consistent with the values of the National Honor Society. 

For the two years my grandfather lived in a nursing home, each weekend I took my dog EJ to visit him. I witnessed first-hand the healing power of animals as EJ lifted his and the other residents’ spirits. Because of this experience and because monkeys are my favorite animal, when I heard about Helping Hands (HH), the only organization in the world that raises capuchin monkeys to be live-in assistants to people with spinal cord injuries, I reached out to volunteer. 

Both in the summer and during the school year, I assist the trainers. Monkeys begin training when they are teenagers. It typically takes three to five years until they are ready to be placed with a person. My first job is to clean the cages of 60 monkeys. (Not my favorite responsibility.) I also prepare meals and construct and distribute dexterity “toys.” 

While not glamorous, my work is critical to the success of the initiative. The physical support the monkeys provide is unbelievable. They turn pages of books, scratch itches, pour water, and retrieve dropped items… Most importantly, I have seen the life-changing impact a monkey’s companionship has on a partner, including a college-age student confined to a wheelchair after a spinal cord injury from hockey. 

In the spring, summer, and fall I also volunteer at Gaining Ground (GG), a non-profit that grows organic produce to donate to food pantries, shelters, and meal programs. When I volunteered at a local food pantry, it struck me that recipients receive mostly canned and packaged food. I think it is important that people in need receive fresh fruits and vegetables, and I enjoy the physical work of weeding, harvesting, cleaning, and packing produce.

Soon after I began volunteering at GG, my rabbi gave a sermon about the working conditions of tomato farmers in Florida. (It reminded me of Grapes of Wrath, and I couldn’t believe inhumane practices continue.) Her sermon motivated me to support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers by distributing postcards urging Trader Joe’s and Stop & Shop to only buy tomatoes from farms that agree to fair wages and human rights. Both chains have now agreed, showing that a little effort by many people makes a difference.

Last, I believe a story is the best way to explain my “behind-the-scenes” leadership. At the annual nighttime football game, one of my soccer teammates (not someone I hang with) was drunk. When our principal came over to the bleachers, my teammate’s friends fled. Concerned that my teammate would fall and hurt herself, I brought her outside the stadium, called her parents, and waited with her until they came — without worrying about social retribution. Despite getting grounded, she thanked me for my help.

I would be honored to be recognized by NHS for my service, leadership, and character. Thank you for your consideration.

The time you invest in composing an effective NHS essay will help you when you’re ready to write your college essays! Essays are important components of applications to selective colleges. Getting into NHS is also an honor that may boost your application at some schools. Remember, you can estimate your chance for acceptance using Collegevine’s free chancing calculator . This tool will factor in your GPA, test scores, extracurriculars, and more to calculate your odds of admission at hundreds of schools across the country.

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• The Good Society

Characteristics of a Good Society

There are a number of elements that makes a good society. One of the characteristics of a good society is the one that has strong constitutional institutions that enhances the process of people living in harmony. A society should be able to provide institutions that facilitate the process of resolving conflicts in the most peaceful manner. For instance, a good society should have judiciary institutions that are strong, transparent and corruption free, so that people can have faith in them. This can be a critical step when it comes to ensuring that people do not use violence as a means of resolving conflicts. In addition, strong constitutional institutions such as the police force are critical in ensuring that the rights as well as freedom of individuals are protected at all times. A society with weak institutions is always at the risk of people using violence as a means of dealing with conflicts or failing to respect the rights of others because they have the financial power over the poor. 

Secondly, a good society is the one that is able to provide security to its residents. Security is one of the basic human needs nowadays, as it determines the capability of an individual to engage in different things in life in a peaceful manner. It is impossible for individuals attending to their day to day activities in a society that has no security. Therefore, a good society should have strong security forces to provide the security needs of all the members of the society. It is impossible to live in a society where one can easily lose his properties to thieves or can lose his life to criminals. Thus, security is a fundamental element of any good society. 

On the other hand, a good society is the one where the rights as well as the freedoms of individuals are protected. In order for people to prosper in life they need to be protected from various forms of evils and attacks. One of the best ways that a society can be able to provide protect individuals is ensuring that they have some specific rights as well as freedoms that have some form of limitations. This is aimed at ensuring that all people in the society are accorded equal opportunities to grow and flourish in life. For instance, people should have the right to live, and the right is aimed at ensuring that individuals are protected by the state from different forms of threats that might lead to them losing their lives. 

Additionally, a good society is the one where individuals are given opportunities to flourish in life. People need opportunities, such as job opportunities, access to health care services in order to flourish in life. It is the responsibility of the society to ensure that the right structures are put in place with an objective of ensuring that all people are accorded equal opportunities to accessing education and other programs that empower people and allow them to gain financial, social and political growth in life. 

Furthermore, a good society is the one where people are given an opportunity to participate in the process of choosing their leaders. This is a society where the majority rules, but the interests of the minorities are protected. A good society is one where people have a say when it comes to matters of governance, such as participating in the electoral process and all people be it the majority or the minority have a voice in all the institutions of governance. Lastly, a good society is where all people are treated equal before the eyes of the law. This is a society where people are not discriminated against in terms of their social status. This is a society where an individual is judged based on his character, rather than the social status that he holds in the society. 

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Luxembourg is a nation that is located in the western region of Europe. It has a population of at least 500,000 people. It is one of the smallest nations within the European region. The nation uses representative democracy, where people elect their representatives various institutions of governance. It is one of the most developed countries in the world, with one of the highest per capita income. The country has a monarch system of government. Based on various aspects of the Luxembourg it is a good society. There are a number of features of this country that makes it a good society. 

To start with, the country has strong institutions. The country has strong constitutional institutions, such as the police force, parliament and judiciary that are critical in ensuring that people do not use violence as the means of resolving their differences.  The country’s judiciary is one of the best in the world, where cases involve individuals are fast processed and judgment made on time.  In addition, the interests of the people are represented in the governance institutions and this ensures that there the majority and the minority issues are equally addressed by the government. The existence of strong constitutional institutions in the country makes one of the few good societies in the world. 

Secondly, the country provides individuals with opportunities to flourish in life. The society has one of the best healthcare systems, while levels of employment are high. Therefore, people are able to live for a long period of life, while at the same time having high standards of living. The capability of this country to provide individuals with opportunities, such as employment opportunities, homes and other luxuries in life makes it one of the best societies around the world. Additionally, the country is good because it ensures that the security of the residents is enhanced at all times so that they can be able to flourish in life without fear. The country has low levels of crime rates and this enhances the levels of security in the country. In addition, it has a strong police force that is well equipped, hence being able to respond to the security needs of the residents when the need arises. Thus, the capacity of this country to ensure that the security of individuals is protected at all times makes it a good society that any individual can be able to enjoy living in it. 

Furthermore, the country provides individuals with equal opportunities despite their social classes, in the field of education and healthcare making it one of the good societies in the world. This ensure that people are not discriminated in any given way, thus, making them feeling loved and appreciated by the society. On the other hand, the society is good as it ensures that the rights as well as the freedoms of individuals are protected. The country’s constitution has bill of right clause that ensures the right as well as the freedoms of individuals are protected at all times from various threats.  Lastly, the country is an example of a good society given that it has good as people are given an opportunity in participating in all governance processes. The people in this country are given a legal opportunity to elect leaders who are supposed to represent them in various institutions of governance. 

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Qualities Needed for a Successful Society

The notion of success is a highly subjective concern defined by personal needs and aspirations towards a prosperous future. Within the current materialistic society, the idea of the success of a single individual or the society, in general, became more problematic as it revealed its arrogant side. According to Burke (2015), the common assumptions regarding critical characteristics of a successful society imply “wealth, power, status, and prestige” (p. 16). The modern approach to understanding societal success considers it in terms of a balanced life. The overall successful society is shaped by the success of a single individual. Therefore, humans should focus on the aspects that lead to a more satisfying, meaningful, and successful life regarding different societal functions with an emphasis on work and family. The rapid changes in modern society increased the measures of societal success, and, thus, it is now a more complicated task to achieve.

Thriving societal institutions contribute to the self-determined and multifaceted growth of itstheirmbers. As described by Zandberg (2018), people are concerned with the development of everyone’s qualities and “not in the undermining of others” in terms of a successful society (p. 95). When defining the human quality and value of society, it is crucial to examine the past, existing, and future opportunities that it has. Human beings are social creatures focused on individual progress, which should be the primary focus in current society. A culture that encourages individual self-awareness establishes an uplifting social environment, which promotes a successful society. The positive and respectful attitude towards one another leads to genuine social depth, a high level of happiness, and a wide range of opportunities for people to fulfill their human capacities. Self-determination is the most vital concept that requires oneself to be fully accountable for personal success. With that said, a clear vision of existing reality and desirable achievements, as well as wisdom and presence of mind, contribute to the successful cultural identity and enhance the overall success of the society.

Burke R. J. (2015). Flourishing in love and work. In C. Cooper, K. M. Page, & R. J. Burke (Eds.), Flourishing in life, work and careers: Individual wellbeing and career experience (pp. 3–25). Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.

Zandberg, J. (2018). Where is here? A new philosophy for insights into life, society, and politics . Lulu.com.

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StudyCorgi . "Qualities Needed for a Successful Society." February 1, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/qualities-needed-for-a-successful-society/.

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What Is a “Good Citizen”? a Systematic Literature Review

• Open Access
• First Online: 01 September 2021

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• Cristóbal Villalobos 23 ,
• María Jesús Morel 23 &
• Ernesto Treviño 24  

Part of the book series: IEA Research for Education ((IEAR,volume 12))

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The concept of “good citizenship” has long been part of discussions in various academic fields. Good citizenship involves multiple components, including values, norms, ethical ideals, behaviors, and expectations of participation. This chapter seeks to discuss the idea of good citizenship by surveying the academic literature on the subject. To map the scientific discussion on the notion of good citizenship, a systematic review of 120 academic articles published between 1950 and 2019 is carried out. The review of the literature shows that good citizenship is broadly defined, incorporating notions from multiple fields, although these are mainly produced in Western countries with comparatively higher income levels. Additionally, although there is no single definition of good citizenship, the academic literature focuses on three components: the normative, active, and personal dimensions. This systematic review informs the estimation of citizenship profiles of Chap. 3 using the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016.

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Reflections on the Good Citizen

• Citizenship norms
• Good citizenship
• Systematic review
• International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS)

1 Introduction

The concept of “good citizenship” is part of a long-standing discussion in various academic fields, such as political science, education, sociology, anthropology, evolution, and history, among others. In addition, good citizenship involves various components, including values, norms, ethical ideals, behaviors, and expectations of participation. Finally, the idea of good citizenship is related to diverse contemporary issues, such as patterns of political participation, the meaning of democracy and human rights, the notion of civic culture, equal rights, and the role of technology in the digital era (Bolzendahl and Coffé 2009 ; Dalton 2008 ; Hung 2012 ; Noula 2019 ).

In this regard, the notion of good citizenship can be considered as a concept with three basic characteristics: multidisciplinary, multidimensional, and polysemic. Therefore, the definition of good citizenship is a topic of constant debate and academic discussion. This chapter seeks to discuss the idea of good citizenship, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of this phenomenon and its social, political, and educational implications. In this way, this chapter aims to map the academic discussion and literature regarding the notion of good citizenship, presenting the key debates about the limits and possibilities of this concept in the framework of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016.

In order to organize this complex debate, we start from the premise that any notion of good citizenship is composed of the interaction of two definitions. On the one hand, it involves a certain notion of membership, that is, of belonging to a community. As Stokke ( 2017 ) shows, the definition of who is (and who is not) a citizen is, in itself, a subject of debate, since the definition of citizenship implies political, social, cultural, and legal components. On the other hand, the definition of good citizenship always implies a conceptual position regarding how citizens are expected to act and what they are expected to believe (the “public good” component). In this sense, the debate focuses on the types of behaviors that should be promoted and their ethical-political basis, which is highly dynamic depending on the cultural and historical context (Park and Shin 2006 ). Finally, in order to answer the question about the meaning of good citizenship, it is necessary to first decide who qualifies as a citizen, and how they are expected to behave.

Considering these objectives, the chapter is structured into five sections, including this introduction. The second section describes the systematic review methodology used to select the literature and analyze the discussion regarding the concept of good citizenship. The third and fourth sections describe the results of the analysis, mapping the main trends and characteristics of the academic discussion on good citizenship and exploring its different meanings. Finally, the fifth section presents the conclusions, focusing on the conceptual challenges and methodological limitations to be considered in future research.

2 Methodology

2.1 the systematic review.

We conducted a systematic review to map the academic discussion on good citizenship. This review seeks to identify, evaluate, and analyze the publications in relevant fields of study, in order to determine what has already been written on this topic, what works and what does not, and where new studies are needed (Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ). Through the definition of eligibility criteria, the systematic review is an explicit and reproducible methodology that allows for both an evaluation of the validity of the results of the selected studies (Higgins and Green 2011 ) and the objective valuation of evidence by summarizing and systematically describing the characteristics and results of scientific research (Egger 1997 ). In this regard, the systematic review, unlike other forms of literature review, allows for recognizing “gray” spaces in the literature, describing trends in academic research, and analyzing conceptual and methodological aspects of studies.

2.2 Procedure

The systematic review was conducted using five academic databases, including the main journals in the fields of education, social science, and the humanities. These databases are: (i) Journal Storage, JSTOR ( https://www.jstor.org ); (ii) Educational Resource Information Center, ERIC ( https://eric.ed.gov ); (iii) Springerlink ( https://link.springer.com ); (iv) WorldWideScience ( https://worldwidescience.org ); and (v) Taylor & Francis Group ( https://www.tandfonline.com ). For each search engine, the keywords used were: “good citizen” and “good citizenship.” Additionally, each search engine was tested with other related concepts, such as “citizenship norms,” “citizenship identities,” or “citizen norms.” The results showed that articles containing these latter concepts represented no more than 10% of new articles. For this reason, we decided to concentrate on the two keywords described above.

Considering the importance of these key concepts, the search was limited to those articles that contain these terms in the title, abstract, and/or full text. Of the five search engines, only two had the full-text option in the advanced search and only one allowed searching by keywords, then all results were filtered manually. The search was conducted from May to July 2019, obtaining 693 academic articles.

The search was restricted to those academic articles written in English and published between 1950 and 2019, as a way to study contemporary conceptualizations of good citizenship. We discarded letters to the editor, responses to articles, and book reviews. As a result, we obtained 693 articles to which, based on a full-text review, we applied an additional criterion, excluding those articles about other subjects or from other disciplines. Included in the first search exclusively for having the word “citizenship” in the abstract, there is a wide range of articles including studies on biology, entomology, and film studies. Similarly, with this search strategy we retrieved articles on a related topic but not specifically about citizenship (e.g., leadership, public participation, social values, and immigration), articles on the concept of corporate or organizational citizenship, and articles on social studies in the school curriculum and its contribution to the education of citizens.

After applying the abovementioned selection criteria, we analyzed the abstracts of the articles to verify that they were related to the general objective of the study. As a result, all articles were selected that sought (directly or indirectly) to answer the question, “what is a good citizen?” Specifically, this involved incorporating studies that: (i) study or analyze citizen norms in conceptual, historical, political, educational, or social terms; (ii) generate models or analytic frameworks that define variables or dimensions that should make up the concept of a good citizen; (iii) explore factors on how good citizenship occurs, studying the educational, institutional, and cultural factors that would explain this phenomenon; (iv) relate the expectations (or definitions) of a good citizen with other dimensions or aspects of the political or social behavior of the subjects. The research team, which was comprised of two reviewers, held a weekly discussion (six sessions in total) during which the selection criteria were discussed and refined. This analysis resulted in the selection of a total of 120 articles (see list in Appendix A ).

2.3 Analytical Strategy

The data collected in a systematic review may allow for a wide variety of studies, but the analysis depends on the purpose and nature of the data. Given that the review included quantitative and qualitative studies, as well as both theoretical and demonstrative essays, such heterogeneous literature does not allow for statistical analysis. As a result, the recommended methodology is to carry out a narrative synthesis and an analysis that focuses on relationships between different characteristics and the identification of gaps (Grant and Booth 2009 ; Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ).

The narrative synthesis is a process that allows for extracting and grouping the characteristics and results of each article included in the review (Popay et al. 2006 ), and can be divided into three steps: (i) categorization of articles; (ii) analysis of the findings within each category; and (iii) synthesis of the findings in the selected studies (Petticrew and Roberts 2006 ). The first step towards the narrative synthesis consisted of reading, coding, and tabulating the selected documents in order to describe their main characteristics. A set of categories was designed to classify documents according to four dimensions: general characteristics, purpose, methodology, and results.

To analyze these categories, we transformed data into a common numeric rubric and organized it for thematic analysis, using the techniques proposed by Popay et al. ( 2006 ). The first category was used to summarize the quantity and characteristics of the published studies, while the thematic analysis focused on systematically identifying the main, recurrent, and/or most important concepts of good citizenship.

3 The Concept of Good Citizenship in Academia

Despite being a topic of interest for several decades, academic production on good citizenship tends to be concentrated in the second decade of the 21st century. Since 2009, there has been an explosive increase in the number of scientific papers published on this topic (Fig.  1 ). Although an important part of this growth may be due to the global pressures of academic capitalism to publish in academic journals (Slaughter and Rhoades 2009 ), it could also be the case that academic communities have cultivated a growing interest in studying this issue.

Academic papers by year of publication

Although few in number, the earliest articles published represent a landmark for the discussion. Thus, for example, the text of Almond and Verba ( 1963 ), which analyzes through interviews the perceptions of individuals in communities in five countries (United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, and Mexico) and highlights their different participation profiles, has been repeatedly cited in the discussion with 263 references (as of August 2019), according to Google Scholar. Another classic text is Ichilov and Nave ( 1981 ), which aims at understanding the different dimensions of citizenship by surveying young Israelis. To this end, it generates the following five criteria, which have been widely used in academic discussions: (i) citizenship orientation (affective, cognitive, or evaluative); (ii) nature of citizenship (passive or active); (iii) object of citizenship (political or non-political); (iv) source of demand (mandatory or voluntary); and (v) type of guidance (support principles or behavior).

The selected articles are geographically concentrated in two aspects: by institutional affiliation and by the location of their studies. Considering the institutional affiliation of the authors, 32.77% of the articles were produced in the United States, a figure that rises to more than 60% when the countries of Western Europe and Australia are included. This bias is maintained, although to a lesser extent, when analyzing the countries where the studies were carried out. Moreover, more than 50% of the studies were carried out in the United States, England, and the democracies of Western Europe. Africa (4.24%) and Latin America (2.54%) were the regions least represented in the studies. These characteristics, which tend to be representative of global academic production in the social sciences (Connell 2007 ), may encourage certain notions of good citizenship that are anchored in Anglo-Saxon traditions, such as the liberal conception of citizenship studied by Peled ( 1992 ), or more recently, the conception of active citizenship (Ke and Starkey 2014 ), both of which have had an important influence on academic discussion about good citizenship.

Finally, the third characteristic of academic production is related to the multiple research fields and diverse purposes of the studies that deal with the concept of good citizenship. Research on good citizenship is published in multiple disciplines. Of the articles included in the review, 82.29% are concentrated in three disciplines: education, political science, and sociology. However, there are also articles associated with journals of history, philosophy, anthropology, and law. Additionally, we identified six main objectives from the articles reviewed (Table  1 ). The most common objectives are related to bottom-up research, which seeks to gather information on how diverse populations understand good citizenship, and top-down research, which seeks to conceptualize and/or define the idea of good citizens based on conceptual, historical, or political analysis. In addition, there are a wide variety of studies that seek to explain good citizenship, as well as studies that use the idea of a good citizen to explain other behaviors, skills, or knowledge. In other words, in addition to being multidisciplinary, research on good citizenship has multiple purposes.

In sum, although the academic discussion on good citizenship has been mainly developed during the last two decades in the most industrialized Western countries, the academic research is a field of ongoing and open debate.

4 Understanding the Meaning of “Good Citizenship”

As an academic field with a lively ongoing discussion, the notion of good citizenship is associated with different sets of ideas or concepts. Some keywords were repeated at least three times in the articles reviewed (Table  2 ). Only those articles that used a keyword format were included. The most frequent concepts are related to education, norms, social studies, political participation, and democracy.

This indicates that, first, studies tend to associate good citizenship with civic norms and citizen learning, highlighting the formative nature of the concept. Second, studies that associate good citizenship with other dimensions of citizenship (such as knowledge or civic attitudes) or contemporary global problems (such as migration) are comparatively scarcer.

Another way to approach the concept of good citizenship is by analyzing the definitions proposed by the authors in the articles studied. Most of the articles propose characteristics or aspects of good citizenship (in 43.8% of the cases) that, instead of creating new definitions, are often based on existing political, non-political, liberal, or philosophical concepts. In this regard, many papers define good citizenship based on specific behaviors. In contrast, other authors (18.6%) refer to citizenship rules when it comes to voting or participating in politics, thereby seeking to relate the concept of the good citizen with a specific civic attitude—participation in elections. Finally, a large group of studies define good citizenship in terms of the values, virtues, or qualities of a good citizen (22.6%). Within the group of studies that propose new definitions, it is possible to identify two main categories: studies that propose types of citizenship, such as Dalton ( 2008 ), distinguishing between “duty” and “engaged” citizenship, and works, such as Westheimer and Kahne ( 2004 ), which differentiate between “personal responsible citizenship,” “justice-oriented citizenship,” and “participatory citizenship.”

Finally, the meaning of good citizenship can be analyzed by studying the variables used in the studies. Among the quantitative studies included in the review, only 28.3% use international surveys such as ICCS, the Center for Democracy and Civil Society (CDACS), the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), the United Citizenship, Involvement, Democracy (CID) Survey, and the European Social Survey (ESS). Each of these surveys contained a slightly different definition of good citizenship and the variables used to measure the concept (Table  3 ).

In general, the indicators used to measure citizenship in the different surveys share certain similarities. Variables associated with rules (such as obeying the law or paying taxes) are present in all surveys. Additionally, variables related to participation also have an important presence, especially (although not only) related to voting in national elections. To a lesser extent, surveys include variables related to solidarity (supporting people who are worse off than yourself) as well as attitudes related to critical thinking and civic culture (knowing the history of the country, thinking critically).

5 Discussion and Conclusions

The concept of good citizenship can be considered an umbrella term, which includes ethical, political, sociological, and educational aspects and discussions about who qualifies as a citizen and how they should act. The systematic review has shown that good citizenship is broadly defined, although these notions are mainly valued in Western countries with comparatively higher income levels.

For this reason, the definition of good citizenship used is, in large part, highly dependent on the research objective of the academic endeavor. In our case, the analysis is based on ICCS 2016, which defines good citizenship in relation to notions such as conventional citizenship, social movement citizenship, and personal responsibility citizenship (Köhler et al. 2018 ). The variables included in ICCS 2016 are related to the three main dimensions of good citizenship: normative, active, and personal. These three components of good citizenship have been essential in the academic discussion in the last seven decades, constituting the central corpus of the concept, although this definition does not incorporate current discussions on good citizenship, which focus, for example, on the notion of global citizenship (Altikulaç 2016 ) or the idea of digital citizenship (Bennett et al. 2009 ). These latter concepts are part of the ongoing debate on good citizenship, although it seems that more work is needed to better understand how these notions of citizenship are related to the ways in which individuals or groups in society relate to power and exercise it to shape the public sphere.

This systematic review has mapped the academic discussion to date on good citizenship. However, despite its usefulness, this review has a number of limitations. Firstly, it summarizes and analyzes the academic discussion, ignoring the gap between the scientific debate on good citizenship and the social discussion related to this subject. Secondly, it focuses on English-language literature, which may result in a bias towards publications produced in Western countries. In spite of these limitations, the review allows us to study the process of defining the concept of good citizenship, and to identify the main debates related to this notion, which is the central focus of this book.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank their research sponsors, the Center for Educational Justice ANID PIA CIE160007, as well as the Chilean National Agency of Research and Development through the grants ANID/FONDECYT N° 1180667, and ANID/FONDECYT N° 11190198.

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Cristóbal Villalobos & María Jesús Morel

Center UC for Educational Transformation, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

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Ellen Claes

University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa

Kerry J. Kennedy

The following list of publications is the reviewed references for the systematic review conducted in this chapter.

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Villalobos, C., Morel, M.J., Treviño, E. (2021). What Is a “Good Citizen”? a Systematic Literature Review. In: Treviño, E., Carrasco, D., Claes, E., Kennedy, K.J. (eds) Good Citizenship for the Next Generation . IEA Research for Education, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75746-5_2

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12 Characteristics of a Good Leader

Leaders shape our teams, organizations, communities, and world.

We need good leaders to help guide us and make the essential decisions, big and small, that keep things moving forward.

Our society is usually quick to identify a bad leader, but how can you identify a good one? What would most people say are the qualities of a good leader?

What Good Leadership Looks Like

Based upon our decades of research and experience working with leaders at thousands of organizations around the world, we’ve found that the best leaders consistently possess certain fundamental qualities and skills. Here are 12 essential leadership traits.

12 Essential Leadership Qualities

• Self-Awareness
• Communication
• Learning Agility
• Collaboration

TIP: Download an action guide & summary of these essential characteristics of a good leader in PDF format to keep this list of leadership qualities at your fingertips as a reminder.

1. Self-Awareness

While this is a more inwardly focused trait, self-awareness and humility are paramount qualities of leadership. The better you understand yourself and recognize your own strengths and weaknesses, the more effective you can be as a leader. Do you know how other people view you and understand how you show up at work and at home? Take the time to learn about the 4 aspects of self-awareness and how to strengthen each component.

Treating people with respect on a daily basis is one of the most important things a leader can do. It helps ease tensions and conflict, fosters trust, and improves your effectiveness.  Creating a culture of respect  is about more than just the absence of disrespect. Respectfulness can be shown in many different ways, but it often starts with showing you truly value others’ perspectives and making an effort to build belonging in the workplace — both critical components of supporting equity, diversity, and inclusion.

3. Compassion

Compassion is one of the most powerful and important acts of leadership. It’s more than simply showing empathy or even listening and seeking to understand — as compassion requires leaders to act on what they learn. After someone shares a concern or speaks up about something, they won’t feel truly heard if their leader doesn’t then take some type of meaningful action on the information, our researchers have found. This is the core of compassionate leadership , and it helps to build trust, increase collaboration, and decrease turnover across organizations.

Motivating others and garnering commitment are essential parts of leadership. Purpose-driven leaders ensure they connect their team’s daily tasks and the values of individual team members to the overall direction of the organization. This can help employees find meaning in their work — which increases engagement, inspires trust, and drives priorities forward. You’ll want to communicate the vision in ways that help others understand it, remember it, and go on to share it themselves.

5. Communication

Effective leadership and effective communication are intertwined . The best leaders are skilled communicators who can communicate in a variety of ways, from transmitting information and storytelling to soliciting input and using active listening techniques . They can communicate well both orally and in writing, and with a wide range of people from different backgrounds, roles, levels, geographies, and more. The quality and effectiveness of communication among leaders at your organization will directly affect the success of your business strategy, too.

6. Learning Agility

Learning agility is the ability to know what to do when you don’t know what to do. If you’re a “quick study” or are able to excel in unfamiliar circumstances, you might already be learning agile. But anybody can foster and increase learning agility through intentional practice and effort. After all, great leaders are really great learners.

7. Collaboration

The most effective leaders can work with a variety of colleagues of different social identities , locations, roles, and experiences. As the world has become more complex and interconnected, good leaders find themselves spanning boundaries and learning to work across various types of divides and organizational silos. When leaders value and embrace collaboration, whether within their teams or cross-functionally, several benefits arise — including increased innovation, higher-performing teams, and a more engaged and empowered workforce.

8. Influence

For some people, “influence” may sound unseemly. But as a leader, you must be able to influence others to get the work done — you cannot do it all alone. Being able to persuade people through thoughtful use of appropriate influencing tactics is an important trait of inspiring, effective leaders. Influence is quite different from manipulation, and it needs to be done authentically and transparently. It requires high levels of emotional intelligence and trust.

9. Integrity

Integrity is an essential leadership trait for the individual and the organization. It’s especially important for top-level executives who are charting the organization’s course and making countless other significant decisions. Our research has found that leader integrity is a potential blind spot for organizations , so make sure you reinforce the importance of honesty and integrity to managers at all levels.

10. Courage

It can be hard to speak up at work, whether you want to voice a new idea, provide feedback to a direct report, or flag a concern for someone above you. That’s part of the reason courage is a key leadership trait — it takes courage to do what’s right! Leaders who promote high levels of psychological safety in the workplace enable their people to speak up freely and share candid concerns without fear of repercussions. This fosters a  coaching culture that supports courage and truth-telling . Courage enables both team members and leaders to take bold actions that move things in the right direction.

11. Gratitude

Being thankful can lead to higher self-esteem, reduced depression and anxiety, and better sleep. Sincere gratitude can even make you a better leader. Yet few people regularly say “thank you” in work settings, even though most people say they’d be willing to work harder for an appreciative boss. The best leaders know how to show frequent gratitude in the workplace .

12. Resilience

Resilience is more than the ability to bounce back from obstacles and setbacks — it’s the ability to respond adaptively to challenges. Practicing resilient leadership means you’ll project a positive outlook that will help others maintain the emotional strength they need to commit to a shared vision, and the courage to move forward and overcome setbacks. A good leader focuses on resilience, both taking care of themselves and also prioritizing leading employee wellbeing , too — thereby enabling better performance for themselves and their teams.

Download a PDF action guide and summary of these characteristics of a good leader, so you always have a visual reminder available of these 12 qualities of good leadership.

Develop the Characteristics of a Good Leader in Yourself & Others

Our 3 core beliefs about leadership & leadership development.

At the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)®, we’ve been researching the qualities of a good leader and the role of leadership for over 5 decades. Here are 3 of our core beliefs about good leaders and effective leadership.

Good leaders are made, not born.

First, we believe that leaders are made, not born. Put another way, leadership is a skill that can be developed . Good leaders are molded through experience, continued study, intentional effort, and adaptation. So you can strengthen any of these 12 characteristics of a good leader, if you’re open to growth, use your experiences to fuel development , and put in the time and effort toward self-improvement.

Similarly, organizations can help their people hone these top leadership qualities by providing ample opportunities for training, offering support for learning from challenges, and providing access to coaching and mentoring programs .

Leadership is a social process.

It’s also essential to recognize that  leadership is less about one strong or charismatic individual, and more about a group of people working collectively to achieve results together . If you demonstrate several of the characteristics of a good leader, but fail to grasp this key point, chances are you won’t get very far on your own. You may be well-liked and respected, but it will be challenging to accomplish team or organizational goals. At CCL, we like to say that the  outcomes of leadership are about creating direction, alignment, and commitment, or DAC , within a group.

Good leadership never stops.

Also, we believe that leadership isn’t a destination, it’s a journey   — it’s something that you’ll have to work at regularly throughout your career, regardless of what level you reach in your organization or what industry you work in. Different teams, projects, and situations will provide different challenges and require different leadership qualities and competencies to succeed. So you will need to be able to continue to apply these leadership characteristics in different ways throughout your career. Just continually keep learning and growing, and you’ll be an agile learner with a long career .

We Can Help You Develop the Qualities of a Good Leader

Organizations can strengthen leadership qualities and foster deeper levels of engagement at work through providing a variety of on-the-job learning experiences, mentoring, and formal development opportunities. At CCL, we have many award-winning leadership solutions with clients around the world, and we’d be honored to work with you and your organization as well.

But individuals don’t have to wait to begin strengthening these leadership characteristics within themselves. If you decide you want to work proactively on developing your leadership qualities and skills,  download our action guide & visual summary  of this content. And get our tips on how to  convince your boss to make an investment in you  and your future. We’re here to support you every step of the way on your journey to becoming a better leader!

Ready to Take the Next Step?

After you download the 12 Characteristics of a Good Leader , keep on learning and growing: never miss our exclusive leadership insights and tips — subscribe to our newsletters to get our research-based articles, webinars, resources, and guides delivered straight to your inbox. 

Keep these qualities of a good leader top of mind in the future: download a PDF summary of this article as an action guide and visual reminder of the leadership qualities to nurture in yourself, on your team, and at your organization in the future.

This article was written by our Leading Effectively staff, who analyze our decades of pioneering, expert research and experiences in the field to share content that will help leaders at every level. Subscribe to our emails to get the latest research-based leadership articles and insights sent straight to your inbox.

Table of Contents

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Related Topics

What to explore next.

With over 30 pages of insights gleaned from our research, this collection of resources includes actionable tips and team discussion questions to help you become a (better) leader with a focus on compassion, wellbeing, and belonging.

This introduction to our leadership philosophy explains how direction, alignment, and commitment (the elements of our DAC framework) are key in how leadership works, connecting exponential potential with collective progress.

Want to set yourself apart as a leader? Arm yourself with these 6 essential skills. Our global research study found that organizations will need these 6 key qualities that their leaders presently lack.

Do you know how to effectively communicate at work? It's the core of everything we do, and yet many of us have significant room for improvement. Get our top tips for leaders.

Stepping into a management role requires a fundamental shift of identity. Learn how to be an effective boss and succeed in your new role with our leadership tips for first-time managers.

Related Solutions

Learn more about our flagship Leadership Development Program (LDP)®, the most widely known and longest-running leadership development training in the world.

Professional leadership coaching deepens and sustains leadership development. Learn more about our world-class leadership coaching services.

Learn more about our leadership training courses, which are targeted to develop the skills leaders need to succeed at all levels of your organization.

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL)® is a top-ranked, global, nonprofit provider of leadership development and a pioneer in the field of global leadership research. We know from experience how transformative remarkable leaders really can be.

Over the past 50 years, we’ve worked with organizations of all sizes from around the world, including more than 2/3 of the Fortune 1000. Our hands-on development solutions are evidence-based and steeped in our work with hundreds of thousands of leaders at all levels.

Good Qualities in a Person: 150+ Positive Character Traits

Understanding and appreciating the qualities that make us human can be a journey of self-discovery, a tool for character development, or a compass for personal growth. 

Whether you’re a teacher nurturing these traits in your students, a mental health professional guiding your clients, a writer crafting compelling characters, or simply someone seeking to better understand yourself and others — this resource is for you.

At Good Good Good , we celebrate stories of good people making a positive difference in the world . So, it made sense for us to compile this guide of diverse vocabulary to describe the qualities of a good person.

Remember: No one person can have every good quality — but every person does have some good qualities. We each have an opportunity and an obligation to continue to grow and improve ourselves.

Like Maya Angelou said , “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

We’ve curated the most comprehensive list of positive character traits on the internet. From Adventurous to Zealous, this guide serves as a testament to the multifaceted dimensions of character that make us uniquely human.

Whether you’re utilizing this resource for yourself or others, we hope it brings value to your journey.

You might also like: List of Personality Traits | List of Positive Words To Describe Someone | List of Emotions | List of Mood Words | List of Positive Affirmations

Good Personality Traits To Describe Good People

• Accountable
• Adventurous
• Anti-discriminatory
• Anti-racist
• Anti-sexist
• Appreciative
• Civic-minded
• Collaborative
• Communicative
• Compassionate
• Conscientious
• Considerate
• Constructive
• Cooperative
• Disciplined
• Eco-conscious
• Egalitarian
• Emotionally Intelligent
• Encouraging
• Enthusiastic
• Environmentally Friendly
• Fashionable
• Humanitarian
• Imaginative
• Independent
• Individualistic
• Intelligent
• Interesting
• Leader-like
• Lighthearted
• Negotiating
• Non-discriminatory 
• Non-exploitative
• Non-violent
• Open-minded
• Persevering
• Philanthropic
• Problem-solving
• Progressive
• Resourceful
• Responsible
• Self-confident
• Self-controlled
• Self-disciplined
• Self-reliant
• Socially Conscious
• Sustainable
• Sympathetic
• Team-oriented
• Trustworthy
• Understanding
• Willing to Learn

You might also like: Positive Words from A-Z

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