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HAVE you noticed how the word ‘so’ has crept into common use as the default start of a statement? The radio host asks someone how he got involved in NGO work, and he replies: “So I was just out of university…”
“Where did the idea come from?”
“So we were sitting together one night…”
“What online audience are you hoping to attract?”
“So we’re hoping that the Yoof will be interested…”
Like the use of ‘ASwell’ instead of ‘as WELL’, it’s an earworm – you start finding yourself using it automatically.
So I have started to get grils when I start a sentence with ‘so’!
All of this because I was about to start this column with so:
So I was online the other day, and a friend shared a video with me about morality.
I don’t usually enjoy listening to people witter on about philosophy and morality and the like, but it was only a few minutes long, so I gave it a whirl. It was a clip of Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, talking in Sydney, Australia.
Foner’s academic career has been devoted to the notion of freedom as it’s played out in American history; here he was arguing that “traditionally-held American values of free-market capitalism and Christian morality are inherently contradictory”. (He is using as a basis for his talk a speech from 1645 given by the then-governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, a Puritan, hence Christian – but what he says applies, I think, to all morality, whether religious or not.)
Winthrop, he explains, said there were two kinds of freedom – ‘natural' freedom, or doing whatever you want, and ‘Christian’ freedom – subjecting yourself to a moral code. Doing whatever you want makes you a slave to your desires, said Winthrop, getting a little Buddhist on us; the true freedom lies in self-restraint.
“Freedom as the right to choose versus freedom as choosing the right,” is how Foner puts it.
He points out that today both those ‘freedoms’ are contained within one wing of USA democracy, the Republican party, which is home to the Christian conservatives (hot on a moral code that you should subject yourself to) and the libertarians – do what you want, what you like, and keep government restraints and interference out of our lives.
Foner says the Christian right in the States senses that it’s fighting a rear-guard action against the huge social changes that emerged out of the 60s, but perhaps even more so, against the impact of a ‘consumer culture’: “You cannot have a mass consumer culture, like we do in the United States, and have public morality.
"It’s impossible. […] the free market is based on self-interest… it’s self-interest which drives the economy.” But then how do you introduce moral self-restraint into the situation, he asks.
Economic good versus what's good for us as people
This inherent tension between what’s supposed to be good for us economically (unfettered markets, company behaviour that looks to the bottom line as the critical driver, deregulation and so forth) and what’s good for us as humans, as a community, fascinates me.
And drives me nuts, to be honest. Because so often you find yourself trying to unpick the motives for various ‘social responsibility’ efforts, or figure out how much impact commercial interests have had on the science underpinning public policy.
In early August, for instance, a New York Times blogger wrote a hugely shared blog talking about the revelation that Coca-Cola had put $1.5m into funding something called the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN).
This network supports the idea that physical activity is as important as diet in solving the obesity epidemic. (Just for context, there is a rather large body of research that indicates that exercise, while it does all sorts of other wonderful things for your health, is not a particularly good stratagem for weight loss: the famous Mayo Clinic in America concluded that “most studies have demonstrated no or modest weight loss with exercise alone… an exercise regimen is unlikely to result in short-term weight loss beyond what is achieved with dietary change”.)
Critics say the sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) industry is under fire because research repeatedly indicates strong connections between consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity, type 2 diabetes et al (here’s just one such piece of research and here is a summary from the Harvard School of Public Health bluntly stating: “Sugary drinks are a major contributor to the obesity epidemic”).
Their out, say the critics, is to support the message that, if you were more active, you could choose to drink SSBs and not gain weight. So they sponsor the Olympics (“Coca-Cola refreshes Olympic athletes, officials and spectators with its beverages during the Olympic Games”) and provide finance and logistical support for the GEBN.
Is this good for society, or is it just good for the bottom line? What’s likely to be the motive here? If science and public understanding of health is biased, even a little, by the power of money, the consequences could be dire.
Can we trust companies, who are accountable to shareholders on the basis of profit, to be ‘moral’, to act for the public good? (Note: I’m saying companies, not individuals – there are well-meaning people everywhere, sometimes making a difference, sometimes unable to do so. You know who you are. And I’ve heard many of you speak of your frustrations.)
And if we can’t trust ‘em, what do we do about it? (Answers on a postcard, please!)
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.
