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In onze tijd, Tim Fransen

Saturday 6 July 2024

A few days after I wrote Taking stock, I bought In onze tijd (In our time) by Tim Fransen, a book which happens to capture a lot of what I was trying to convey. Except, Tim Fransen goes to the roots of these developments and tries to come up with a way forward.

First a few fragmentary items.

Apparently Immanuel Kant thought that it was wrong to maintain standing armies, because that would trigger an arms race as a result of the constant threat that such armies pose. We are going in the wrong direction, clearly. I know Iceland has no army, but it is a member or NATO.

I saw a reference to gun violence in the US. Each year, more children in the United States die from gun violence than from any other cause, even traffic accidents (which are also numerous in the US).

A proposal to encourage companies to create more socially valuable activities. Based on a ‘social assessment’, these companies would receive a reward or a fine. (This seems rather radical to me, but there is also the suggestion to initially only provide a ranking; perhaps we can reward companies with positive or negative PR? No, that would probably be too weak an incentive.)

Turns out the Dutch are even more individualistic and ‘freedom’ loving than people in the US. (Read: not willing to pay taxes, not willing to adapt one’s behavior for the larger community, etc.)

While I was reading I noted something ironic: the politically extreme right people who value ‘freedom’ above anything else vote for autocratic leaders who will actually work to restrict freedom (and rights and democracy so that they can remain in power).

Not wanting to pay taxes exposes you as someone who doesn’t care about society and also as a ‘free rider’ with regard to infrastructure.

As for solutions, subsidiariteit, supranationaliteit, stapsgewijsheid, solidariteit. Not sure how to translate that. I’ll try chatGPT:

Subsidiariteit:

Supranationaliteit:

Stapsgewijsheid:

Solidariteit:

That’s all I’ve got for now. Below I’ll quote from a few reviews:

Adriaan Jansen on Goodreads wrote:

Tim Fransen is not the first to claim that we have gone too far in our individualism and self-interest. What is original to me is: Fransen describes how our excessive individualism is mainly caused by a wrong idea about how we can promote progress. In "In our time," he describes how this misguided idea of progress and our extreme individualism pose a threat to our democracy and society.

Fransen describes this misguided idea of progress as an ideology, as a recipe for how we can organize society to maximize the chances of progress. Fransen objects to this Western progress ideology, which states that when setting up fundamental institutions (science, liberal democracy, free market), we cannot assume the moral goodness of people. In fact, the idea behind the Western progress ideology is that humans are selfish and mostly act out of self-interest. Therefore, institutions must be designed to ensure that acting out of self-interest benefits the greater whole. A good example is the free market: buyers and sellers act out of self-interest, and the invisible hand of Adam Smith ensures that the greater whole benefits from it.

So according to the progress ideology, our self-interest should not be rejected or tempered, but rather guided into the right paths through the proper institutions. This method is applied to almost all societal problems: "Time and again, the answer lies not in moral effort, but rather in establishing institutions that make such moral effort unnecessary" (p. 30).

According to Fransen, one problem with this progress ideology is that we not only guide self-interest into the right paths but also encourage and cultivate it, leading to excessive individualism. This comes at the expense of solidarity and community spirit, thus undermining our democracies.

Fransen also notes that much societal progress has not been caused by institutions guiding our self-interest. The abolition of slavery, women's suffrage, civil rights in the 1960s in the US all came about through civil movements that had to fight long for justice (and were not concerned with exercising self-interest).

In short, the loose approach of the progress ideology, which states that progress for the greater whole more or less automatically occurs when we pursue our self-interest, is what Tim Fransen objects to. He advocates for a different approach, recognizing that democracy is always a fragile "work in progress" and that true progress cannot be separated from justice: "Progress is not something you can let take its course. Progress requires our wisdom, careful considerations, and moral choices" (p. 97) and "a democracy requires effort from its citizens...the realization that democracy is a vulnerable system" (p. 187-188).

This book not only provides an analysis of the pitfalls of the progress belief based on self-interest but also offers suggestions on how to make our society more resilient again. Two pillars to support the transition to a more resilient society: less focus on individual freedom and more attention to collective freedom (where we ourselves choose under which laws we want to live, laws that sometimes limit our individual freedom) and a more conscious citizenship (where we no longer relate to each other as mere consumers, but mainly as engaged citizens). Building on these two pillars, Fransen presents a series of recommendations in the last part of the book, where he himself is most charmed by Economic Democracy, a kind of stakeholder capitalism.

Fransen pays much attention to both modern and ancient thinkers who have shaped our ideas about how to shape society. Thus, the book is also sometimes a polemic, where especially modern progress believers like Steven Pinker and Maarten Boudry have to endure criticism.

After reading the book Hjalmar Haagsman (also on Goodreads) had this amusing thought about the freedom we value so much:

I was reminded of the beautiful scene in Fargo season 5, where a shrewd businesswoman says to a Cowboy Sheriff, 'So you want freedom without responsibility? Kid, there is only one kind of person on earth who gets that.' 'The president,' says the Cowboy, beaming. 'No. A baby. You want to be a baby,' says the businesswoman.

Finally, Marc on Goodreads wrote, among other things, this:

In his book, Tim assumes that his analysis of our time is so clear that it inevitably leads to his proposed solutions. He is right, but he probably won't get this recognition, because the 'non-parishioners' don't even want to analyze the problem: the problem of our time is migration, period.

People want to 'enjoy' their comfort and safety for as long as possible and will defend it. They are formidable opponents when supported and unleashed by the powerful 'heretics'. I think Tim (heavily) underestimates these forces: Nelson Mandela spent 25 years on Robben Island, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Jesus were murdered, as was Navalny.

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