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.

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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.

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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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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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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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IvyPanda . "How to Be a Good Person Essay." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-it-means-to-be-a-good-person/.

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Ethics and Morality

Social justice, social order, and the common good, we are divided in our moral beliefs about what constitutes a good society..

Posted January 4, 2024 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch

• We are divided in our moral beliefs about what constitutes a good and just society and how to achieve it.
• Two competing views characterize our beliefs: one oriented to Social Justice and the other to Social Order.
• To foster constructive conversations, it is important to put both perspectives on an equal moral footing.

As revealed in the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer , Western societies are becoming increasingly polarized, with the US severely polarized and several countries, such as the UK, France and the Netherlands, in danger of severe polarization. There are worrying signs that countries like Canada, Australia and Ireland are on a path to polarization.

The causes are many and complex and, like all social science research, full of interpretive challenges. Nevertheless, certain trends seem clear. One is the growing division in our beliefs about what constitutes a good and just society and how best to achieve it.

On the one hand, there is nothing especially new or surprising about this. The concept of the good society – the common good – has been subject to normative theorizing for millennia, producing a vast array of insights and competing perspectives. Indeed, the plurality of views is such that the common good is regarded as an ‘essentially contested’ concept.

On the other hand, these divisions in our beliefs about what constitutes a good society create cause for concern. This concern is not related to the differences of opinion per se – this plurality of perspectives is generally to the good – but rather to the inability of each ‘side’ to understand and have constructive conversations with the other about our shared challenges.

How can these competing perspectives on the common good be understood? In addition to the competing unitary, aggregative, communitarian, and procedural approaches that I have summarized elsewhere , a new framework has been proposed by sociologists John Iceland, Eric Silver, and Ilana Redstone (2023) that delineates two basic moral and philosophical worldviews, termed Social Justice and Social Order , respectively.

As described in their new book, Why We Disagree About Inequality: Social Justice vs. Social Order , the Social Justice and Social Order worldviews are associated with distinct conceptions of human nature, morality , social change, and the wisdom of the past. Moreover, they are associated with distinct construals of inequality, such as gender , racial and income inequality, and distinct remedies for these inequalities.

To the extent that these competing worldviews contribute to the polarization we are witnessing in Western societies, it is instructive to examine the nature of these worldviews. Doing so is not only intrinsically interesting, illuminating the schism in Western societies, but the mutual understanding fostered by doing so may increase the odds that we start to talk to rather than past each other.

Fairness and equality

Although everyone is concerned with fairness, the Social Justice and Social Order worldviews have distinct conceptions of this concept. As described by Iceland and colleagues (2023), a person with a Social Justice perspective tends to understand and measure fairness in terms of outcomes , whereas a person with a Social Order perspective tends to understand and measure fairness in terms of processes . Corresponding differences are observed in how equality is construed. Specifically, a person with a Social Justice perspective emphasizes equality of outcome , viewing inequalities of outcome as the result of discrimination . By contrast, a person with a Social Order worldview emphasizes equality of opportunity , with variation in outcomes attributable to individual differences in talent, effort, and preferences.

Choice and responsibility

Similarly, although both value freedom, the Social Justice and Social Order worldviews have distinct conceptions of this concept. As described by Iceland and colleagues (2023), a person with a Social Justice perspective tends to understand freedom in terms of power and influence , whereas a person with a Social Order perspective tends to understand it in terms of options and opportunities . Although both perspectives are concerned with the ability of people to makes choices, they differ in terms of how they conceptualize the freedom of individuals to do so. From the Social Order perspective, people should have the freedom to pursue opportunities for well-being and success, whereas from the Social Justice perspective, freedom means freedom from discrimination and oppression.

Individual and group-based morality

As with fairness and freedom, most people value caring for others regardless of their specific moral, philosophical, and political orientations (e.g., Greene, 2013; Haidt, 2012). Drawing on moral foundations theory (Graham et al., 2009; Haidt, 2012), which posits that people’s moral foundations coalesce around ‘individualizing’ (i.e., putting the care and protection of individuals at the centre of moral concern) and ‘binding’ moral intuitions (i.e., putting social order and group cohesion at the centre of moral concern), Iceland and colleagues (2023) argue that the Social Justice and Social Order worldviews have distinct moral foundations. Specifically, care for the vulnerable is at the heart of the Social Justice perspective, whereas group loyalty and respect for authority are centered in the Social Order worldview.

Social change

Finally, while proponents of the Social Justice and Social Order worldviews see room for improvement in existing social systems, they differ in their beliefs about type of social change that is needed and how it ought to be achieved. Whereas the Social Justice perspective tends to favour rapid, extensive change, the Social Order perspective tends to favour slow, incremental change, believing it is in the nature of complex systems to operate by means of ‘trade-offs’ rather than ‘solutions’. These perspectives also appear to be associated with markedly different dispositions towards the past and tradition, with the Social Justice view associated with a posture of repudiation and Social Order marked by an appreciative disposition towards traditional ‘discovered solutions’.

As we ease into the new year, it is salutary to reflect on our moral and philosophical perspectives and to contemplate how these worldviews, and our moral tribes, inform our moral thinking. Let’s begin by putting both perspectives on equal footing, understanding how the world looks from each perspective, and trying to talk to rather than past one another.

Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96 (5), 1029–1046.

Greene, J. (2013). Moral tribes: Emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them . Penguin.

Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion . Pantheon.

Iceland, J., Silver, E., & Redstone, I. (2023). Why we disagree about inequality: Social Justice vs. Social Order . Polity Press.

Samuel Wilson, Ph.D. , is an associate professor of leadership at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia

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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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Creating the Good Society

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The social problems confronting us today, the authors argue, are largely the result of failures of our institutions, and our response, largely the result of our failure to realize the degree to which our lives are shaped by institutional forces and the degree to which we, as a democratic society, can shape these forces for the better.

In the Good Society , sociologist Robert Bellah and his coauthors challenge Americans to take a good look at themselves. Faced with growing homelessness, rising unemployment, crumbling highways, and impending ecological disaster, our response is one of apathy, frustration, cynicism, and retreat into our private worlds. The social problems confronting us today, the authors argue, are largely the result of failures of our institutions, and our response, largely the result of our failure to realize the degree to which our lives are shaped by institutional forces and the degree to which we, as a democratic society, can shape these forces for the better.

What prevents Americans from "taking charge" is, according to the authors, our long and abiding allegiance to "individualism" -- the belief that "the good society" is one in which individuals are left free to pursue their private satisfactions independently of others, a pattern of thinking that emphasizes individual achievement and self-fulfillment.

As the authors point out, this way of thinking about ourselves and our society can be traced back to our country's eighteenth century founders, most notably John Locke: "Locke's teaching was one of the most powerful ideologies ever invented, if not the most powerful. It promised an unheard of degree of individual freedom, an unlimited opportunity to compete for material well-being, and an unprecedented limitation on the arbitrary powers of government to interfere with individual initiative." Our nation's founders, however, assumed that the freedom of individuals to pursue their own ends would be tempered by a "public spirit" and concern for the common good that would shape our social institutions: "The Lockean ideal of the autonomous individual was, in the eighteenth century, embedded in a complex moral ecology that included family and church on the one hand and on the other a vigorous public sphere in which economic initiative, it was hoped, grew together with public spirit...The eighteenth century idea of a public was...a discursive community capable of thinking about the public good."

It is precisely this sense of common purpose and public spirit crucial to the guidance of institutions in a democracy that is absent from our society today. A ruthless individualism, expressed primarily through a market mentality, has invaded every sphere of our lives, undermining those institutions, such as the family or the university, that have traditionally functioned as foci of collective purposes, history, and culture. This lack of common purpose and concern for the common good bodes ill for a people claiming to be a democracy. Caught up in our private pursuits, we allow the workings of our major institutions -- the economy and government -- to go on "over our heads."

One way of summing up the difficulty Americans have in understanding the fundamental roots of their problems is to say that they still have a Lockean political culture, emphasizing individual freedom and the pursuit of individual affluence (the American dream) in a society with a most un-Lockean economy and government. We have the illusion that we can control our fate because individual economic opportunity is indeed considerable, especially if one starts with middle class advantages; and our political life is formally free. Yet powerful forces affecting the lives of all of us are not operating under the norm of democratic consent. In particular, the private governments of the great corporations make decisions on the basis of their own advantage, not of the public good. The federal government has enormously increased its power, especially in the form of the military industrial complex, in ways that are almost invulnerable to citizen knowledge, much less control, on the grounds of national defense. The private rewards and the formal freedoms have obscured from us how much we have lost in genuine democratic control of the society we live in.

The authors see hope, however, in renovating our institutions in a way that will revitalize and transform our democracy. In a culture of individuals possessed by individualism, such a transformation will not be easy. First and foremost, we will have to shed our individualistic blinders and learn to "pay attention" to ways in which we are dependent on and collectively responsible for the institutions that shape our common life.

Second, we will need to find or create spaces in our lives where we can "practice" democracy -- beginning with our families (responsibilities shared equitably between parents) and our places of work (increased worker participation). Educational and religious institutions, as bearers of our moral ideals, will also play a vital role in preparing us for active and intelligent participation in public life. Our larger political and economic institutions can be redesigned to encourage and nurture citizen participation. More government policy and planning decisions, for example, can bc relegated to local levels, encouraging wider citizen participation and responsibility for government policy.

Underlying these proposals is a belief that as we begin to participate in public projects, our perspectives and concerns will broaden. From a focus on self and a view of society as unrelated autonomous individuals, we will come to look beyond ourselves and come to view ourselves as members of a larger community concerned not only about ourselves but about our fellow Americans, peoples of other nations, future generations, and non human life. "When citizens are engaged in thinking about the whole, they find their conceptions of their interests broadened, and their commitment to the search for a common good deepens."

The result: an informed and morally sensitive public active in discussing and debating issues ranging from international financing to day care, within a framework informed by a shared vision of a good society; and a citizenry capable of instituting reforms in our economic and political institutions so that they work for the common benefit of all peoples.

This reinvigoration of democracy is not proposed as an idealistic project but as a practical necessity. The authors write that nowhere is the need more evident than in the international sphere, where problems are beyond the capacity of any single nation to solve.

Our economic life is dominated by the dynamics of a vast world market that cannot be controlled by the action of any single nation-state. Problems of environmental pollution transcend national boundaries. The proliferation of nuclear weapons threatens the security of all. Vast disparities in global wealth and power lead to petering conflicts that endanger economic health and political security around the world.

In a world of increasing complexity and interdependence, we can no longer afford "to go our own way." Rather, we need to exercise our capacity for developing institutions that recognize our interconnectedness, moving toward the creation of "the good society," "where the common good is the pursuit of the good in common."

The Good Society , by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1991)

This article was originally published in Issues in Ethics - V. 5, N. 1 Spring 1992.

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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• 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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How to Write the National Honor Society Essay + Example

What’s Covered:

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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Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks

Published on February 9, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

This example guides you through the structure of an essay. It shows how to build an effective introduction , focused paragraphs , clear transitions between ideas, and a strong conclusion .

Each paragraph addresses a single central point, introduced by a topic sentence , and each point is directly related to the thesis statement .

As you read, hover over the highlighted parts to learn what they do and why they work.

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Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an essay, an appeal to the senses: the development of the braille system in nineteenth-century france.

The invention of Braille was a major turning point in the history of disability. The writing system of raised dots used by visually impaired people was developed by Louis Braille in nineteenth-century France. In a society that did not value disabled people in general, blindness was particularly stigmatized, and lack of access to reading and writing was a significant barrier to social participation. The idea of tactile reading was not entirely new, but existing methods based on sighted systems were difficult to learn and use. As the first writing system designed for blind people’s needs, Braille was a groundbreaking new accessibility tool. It not only provided practical benefits, but also helped change the cultural status of blindness. This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.

Lack of access to reading and writing put blind people at a serious disadvantage in nineteenth-century society. Text was one of the primary methods through which people engaged with culture, communicated with others, and accessed information; without a well-developed reading system that did not rely on sight, blind people were excluded from social participation (Weygand, 2009). While disabled people in general suffered from discrimination, blindness was widely viewed as the worst disability, and it was commonly believed that blind people were incapable of pursuing a profession or improving themselves through culture (Weygand, 2009). This demonstrates the importance of reading and writing to social status at the time: without access to text, it was considered impossible to fully participate in society. Blind people were excluded from the sighted world, but also entirely dependent on sighted people for information and education.

In France, debates about how to deal with disability led to the adoption of different strategies over time. While people with temporary difficulties were able to access public welfare, the most common response to people with long-term disabilities, such as hearing or vision loss, was to group them together in institutions (Tombs, 1996). At first, a joint institute for the blind and deaf was created, and although the partnership was motivated more by financial considerations than by the well-being of the residents, the institute aimed to help people develop skills valuable to society (Weygand, 2009). Eventually blind institutions were separated from deaf institutions, and the focus shifted towards education of the blind, as was the case for the Royal Institute for Blind Youth, which Louis Braille attended (Jimenez et al, 2009). The growing acknowledgement of the uniqueness of different disabilities led to more targeted education strategies, fostering an environment in which the benefits of a specifically blind education could be more widely recognized.

Several different systems of tactile reading can be seen as forerunners to the method Louis Braille developed, but these systems were all developed based on the sighted system. The Royal Institute for Blind Youth in Paris taught the students to read embossed roman letters, a method created by the school’s founder, Valentin Hauy (Jimenez et al., 2009). Reading this way proved to be a rather arduous task, as the letters were difficult to distinguish by touch. The embossed letter method was based on the reading system of sighted people, with minimal adaptation for those with vision loss. As a result, this method did not gain significant success among blind students.

Louis Braille was bound to be influenced by his school’s founder, but the most influential pre-Braille tactile reading system was Charles Barbier’s night writing. A soldier in Napoleon’s army, Barbier developed a system in 1819 that used 12 dots with a five line musical staff (Kersten, 1997). His intention was to develop a system that would allow the military to communicate at night without the need for light (Herron, 2009). The code developed by Barbier was phonetic (Jimenez et al., 2009); in other words, the code was designed for sighted people and was based on the sounds of words, not on an actual alphabet. Barbier discovered that variants of raised dots within a square were the easiest method of reading by touch (Jimenez et al., 2009). This system proved effective for the transmission of short messages between military personnel, but the symbols were too large for the fingertip, greatly reducing the speed at which a message could be read (Herron, 2009). For this reason, it was unsuitable for daily use and was not widely adopted in the blind community.

Nevertheless, Barbier’s military dot system was more efficient than Hauy’s embossed letters, and it provided the framework within which Louis Braille developed his method. Barbier’s system, with its dashes and dots, could form over 4000 combinations (Jimenez et al., 2009). Compared to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, this was an absurdly high number. Braille kept the raised dot form, but developed a more manageable system that would reflect the sighted alphabet. He replaced Barbier’s dashes and dots with just six dots in a rectangular configuration (Jimenez et al., 2009). The result was that the blind population in France had a tactile reading system using dots (like Barbier’s) that was based on the structure of the sighted alphabet (like Hauy’s); crucially, this system was the first developed specifically for the purposes of the blind.

While the Braille system gained immediate popularity with the blind students at the Institute in Paris, it had to gain acceptance among the sighted before its adoption throughout France. This support was necessary because sighted teachers and leaders had ultimate control over the propagation of Braille resources. Many of the teachers at the Royal Institute for Blind Youth resisted learning Braille’s system because they found the tactile method of reading difficult to learn (Bullock & Galst, 2009). This resistance was symptomatic of the prevalent attitude that the blind population had to adapt to the sighted world rather than develop their own tools and methods. Over time, however, with the increasing impetus to make social contribution possible for all, teachers began to appreciate the usefulness of Braille’s system (Bullock & Galst, 2009), realizing that access to reading could help improve the productivity and integration of people with vision loss. It took approximately 30 years, but the French government eventually approved the Braille system, and it was established throughout the country (Bullock & Galst, 2009).

Although Blind people remained marginalized throughout the nineteenth century, the Braille system granted them growing opportunities for social participation. Most obviously, Braille allowed people with vision loss to read the same alphabet used by sighted people (Bullock & Galst, 2009), allowing them to participate in certain cultural experiences previously unavailable to them. Written works, such as books and poetry, had previously been inaccessible to the blind population without the aid of a reader, limiting their autonomy. As books began to be distributed in Braille, this barrier was reduced, enabling people with vision loss to access information autonomously. The closing of the gap between the abilities of blind and the sighted contributed to a gradual shift in blind people’s status, lessening the cultural perception of the blind as essentially different and facilitating greater social integration.

The Braille system also had important cultural effects beyond the sphere of written culture. Its invention later led to the development of a music notation system for the blind, although Louis Braille did not develop this system himself (Jimenez, et al., 2009). This development helped remove a cultural obstacle that had been introduced by the popularization of written musical notation in the early 1500s. While music had previously been an arena in which the blind could participate on equal footing, the transition from memory-based performance to notation-based performance meant that blind musicians were no longer able to compete with sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997). As a result, a tactile musical notation system became necessary for professional equality between blind and sighted musicians (Kersten, 1997).

Braille paved the way for dramatic cultural changes in the way blind people were treated and the opportunities available to them. Louis Braille’s innovation was to reimagine existing reading systems from a blind perspective, and the success of this invention required sighted teachers to adapt to their students’ reality instead of the other way around. In this sense, Braille helped drive broader social changes in the status of blindness. New accessibility tools provide practical advantages to those who need them, but they can also change the perspectives and attitudes of those who do not.

Bullock, J. D., & Galst, J. M. (2009). The Story of Louis Braille. Archives of Ophthalmology , 127(11), 1532. https://​doi.org/10.1001/​archophthalmol.2009.286.

Herron, M. (2009, May 6). Blind visionary. Retrieved from https://​eandt.theiet.org/​content/​articles/2009/05/​blind-visionary/.

Jiménez, J., Olea, J., Torres, J., Alonso, I., Harder, D., & Fischer, K. (2009). Biography of Louis Braille and Invention of the Braille Alphabet. Survey of Ophthalmology , 54(1), 142–149. https://​doi.org/10.1016/​j.survophthal.2008.10.006.

Kersten, F.G. (1997). The history and development of Braille music methodology. The Bulletin of Historical Research in Music Education , 18(2). Retrieved from https://​www.jstor.org/​stable/40214926.

Mellor, C.M. (2006). Louis Braille: A touch of genius . Boston: National Braille Press.

Tombs, R. (1996). France: 1814-1914 . London: Pearson Education Ltd.

Weygand, Z. (2009). The blind in French society from the Middle Ages to the century of Louis Braille . Stanford: Stanford University Press.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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An essay is a focused piece of writing that explains, argues, describes, or narrates.

In high school, you may have to write many different types of essays to develop your writing skills.

Academic essays at college level are usually argumentative : you develop a clear thesis about your topic and make a case for your position using evidence, analysis and interpretation.

The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement , a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.

The structure of the body is flexible, but you should always spend some time thinking about how you can organize your essay to best serve your ideas.

Your essay introduction should include three main things, in this order:

• An opening hook to catch the reader’s attention.
• Relevant background information that the reader needs to know.
• A thesis statement that presents your main point or argument.

The length of each part depends on the length and complexity of your essay .

A thesis statement is a sentence that sums up the central point of your paper or essay . Everything else you write should relate to this key idea.

A topic sentence is a sentence that expresses the main point of a paragraph . Everything else in the paragraph should relate to the topic sentence.

At college level, you must properly cite your sources in all essays , research papers , and other academic texts (except exams and in-class exercises).

Add a citation whenever you quote , paraphrase , or summarize information or ideas from a source. You should also give full source details in a bibliography or reference list at the end of your text.

The exact format of your citations depends on which citation style you are instructed to use. The most common styles are APA , MLA , and Chicago .

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Bryson, S. (2023, July 23). Example of a Great Essay | Explanations, Tips & Tricks. Scribbr. Retrieved March 25, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/example-essay-structure/

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15 Qualities That Are At The Core Of Every ‘Good’ Person

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What makes a person “good” in the grand scheme of things?

There are some traits considered to be good by just about everyone. There are also cultural variables as to what symbolizes and expresses goodness in a person. 

Ultimately, it’s up to the individual to determine what they feel are the qualities of a “good person.”

When we’re asked to explain why some of our heroes are (or were) sincerely good people, many of these traits will make the list.

1. Prudence

A good person is a prudent person. Prudence is the ability to determine whether or not a particular action is a good (or appropriate) idea at that specific point in time. It’s considered to be one of the four cardinal virtues, derived originally from Plato’s Republic .

Prudence also refers to a situation in which you have the strength to do something, but choose not to. Or, when you could do something that’s self-indulgent in the moment, but choose to err on the side of better judgment for later.

An example of this would be refraining from spending money on games and junk food because you need to save enough to cover your portion of the rent and bills. You may spend a bit on a small indulgence, but choose responsibility over temporary amusement or gratification.

2. Temperance

Although most people interpret temperance as being abstinence from something, what it actually means is moderation. 

Having temperance means finding the middle path, and balancing the self in the face of any situation. It encompasses self-discipline and self-awareness. After all, you have to know your own abilities as well as your own limits in order to find the moderate zone between them. 

For example, embodying a sense of diplomacy as a moderator means finding that magical middle ground between expressing what you need to say, with the needs and views of others around you.

In other people, temperance might mean accepting a small drink when toasting with others, but refraining from drinking to inebriation. Or thoroughly enjoying a slice of cake without overindulging.

When you are balanced and measured in your approaches to everything, you can experience and understand all without being overwhelmed by it.

Good people often show courage. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, but rather the ability to take action even though you feel afraid. It is knowing that there is a difficult, potentially dangerous task ahead of you, but doing it because you know it needs to be done.

This one goes along with several of the other qualities listed here. For example, it often takes courage to act with integrity.

Courage can take many forms, from trying a new, challenging exercise to standing up to an intimidating person, or facing something that scares you.

The first level of courage is doing something even though it terrifies you.

The last level is being a calm, inspirational force to others, while feeling the same fear that they’re experiencing. 

For example, a high-ranking officer in a WWI trench was a bastion of calm and confidence, while the troops around him were quaking with fear. A young Private asked him how he was so calm, and the officer replied that he had to be in order to keep morale up. Additionally, he knew that the soldiers on the other side were also afraid, and that was oddly reassuring to him.

4. Compassion

Being compassionate isn’t just about understanding someone else’s pain. It’s also the desire to help alleviate it. One can look at a person and see that they’re suffering (sympathy) and then walk on by. But when we want to do what we can to help, then that’s compassion in action.

Ultimately, the basic element of compassion is kindness. We want to give of our own abilities to help another being who may be suffering. We can have compassion for people, animals, trees, rivers… anything that seems to be in distress that we can help to lessen.

The greatest mastery of compassion is when the one you’re trying to help is hurting you, and yet you’re still offering them assistance in a loving, gentle way. An adult may rail against you, or the hurt animal may bite you, but you still try to help.

Compassion means that you understand another’s pain without compounding it, offering what the other needs, and giving of yourself, regardless of the outcome.

5. Generosity

Generosity is a quality often associated with a good person. When we have a surplus of something, it’s important to share with others who have less. Even if we don’t have a surplus, it’s important to share with others. 

We always have something that we can share or give to those around us. This doesn’t have to be monetary wealth or physical objects, either. People who don’t have a lot of money can still be immensely generous with their time, for example. They can volunteer with the elderly or doing charity work. Or they can teach their skills to others who would like to learn from them. 

Being generous means that you’re giving with the heart, without any schemes to receive anything in return, or control those you are being generous with. These are gifts freely given, not because you think you’ll benefit in turn.

Quite often, those who have the least are the most generous toward others, because they know what it’s like to have nothing. They have the biggest hearts, and tend to be the most willing to help others in need.

6. Patience

This is one of the qualities that many admire, but it is also one of the most difficult to put into practice. It’s possible that this is because few of use are actually patient by nature. 

We tend to want things on our terms, on our own time. As a result, we get frustrated and annoyed when things don’t play out the way we think they should.

This is why it’s important to remember that the world doesn’t revolve around our wants and our schedule. There are billions of other players on this chess board, all engaged in an intricate dance. As such, we need to acknowledge and respect that we are all cogs in the machine, and our time to turn will come when it’s meant to.

Furthermore, it’s important to be aware that a lack of patience can cause a great deal of harm. People can only do their best, and when we’re impatient with those who aren’t as capable as we are, we can make them feel truly horrible about themselves. Or worse, they may end up traumatized and damaged. 

This is why it’s important to be patient with the grandmother or the child when crossing the road in a hurry, because they can’t keep up with you. If you’re not, and you walk away quickly instead of helping, they may end up getting hurt. 

Patience means that you can remain calm and measured in your responses, even when irritated. To not throw a tantrum when forced to wait. And to not complain unduly when things are taking longer than expected.

7. Respect 

Respect is undoubtedly a characteristic of a good person. When we talk about respect, we’re encompassing various aspects thereof. This includes respect for other people, self-respect, respect for life, for nature, etc.

Tolerance, esteem, appreciation, and recognition are just a few aspects of respect that can come into play.

For example, we can respect nature by not throwing garbage around or polluting water supplies. We can respect housemates by acknowledging the fact that they live their lives differently than we do, so we don’t project our behavioral expectations onto them.

We can respect our bodies by eating well and getting plenty of exercise, and show self-respect by not engaging in activities that would make us feel shame later. 

We acknowledge boundaries – our own and other people’s – and don’t overstep them for the sake of self-indulgence. We acknowledge that every individual is perfect, sovereign, and sacred. As such, we don’t put others down or mistreat them. Instead, we pay attention when they speak, honor their words, heed their personal choices.

It doesn’t take much effort to help others feel seen and heard, but it makes a world of difference to them when we do so.

8. Tolerance

Tolerance means accepting that others may think, behave, or live differently than we are, without trying to change their ways to suit our own preferences.

In simplest terms: live and let live.

Seek to understand your contemporaries in other cultures, races, religions, and creeds, rather than attacking them for their differences from you.

This is the difference between people who talk about how tolerant they are, but want to lead the next witch hunt.

In the 1600s it was witches. In the 1800s it was Amerindians. In the 1930s it was Jews. It is what it is today, and in 200 years, there will be another target group for people’s ire. 

Don’t jump on that bandwagon. We’re all better than that.

9. Integrity

A good person will act with integrity. Integrity means doing the right thing, even when nobody is watching. It’s holding to your individual moral and ethical convictions despite other people’s opinions and influences. Especially when it’s difficult to do so.

For example, let’s say that you’re working on a construction site and you find a precious artifact. You’re only making minimum wage at this gig, and this is a centuries-old gold ring buried in the mud. Nobody saw it except you. If you sold it, you’d likely make a ton of money. But you also recognize that it has historical significance.

Your sense of integrity would have you report the ring to the local coroner or Finds liaison officer so they can investigate it. Sure, you might get a reward for it – likely less than you’d have made for pawning it – but you know it’s the right thing to do. You didn’t have to, but you did it anyway.

10. Commitment

This one goes along with integrity, but expands upon it differently. 

Commitment means that you’ve held to your word, even if it was difficult to do so. This might mean sticking with a job or project that you absolutely hate because you promised someone that you would do so. Or it could be remaining faithful to a partner, despite your own non-monogamous leanings, because you gave your word that you’d be loyal.

You’ll see something through, simply because you made a promise.

A person who keeps their commitments is someone who can be trusted and relied upon. When you’re known as someone who keeps their word, you’re incredibly valued and respected in your community, as well as among your friends and loved ones.

11. Honesty

Honesty is often expressed as a quality of a good person. After all, if you discovered that someone lied to you, could you ever trust them again? If they lied to you that time, what would stop them from lying to you about everything and anything else?

People respect and appreciate honesty, especially when it’s difficult. For example, if and when we mess up horribly at work, but own that screw-up, admit to it, and take action to remedy it. Our employers and peers will respect us a lot more than if we try to cover it up or cast blame on others.

Furthermore, many people even appreciate honesty when it’s a bit hurtful. When someone is honest about a difficult topic or situation, it means that they care enough not to betray the other’s trust by lying about it. 

Of course, a lot depends on how a truth is shared. We can be gentle in our tone and the words we choose, rather than being cruel or scathing. How a truth is delivered can make the difference between long-term positive change, and trauma.

12. Humility

You know the type of person who’s always bragging about how awesome they are? Humility is the opposite of that.

Humility is holding to the idea that no person is greater or lesser than any others, despite popularity, wealth, titles, or achievements.

Those who feel that they are better or more important than other people tend to treat others badly. Since they consider themselves to be special, they often expect better treatment, and to be allowed to belittle those around them.

In contrast, someone who remains humble treats everyone around them with care and respect. They don’t tell others about all the wonderful charitable things they’ve done: they just do them. Their actions are for the greater good, not for the acknowledgement and praise they’ll receive from doing so.

13. Strength

The strength that makes a good person is mental and emotional rather than physical. Strength can be shown in a gentle way, albeit one that is unyielding. Look at Mahatma Gandhi and his hunger strike. It took immense strength to quash his own hunger, though agonizing, in order to work toward positive change. 

Hannibal and Marcus Aurelius showed immense strength of character in keeping everyone together while undertaking a massive journey. 

Anne Frank and Mother Teresa both showed tremendous strength in atrocious circumstances. Furthermore, their ability to love and care for others remained intact despite the horrors they witnessed and experienced.

You’ve likely noticed that strength and compassion, and strength and courage are linked. This is because strength is not always a projective virtue, but rather it’s an adaptive term. 

Strength is often a battery for many of the other qualities on this list. For example, you may show immense strength when you hold to integrity when everyone around you is doing something that goes against everything you believe in. Standing up for what you believe is right might be dangerous to you – perhaps even life threatening. As such, it takes immense strength of character and will to be true to yourself. 

There are many different types of love, despite the fact that only one word is used to encompass them in the Western world. We’re mostly familiar with romantic love, or the love felt between parents and children. But we can love humanity or nature with all our hearts as well. And we know that we love when we pour our energy toward other beings’ happiness, health, success, and freedom.

Some people mistake infatuation for love. Or possessiveness. Someone might love another person because they feel that the other person will give them what they need. Similarly, they might love a pet, or a house, or any other being or creature that brings them fulfillment. 

In contrast, when we truly love a person, our greatest wish is for their happiness. 

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski covers this when he talks about “fish love.” What most people consider to be “love” is when their needs are fulfilled. Such as a man who eats a fish because he loves fish. This man loves the fish he’s eating so much that he took it out of the water, boiled it, and is eating it. He loves himself, and sees the fish as something that will fulfill his needs and wants.

If he truly loved the fish, he would encourage it to swim happily and lead a beautiful life. 

Real love isn’t a question of what we’re going to get from a situation or a person, but what we can give .

15. Self-awareness

You know in your gut when you’ve done wrong, or when you have done good.

If you ever do something and feel a twinge of shame or disgust with your actions, then you’re fully aware that you didn’t act in love or respect. Perhaps you did something sneaky for the sake of your own self-interests. Or the selfish altruism you displayed was far more for your own benefit than the other person’s.

In contrast, when you’ve done something that’s ethical and loving, you’ll feel an immense lightness of being. A warm glow will suffuse through you, and you might even get a bit choked up. You know that your actions will have long-reaching positive repercussions; like a glowing pebble thrown into a pond. Every ripple will carry light along with it.

Listen to this feeling when it speaks to you. Recognize it as your own inner compass, and allow it to lead you to the sincere goodness you’re capable of.

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About The Author

Finn Robinson has spent the past few decades travelling the globe and honing his skills in bodywork, holistic health, and environmental stewardship. In his role as a personal trainer and fitness coach, he’s acted as an informal counselor to clients and friends alike, drawing upon his own life experience as well as his studies in both Eastern and Western philosophies. For him, every day is an opportunity to be of service to others in the hope of sowing seeds for a better world.

• Published December 1, 2023
• 9 Minute Read

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.

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The Key Characteristics of a Good Leader

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