Explainer
Comment
Nationalism
5 min read

Beyond wealth and wellbeing: how nations flourish

As GDP data is increasingly scrutinised, Ryan Gilfeather asks how to measure the true health and wealth of a nation.

Ryan Gilfeather explores social issues through the lens of philosophy, theology, and history. He is a Research Associate at the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work.

Two women sit behind a press conference desk against a backdrop, one listens as the other speaks and  gestures.
A recent International Monetary Fund press conference on the world economic outlook.
IMF.

Discussions of GDP loom large in our current age. As we live under the shadow of the threat of a recession in the UK, ministers and commentators anxiously follow our country’s Gross Domestic Product, to see whether we are on the right track. Measuring the total value of goods and services produced in a country, this figure is a litmus test for the health of an economy. Crucially, many policymakers and leaders in government believe this figure reveals the health of a nation. 

As we will see, not all agree. Opponents rightly highlight that an increase in GDP does not necessarily mean that ordinary citizens live better lives. There are good reasons to share this opposition from a Christian perspective. However, ultimately, the Christian tradition highlights a very different way to measure the health of a society. 

In 2020 The Carnegie UK Trust, a think tank campaigning for greater welfare for all, published a new measure for social progress: GDWe (Gross Domestic Wellbeing). In brief, they gathered and processed ONS (Office for National Statistics) data on a variety of domains in life, giving them a single figure on a 10-point scale to rate well-being. These domains included personal well-being, relationships, health, vocational activities, living environments, personal finances, the economy, education and skills, governance, and the environment. When they plotted GDP against GDWe from 2013-9, they revealed that the two do not always line up. As GDP steadily increased from 2016, overall welfare in society dipped. From 2013-9 GDP increased by 10.34 per cent and GDWe only 5.19 per cent. Hence, measuring GDP does not necessarily reveal whether life is getting better for ordinary.

Economic resources are not useless... However, they are not sufficient unto themselves for us to live full and good lives. 

This attempt to shift the conversation about social progress from predominantly centring GDP is commendable. The Bible does not legislate on whether to use GDP or GDWe. However, scriptures within it repeatedly decouple economic wealth from flourishing. For example, in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says the following: 

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 

In life, we can either focus our efforts on attaining wealth or fostering our relationship with God. Only the latter will lead us to flourish. Economic resources are not useless; they are necessary for us to thrive in certain conditions. However, they are not sufficient unto themselves for us to live full and good lives. Furthermore, when wealth becomes the focus of our hearts and minds, our lives will be hollow and fractured. GDWe is a good measure, insofar as it acknowledges that economic flourishing is not the same as a good quality of life, and it attempts to shed light on the latter. However, the Christian tradition highlights a different framework altogether to grasp the health of a society.  

Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth-century theologian and bishop, frames wellbeing as a human being reflecting the image of God to the greatest of their ability. The book of Genesis says that God made us all in His image. Gregory argues that this means that we can become like God in certain ways. God is the fullness of all good things, such as love, justice, peace, joy, and courage. Consequently, Gregory argues that when we act in good ways, we begin to share those characteristics, which in turn leads us to act well in the future. For example, if I defend someone who is under attack, I will become more courageous, and more likely to repeat the same action in the future. The more we reflect the image of God, by acting well and taking on His characteristics, the more we will flourish as individuals. In this vision of human flourishing, Gregory brings together an Aristotelian account of virtue, with a Christian understanding of people as the image of God.  

This framework for the well-being of an individual also provides a good barometer for the health of a society. All of these actions and characteristics are building blocks for a healthy society. So long as we have a good sense of how to act appropriately with love, justice, peace, joy and courage, then our actions will build up our common life together. They benefit all, rather than one. They are not zero-sum actions. Accordingly, a society made up of individuals who are acting well and reflecting the image of God would be very healthy indeed.  

As a measure of a society, we should ask whether it leads citizens away from virtuous actions and characteristics. For example, between 2019 and 2021, gun murders in the USA rose by 45%. Earlier this year, journalist John Burn-Murdoch argued this rise is partly due to decaying public trust in that country. This tells us that a culture marked by fear of others can lead some of its citizens to commit terrible actions and live lives full of violence. GDP may rise during this time, as may other markers of welfare. However, to see the whole picture we need also consider how societal forces are leading citizens away from flourishing in their reflection of the image of God. Then, we should go about addressing these malignant forces.  

 

In times of adversity... individuals in societies marked by high levels of trust are more satisfied with their lives and act more benevolently. 

At the same time, we should also consider how a society enables its citizens to reflect the image of God. Societies with high levels of social trust create space for a variety of positive actions and characteristics. The World Happiness Report studies people’s sense of life satisfaction worldwide. It routinely finds that in times of adversity, like the Great Recession in 2008 or the COVID pandemic, individuals in societies marked by high levels of trust are more satisfied with their lives and act more benevolently than others. Again, these social forces are not the same as GDP, yet they have a significant ability to shape the extent to which citizens can reflect the image of God, and thereby flourish.  

In my work for the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work, I am particularly concerned with low-wage workers’ pay and conditions. As I have argued elsewhere, low pay leads to some workers needing to take on two or more jobs. They, consequently, have no time to see their children, nourish their faith, or participate in community institutions. It is clear, therefore, that the widespread pattern of paying below the Real Living Wage (£11.94 p/h in London, £10.90 elsewhere), hinders people in their expression of love for God, family and neighbour. Pay and conditions are but one further example, amongst many, of how societal forces can hinder or help our flourishing in the reflection of the image of God.  

Needless to say, GDP and GDWe are still useful and necessary tools. However, they do not tell the full story. GDP only describes the progress of the economy as a whole, and GDWe can only describe the quality of an average person’s life. In contrast, when we set a goal that each citizen should reflect the image of God, we can begin to explore how societal forces enable or squeeze out this aim. With this greater knowledge in mind, we can strive for progress in our nation by fostering good structures and stamping out bad ones, so that all may reflect the image of God to the greatest of their ability.   

Article
Comment
Community
Politics
10 min read

How to respond when politicians talk about “our way of life”

Alasdair MacIntyre’s thinking helps us understand what we share across society.

Joel Pierce is the administrator of Christ's College, University of Aberdeen. He has recently published his first book.

Four men in suits, sit next to each other smiling, in the House of Commons.
Reform MPs in the House of Commons.
House of Commons, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia.

What is “our way of life”? It’s a phrase which slides easily into the rhetoric of politicians of every stripe. It’s what the Reform Party says is threatened by multiculturalism, but what do they mean by it? What kind of politics is sustained by talk of “our way of life” and is there a better way of thinking about such politics? 

This summer, we made an exception to the time limit rule for television in my house, mainly so that I could have the Olympics on from morning to night. It’s a habit I acquired growing up in the United States, where an obsession over the quadrennial medal count is one of the few remaining things which bridges political and regional divides. During the Cold War, the Olympics were a way for Americans to proudly affirm the superiority of our way of life over the rigid training schedules and alien ways of the rival Soviet Union. 

Although my memories begin around the fall of the Berlin Wall, old habits die hard, and so the Olympics, to me, was endless coverage of plucky underdog Americans overcoming the odds to defeat the machine-like discipline of a new set of rivals–now Russia and China 

I moved to Britain just before the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics at which Britain won exactly one medal. At first I was bemused by the BBC’s coverage, which, of necessity, had to focus on British Olympians with little chance of winning. I was invited to cheer on eighth or ninth place finishers who had committed their life to a craft which would never bring the rewards of lasting fame or financial security. For them the reward was the Olympics themselves, the chance to compete amongst peers, to push themselves to their highest level, enjoying their sport and their performance for what it was, not for any external reward. In the terms of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, what these Olympians displayed was dedication to the internal goods of their sport–those goods that make a particular activity worth doing for its own sake. The Olympics were not about medals for them, but about showing what could be achieved if, as Olympians must do, they made their sport their way of life, dedicating themselves to its unique forms of excellence. 

Sports, for MacIntyre, are but one example of a broader category he labels ‘practices’. Although MacIntyre has a technical definition of what counts as a ‘practice’, the general idea can be conveyed through examples he gives such as farming, researching history, architecture, chess, and chemistry. Practices are human activities which are worth doing for their own sake, which require a degree of skill and excellence, and in which what counts as that skill and excellence is, in part, defined and discerned by the people who participate in the practice. This last criterion points at something important about practices for MacIntyre: they are inherently social.  

This is obvious in the case of sport. For an individual athlete to compete in a race they need not just other competitors to race against, but also trainers and coaches to prepare them for it, governing bodies to organise it, and, hopefully, spectators to cheer them on. It is, perhaps, less obvious in the case of individual farmer, but even here, one has to be taught to farm and, if one is wise, continues to learn and adapt through consulting with other farmers. A different way of putting this is that practices are the kinds of things which it’s not absurd to call “a way of life”. For an Olympic curler, curling is a way of life, just as much as farming is for a farmer. 

There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth.

However, this seems to offer little help in defining “our way of life” if it is being used in the way our politicians like to talk about it. If there’s one thing that I learned from all those BBC features of British Olympians way back in 2010, it was that aside from geographic proximity, there was not much that their way of life had in common with mine. I may be within driving distance of the rink where Winter Olympian Eve Muirhead learned to curl, but my workdays of wrestling spreadsheets and answering emails have little in common with ones spent lifting weights, studying strategy with coaches, and perfecting the just right spin on a stone as it’s released.   

And, of course that’s not just true of Olympic athletes. The investment banker who attends our church shares a way of life with his colleagues in Edinburgh, London, and Tokyo, that is completely opaque to my wife and I, immersed as we are in the worlds of ministry and academia. I glimpse some of the internal goods of the practices of our dentist watching her check my daughters’ teeth and our plumber as he fixes our leaking radiators, but their way of life, the rhythms of their days, and what gives them satisfaction in their work as they move from appointment to appointment, eludes my understanding.   

Where does this leave the search for a British way of life? If practices are as important to forming us as MacIntyre thinks, then the quest for any singular British way of life will ultimately be fruitless. There are many ways of life, many modes of being British, as diverse as the professions, hobbies, and passions which we find to have inherent worth. And even this characterisation does not go quite far enough, because all of these practices have a way of bursting the boundaries of Britishness if they really are worthwhile. A century and a half ago, football, rugby, and cricket were quintessentially British sports. Now they belong to the world.  

Similarly, valuing these practices well within Britain has a tendency to open us to accepting those from outside our borders who can help develop them. The best footballer in Britain is Norwegian. Many of the doctors who ensured my daughters arrived safely after complicated pregnancies were originally from India and Pakistan. 

Still, one might wonder if thinking about community through the lens of practices, as MacIntyre does, is too much of a solvent. Isn’t it a way of imagining us living near each other, but not with each other; siloed in our practices, in each of our communities, not understanding what our neighbours are up to? Not necessarily. For MacIntyre, the familiarity that arise from living near someone, hearing their worries at planning permission hearings, arguing with them at the local school’s parent council meetings, organising a community fundraiser together, or, even, being part of a family with them, can help develop an understanding of the internal goods of practices which we do not take part in. I haven’t lifted a brush to paper to since my secondary school art class, but my mother-in-law’s virtuosity with acrylics has led me to acquire an increasing appreciation for painting. Part of what helps facilitate this recognition is that, as MacIntyre argues, although the internal goods and the skills required to achieve them tend to be different for each practice, the virtues which we develop while pursuing them–patience, honesty, courage, self-control–are universal. Part of what helps us recognise others’ activities as practices, as worth doing for their own sake, are the virtues we see them develop as they do them. 

This sort of recognition requires familiarity, the sort I might have with my neighbours in our corner of rural Aberdeenshire, but that I am unlikely to have with fellow citizens in Cornwall, Cardiff, London, or Glasgow. How then are we to respond to national politicians talking about “our way of life”? One answer might be: with extreme scepticism. This is MacIntyre’s approach. He rejects the nation-state, which he calls “a dangerous and unmanageable institution”, as a potential channel of communal unity. Instead, he calls on us to admit that modern nation-states exist as a contradiction, being both “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services” and yet also something treated as sacred, which we are asked, on occasion, to surrender our lives to preserve. He notes with characteristic acerbity, “it is like being asked to die for the telephone company.” 

However, here I’d temper MacIntyre’s rhetoric somewhat. While my attachment to bankers in Canary Wharf is largely a happenstance of history, a contingent fact generated by long forgotten necessities of eighteenth century geopolitics, it has nevertheless resulted in both of us being issued the same passport, governed by the same tax regime, and having the same set of regulatory agencies to complain to when things go wrong. Those may be manifestations of what MacIntyre disparages as “a bureaucratic supplier of goods and services”, but they nevertheless do bind us together. As such we both have an interest in making sure this bureaucracy acts as justly as it can, not because it is the embodiment of all that is British, Britain is much too diverse and interesting to be fully embodied in our political institutions, but because we all have an interest in the institutions in which we are enmeshed, British or otherwise, being run as justly as possible.  

Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life” 

Because we find ourselves tied together by these institutions to a diverse collection of people, we have an interest in learning about those with whom we live. Even those who are far away. And to also celebrate when goods and services delivered by our institutions result in success to which we, in a remote way, have contributed. I may not share a way of life with Adam Peaty, but, thanks to the BBC, I can have a glimpse into what his way of life is and can be happy that through my taxes I have contributed, in a small way, to helping him win another medal. Since that 2010 Winter Olympics Britain has come quite a long way and there is nothing wrong with a little vicarious pride in our athlete’s accomplishments.  

But I can also be proud of athletes who didn’t win. Ones like BMX rider Beth Shriever who handled her unexpected last place finish in her final with a kind of grace and maturity, the kind of virtue, which someone more dedicated to her practice than to just winning can demonstrate. It is the facilitating of this kind of moral achievement which is more valuable than any medal. 

Similarly, I can rejoice when a new hospital gets built in a neglected area in London, or more council housing is supplied to people in need in Edinburgh, hopeful that these lead to my fellow citizens achieving the kind of flourishing lives they deserve. I can be angry, when I discover that the money I’ve paid towards postage has been used to prosecute innocent victims of a computer glitch, and pleased when the opening of a new rail line eases the otherwise stressful commute of tens of thousands in London. The state may be a bit like a telephone company, but a well-run utility can do a lot to supply people with the goods they need to make their lives. As long as I’m a subscriber, as long as I’m tied to people through national institutions like the state, I have a moral duty to ensure that they’re run as well as possible. 

This way of thinking about politics may strike some as idealistic, the kind of view only a naive Christian ethicist could endorse. Surely politics is all about securing as much money and resources as possible for the people most like oneself. That, it seems, is often the unstated assumption when the talk of “our way of life” is deployed and why so much coalition building in our politics turns on finding a convenient other against which to define “our” similarity. Take your pick: immigrants, the EU, woke elites, the Tories, or Westminster (among a certain brand of politician here in Scotland).--. Growing up in the USA, the Soviets, and then the Chinese, and now, depending whether one lives in a Republican or Democratic district, the other political party, have served the same purpose. The problem is that we aren’t that similar, we are and always have been a diverse lot with diverse needs. Every nation is. There is no one British way of life and to allow our politicians to try to sustain the fiction that there is lets them off the hook. Solving deep seated economic and social inequality is hard. Blaming immigrants for not embracing our way of life is easy. 

So, perhaps the sort of politics that I am talking about here is idealistic, nevertheless it is the only kind that can sustain a just government in the long term. Without acknowledging the importance of goods we only partly understand which are pursued by people whose ways of life are different from our own, we cannot hope to sustain the minor miracle of coordination and mutual aid that history has gifted us with in our united kingdom.