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Coping with freedom:

Choosing to make a difference

by Simon Longstaff

There is an old television documentary in which Malcolm Muggeridge strolls through the Indian sub-continent musing about humanity's future. Most of what he says is eminently forgettable. However, one observation has the capacity to transfix the mind.

Made in the 1960s, Muggeridge concluded the programme by addressing the future of the liberal democracies of the First World. If anything was going to bring down the West, he said, it would not be the power of an external enemy. Instead, the radical incapacity of people to cope with their freedom would cause them to buckle under its weight - inexorably ground down by the burden of having to take responsibility for how their lives were lived.

His meaning was fairly clear at the time. However, any doubts were removed at a conference on democracy, held in London, in 1990. The Berlin Wall had only just come down and a significant number of people from the old Soviet Bloc were in attendance. There had been many fine speeches. Some had extolled the virtues of liberty. Many more had warned against the pitfalls of Thatcherism. Much of that which was said was predictable.

The last session saw the Eastern Europeans cluster around a table at the front of the hall. Their message was simple, “We have heard all your warnings. We know that they were well meant. But you don't seem to understand. We have our freedom - now we must learn what to do with it.” Having been denied freedom for so long, the last thing that these people needed was to be told how to live their lives. Indeed, they made it quite clear that to be free included the opportunity to make mistakes and even, to fail. One additional factor should be noted. For all their realism, these people still had hope.

This is important because the burden of choice is relieved by our hope that the struggle is ultimately worthwhile.

Unfortunately, too many now seem resigned to despair. Think of the people who experience their lives as having little meaning or purpose. Think of the young people who belong to a third generation of unemployed from the same family. Think of those who have served their employer with loyalty and diligence only to be discarded as 'surplus' labour culled during an exercise in downsizing. Think of those who have everything except a friend. Think of old people who live in the shadows of fear, abandonment or loneliness. Think of the poor, the homeless and the dispossessed - all of whom have missed out on their share of the prosperity that was supposed to be distributed through our market economy.

This dark picture can be offset by others in which people are seen to live rich and fulfilled lives. Furthermore, the simple fact that some people live an impoverished life is not, in itself, the chief source of despair. Rather, it is the growing sense that the problems we face are beyond our power to solve - that each of us is a prisoner locked in a cage of systems and structures over which we have no control. It is the sense of futility that leads people to surrender themselves to apathy and the rising tide of despair.

Is this to exaggerate? Perhaps. But, how else might one explain the fairly constant experience of working with people who expertly dissect their organisations and identify all that they find objectionable and still do nothing? It is easy to see the concern on people's faces - to see that deep down they are troubled. Anybody who has taken a moment to speak with people about how they really feel will recognise the phenomenon. We feel that things could be better and we do nothing.

Despite this, there are still good reasons for remaining in the camp of the optimists. The challenges we face need not defeat us. Accepting the burden of choice is not an exercise in futility. We know that it is possible to run a profitable business and still treat people with dignity. It is possible to prosper while making safe and reliable products and refraining from unconscionable conduct. It is possible to enhance the quality of our social and physical environment - by helping someone less advantaged than oneself or through recycling, saving on water usage, and so on. All we have to do is choose to make a difference.

To take such steps is to declare an underlying sense of commitment - to accept the proposition that it is possible to make a difference. And this is the basis for discovering that each person has the capacity to make meaning and not simply discover it, in their lives.

What has all of this to do with the world of business? Many people in business seem to be largely unconscious of the wider role it can play as part of society. Business is not an external engine generating profits alone. Indeed, has anybody ever really believed this caricature to be true!

Business is not outside society. It is an integral part of it. It has a massive capacity to help define the kind of society that we are. It does so through the type and quality of goods and services that it produces. It does so by the values and principles that it displays and rewards in the marketplace and within its own operations. It does so by the example it sets in terms of the policies and procedures; systems and processes that it applies. Finally, it establishes an important benchmark in terms of the quality of relationships that it fosters with its various stakeholders.

Everyone has the opportunity to make a difference. But that means exercising choice in a responsible manner. To act in a way that makes a positive difference is one important way to make life worthwhile. Even one person living a worthwhile life is a cause for hope. And hope is the antidote to Muggeridge's malaise.

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