Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Mal Fletcher about his new book

Mal Fletcher

Mal Fletcher is a social commentator and social futurist, global leadership speaker, broadcaster and author. He has just released Fascinating Times: A Social Commentary. The editorials and articles featured in this anthology cover a wide range of subjects and issues, among them: technology, social networking, robotics, assisted dying, youth violence and gangs, the marriage debate, middle-age crises, suicide, ageism and many more. Jonathan Bellamy caught up with him to talk about how ethics and technology are changing society.

Jonathan: Mal, the purpose of your book is to look at how our fast changing society may be having an impact on social ethics. You said that ethics is destiny; what do you mean by that?

Mal: I think our present and our future are not shaped by the technologies we develop Jon, they're shaped by how we choose to use them. Change is happening so rapidly in all areas that we don't normally get the time we need to reflect on what that change means and what it might mean to the future. Social commentary of the kind that I've tried to provide in this book, Fascinating Times, allows us to step back to identify possible patterns in the shifts that we see today in society and to reflect on the worldview and ethics with which we face those changes. If you like it allows us to plug individual stories into a wider narrative and in doing that to explore how the ethics we adopt now might actually shape the future.

Jonathan: Do you think as a society we have been guilty of not giving enough time to ethical consideration?

Mal: I think sometimes in the discussion of ethics we get a little bit confused because we're moving so quickly. Ethical debate isn't able to keep up with our development of new technologies.

One of the areas where this is most strikingly true is that of consumerism. We've seen in the recession that a free market society, which relies on consumer spending, has to have some limits applied to it. I'm not an economist, but in the book I ask what I think is a very important question; do we want a market that serves us or a market that defines us? We're turning more and more human activities today into marketable commodities. Is it appropriate that we attach price tags to everything in life? Are there some things that we cheapen when we do that? I think on the back of recession that's an ethical area where people have started to re-evaluate their priorities and values. For example, consumers today are becoming activists. We're trying to find opportunities to produce change for the common good at the same time as we're meeting our own need; that's why we buy things like Fair-trade coffee. People don't just want to spend, they want to invest. I think when it comes to ethics, sometimes there are new technologies and new developments that overtake our ability to form ethical judgements on them.

Jonathan: Do you think ethics change over time?

Mal: I think that the core ethics don't. The core of ethics doesn't change because human nature essentially doesn't change over time. If we go back thousands of years we find Greek philosophers asking precisely the same philosophical and ethical questions that we're asking today; in fact we still rely on many of the classical greats, Socrates, Plato and others to guide us in terms of our ethical decisions. Human nature doesn't change all that much, even though events do - and technology certainly does. I think we are still, fundamentally, beings who are trying to work out what is good and appropriate in any given situation. We don't discuss ethics as much in the mainstream as we used to do, but it's still very important to us.

Jonathan: What about here in the UK? It's often quoted how we're a society that's been built on Judeo-Christian ethics and values, but arguably in recent decades we may be shifting from that as a foundation. Do you agree with that and if so do you think that's a concern?

Mal: I think first of all that the mainstream of the British public, at least in my view, in the years that I've been studying it, tend to have what I would call 'small c' conservative values; that is when it comes to things like basic right and wrong, the importance of family etc. These are the sorts of things that the British public generally has fairly conservative values about. There are members of the literati and the glitterati who don't share that, so we tend to get a lot more in our electronic media, at times, that takes what I would call, an ultra liberal approach; but being objective I think we have to say that people are still conservative in the core things and I think that does come from our worldview and most worldviews have a religious element to them. As you point out, in our part of the world, our western or European worldview, has been heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian values. I don't know that it's a good thing for us to depart too far from some of those values because they've guided us fairly well through the years.

Jonathan: You mentioned consumerism as one of those things you highlighted as a concern. Have there been other main issues that have sparked your recognition of the need to write such a book? You mentioned things like shifting medical ethics; that's often a hot potato that's in the press, particularly with things like euthanasia.

Mal: Yes, that's a big one. I discuss in the book how taking an ultra liberal approach to that might leave us with greater problems in the future.

One of the areas that does concern me, or interest me, in the book, is what I call digital dementia. You may remember last year that a ten-year study was concluded. It was found that the onset of dementia, rather than happening at an age around the mid-sixties, happens around the mid-forties, which was a new finding. My question was, if we started another ten-year study today, would we find that the things we associate now with the onset of dementia - things like short term memory loss, loneliness, confusion etc - have become normative cognitive functions, because we've farmed out or outsourced more of our thinking to increasingly sophisticated machines. What happens to the parts of our brains responsible for those activities? I'm not taking a Luddite approach, because I'm in part a social futurist. I don't want to wind back the clock even if we could. But do we perhaps need to pause and reflect a little bit on where technology's taking us and do we at times need to de-gadgetise our lives a little bit, whether it's in business or in the home, just to ensure that our machines stay servant and not master?

Jonathan: Would you say you're overall hopeful or concerned at the possible future implications of the choices we're making today?

Mal: Well I'd say I'm both - and really that's the essence of the title of this book. The word fascinating is an interesting word because the Chinese reportedly used to bestow a curse on their enemies by saying, "May you live in interesting times." There's scant evidence in history that this ever occurred, but it's easy to understand why a statement like that could be seen as a curse. Being born into interesting times isn't necessarily a comfortable thing. If you're fascinated by something you're either intrigued by it or terrified by it. I find that most people have that sort of reaction to some aspects of where we may be headed in the future. I certainly feel that there are areas of concern. I wouldn't say that I'm terrified, but there are areas of concern if we continue down certain routes. There are also areas of great hope though, as we see technology opening up marvellous new opportunities for us - in medical science, for example. Within about 15 years time we may have no nation on earth that has an average life expectancy under 50 years of age; that's a remarkable thing. Ten per cent of the world in about 15 years will be over the age of 60 - the first time that's ever happened, as far as we know. There are great opportunities, but mixed with that - as with all things human - there are some real concerns and challenges.

Jonathan: I've got a nice quote from you here, "We cannot afford to confuse progress with progressivism which pursues change merely for change's sake". How would you measure progress in our society; how would you like to measure that in the future?

Mal: I think progress is measured in terms of what we do with the opportunities that are given to us. It's not really about what new technologies we happen to come up with; it's what we do with those once presented with them. It's about what each generation does with the platform, the heritage that was left to it by an earlier generation. I think that in all of our choices we have to be accountable to something beyond our own particular political ideology or whims of the time. We have to look for what is best for the common good as opposed to what is just expedient at the time. I would say that I am concerned at times that we do get the two mixed up. We think that progressivism is progress. Progressivism just worships change for change's sake, but real progress is in the areas where change is most constructive, not just for me, but for my community, society, city, nation and the global environment. I often say in lectures to civic leaders, the biggest question we can ask is what kind of city do I want to live in 10 years from now? And then, what can I do now to set that in motion? I think that question helps us navigate the difference between genuine progress and this empty progressivism.

Jonathan: The book Fascinating Times: A Social Commentary is out now. How's the book available if people would like to get a copy?

Mal: We've published the book on Amazon Kindle worldwide. This is wonderful technology because it's environmentally friendly and because it allows us to get the book out to a wide readership as quickly as possible. People just have to go to the Amazon Kindle bookstore. They don't have to have a Kindle to read it. You can download these books and read them on just about any digital device. There's free software at Amazon to allow you to do that. We also offer the same software on our website, so people could just go to www.2020plus.net and they can get the free software there.