Concern with the social and moral crisis in America (and the rest of the world, as Francis Fukuyama claims) has preoccupied many social scientists and social philosophers. I am convinced that a critical component to establishing morality, democracy and prosperity in a country is the strength and vitality of its civil society. The expression, civil society, is not used as much by political scientists today as it was in the previous century, but it is coming into use again. Civil society is a difficult concept, since there is no clear-cut model of a civil society.

Elshtaine, one of the leading persons in the movement to restore civic values in society, has written:

Coming up with a definition of civil society is a difficult task, as Elstain demonstrates,

Some say it has to do with interest groups, or markets. Others say it has to do with philosophies like individualism, privacy and civility. But most theorists have defined civil society, at least in part, as the realm of independent self-organised and self-governing organisations–groups and organisations not founded or controlled by government.

In a civil society, these non-governmental groups help people get heard by their governments. This does not mean that a civil society and its government are in some way in opposition to one another, or incompatible, on the contrary as Andrew Arato and Jean Cohen point out, "a modern civil society... is in a complementary relation to at least some version of the modern state." A state that lacks effective economic and administrative steering functions, structures that permit the intermediation of interests, and a capacity for the universalisation of law can actually impede the emergence of the organisations of civil society. Indeed, the state and the society do not necessarily stand in inverse relationship: the power of each may even rise and fall together. (Fish, p.125) With regard to civil society in particular, it cannot exist at all if there is no one with whom to negotiate. If there is anarchy in the government, as in Russia right now, it is very difficult to have a civil society. You want to exercise pressure, but on whom do exercise pressure? If there are no systems of law and order and regulation, there is no one with whom to talk. The success of both a civil society, or civil community, and a democratic government appear to be interdependent.

Robert Putnam set out to empirically test the proposal that the success of a democratic government depends on the degree to which its surroundings approximate the ideal of civic community, in post-war Italy (p.87).

In post-Mussolini Italy in 1970 the Italian government gave every province from south to north equal resources–such as financial support for school systems, roads, social work–in order to set up civil governments. Putnam with the Institute of Civil Government, and some of his Italian colleagues set out to discover under what conditions these local civil governments would work. They looked at the governments which worked well, and in particular those which appeared to be failing. Questionnaires, with questions like "how happy are you?" and psychological tests were given out. Letters of inquiry were sent to various government departments with questions like, "How do I get my child enrolled in school?" "What do I need to do in order to start a new business?" "Where can I go to get help for my Elderly parents?" With the information gathered, and although some areas never responded, they designed a civility index of the government’s effectiveness and people’s satisfaction. They discovered that the most civilised areas of Italy were the central and northern regions, and that the least civilised were Sicily and other southern Provinces.

Having made this discovery and as a part of their investigation they compared the histories of these regions of Italy. In going back 100 years they found nothing that would explain the differences. It was not until they went back to the Middle Ages that differences were discovered.

Areas, City States–such as Genoa and Tuscany, which had self-rule in the Middle Ages and had resisted the empire building–created laws, mutual help societies, and regulations, including those protecting visitors. These were the areas that flourished when self-government returned; areas that had a history of collaboration, trust and self-government.

On the other hand, those areas that were under Imperial rule for the last 1000 years, where feudalism and corruption ruled, where the Mafia found its origins as representatives of the Emperor, these areas failed. These areas seemed to reinforce the adage that once you have been a slave, you are a slave for life. Putnam says the same thing. In those areas of Southern Italy ruled by the Mafia, the government has been completely unable to wipe them out. All their efforts failed; first, because the citizens did not trust anybody–not each other, and not the government. Second, there was the pervasive attitude that laws were meant to be broken. And third, they believed that if one acted as if in an honest functioning government one was a fool and everybody would take advantage of you.

The moral attitude in Southern Italy is such that only one’s own family is exempt from one’s hatred, cheating and robbing. Everyone else is a legitimate victim and should be exploited, including some relatives. Civic values of honesty, loyalty, co-operation, trust and caring are very narrowly limited only to the immediate family. This is an example of one of the narrowest forms of collectivist life called familism. ¹

With regard to the rule of law, citizens in the more civic regions of Italy expressed greater social trust and greater confidence in the law-abidingness of their fellow citizens than did citizens in the least civic regions. Conversely, those in the less civic regions were much more likely to insist that authorities should impose greater law-and-order on their communities. However, the absence of trust and civic responsibility makes it difficult for the government to carry out its task and impose law and order.

From the results of the investigation of Italian society Robert Putnam concludes, "Happiness is living in a civil community." What might this civic community mean in practical terms?

Citizenship in the civic community entails equal rights and obligations for all. Such a community is bound together by horizontal relations of reciprocity and co-operation, not by vertical relations of authority and dependency (p.88). Today's Russia is an extreme example of absence of this rule. The division of labour and political leadership are unavoidable in a contemporary civic community, but leaders must be, and must conceive themselves to be responsible to their fellow citizens "Both absolute power and the absence of power can be corrupting, for both instil a sense of irresponsibility" (p.88).

Furthermore, Putnam states in terms of civic responsibility,

Recent research evidence and observations in countries, such as Italy and Russia, support this vision. The least civic regions in Italy are the most subject to the ancient plague of political corruption. They are the home of the Mafia and its regional variants (Putnam, p. 111). In Russia–where the rule of law essentially does not exist and corruption involves collaboration between police, the Mafia and all levels of government–distrust and disregard for law is universal, the economy has collapsed and the whole system is paralysed.

It is possible to be in full agreement with Putnam about the conditions that are likely to produce effective liberal-democratic government and a happy and prosperous citizenry. But as Schmitter pointed out, democracy will not necessarily develop and many new states are not even moving toward developing a genuine democracy.

In terms of creating a renewed sense of civic mindedness, there appear to be two main schools of political thought (p. 86-87):

(1)The liberals–Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and their liberal successors–who stressed individualism and individual rights. They maintained that with a certain modicum of control and good will things will work out. The market will take care of itself. Individualism will eventually produce great things. But in case it does not, legal instruments, like the constitution, make democracy safe for and from the not-so-virtuous.

The US Constitution is not based on the belief that people are virtuous, but on the contrary that they may not be. It is better to have checks and balances on anything they do.

(2) The Republican school of civic humanists, who emphasized community and the obligations of citizenship. Their thinking was based on Machiavelli and his contemporaries, who concluded that whether free institutions failed or succeeded depended on the character of the citizens, or their civic virtue. The new republican theorists have suggested a principle upon which a theory of effective democratic government could be built:

There are some ideas that offer hope for turning around the decline of civic- mindedness, moral values and the liberal-democratic ideals.

Before I begin, there is one basic question which has been much debated–the origins of morality. Indeed, not much is known about the origins of morality. The Czech president Vaclav Havel in his recent address to the members of Canadian Parliament in Ottawa (April 1999) said that there is a fundamental basis from which the same basic moral values re-emerge throughout human history. This basis lies outside the human organism and may come from God.

On the other hand, Francis Fukuyama says in his forthcoming book that the tendency to recreate social order and moral values is probably founded in the genes of human beings. Social order, once disrupted, tends to get remade, and he says that there are many indications that this is happening today. We can expect a new social order for a simple reason: human beings are by nature social creatures, whose most basic drives and instincts lead them to create moral rules that bind them together into communities. They are also by nature rational (I have my doubts), and their rationality allows them too spontaneously create ways of cooperating with one another. Religion, though often helpful in this process (Fukuyama is sceptical about religion), is not the sine qua non of social order as many conservatives believe. ² Nor is a strong and expansive state necessary for social order as many on the left argue. ³ Man's natural condition is not the war of "every man against every man" envisioned by Thomas Hobbes, rather a "civil society made orderly by the presence of a host of moral rules." (p.56) Civil society is the normal state of human beings.

While looking at Russian history, I realised that Finnougaric people inhabited the northern part of Russia before 900 CE. Many names are still Finnougaric. While some had slaves, they were mostly hunter-gatherers living in communities. Places like Novogorod and Kiev, ⁴(which are supposed to have been ruled by Scandinavians–questionable, though some Russian rulers had Scandinavian names) elected their rulers, who would then do the will of the people.

This was the case until the Mongol invasion of 1200 CE and 200 years of Mongol rule. The Mongols burned and destroyed most of the northern cities. Nogovorod escaped due to the death of the Mongol ruler.

During the Mongol occupation, Muscovite princes were put in charge of taking taxes, as was the Orthodox Church, which the Mongols liked because it kept law and order in the country. As a result they amassed great power.

Then in 1470 CE the Mongols were removed and the Russian Czars came to power, keeping the Mongol rule. Like Italy, there was a lot of self-rule and equality in the early centuries of Russian history; tyranny came later. ⁵

Fukuyama gives two reasons why a culture of unbridled individualism will not result in social well-being and progress:

(1) moral values and social rules have practical value. Social scientists are referring to them as "social capital." Honesty, reciprocity and the keeping of commitments enable groups to achieve their goals. … adhering to agreements are more important for wealth than other material resources. It is the primary source of wealth (Putnam). They have a dollar value–they generate wealth (Fukuyama). (This is, of course, exactly the argument made by Putnam).

(2) Freedom to enter and to leave relationships (including marriages), and to interact only with whom we choose and when we choose, leaves people feeling lonely and disoriented. When they no longer accept traditional ties to spouses, families, neighborhoods, workplaces and churches, life becomes empty, isolated and lonely, lacking predictability and permanence, their relationships lack depth and permanence. They will experience the lack of a sense of community.

These are not new arguments. The first I have already elaborated upon at length in my discussion of Putnam's study of civil government in Italy. The second has been well documented by developments in the United States since 1950s.

Ferdinand Tönnies, in his book Gemeinschaft und Gesellshaft ⁶distinguished between the more personal, face-to-face associations that characterised the pre-industrial village societies, and the less personal, contractual and business-like organisations of the modern world. As Kurt Back describes in his book Beyond Words, people a decade or two after the Second World War enjoyed prosperity and full employment, but felt that something was missing from their lives–a sense of community and the feeling of belonging. In 1947, Kurt Lewin, a psychologist who had escaped from Hitler's Germany, started a new trend; he studied how people related and interacted in small groups.

During the war he was experimenting with new methods of influencing people. At the time the American Government wanted to encourage people to eat cheaper (and more healthy) cuts of meat, like liver and kidneys, they found that lecturing did not work. However, when people were invited to discuss matters, and agree on something, they were also more likely to carry out the decision. This began group work and the study of group dynamics.

Staff discussions, which included honest feedback, at National Training Labs turned into a teaching method.

By the 1960s millions were signing up for sensitivity training groups. The participants were mostly well-off yet were missing something. Life was boring. After 2 days of intense group activity, everyone loved everybody. ⁷ Unfortunately, they also discovered that after they left these groups, and returned home, where nothing had changed, that which was learned collapsed. ⁸

Today groups are designed for specific tasks. There are support groups for parents with children with cancer, and family mental health, for example. We still find that these groups are of enormous influence, why? They foster a sense of community. You discover that you are not alone, you are a member of a family. There is an enormous desire for community, of being a part of something larger and this group partially satisfies that desire. Fukuyama is right. People are feeling isolated, they don’t have this sense of belonging.

Groups are increasing as radius of trust is decaying. In previous decades people were part of large groups, large unions, large churches. Now they join small groups. They do not trust anything large. Today’s groups are small and specific. You can also be a member of many groups. You can leave the groups, turn on / turn off the community, go home, and be alone again.

Although Lewin died at the beginning of these new experiments, these set in motion an enormous interest in and practical application of all kinds of groups, which are now a familiar part of society. It is estimated that about two million people are actively participating in some form of group work or experience.

As mentioned earlier, this search for a "psychological sense of community" exploded in early sixties with the massive spread of sensitivity groups all over North America, which was at about the same time as the 'hippie' movement. Though it was a rebellion against social conformity and sought solutions by working together, the formulation of new ethical principles by which one ought to live was not particularly conspicuous in that era. In a sense people were practising individualism–I do what pleases me, you do what pleases you, too, okay?

A longing for community continues in today's society. One way in which it expresses itself is in joining face-to-face groups. However, these groups tend to be small and very often organised around a specific purpose or task. A person may be member of many groups, without having any sense of belonging to the larger community. Fukuyama says:

This brings me to one of my main points; I believe that three basic human needs are essential to the well being on a community and its members. They are trust, caring and hope.

Assuming that a new morality can be recreated, where does it come from? What is the motivation? I can say that everybody probably feels that it would be so nice if one could believe whole-heartedly in something, like some people believe in God. Others are patriots, still others love this, love that. It would be nice to believe in something, to trust something, to trust people. How marvelous it would be! Trust is a key to it.

Indeed, the first thing I ran into after reading Putnam’s work was how trust was absolutely the word, the key concept, on which community depended. Without trust it was a free-for-all.

After a few years I discovered the idea of caring. Caritas, a certain kind of love, a love of neighbour. After 50 years of communist rule there is lack of caring in Estonia, because the state took care of everything. People did not have voluntary organisations to help each other.

And finally I understood the importance of hope to society.

"Trust is a necessary condition for both civil society and democracy," says Richard Rose, professor and director of the Centre for the Study of Public Policy in England. The people, after all, do not rule directly, but must place their faith in representative institutions that bear responsibility for aggregating the interests and preferences of millions of individuals. Some representatives, such as elected members of parliament or congress, are officials of the state. Others, such as trade unions, business associations, churches, and universities, belong to civil society and are relatively independent of the state. Political parties are uniquely important to the functioning of democracy, furnishing two-way channels of communication between the mass of individuals and the institutions of government.

As both Putnam and Fukuyama ⁹have argued, one of the social virtues, which make human communities thriving and prosperous, is trust. Half a century of communist rule has left a pervasive legacy of distrust in countries under its influence. While communist societies boasted many institutions–trade unions, writers' guilds, and the like–these bodies were merely puppets of the party-state. Individuals were compelled to join communist organisations and to make a public show of loyalty to the party and its aims. The result of this pervasive intrusion into every corner of society was massive popular distrust of institutions that repressed rather than expressed people's real views. Now people in post-communist regimes who want democracy find that their societies lack a key ingredient: trustworthy institutions capable of mediating between individuals and the state. ¹⁰

The effect of soviet rule on its citizens was devastating. There was pervasive distrust toward everyone else, because the secret service had spies and informers in every office, industrial plant, school or other institution. Most people were at one time or another approached by the secret police and asked to report on fellow workers or superiors. To save themselves from arrest and execution during Stalin's purges many people made false accusations about others.

During the political campaigns that preceded the first elections in Russia in the Spring of 1989, which were only partially democratic, the opposition to the communists was unable to organise a political party, to select official leaders or to delegate powers to others. They knew that they were being infiltrated by the KGB and did not know who to trust; who was a genuine democrat, or who was a secret police agent or informer.

One other trait, which has made public life in Russia difficult, is vicious envy. The mayor of Leningrad, Sobchak, told the American writer Hedrick Smith:

During perestroika Gorbachev warned that the culture of envy among Russians would snuff out any spark of initiative and daring and cripple hopes of real economic progress. ¹¹

Public opinion polls in the United States and Western Europe also find a significant degree of distrust in institutions of government. Yet because these societies are so well supplied with institutions competing for people's trust, the vast majority of citizens can find some institutions in which they place their confidence, just as they may distrust others. Relatively few individuals in the West are wholly alienated in the sense of believing themselves represented by no organisation whatsoever (p.19).

Westerners who have entered the post-soviet states in Eastern Europe, have found the dishonesty and the failure of local officials to live up to agreements shocking. A verbal promise means absolutely nothing; deception, stealing and pilfering is rampart everywhere. The former communist officials, who stayed in power during the transitional period, used their power and connections to transfer into their ownership, under the guise of some phoney 'stock company,' much of former government property and the most lucrative new business ventures. ¹³ It is estimated that former communist bosses in collaboration with the KGB and the Russian Mafia own two thirds of all ‘privatised’ businesses. New Russian millionaires and billionaires have been living in obscene luxury, while the majority of the population, especially pensioners, lives in poverty. The Russian population, with some justification, trusts no one and believes that no one cares. How long this situation can continue before it explodes, nobody knows.

Taking care of one another and doing favours for other people is a necessary part of any community. Without it human beings could not have survived in the past and would not survive today. As I have commented earlier, care for one's fellow human beings in our communities is diminishing and the weak, the old, those under-privileged or in poor health are suffering the consequences. For whom one cares, how wide or narrow the circle–who one includes in such relationships– and the reasons for such behaviour, deserves study. I am making the assertion that caring may be as important a variable in the survival and flourishing of nations and countries as trust.

It is a known fact that collectivist and individualist societies differ greatly in the attitudes and behaviors of an individual toward others. Within these major categories, there are still major differences between cultures. ¹⁴ Harry Triandis, one of the foremost researchers in this area, says that collectivists are concerned about the results of their actions on others, share material and nonmaterial resources with group members, are concerned about how they present themselves to others and believe that the outcomes of their actions for themselves and their in group are interconnected. They feel involved in and share in the lives of in-group members.

An ingroup is a group whose norms, goals, and values shape the behaviour of its members. Both actual groups (such as family) and reference groups (such as a social group one aspires to belong to) can be in-groups for a particular individual. The size of in-groups is a hundred or less. Collectivism is often internalised to such an extent that members act in the way the in-group norms prescribe, without asking: "What is in it for me?" In other words, their response is automatic, not calculated.

A very narrow form of a collective is familism. In familism, as in southern Italy, only the family is important (Triandis, pp. 58-59). In many Arab countries, collectivism is very strong on the religious dimension, somewhat strong on the political and social dimension but non-existent in the economic and scientific dimension. In North America, individualism is characterised by emotional detachment from in-groups and relatively weak family ties (p. 55). Such individualist societies are found mostly in North America, Western Europe, and especially Scandinavia and Australia. They are characterised by less emphasis on the in-group / out-group dichotomy; North Americans tend to treat broad categories of people according to the same principles, while in a collectivist society helpful behaviour toward in-group members is expected and toward out-goup members it is actually met with disapproval.

It is obvious that limiting one's care, trust, honest behaviour and loyalty to a small radius of people of one's own does not hold out much hope for mankind. Therefore, it is possible that the longing for community does not build larger systems that live in peace and co-operation with one another. We see this in the familiar phenomenon of people who have become comfortable with one another excluding newcomers from their circle.

Hope is an important motivator of human progress and absolutely essential for survival. Ezra Stotland ¹⁵reported that inmates of German and Japanese concentration camps who felt that there was a purpose in their life, survived, while others often died without any apparent physical cause. They had simply given up. On the other hand there were those like Viktor Frankl, who wanted to survive in order to teach people what he had learned while being in a concentration camp. Or those like the American women in Japanese camps, who had little children to look after; they were much more likely to survive than those who did not have a purpose.

Hope and purpose are closely related. People can put up with a sorts of hardships make all sorts of sacrifices, but there needs to be a reason for hope, and a likelihood of achieving it. One has to know how to get it.

C. R. Snyder ¹⁶has proposed that hope requires three conditions: (1) a goal, or knowing what outcome you desire, (2) willpower, or a reservoir of determination and commitment that helps you to move towards the desired outcome, and (3) 'waypower,' the mental capacity for planful thought, to find one or more effective ways to reach your goal. There is an old saying: "Where these is a will, there is a way." It is of little use if you know what you must do, but lack the willpower to put in the effort. Similarly, a strong drive to reach a certain goal does not get us very far if we have no idea how to get there. And finally it is obvious that if we do not have a clear idea what it is, we cannot find it.

In the world today, many people have given up hope. One of the ominous signs in today's Russia is that masses seem to have lost any faith in their government. Many are longing for the return of the "good old days" of Brezhnev–even Stalin! Recent opinion surveys in Estonia also show a similar marked drop in public confidence.

In the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he concludes his discussion of spiritual gifts with these words,

Fides, spes et caritas in Latin. Faith, not in the sense of God, but in the sense of trustworthiness, reliability, fidelity; caritas, not sexual love, but godly love (Greek: Agape); and hope.

It is nice to know that we all are idealistic; it is nice to know that we all basically crave the moral virtues; of faith, of hope for the future. What motivates us to put in the effort? It doesn’t come by itself. It doesn’t just happen if you wait long enough. My friends in Estonia, especially the ex-communists, who are now not too communistic, but not too much of anything else either, say, "Just wait, just wait, it will get better." I invented a term to describe this attitude, the Santa Clause Principle–if you wait long enough Santa Clause will bring it. Don’t do anything; you don’t have to do anything it will get better by itself. Well, it doesn’t. Nothing gets better by itself. Except by pure chance, and that’s very dubious. It’s good to have ideas, it’s good to want to believe in something, but what makes people want to do it, to go into the trouble it takes? What makes people want to sacrifice, rather than use their money to build a big electric fence, guard posts, and towers to protect them from the dark hordes out there. What makes you sacrifice and go out there to convert the pagan–the former communists, or whatever–to what you believe in. I think there has to be something, and I believe the three elements are the keys: trust, hope and caring. If you don’t trust anybody and you don’t believe that trust is even justified in today’s world, then you won’t do a thing, except protect yourself. Each lives for himself only.

If you do not care–if you do not have caritas–if you don’t care about those who don’t have it so well as you. If you do not care about those who do not even have decent conditions for living. Then not much will happen. There is a decline of caring. Governments seem to care less and less if people with small children, no husbands, and no jobs have a place to live or decent food on the table. In fact they seem to blame them for their misfortune: "Well they deserve it." "They’re lazy" or "Welfare is responsible for what they are. Take welfare away and they will go back to work." In fact, it turns out many of them cannot go back to work. Some of them would.

There isn’t very much trust. But there is a lot more here, than there is behind the iron curtain in the former soviet states.

And hope. These elements may be the moving forces in searching out some kind of a new ethical system–whatever that might be.