From Pooling to Differentiation

If I were constructing a Utopia, which God forbid, I should describe a higher civilisation in which every human being had a hundred names; in which each had a particular name known only to a particular friend; in which there were more and not less ceremonies differentiating the various kinds of love and friendship and in which the suitor had to go through ten names before he got to Glory. That would be a Utopia really worth constructing; for it would be a real question of construction. Most of the Utopias represent only a dull sort of destruction; the sort of destruction we call simplification. It would really be something like fun to invent a ritual; but since the neglect of religion, no man has really had the courage to invent a ritual. It would be a great lark to draw up a code of law, decorating Tom, Dick and Harry with their Seven Secret Names. But these things will not come until the modern world has realised that its cure lies in distribution and even in differentiation; and not in mixing up everything together in one great mess. Comradeship has become a sort of Combine; bearing the same relation to true friendship that a Trust has to a true trade. Nobody seems to have any notion of improving anything except by pouring it into something else; as if a man were to pour the tea into the coffee or the sherry into the port. The one idea in all human things, from friendship to finance, is to pool everything. It is a very stagnant pool.

G K Chesterton from On Calling Names

Chesterton is the great advocate for the road to social justice less travelled. He believed that the path of the Fabians, the communists and the social democrats towards social justice was the same path taken by the great capitalists: to destroy diversity and so to achieve a greater centralisation of power and control in their own hands.

One hundred years later Chesterton's path remains untravelled. But could we not rethink social justice? Could we seek fairness, while still respecting tradition, complexity and diversity? Could we build, without destroying?

People with learning difficulties have already shown us the way. People who have been excluded, victimised and disempowered, do not want revenge or some meaningless token of 'equality'. They want to be included, to live in freedom, to be safe and to make their own contribution, in their own way. People want citizenship and world that enables them to find their own honoured place within it.