Amoral to the story

Having grasped the nettle of morality as an integral part of sustainable development (see http://pictograph.blogspot.com/2010/01/want-sustainability-need-more.html), I find that it raises as many questions as it answers. How, for example, does a community undergoing sustainable development deal with the amoral? Should we impose our own moral code? Are some morals a pre-requisite for sustainable development?

A goal of a sustainable society does not undermine the thinking of John Stewart Mill and his successors. If anything, attempts to legislate for sexuality and hedonism in the last two decades have shown that Mill was right: it is simply wrong to restrict freedoms on a moral basis.

That said, there are large parts of our society where it appears that morality has broken down. Individuals with nothing left to lose, taking and destroying without any apparent qualms. Vandalism, theft, intimidation, rape, assault and murder seem to be less the result of desperation and more the effect of devaluation.

To say these things is a hair's breadth from the Daily Mail view of sink estates filled with feral children, their feckless teenage single mothers and drug-fuelled gangster fathers. An extreme characterisation with a sliver of truth behind it.

All this obsession with sustainability, on the other hand, is overwhelmingly middle-class. There are great examples of green activism in the inner cities, but most activists and agitators come from more comfortable backgrounds, and apply their thinking to the comfortable communities that they already inhabit.

In my own mind, the hypothetical community-in-sustainable-development looks more like a village than a council estate. I think the ideas can apply to any self-identifying community, but it must be easier for places with more room for crops and with people with a broader education.
Development, in other words, isn't going to happen uniformly. In Hackney, where I live now, it is Stoke Newington and Dalston that have most of the community activity, and Stoke Newington that has an active Transition Town group. But these things can't happen in isolation because a sustainable community can't survive when its neighbours are not sympathetic.

A sustainable community should act as an attractive model for others, whether the original ideas were appealing or not. Who wouldn't want to live in a more peaceable place with lots going on? And similarly, a sustainable community should be one that shares with its neighbours, helping those in need.

This is one concept that works at any scale. Certainly, the North has become wealthy partly by exploiting the South and that imbalance cannot last for ever. I don't believe there is a significant risk of the UK being overrun by immigrants for the UK, but the wealth divide we have created does lead to increased migration. Injustice is not sustainable.

Many things create a community, including history, natural and artificial boundaries, transport hubs and routes, common cultures, and market centres. The result, in Hackney as in many other places, is that some communities thrive and dominate as Stoke Newington is doing now, while others like Homerton wither and have little to identify themselves.

This ecology of communities means that some will be subsumed into others although the physical geography remains the same, and some places will find a new identity if not a new name and follow the lead of more successful neighbours. If there is successful and meaningful sustainable development in one area, its development will affect surrounding areas, absorbing some and influencing others.
The moral element of sustainable development should be as contagious as the ideas behind and results of the development itself. If anything, the principled and generous behaviour of a more sustainable community should be more infectious than simply being seen to have a better life.

This entire argument presupposes that there is a moral vacuum, when the reality is more one of moral relativism. Spend any time in a poor community and you will find that most people have a strong moral code: respect for ones parents and a general sense of fairness are particularly important. Many sanctify the home. Many will not tolerate discourteous or profane language. Most young people form strong bonds with their peers and demonstrate great moral strength in preserving those bonds.

Aside from the fact that everyone is different, it is simply wrong to say that amorality is rife because some people do not share all your values. Levels of crime are higher in poorer neighbourhoods but that does not mean that there is no humanity for sustainable development to build upon.