The Big Society

I believe British PM Cameron’s effort The Big Society has the right intention, at least it is a step that needed to be taken. To some, it came across as a spin, something to justify all the cuts the government had to make for public services, but change had to start from somewhere, and if it took the archaic previous system to implode for it to start, then so be it. I see elements of 3rd Wave in The Big Society.

I am hopeful for Britain. It is after all the birthplace of Magna Carta which was a critical document that balanced the power of the “center” against the “periphery”, and is claimed to be the basis of the Western civilization [1]. Being no fan of Roman Empire and its centralization, this document is a favorite of mine indeed.. Some could see British monarchs akin to Roman Emperors, marrying religion and the state, but the two approaches to governance are very different. First of all the official religion in Britain is not Roman Catholicism, second, as we said before Magna Carta acts as a decentralizing force in the country, and was in fact a major influence on the US Constitution (another favorite document of mine).

As the birthplace of industrialization (2dn wave), obviously centralization, specialization, synchronization, etc. would take effect in the British society, but maybe, being the birthplace to all these, this island country will feel more empowered, more authentic to be the first country on Earth to shed itself of the institutions of a by-gone era. Brits never fell behind on computer tech either, from Alan Turing who provided much of computing’s theoretical foundation to Clive Sinclair who developed a PC named Spectrum, they always had people who were leaders in their own areas of computer tech.

So hopefully TBS will provide some new insights into 21st century governance. Because, let’s be frank, our current “methods” are simply not working.

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[1] As famously claimed by Samuel Huntington, that Western world is based on Magna Carta, not on Big Mac.

[2] Brits also fought a bitter war against Roman colonization, not completely overrun like the French people – another plus in my book.