Thinking again

A podcast reminded me about John Rawls, a political philosopher who described a thought experiment in which he imagined a group of people sitting down to agree on the design of the society in which they would like to live. Crucially, his 'experiment' stipulated that these people would not know anything about themselves or the lives they might lead in the new order: their gender, race, wealth, intelligence, physical abilities, medical problems, family situation. He named this lack of self-knowledge the 'Veil of Ignorance'. 

His purpose, of course, was to highlight the way in which our actual society rewards or penalises these personal qualities, that are matters not of personal merit, but pure chance. This enabled him to compare our actual society with the one that he thought people, under the constraint of the veil of ignorance, would design. The differences, he would argue, highlight the prejudices, self-interest and lack of empathy that lead to the sub-optimal world we actually live in 

A broadcaster called Iain Dale, a former Conservative candidate and advisor to Conservative ministers, has recently had a series of unlucky accidents that have restricted his mobility. Travelling around Britain by train, he has been appreciative of the way that the help of platform staff and train guards has enabled him to complete his journeys. He has written an article admitting that he was wrong in his previous roles to argue that these people are unnecessary and make the railways inefficient; he says that he is sorry that he took that position. I suppose he has had his own personal veil of ignorance removed

The awesome Rose Ayling-Ellis has given an interview to publicise a BBC documentary she is fronting about the way out society restricts the lives of disabled people. She says that she embraces the label 'disabled, “But that doesn’t mean I am an able person who is ‘dis’, it means I’m disabled because the world disables me. Thinking like this can make a huge difference.” I think she's thinking like a political philosopher

We once more visited our favourite walled garden - the one that is only open one day a month in summer, because the rest of the time it is a sanctuary in which people who are recovering their mental health can engage in meaningful, purposeful occupations in the garden and associated land-based crafts. We speak of 'mental illness', and certainly there are some people who have organic medical disorders, just as others might have diabetes or high blood pressure. But I think some of what we call 'mental illness' is a perfectly rational and foreseeable reaction of healthy minds to the world some people are forced to live in - like Rose, it is the world that disables such people

Quotes from the users of the garden about their experience there were displayed on little blackboards hung among the plants. One said, "There was no wrong or right way to be. It was OK for me to be withdrawn, angry or upset - I wasn't judged". Words from a better designed world, perhaps

The picture is giant fennel - the plant is over two metres high. The bee is just for scale, of course