In Praise of Instability

In the current referendum, the Yes side’s posters tell us that by agreeing to this new European treaty we are ensuring stability. “Stability” is seen as an obviously “good thing”.

But is it? I would suggest that human society will not only always suffer intense periods of instability, but that such a bout of instability can actually be a good (and in fact unavoidable) thing.

Stability means the survival of the status quo. It means that real reform need not be undertaken. It ensures that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. But what if the status quo is not fit for purpose, what if our ruling class is so abjectly corrupt and incapable of self-reform that it really must be displaced by some kind of major upheaval.

In the higher education system that we are all so familiar with, the response to the current crises has largely been “business as usual”. Maybe this shows commendable sang-froid in the face of a crisis. Maybe it’s the band playing on with a stiff upper lip as the ship sinks. Demanding higher and higher fees to sustain a high-cost educational model in the context of an increasingly impoverished population seems unsustainable to me. Which is something that everyone will admit to, but no-one will act on.

Europe has certainly undergone some major bouts of instability in the past century, and indeed the whole point of the EU was to prevent such terrible events ever occurring again. But if the idea was perpetual stability, then it’s clearly misguided, in fact delusional.

But I would hope that we do have the capacity and wit to manage instability to an extent, to ease the pressure on the tectonic plates moving beneath us before we have a major disaster. Vigorous root and branch reform of all of our institutions is the only way forward.

Certainly thinking we can vote our way to a future of endless stability, is just plain foolish.