Free Thinking Essay: Does Trusting People Need a Leap of Faith?

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2018

⏱️ 19 minutes

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Summary

Tom Simpson looks at a study of suspicion in a 1950s Italian village and the lessons it has for community relations and social tribes now. Edward Banfield's book, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, depicts a village where everyone is out for themselves. New Generation Thinker Tom Simpson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He argues that we are losing the habits of trust that have made our prosperity possible. Unless we learn how to reinvigorate our cultures of trust, we ourselves have a future that is backwards.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
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0:32.4	This is the BBC.
0:37.4	I enjoy books with rude titles.
0:41.0	One such is the moral basis of a backward society, written by Edward Banfield, who is
0:47.8	largely forgotten to history and who didn't think that the title was rude.
0:52.6	He was an American anthropologist who spent nine months living in a rural village in southern Italy in 1955.
1:00.0	Banfield's question was why the village was backward. The answer he gave turned on trust.
1:10.0	Because of the village's moral code, they were unable to trust
1:14.0	each other. As a result, they were poor. But the villagers' experience isn't just a chastening
1:21.5	moral parable for the past. It contains a warning for us, as the habits of heart that have sustained patterns of trust
1:31.3	for us are under threat. Bannfield gave the fictitious name of Montegrano to the village where he
1:38.3	lived. Montegroano posed a puzzle. While the farmland wasn't exactly rich, it was well capable of supporting a decent
1:46.6	life for the three and a half thousand people in the area. But the people who lived there were
1:51.8	desperately poor. They knew what was needed to improve their lot, better schooling, better roads and so on.
1:58.8	But they seemed unable to work together to improve things.
2:03.6	Why was this? What accounted for the political incapacity of the village?
2:10.6	According to Banfield, Montegrenese society was backward because of its moral basis.
2:15.6	And by that, he meant the moral code they lived by,
2:19.3	the ideas of what appropriate behaviour looks like.
2:23.1	It was not the only impediment to the village, but it was central.
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