Sublime

Those who think that liberalism is largely about unrestrained private activity and those who believe liberalism is about the reasonable development of individuals in a mutually supporting and project-sharing society do not have too much in common.

explored the conditions for individual development and growth, sustained by networks of mutual assistance and interdependence.

Instead of religious authoritarianism, they practised an open-ended curiosity, and most of them extolled the ideals of freedom and equality.

the mental inertia that John Stuart Mill called the ‘deep slumber of a decided opinion’.

Neoliberalism—a product mainly of the second half of the 20th century—emphasizes the beneficial consequences of competitive markets and personal advancement far more than the general nourishing of human well-being.

Stiglitz employs Isaiah Berlin’s positive and negative freedoms, and later threads the needle: neoliberalism believes only in ‘freedom to do’, and disparages the need of government to constrain corporations and the wealthy for the good of the rest:

‘exploratory social science’.

Ideologies, as we shall see, map the political and social worlds for us. We simply cannot do without them because we cannot act without making sense of the worlds we inhabit.

Obviously Reich’s influence went way beyond just me. Alongside other authors such as Anthony Giddens[411] and Jeremy Rifkin[412], he was instrumental in crafting the message of a new generation of progressive leaders that the era of the steady, lifelong job was over. In a more global and unstable world, lifelong education was the new key to providi