Rowan Williams on a “broken” society

Rowan Williams tells the Telegraph that he believes our society is “broken,” in an interview that has nothing to do with the Anglican Communion.

“Is our society broken? I think it is,” he says. “We are in a phase of our culture where the fragmentation of society is far more obvious. It’s not just families, it is different ethnic communities and economic groups. We talk about access and equality the whole time, but in practice we all seem to live very segregated lives.”

He goes on: “Outside my front door in Lambeth I see a society so dramatically different from across the river or in Canterbury. There is a level of desolation and loneliness and dysfunctionality which many people have very little concept of. If you sense that the world you live in is absolutely closed, that for all sorts of reasons you are unable to move outside, if nothing gives you aspirations, there is an imprisonment in that, there is a kind of resentment that comes with that and a frustration that can boil over in violence and street crime.”

Inequality is, in his view, just a symptom of a wider moral vacuum. “I don’t think that the huge wealth of some is the cause (of the problems), it is more that society just wants to reward business success and celebrity. If you’re a teenager in Peckham neither of those are easily accessible.”

Indeed, he is horrified by the triviality of modern society. “We are too celebrity obsessed, we have got into a dangerous cycle where fame is an objective in itself.”

His children are 11 and 19. “I sometimes sit with them and watch The X Factor and it is heartbreaking to see people who plead with judges to get through because they just want to be famous so intensely,” he says.

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