What is social conscience, and why is it relevant?
Conscience can be described as internalised values: a person’s intuitive ‘moral compass.’
While rational, philosophical, or religious arguments are often used as justifications,
conscience itself is primarily emotional: we associate feelings of pleasure and pride with right
action, and feelings of guilt and shame with wrong action. These emotions help to motivate
choices and behaviour, playing an important role in the maintenance and transformation of
social norms. In many ways, the norms of society are the sum of our collective values and
priorities – as society shapes us, we shape society.
In addition to a sense of right and wrong for personal action, individuals possess a sense of
right and wrong for collective action – what might be called social conscience. Individual
conscience compels us to act morally in our daily lives, avoiding or helping to relieve the
immediate suffering of others, whereas social conscience compels us to insist on moral action
from the wider institutions of society and to seek the transformation of social structures that
cause suffering. While individual conscience is reflected in norms of personal interaction,
social conscience is reflected in the ways we organise ourselves more broadly.
Across the political spectrum, most people experience a gap between the kind of world they
see and the kind they want. On a personal level, social conscience is what bridges that gap. If
we can understand our own social conscience, we can make more conscious choices to help
shape society according to our values. If we can understand the social conscience of others,
we can find common values and goals among seemingly diverse groups and build movements
for change. Understanding social conscience, whether our own or others’, helps to identify
assumptions, values, and visions, making it an important element of sustainability literacy,
and a useful tool for effective social and ecological transformation.
To give an example, homelessness is an issue of both social and environmental sustainability
- while homeless people contribute least to pollution and environmental destruction, they are
the first to suffer from them. Homelessness may or may not be on the moral ‘radar’ of
someone who is not experiencing it first-hand; it may be considered a normal part of city life
– a non-issue, morally speaking. If considered an issue, a person becoming homeless might be
seen as the result of unlucky coincidence, personal failure, punishment for sins, or particular
social forces. These four examples are not mutually exclusive, but each fits into a particular
kind of worldview dominated by random chance, individual choice, divine will, or complex
social systems, respectively, and would elicit a particular kind of response – charity, tough
love, evangelism, or social change. Each person’s worldview influences the way they treat
new information or experiences, but information itself only sometimes has an impact on
worldview. Raising consciousness of an issue, while important, is only one element of
motivating action to transform it.
