According to the Future Foundation, the trends forecaster that coined the term, Britons are "increasingly curbing our enthusiasm for profligate consumption, and health and environment-threatening behaviours." Sure, I'm all eyes as I continue reading down the article. "Gone is the guilt-free pleasure-seeker, to be replaced by the model well-meaning citizen, the New Puritan - a tag interchangeable with neo-Cromwellian, if you really want to seal its 17th century origins - who thinks through the consequences of activities previously thought of as pleasurable and invariably elects to live without them."
Any sensible person in this day and age would probably agree with the principles of this movement, if one can call it such. In many ways my riling against the me-generation and the society of instant gratification as symbolised by the United States has been distilled in purer form in this new movement. I personally subscribe to it. It is, however, important to note that this code of conduct does not stop at being personal or private decisions; they would only be effective, the Future Foundation explains, if the curbs are also "extended to other people's behaviour, and wherever possible enshrined by legislation - for New Puritans do not fear the nanny state". Whoa - move aside Singapore, the anti-consumerist Commonwealth is here! It's like saying, it's no longer enough to talk about faith as internal; if we truly believe, we should now all go out and fulfill an Evangelical type of global commission here.
There are certainly elements of this movement that I heartily approve of, in particular the attack on the aptly described "menace" of the Sports Utility Vehicle.
"Part of the New Puritan brief is to penalise those who make poor choices on behalf of the rest of society - in this case the gas-guzzling, emissions-generating Montessori wagons that choke our town centres." The article goes on to describe a well-organised and -supported band of SUV vigilantes in Paris, a sort of earthbound Yamakasi against the Cheyennes, X5s and Explorers of the banlieus. Les Dégonflés (The Deflated), as they are called, quietly run round in the middle of the night deflating the tyres of SUVs and splattering them with mud. Why, this is a tactic straight out of my own book. Something I secretly wanted to do myself but just never had the gumption to. (In Britain, the equivalent is called the Alliance Against Urban 4x4s, which takes a less violent tactic using fake fixed penalty notices.) If they had such a band in Moscow, 40 SUVs a week would probably not be enough. What are the specific articles of faith of the NP or neo-Cromwellian? Sure, the intensity varies but I suppose the basics cover the following: no binge drinking, smoking, buying big brands, flying on cheap flights, eating junk food, sleeping with multiple partners, wasting money on designer clothes, growing beyond one's optimum weight, subscribing to celebrity magazines, driving a flash car, or living to watch television. Although I safely clear the bar on at least half this list, it would be a painful cut to adhere to the rest of it. Lisa Siegle says the list is "likely to grow longer", with 80 per cent of people agreeing that alcohol should not be allowed at work at all; 25 per cent saying snack products should not be offered at business meetings; more than a third agreeing that we should think twice before giving sweets and chocolates as gifts to family and friends, and a further 25 per cent thinking that 'the government should start a campaign to discourage people from drinking alcohol on their own at home' (a figure that rises to 41 per cent in Scotland).
Argh. In a way we've been living for far too long on a post-modernist Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the Pleasure Principle served as the main creed. The article continues:
These are sobering thoughts for anyone connected to the pleasure market. But if you possess a shred of New Puritanical sensibility you're likely to think that the big brands - the junk-food peddlers, alcohol promoters, cigarette pushers and even the supermarkets - had it coming. That for too long these kinds of businesses reaped vast profits while riding roughshod over community spirit, public health and morality. The lack of a liberal backlash against increased policing of previously uncontroversial pleasures is significant, too. And it's a trade-off the New Puritans are clearly willing to make: extra nannying for extra peace of mind.
This is actually the sign of a maturing civil society, according to Dr Peter Whybrow, director of UCLA's Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behaviour, and author of American Mania: When More is not Enough, which charts what happens to society when we are pushed to the limits of our physical and mental tolerance.
'Civilisation offers no gifts to liberty,' he quotes from Sigmund Freud's Thirties essay, Civilisation and Its Discontents. Whybrow suggests that we use America as a cautionary tale, 'an indication of what happens when citizens turn into consumers, solely driven by immediate reward, and when consumerist impulses become substitutes for communities.'
...
So, with a few grand gestures and some high-profile converts New Puritanism offers a powerful escape route from our impulsive, reward-driven lifestyles. It might just have the potential to stave off the horrors promised by an out-of-control consumerist culture in which, according to agrarian essayist Wendell Berry, 'The histories of all products will be lost. The degradation of products and places, producers and consumers is inevitable.'
Consider the New Puritan philosophy from this point of view and it can look like a blueprint for a rather noble kind of empowerment. Our New Puritans become less like neurotic killjoys and more like early adopters, with an enhanced ability to recognise the pitfalls of contemporary life. A battle is shaping up between the New Puritans and the old guard libertarians, but at the moment it's a vastly uneven one. The New Puritans might be a trend, but it's still a small one, swimming against a seemingly inexorable consumerist river.
But New Puritans shouldn't be deterred. As Oliver Cromwell, their ancestral spiritual leader, put it: 'A few honest men [and let's add in women for contemporary relevance] are better than numbers.
I think I'd have to re-examine my own lifestyle to find out what changes I would have to make. At the moment it seems I'm only paying lip-service and not really making the hard decisions. In fact after taking the diagnostic quiz to find out my degree of Puritanism, as it were, I found out I came out middling on most choices. Not impressive at all. Wouldn't make it as a Yamakasi SUV tyre-buster. The verdict, in pastel colours, came out this way: "There is no doubt that you mean well and are flirting with the temperate outlook, but you are still too frightened of being thought of as extreme. In your heart of hearts you know that we eat too much refined sugar, possess too many appliances and watch too much bad TV, but you cannot bear to acknowledge the demise of libertarianism. However, you show promise; all you need is the courage of your convictions."
