New Puritans?

'Something very interesting, indeed radical, is happening to Britain,' confirms Jim Murphy, associate director of the Future Foundation, the trends forecaster which coined the term 'New Puritan'. 'If you look at the way our lives are filled with different kinds of social opprobrium, a lot of people are increasingly under ethical pressures which influence their choices.'

According to the Future Foundation, we are increasingly curbing our enthusiasm for profligate consumption, and health and environment-threatening behaviours. 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. Think of it as the dieticians' favourite adage, 'a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips' given socio-economic resonance.

Posted by illogicist at 11:48 AM