The British philosopher C.E.M. Joad said, as he journeyed away from agnosticism, “It was because we rejected the doctrine of original sin that we on the Left were always being disillusioned by the behaviour of the peoples, nations, and politicians and by the recurring fact of war. Because I didn’t believe in original sin I couldn’t understand why nothing was working.”

Something has gone missing from our collective psyche. It used to form an essential part of our understanding of life. It helped us navigate a world where bad things happened and prompted us to take precautionary measures. It guarded us against naiveté.

Its disappearance leaves us grasping for solutions to symptoms rather than solutions to the problem. What has gone missing?

I was listening to a discussion recently on the radio about consent. The host and his guest were talking about the way men mistreat women, and discussing what needed to be done.

“What lies at the heart of the issue?” they wondered. “We need to give our young people a better understanding of the facts of life—we weren’t taught about them in school.” “I think we need more education on what consent means.” “They just don’t seem to understand what consent is, so we need to take more time to teach them it.”

I’m not denying that hammering a message home is useful—but there is a basic presumption that is faulty. The presumption is that people are basically good, and lack only information—if they had better information they would behave better.

Surely after all the troubles of the 20^thCentury, and 21^stCentury thus far, we can ditch this idea.

Was the problem in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq that he simply didn’t know enough about the Kurdish people to understand that they were human? Is the problem with rapists really that they need a better understanding of consent?

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