⚖ The Common Good of the 'Middle-Wing':

Advancing The Common Good: A Vaccination for a Fracturing Society:

Reading time: ~12 minutes

Preview: Our age is fractured by the binary antagonisms of Left and Right, each collapsing into brutality or alienation. Neither has ever shared abundance or governed with sustained civility. The Middle-Wing is not a muddled compromise but a higher calling: a politics of cooperation, compassion, and reciprocity. Drawing on the wisdom of the co-operative movement, Quaker testimonies, and the philosophy of Good Being, this essay casts the Middle-Wing as a vaccination against division and policy whiplash. It challenges us to step into our vocation, not to outshine others but to shine together, illuminating the path of the common good.

Neither Left nor Right has ever governed without collapse. The Middle-Wing offers civilisation its untried remedy: love as evolution’s gift.

Two enlightened individuals stand on a bridge illuminated by a rising sun with signs pointing to "Left Wing" and "Right Wing," symbolising unity through central paths, with the message emphasising the importance of a middle ground to connect divided perspectives.

A Fractured Beginning:

Step into any pub, café, or family living room and it does not take long before politics raises its quarrelsome head. Voices rise. One side rails against the greed of the Right. Another spits venom about the naivety of the Left. Neighbours who shared jokes a minute before are squared off across an invisible divide. The atmosphere thickens with blame, mistrust and self-righteous certainty.

Identity now fuses with partisan allegiance. The Left blames The Right. The Right blames The Left. Each grows more brittle, more entrenched, more cynical, less capable of compromise, ill-equipped to meet the opposing view 'halfway'. Yet beneath this theatre of antagonism lies a deeper truth: neither pole has ever succeeded in running the world civilly. Both end in collapse. Both leave hardship in their wake. Both pit neighbour against neighbour and do not teach us how to share in the planet's abundance. Only bona fide coalitions appear to have served the broadest interests and here is why.

The Middle-Wing is the vaccination against that contagion of division. It is not the soft compromise of centrism nor the bland arithmetic of capitulation. It is an elevation of politics to its evolutionary purpose: to protect the common good through cooperation, compassion, consensus-building and love.

Love as Evolution’s Gift:

There is a line of thought from thinkers such as Jeremy Griffith and David Loye that recovers Darwin’s less-advertised insight. Darwin recognised cooperation and affection as engines of human survival. It is a corrective to Herbert Spencer’s later slogan, 'survival of the fittest', so often used to justify greed, vicious competition and, at its worst, the brutal political doctrine of free-market Capitalism.

Fascism, at its root, is the lie that domination is strength and that cruelty secures survival. Its inherently pugnacious logic demands the neighbour turn upon neighbour, differences be met with violence, and human dignity be extinguished under the jack-boot of authority. History offers us the evidence: collapse, atrocity, generational trauma, widespread recrimination, betrayal, poverty. Ideological implosion.

But do not imagine the Left offered an automatic cure. Communism’s rhetoric of equality sounded noble; its practice often strangled individuality, stifled enterprise and crushed ownership beneath bureaucratic jurisdiction. In trying to erase hierarchy, it also erased freedom, replacing neighbourly trust with suspicion, denunciation and state coercion. History’s verdict is plain and uncompromising: communism, too, has often ended in collapse, hardship and, again and again, ideological implosion.

Both Left and Right have proven incapable of stewarding civilisation with civility, compassion, 'fair play'. Both share a fatal flaw: neither has yet shown us a reliable way to share abundance while preserving good humour, respect, altruism and dignity. They tend to trade solidarity for suspicion, cooperation for competition and kinship for conflict. They quite literally play both ends against the middle.

Policy Lurch: Why Binary Governance Leaves Progress Prone to Upset:

The limitations of First Past the Post (FPTP) and similarly majoritarian electoral systems, especially as practised in the UK and US, are not merely hypothetical; they are felt in the instability and unpredictability of government itself. FPTP’s celebrated “effectiveness” in delivering clear parliamentary majorities and allowing rapid enactment of an elected party’s agenda comes at a grave cost to the common good: policy lurch.

Under FPTP, a new government does not simply tinker at the margins. It has the parliamentary muscle to sweep away its predecessor’s reforms, often with little cross-party consultation or compromise. Services as fundamental as education, health, economics, and social safety nets can be uprooted or reimagined not incrementally, but radically, whenever power changes hands. The result is not robust democracy, but a pendulum, swinging with sometimes traumatic force between governing philosophies: expansion today, austerity tomorrow; nationalisation this year, privatisation the next. Each side spends as much time undoing “the damage” of the last regime as it does building for the future. The net result: a blame culture.

This perpetual discontinuity is more than a quirk of process; it fragments lives, disrupts civil institutions, undoes progress, and exhausts the public trust. Those most affected are not the architects of these binary swings but citizens, families, and communities caught in the crossfire. Continuity of care, clarity of direction, and the capacity for long-term planning a society’s civic lifeblood are sacrificed at the altar of ideological supremacy.

Majoritarian models reward victory over stewardship, and the resulting binary antagonism makes shared progress all but impossible. Each electoral cycle becomes a zero-sum referendum along tribal allegiances, not a conversation about the nation’s actual needs or collective flourishing - those who long for stability, inclusion, and authentic common good are left with no real home, nor affiliation.

Balancing Interests: Advocating for a 'Middle Wing' Approach That Combines Cooperative Values and Egalitarianism to Serve the Common Good.

Diversity in the Common Good: The Crafted Symphony of Selves:

To invoke the 'common good' within the Middle-Wing is to summon the most human of paradoxes: our unity takes root only when our differences are not merely tolerated, but nurtured as the gifts of the individual worthy of celebration. This ethos runs deeper than the shallow egalitarianism that merely distributes the same portion to each. Instead, it looks to the callings, capabilities, and uniqueness encoded in our Occupational DNA - those lived patterns of skill, aptitude, life-defining curiosities, principles, passions, insights, inner longing, and temperament that make each soul’s vocation utterly unrepeatable.

A civilised society must aspire to be a gallery of vocations, each life an original artwork in its own right. The wisdom of Work Aesthetics reminds us that there is a rightness, a beauty, a point-of-view unique to every task sincerely performed, no matter whether humble or grand. When each person is granted the dignity to discover, craft, and contribute their unique Work Aesthetic, the whole community is lifted. In a culture governed by the Middle-Wing, the carpenter is as needed as the composer, and the repair of a broken fence carries moral weight equal to the writing of a sonnet.

The Meld - that home-centred archetype from Skara Brae - offers a vivid metaphor for this inclusive arrangement. In a true home, just like in a true civilisation, 'The Hearth' and the dresser, the cooking and the display, the tool and the trophy, all exist synergistically. None outshines the other; none exist in isolation. They are melded, cooperatively yet distinct, each lending purpose and story to the other. Humanity, in this light, is not meant to become identical bricks in a uniform wall, but facets in a resplendent mosaic - each reflecting the human experience in its own unique chromatic frequency along the broad spectrum of our existence.

This vision is the engine of self-actualisation – not the individual’s lonely ascent, but a journey of belongingness, of finding one’s calling and giving it freely to the common storehouse for the contribution of its inherent good. When society legitimises and celebrates every thread of Occupational DNA, when it holds space for the Work Aesthetic of each member, and when it models its institutions on the completeness of The Meld, then self-actualisation becomes a communal act. My flourishing is made possible by the recognition and empowerment of your flourishing; which brings us back to the consistent Good Being core principle of ‘Ubuntu’.

This, ultimately, is the clarion attraction of the Middle-Wing: The goal is not to make all of us the same, but to ensure every uniqueness finds a welcome, a task, a hearth in the shared light of mutual prosperity and flourishing. In realising our wholesomeness and our strength - in shining so the constellation brightens - we fulfil not only the demands of justice, but the hopes of our deepest, most human selves.

The Middle-Wing A Remedy for Policy Whiplash:

It need not be this way. The Middle-Wing, not the muddled compromise of centrism, but an affirmative commitment to the Common Good, offers a dignifying, edifying remedy. By prioritising cooperation, consensus, partnership and community-led governance, the Middle-Wing inoculates society against the policy whiplash endemic to the two-party dichotomy. Instead of binary reversals, it seeks persistent, participatory stewardship; instead of ideological spectacle, it champions neighbourliness, reciprocity and pragmatic common purpose.

When governance is designed for the long horizon, anchored in the Middle-Wing’s discipline of compassion and mutual respect, public services acquire resilience. Policies become less about the triumph of one side and more about the flourishing of all, a transformation from battleground to common ground. It's an ideal built upon basic logic.

The challenge is not simply to call for 'dialogue' or moderation, but to seed new political and cultural habits: co-cooperativism in economics, citizens’ assemblies in governance, purpose-driven education, and moral courage in daily life. Building the Middle-Wing tradition demands hard virtues, restraint, humility, internal shining and the discipline to hold the paradox. But the prize is continuity, prosperity, and most vitally, a society immune to the chaos of binary, quadrennial lurching.

The Middle-Wing as Vaccination:

The Middle-Wing rises above these failed extremes. It does not dilute conviction; it deepens it. Love, compassion and cooperation are not sentimental luxuries. They are evolutionary necessities, as essential to our survival as oxygen itself.

To embrace the Middle-Wing is to inoculate ourselves against the plague of hatred and scapegoating. It is to recognise that civilisation cannot be built through domination or coercion, but only through voluntary partnership, mutual respect and neighbourly reciprocity.

The Middle-Wing is utter practicality. It is a new contract of community spirit and cordiality, a blueprint for stake-ownership, partnership and community-led administration. It calls us to live not as consumers and competitors, but as curators of life, collaborators in abundance.

Good Being & The Vocation of Humanity:

The Good Being Meaning of Life-Engine teaches that unless individuals learn to love themselves, their families, their communities and the world around them, the intrinsic design of nature itself is interrupted. Humanity’s vocation is to be curator of life to fit ourselves harmoniously into the world rather than exploiting it.

'Unconditional Reciprocity' sits at the heart of this vision. Life flows when giving and receiving are not transactional but trustful and faithful. Society flourishes when love, compassion and a caring for mutual flourishing circulate freely and neighbours uplift one another without keeping score.

Work Aesthetics adds a further dimension. Civilisation radiates beauty when we bring devotion and discipline to our labour. We should remind ourselves that we are evolved to overcome adversity. Labour is the becoming of us. Potential lies in wait within each of us. It is our inherent duty to set it free. Work is not merely an economic function. It is a vocation expressed through craft. Under the extreme influences of fascism, labour is coerced; under communism, it becomes alienated. Neither wing facilitate maximum potential in the individual. Each expect us to surrender our own need to 'become'. Only under Middle-Wing practices does work regain its dignity as the radiation of love through focused action.

The Map of Respect reminds us that respect must ripple outward in concentric rings: self, others, relationships, society, the more-than-human world and our cosmic Source. The Middle-Wing embodies this map, weaving reverence into governance, respect into being.

And The Meld - that Skara Brae inspired symbol of hearth and dresser united - gives us a tangible metaphor for integration. Left and Right need not be obliterated. They can be woven into something higher, a coherence that transcends polarity. A wavelength that brings us together.

Ebenezer Howard's defining of his concept of a ‘joyous union’ of town and country with 'The Three Magnets'.

Proofs of the Middle-Wing in History:

The Middle-Wing is not a utopian whisper. As a living, booming, inspiring inheritance, its seeds are sown deep in British soil and tended through seasons of hardship and hope.

The origins of the British Co-operative Party can be traced back to the profound social and economic upheavals of the 18th and 19th centuries, when industrialisation reshaped - and all-too frequently annihilated - communities. Leaving working people to face-down poverty, malnutrition, pestilence, exclusion, and insecurity.

Early experiments in mutual aid, such as the Fenwick Weavers’ Society, founded in Scotland in 1761, demonstrated the power of collective organisation by pooling resources to secure fair prices, fair wages, and educational opportunities for members. A generation later, the Rochdale Pioneers - textile workers determined to resist exploitation - opened their co-operative store in 1844, embedding principles of open membership, democratic control, and education that would become the movement’s moral compass.

From these humble beginnings, industrial co-operatives multiplied, but so too did resistance from entrenched private interests and established hierarchies. Which, in turn, spurred the creation of larger structures to safeguard and advance the movement: the Co-operative Wholesale Society in 1863 and the Co-operative Union in 1869. By 1881, the Union had established a Parliamentary Committee to lobby for the interests of co-operators, a decisive step that laid the groundwork for a fully fledged political party.

That vision came to fruition in 1917, with the founding of the Co-operative Party as the formal political voice of the movement; borne from the collective resolve that more ordinary people should share in both the wealth and the steering of their own destinies. Sam Perry - its first national secretary - refused to stand aside as power concentrated in distant hands. He chose instead the Brentham Estate in Ealing, where co-operative ideals flowered into bricks and mortar, green walks, and laughter echoing from local tennis courts. Here, community was more than fantasy: it was public health rooted in neighbourliness, a neighbourhood designed not to fence in privilege, but to lift all boats on the same rising tide.

Fred Perry’s story, often told as an individual ascent to sporting greatness, is also the parable of 'communal investment'. The five-time Wimbledon tennis champion’s nimbleness was practised first on shared courts, built by people who believed every child deserved to have level ground beneath steady feet. Where opportunity is open, and infrastructure is lovingly tended by the many, the unlikely can thrive. Champions rise not in isolation, but from the rich loam of collective effort - co-operative soil yields fruits that no solitary sower could imagine as 'mutual flourishing'.

Consider too the steadfast Quakers, centuries-long cultivators of the quiet revolution. Their testimonies - Peace, Equality, Simplicity, Truth - were not merely creeds but daily guiding principles. They championed fair trade, treating workers as kin, and pressed conscience into the machinery of business, refusing to let commerce override common decency and compassion. When the tides of cruelty rose - in the slave markets, in the dank cells of debtors’ prisons, in the neglected corners of hungry towns - it was Quaker activism that was first to push back. They reminded Britain that conscience, when woven into habits of social administration, can change the moral grammar of a wholer nation.

These are not exceptions. They are proof that Middle-Wing principles are borne of sound roots and have endured when attention fades. This tradition does not trumpet itself on the activists' barricades; it wins quietly - by building, by aggregating momentum, by promising a gentle harvest for more stomachs to enjoy. Its power is disguised as modesty. Yet it is the steady hand, not the loudest voice, that guides society through crisis and change. The Middle-Wing is civilisation’s secret architecture, the masonry that outlasts shifting banners and thunderous rhetoric of zealous ideologies.

To stand in this tradition is, in truth, to join the ranks of all who have chosen to work with, rather than against, the grain of our shared prosperity. The Middle-Wing tradition humbles and exalts in equal measure: it shows us what is possible not when we compete for the spotlight as puppets of billionaire media barons, but when we kindle it together - tending The Hearth, so that we all may see each other in its glow.

Why Gentleness Gets Pushed Aside:

To truly affect positive change in our world, we must render ourselves vulnerable. We have feel the change we seek. For such senses to function fully, requires a gentleness. Yet, such gentleness and the necessary tolerance do not thrive in the modern attention economy.

Extremes have simple narratives and sharp enemies that render any semblance of gentleness a weakness. The extremeties offer certainty. They supply the media with the soundbites they crave and rely upon for their headlines. They mobilise outrage. A pure and moderate posture, by contrast, asks for nuance, for trade-offs and for patience. That complexity does not translate easily into trending headlines and the click-bait narrative.

There is also the purity trap. Radical movements demand loyalty. Moderation, refusing absolutism, is treated as betrayal. The cult of outrage brands the centre as cowardice or a sell-out. That is why co-operatives and Quaker initiatives have often been sidelined. Their power is moral rather than coercive, and moral power takes longer to accumulate and to be visible.

But gentleness is not weakness. It is a practice of discipline. It takes courage to stand on the common ground and face the fury of both sides. The Middle-Wing asks for the hard virtues: fairness, dignity, grace, love, compassion, egalitarianism, restraint, patience, sustainability, the ability to hold paradox and to sustain long-term projects of wider mutual benefit.

Practical Applications: How the Middle-Wing Rebuilds Civility:

The Middle-Wing is practical. Here are the avenues where it can be enacted now.

In economics, co-operativism replaces monopoly and statist centralism. Companies structured as co-operatives distribute profit, empower workers, and anchor wealth locally. Those models are already in operation and scalable.

In governance, citizens’ assemblies and local stewardship return decision-making closer to everyday life. Where people participate in rule-making, trust rises and polarisation softens.

In education, vocational discovery must sit alongside academic learning. The Purpose Pyramid equips young people to decode their occupational DNA. A system that values vocation and craftsmanship reduces the alienation that fuels extremist recruitment.

In community life, time banks, mutual aid, and shared resource hubs knit social fabric back together. These practical infrastructures make neighbourliness habitual.

In our relationship with nature, stewardship replaces extraction. Climate action becomes reciprocity rather than sacrifice, a duty to the more-than-human world that honours the Map of Respect.

In technology, AI and the ensuing AGI, the Middle-Wing can temper the rush to extractive surveillance capitalism. Democratised data governance, worker co-ops in platform labour, and algorithms designed for human flourishing are all Middle-Wing projects.

None of these interventions are utopian. They are escalations of what is proven to already work. They scale not by coercion but by standard-bearing, demonstration, replication and moral persuasion.

A Verdict on Left and Right:

Let us be blunt. Neither Left nor Right has governed the world without moral and economic implosion and ideological collapse. The Right, when it becomes a creed of domination, reverts to the brutality of scarcity. The Left, when it becomes a creed of enforced uniformity, foments alienation through sameness. Both pit neighbour against neighbour and withhold the shared abundance that civilisation needs.

The cult of outrage blinds partisans on both ends of the binary continuum. Each sees the other as a betrayer, a fanatic, and an enemy to be silenced at all costs. Even if it means civil war. In such a climate, the Middle-Wing looks, to the radicalised, like no man’s land, a barren battlefield where only fools or the dead would tread.

But the Middle-Wing is not no man’s land. It is common ground of mutual flourishing. What extremists dismiss as weakness is the highest act of strength: the courage to face fire from both sides and still choose neighbourliness over hatred. It takes true conviction to compromise.

A Closing Encouragement & Gauntlet To The, As Yet, Unconvinced:

The Middle-Wing is not an arid theory. It is a practice to be lived. It begins in small things: how we greet our neighbour, how we say hello to strangers, how we invest labour with dignity and a solid commitment to produce work we take pride in, how we choose cooperation over cynicism, how we must yield territory to know the benefit of compromise. Such a common good as the Middle-Wing scales from ‘The Hearth’ to community, from community to nation, and from nation to the whole human family. Because each and every one of us has the right to a 'good life'.

But it also demands more. It demands that we, the reader, search our own hearts and ask: What is my true calling? What is the work that only I can contribute? Where in my life am I hiding my talents, waiting on the margins, withholding my vocation from a world that is famished for meaning?

The Middle-Wing will not be built by theory, nor by eloquence, nor by the good intentions of others. It will be built by our hands, by our courage, by our devotion to the labour we were born to perform. This is not a spectator’s creed. It is the throwing down of a gauntlet to those who will seize upon the challenge.

There can be no doubt that we each carry within us a duty to shine. Not the hollow glare of competition, not the desperate scramble to eclipse companions on life’s journey, but the steady radiance of authenticity: The Light that comes when we live, breathe and contribute our vocation with discipline, sacrifice and joy. The Middle-Wing does not ask us to outshine others. It asks us to illuminate the path alongside them; without condition. Together, we are not a battlefield of egos but a constellation of lights, each a star distinct, yet all belonging to the same constellation.

So, here is the gauntlet: dare to bring forth the gift we have buried. Refuse the false binaries that keep us small. Choose cooperation over collapse, neighbourliness over suspicion, love over fear. Step into our vocation as curators of Good Being. Underwrite your legacy with the proof that civilisation can be civil again.

The question is not whether we can afford to build the Middle-Wing. The question is whether we can afford not to answer our calling with the necessary zeal. A life’s purpose is not realised until it is replete.