I didn't much go for The Third Way thing in the 1990s. In good old binary fashion I think there are probably only two ways what I might call UP and DOWN.

DOWN: This is simply the way things are i.e. people use what they’ve got to their best advantage. Capitalism rests on such behaviour. Some are better at it than others. It engenders self interest and unfairness. It is base, therefore down.

UP: This is the more elevated notion that people can lift themselves out of selfish interest into a world of higher ideas based on a relational ethic. Christianity and Communism would be examples. The Third Way was another theoretical attempt at lifting humans from their base level. It is aspirational, therefore up.

Some might say that the base level is the way it is and always will be, that the grander utopian notions are the folly of intellectuals and zealots. They might say there is only one way and it is dangerous to get too hifalutin about possibilities, that when they do, human beings get into trouble. I think that is hard to argue against given the history of utopian enterprises.

Still, although their voices are pretty much silenced currently, the more aspirational and philosophical types will always hanker for something greater. And although they may do damage they at least bring to the world an energy and a vibrancy that can leave it transformed. Religion may be based on myth but it has been no less powerful for that.