The Human Givens Charter is an essential guide for anyone who wants to understand why our culture is so poorly served by its institutions and who wishes to join with others to do something realistic to improve this situation.

Year by year the rates of mental illness in the United Kingdom are rising. In parallel with this, people are increasingly disillusioned with the institutions that run our society: the organisations responsible for mental or physical health, education, policing, the legal system, governance (i.e. political parties), foreign policy, the armed forces, the utilities, farming and fishing. Trust in these institutions has fallen away dramatically.

Furthermore, large numbers of people are unsettled by what they see as corruption in politics, financial institutions, industry and business, the hypocrisy within traditional religious institutions of all faiths and a corrosively cynical media, the output from which often seems devoid of moral sensitivities and appears to be fuelling a perverse breakdown in civil behaviour between strangers (manners).

At any one moment the inhumane way all of the above institutions often work is causing massive distress to individuals, families, or sometimes even whole communities.

The Human Givens Charter offers a refreshing vision of how this situation could be changed for the better in just a couple of generations by practical people inspired by a larger organising idea than those currently in fashion.