Journey to the Beloved Community: An American Experience
Defining a conflict in the American identity
I write this ever-developing position paper mainly to understand my mind in deciding what to do in the crisis of the moment. I offer it to you for your suggestions.
Over the past six years, I have been sharing my belief that Americans are experiencing a great disruption and depression. The depression is not primarily economic or psychological though it has those dimensions. It is political. It affects people across the political spectrum on all sides and on no sides.
Disruption creates a crisis i.e., a moment of choice. And, as was famously said in the financial crisis of 2008, a crisis is not worth wasting. A crisis is an opportunity to understand where we are and how we got here. Most of all, it is the opportunity to choose who we are and what we want.
I see it as an opportunity to re-chart our journey to what Martin Luther King Jr. called “The Beloved Community,” what others have metaphorically called the kingdom or city of God, paradise, great society, Omega Point, the beckoning Future, the human prospect or fulfilment, Complete Justice and Love. We experience it mainly in our drive or tension towards it, our sense of outreach from and to the world, the Other, our transcending consciousness.
I do not blame or praise Donald Trump or anyone else for the disruption. I can easily, maybe too easily, see that Trump, who exhibits little character, empathy, or soul, is a symptom of our depression. I have studied enough psychology to understand that he is mentally unfit for his office and that we voters have been conned by a slick real estate salesman without the education, experience, or wisdom, to run our nation. Yet, I have learned to never blame, but rather to take responsibility and hold myself accountable in all my institutions: communities, government, churches, schools, corporations. To blame is to shift away power from us, the citizenry, the people in assembly, where it belongs.
I do not come here to praise or blame Caesar. I choose to contemplate and act on the possibility of the moment. Right-wing, evangelical Christians see this Trumpian moment the way the ancient Hebrews saw Persian King Cyrus, the vanquisher, imprisoner, deliverer of the Israelites, as an instrument of Yahweh-God. I choose to do likewise although my path and language is very different from theirs.
Let me summarize my still-to-be-completed journey’s itinerary and discoveries. I imagine myself like Lewis and Clark sending missives to President Jefferson on their explorations. There are five legs in the itinerary of my journey over the last two years. Using another metaphor, I outline five seminars as though I am proposing a syllabus for a course to organize my thoughts and hopefully transcend them.
I have had much expert help in preparing this course. I participate in a book club with people who have been active in politics at the local, national, and international level. We have read and discussed excellent peer reviewed accounts which present the evidence of their findings. I am fortunate to live in the capital area where I have attended lectures of authors, professors, and experts. Thanks to my education as a Jesuit scholastic, I have studied the major works of history, philosophy, and political thought throughout my life starting in classical times. Most of all, through my community organizing vocation I have had opportunity to listen to ordinary people in urban and rural, red and blue, young and older areas.
With appreciation for my rich inheritance, here is a summary of the five legs of the course that I have recently run with my key insights:
1. Where we are.
A description of the landscape of America’s political economy.First in my journey, I studied the many economists and political thinkers who analyzed and described the existing situation of America and the world that has been so very influenced by the United States in the 21st century. Many linked American capitalism and the globalization of corporate power with the decline of democracy throughout the world. In my community work, I talked with many who felt that they were being left out of American bounty and disrespected by others without deserving it. With growing GDP and even standard of life, defined in terms of personal wealth and consumer products, came growing inequity, resentment, class conflict, and measured unhappiness. The important lesson I received from all these writings and interviews is the one that was taught by sociologist-economist Karl Polanyi and philosopher-political thinker Hannah Arendt: politics has become subservient to economy as the institutions of politics, even of self-defined democratic countries, have become the tools for individual wealth-making rather than for commonwealth. Markets are largely controlled by corporations run by the successful (measured by personal wealth) owners. And the goals of politics and the institutions of politics have become those of economy. Our heroes are no longer people who struggled for freedom and enlightenment, but billionaires who gained great wealth.
2. How we got here. The history of the modern nation.
History by competent scientific and critical historians provides explanations for how we became who we are. The history of humanity or homo sapiens is the fruit of many scholars, archeologists, evolutionary biologists combing the evidence, developing theories and narratives, publishing them for the scrutiny of other scientists, and reforming them as new evidence is discovered. I read the most recent histories from the beginnings of humanity from tribal times into civilizations up into modernity and now what is called postmodernity. I studied the complex antecedents of American history, including acts of nature, migration of peoples, individual and collective choices for the necessities of life, to understand an America founded in the principles of the Protestant Reformation, the Western Enlightenment, the development of nation states, the Scientific Revolution, into our new age of technology and information.
My main insight is that two major streams running through history define a conflict in the American identity: the democratic republican one in which citizenship is founded on a commitment to equality and universal human rights. The other is the ascriptive tradition in which citizenship is founded on an ascribed, usually cultural, feature such as race, ethnicity, gender, religion and traditional beliefs, education, and lifestyle. The democratic republican tradition in order to counter ascriptivism makes a clear distinction between the public and private realms. This tradition assigns all cultural and religious preferences to the private realm with the public having the primacy over, but also the responsibility to protect, the private.
3. Who we are. The culture, character, ideals, and values of Americans.
I studied how we, the American public, evolved a unifying story and culture that stands over the ascriptions in the private sector, but at the same time progressively includes and is influenced by the private sector and its diverse institutions and cultures. Many practices of Protestant Christians, later added to by Catholics, Jews and now many other religions contributed to an evolving public culture or civic religion leading to a) universal civility and tolerance, 2) civil service especially to those being left behind, and c) civic action for the accountability of all our institutions. Citizenship in a democratic republic is founded on the commitment to human rights as the grounds of citizenship beyond persons’ origins, ethnicities, or religious, political, or philosophical persuasions. The struggle and divisions among these two perceptions almost destroyed the nation and now threatens (because of weapons of mass destruction, earth warming, and wealth disparity) to destroy not only America, but the world.
My conclusion is that the American malaise is the loss of public happiness in favor of the struggle for private satisfaction measured by personal wealth. And that the present divisive struggle is not only a threat but an opportunity to renew our values, ideals, civic culture, unifying story, or what some call the mind or soul of the country.
4. Why we are. The mind of America.
In my philosophical and scientific studies of humanity, I learned how human behavior takes place in a holistic, complex material environment containing, when broken down objectively, of living and non-living beings. There is a dual and interdependent behavior in which humans affect the environment and the environment affects humans. What makes a human being most unique is the quality, and perhaps quantity, of consciousness in that interaction: the experience of a person acting with other conscious persons in and to a common world through words, models, and other symbols.
Neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists in studying the human body and brain teach that there are two types of knowing 1) the attention on things in the world which are being discovered, questioned, studied, analyzed, and affirmed apart from oneself, and 2) the background, “inner” experience of the context and internal activity in the process of attending to the world. The first is called objective, the second pre-objective or subjective. The first is supported primarily by the left hemisphere of the brain; the second by the right hemisphere.
This understanding of human nature as evolved is important to politics because of the observation that at times the left hemisphere dominates; and the knowledge of the right is overlooked. It is then that the empathic, spiritual, holistic, more ambiguous path is lost on the march to the particular, certain, seemingly absolute reality. We no longer experience mystery, transcendence, the sacred, the interconnectedness of all things and especially of all consciousness. We value the utility of things over the holiness of the universe. These observers of human nature even contend that humanity in Western civilization, culminating in the dominance of the American utilitarian economy, is succumbing to left hemisphere thinking to the detriment of our species and our living earth.
My crucial finding here is that the present political situation of national populism, illiberal nationalism, loss of solidarity in fear of others, hatred of enemies, cruelty to strangers, and ravaging of earth Gaia, the very progenitor and condition of our existence, is explained by the evolution of the brain and its ways of knowing. In other words, the conflict within our own human nature must be taken into consideration to understand evil in the world rather than, or as a scientific basis for, the original sin metaphor of theology.
I also learned that human nature through reflective consciousness has the capacity to transcend itself. We have the ability to connect with what some evolutionary psychologists have called “our better angels” of empathy, connectedness, the sacred, and cooperation as taught by the great world religions. The prospects of that seem bleak right now and that furthers our depression.
5. What we choose to do.
The solution to the decline of democracy and the path to the Beloved Community locally, nationally, and globally is not in socialism or capitalism, nor conservativism or liberalism, as ideological true believers might have it. Nor is it left-wing, centrist, or right-wing politics as those who are constantly blaming the “other side” or “losers” would have it looking through their political depression. Nor is it in moderation or balance without the passion of commitment.
Here are the options:
1. Defeat (destroy?) the other side (whatever you name it) in a winner take all contest.
2. Accede to nihilism by getting what you can while waiting for death, the great equalizer.
3. Wait for God or some Marvel superhero to come save us.
4. Compromise with the ascending worldwide “national populism” and its increasing authoritarianism and oligarchical rule while at the same time attempting to temper it through checks and balances.
5. Act unceasingly and strategically for continued progress in achieving a public realm of freedom and justice for all with radical democratization of all public and private institutions.
Therapists have discovered that the cure for depression includes a) acceptance of the facts of depression and its negative consequences, b) interpretation of the facts within a positive vision, and c) choosing to act on this vision starting with even small steps. The first four options accentuate negative experience and thus our depression. The fifth progressive option which includes and transcends liberalism and conservatism, left and right, individualism and communalism is the option that finds common ground in which everybody wins on behalf of the common good founded upon agreed-upon principles and values for this present, a present built on our progressing interpretation of the past and built on our growing consensus of hope for the future.
The strategies for action derive from what I have learned in the five legs of my course.
· Increase our two modes of knowing through education in philosophy, sciences, history, politics and by listening and identifying with others with an openness to critique and reform our beliefs.
· Transcend human nature by returning through spiritual reflection and practice to the consciousness of wholeness, interconnection, empathy, solidarity with others.
· Renew our public culture including the myth and memes that sustain our beliefs though a new great awakening — a developing national story consistent with critical history, science, and broadly refining human and religious values.
· Organize, assemble, speak. and act at all levels including our local communities to create public places for all people to act in concert and achieve public happiness.
· Act for specific policies that democratize our economy, culture, and politics and their institutions: examples include 1) ensuring the necessities of life for all, starting with healthy children in a healthy sustainable earth, 2) public, worker, and consumer participation in governance and management of corporations and the markets, 3) increasing the standards of democratic citizenship to include expectations and support for civility, community service, and citizen action through nonpartisan, culturally inclusive community organization, 4) promoting processes, events, and support to participation in shaping public culture, including arts, education, and the media, 5) increased voting and decreased dependency of partisan campaigning on private wealth.
In other words, based on my experience, study, and bias, I am advocating, as our founders did imperfectly, not socialism, not liberalism, not capitalism, not progressivism, not conservatism (in so far as they are considered negatively). I am advocating a system of radical democracy or, at least, radical democratization. Radical means “at root” i.e., underlying, in principle, at bottom. I am at bottom committed to my nation as a democratic republic. And I promote democracy as the guarantor of human rights for all persons, nations, and institutions public or private, founded on a renewing faith in people.
The People, as Jefferson called us, hopefully educated in citizenship, in thinking, assembling, speaking and acting for the common good, is where we discover our higher power.
Conclusion
On this July 4th celebration of the American Independence, I reread the speech given by the great abolitionist Frederick Douglas on this same day. He passionately described the hypocrisy of Americans celebrating freedom while exercising and defending by law, by force, and by religion the most savage and cruel practice of slavery. I thought of what Americans are doing today to asylum seekers at the borders and the planned roundup of “illegals,” many of whom are my friends and neighbors.
So many of my colleagues, friends, and family are struggling about what we can do. Each of us has to decide in our own situation, time of life, and limited capacities what we will do. As an imperfect example, I offer my own little steps to take at this time.
1. I choose to assist in any way I can to assist communities organize themselves, build leadership, find solidarity, and achieve public happiness or power. I especially focus on those communities that for lack of wealth, investment, education, and organization have little power.
2. I choose to promote active citizenship, for all but especially for those who are unrecognized and unappreciated, through universal public education and contributing to the renewal of the new national story that welcomes immigrants as new citizens.
3. I choose to keep increasing my understanding of others and our world through study, reading, writing, the arts, and especially by meeting others, including those not like me.
4. I choose through civic education and community organizing to advocate democratically and non-violently in local, state, and federal governments for the policies which I enumerated above.
5. I am committed to the proposition that the path to the Beloved Community is more love. The solution to the decline of democracy is more democracy.
However, the Beloved Community, like the City of God, is a place to be built not a place to be found, acquired through faith, not certainty. It is an ideal, not a fact. Or perhaps it is a “not-yet” fact discoverable in our desire, hope, and action for it. It reveals itself in here and now acts of love of neighbors, strangers, and even enemies. Can you think of someone else who lived and taught this? I can and intend to follow.
Bibliography
This is a list of some scholars and their works, so you can see with whom I am forming my ideas, sometimes in contention and always in dialogue. I list them in the order of the five links or courses within which I organized my thoughts. There are hundreds of others who shaped my mind, but I cite just a few more recent reads. There are others with whom I discussed these ideas in classrooms, restaurants, on the street, and in community meetings. I am thankful to all of them for showing me a way out of our political depression towards both personal and public happiness of the American Beloved Community.
1) Where we are. The American political economy.
Wolfgang Streeck, How will Capitalism End?
Robert Kuttner, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?
Freedom in the World, Democracy in Retreat
Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-year Untold History of Class in America
Roger Eatwell and Mathew Goldwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy
2) How we got here. The political history of America.
Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens
Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States
John B. Boles, Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty
John Meacham, Andrew Jackson in the White House
Ron Cernow, Grant
Eric Foner, The Civil War and Reconstruction.
Henry Louis Gates Jr, Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and Rise of Jim Crow.
Rick Perlstein, The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
3) Who we are becoming. The political culture of America.
Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self
Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battled for Our Better Angels
Rogers Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in US History
Richard Rorty, Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in the 2oth Century
Jill Lepore, Why We Need a New American National Story
Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision
4) Why this is so. The political mind of America.
Iain McGilcrist, The Master and His Emissary, The Divided Brain and the Making of the Divided World.
Gary Marcus, The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought.
5) What we choose to do. Political options for America.
Danielle Allen, Justice by Means of Democracy.
Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.
