CHAPTER FIVE (Draft)

The America we know as a nation was born in tumult. If we are to understand the motivations of the European people who originally founded the new republic, we must understand their social and historical context.

The American colonies were populated initially by immigrants of English and European origin who arrived during an extended period of upheaval in Europe. These emigres were intimately aware of the controversies, conflicts and oppression of their homelands, which had often directly influenced their decisions to relocate to the American frontier. They were, of course, also aware of the indigenous peoples who resided all across America, as well as the enslaved Africans they brought with them as forced labor. Prejudice, misinformation and a painful past all contributed to fluid and volatile conditions.

The 18th century in Europe was a time of political restlessness, of intense philosophical debate and a fascination with scientific inquiry. It followed a lengthy period plagued by fierce religious controversy and violence, including horrific Christian-on-Christian carnage. The Church, which dominated society for centuries, had been severely challenged and diminished, along with many of the institutions of civil society that had provided social order and security for individuals, families, and artisans.

The stability of civil society in Europe in the late Middle Ages had depended on the strictly ordered institutions of family, church, and commerce, including the tightly controlled structure of extended families, organized guilds for merchants and artisans, and other associative networks. Such institutions provided foundations for a coherent society that are largely lacking today, but they were rigid, controlling, and patriarchal.

The radical notion of individuality began to emerge openly into consciousness early in the Renaissance, the transition period between the Middle Ages and modernity. Both the idea and the fact of individuality took form along two distinct tracks: in Protestant Christianity and in the emerging modern culture of the Renaissance. Protestantism challenged the dogma of the Catholic church, allowing a heightened awareness of individuality based on the belief that the freedom of the human spirit is ultimately bound only by the will of God. Modern culture, on the other hand, was dominated by the rise of science and rationalism, which rejected the limits imposed by either the Christian faith or the laws of nature.

The modern sense of autonomous individuality developed rapidly among self-conscious and independent people, who went on to create the industrial mechanized culture we know today, dominated by commerce and financialization. The same autonomy has since been annihilated by the mass society it created, as we will see in the coming chapters.

We will trace the outcome of the wishful thinking associated with the modern era in greater detail, because it is a story with profound implications for Americans. But first we need to understand how this expectant self-assurance led initially to dramatic developments in the structure of society and governance.

The spirit of autonomous individuality inspired the dominant themes of the American frontier, giving license to immense creativity and productivity, as well as to the destruction of indigenous peoples. The ideas of freedom and individuality took root in American consciousness and belief despite their ill-defined meaning. Together they become intrinsic to the emerging identity of the American character.

Individualism has sometimes been associated with egotism, selfishness, and a rejection of religious belief. In truth, it has often led to such outcomes. But the concept was originally conceived as respect for the validity of the views and experience of the individual within his or her own sphere, and the ideal that we should all be encouraged to develop our own natural gifts. This idea transformed Western culture; its impact cannot be exaggerated.

A Conflicted Legacy

Although the political and religious violence in European homelands was devastating, it had a stimulating effect on creative thinking and changing perceptions. During the years of American colonization, new ideas and controversial ways of thinking were emerging in Europe at an accelerating rate. A hopeful belief in the synthesis of ideas and assumptions that came to be known as modernity was reaching a peak of intensity. It was a major turning point in the development of Western civilization and consciousness. The dominant influence of religion was replaced to a large extent by the conviction that human reason, armed with science, would eventually solve all human problems.

The transition came to be known as “The Enlightenment,” and it was a major break with the past. Most significantly the new thinking rejected religious belief as dogmatic, superstitious, and irrational. By the time of the American and French revolutions in the late 18th century, the philosophical problems with Enlightenment thinking were hotly debated. Despite these controversies, the promise of science and the presumed perfectibility of human reason captured the popular imagination. The new perception of reality was embraced with a fervor that became firmly embedded in the Western mind.

The consequences were jarring. Without awareness of a coherent universal reality, or grounding in the moral foundations that had guided human societies for millennia, the imaginative constructions of visionary social philosophers attempted to force society into utopian forms. The social imagination of a new world was wide open to intellectual anarchy and the violent competition of values. The loss of belief in one God and the unity of a single coherent reality opened the door to imagination and a range of alternative realities. Utopian conceptions for an ideal society proliferated. Visionary efforts to create a utopian society were well-intentioned. Like all closed social constructs, however, they were inflexible, uncompromising, and resistant to questions.

Among the many visionary ideas of that time, one line of thought asserted that freedom was destabilizing and dangerous; another that society could be organized in a manner that would defend both liberty and social justice, but on relative terms. The first sought the strong hand of dominant leadership and expert planning to ensure social justice. The second envisioned democratic governance as the only realistic path to social justice and accepted the unruly and unpredictable character of democratic institutions as providing the necessary conditions for liberty.

The philosophers best known for utopian thinking included Helvetius, Fichte, Hegel, Saint-Simon, and Marx, each of whom subverted liberty in significant ways. The historian of ideas, Isaiah Berlin believed that Hegel has had the most significant historical influence on Western civilization. But Saint-Simon appears to have provided the primary intellectual basis for the dominant totalitarian versions of both communism and fascism in the first half of the 20th century. Isaiah Berlin argues that many of the ideas of Marx can be traced to Saint-Simon.

In hindsight, it is not hard to see that a utopian society cannot survive unless everyone follows the rules and does so without question. Ultimately, those who were perceived as socially or politically unfit, or who asked too many questions, were imprisoned or eliminated.

Whether we are religiously inclined or not, it essential to come to an understanding of this momentous transition and the consequences that remain with us today. Enlightenment thinking did not come out of nowhere, and the United States of America was not created out of thin air. Ideas can have consequences. What had changed, and how did it change?

These questions are significant because the developing controversies of Enlightenment thinking emerged simultaneously with the creation of the United States. A newly vested sociological imagination came into being, which produced compelling social constructs with dramatic and sometimes disastrous results. For more than 200 years the consequences have impacted us on foreign battlefields and played out in the American mind.

The Boundaries of Liberty

American history begins with two of the most influential ideas to emerge from Enlightenment thinking: A fierce belief in the will to freedom, and unquestioning confidence in the ultimate success of human control over nature. With the founding of the United States, these pivotal ideas were newly joined in the European mind as the conceptual basis of modernity. This is the heritage we live with today.

Writing of this history, the American philosopher and political scientist Michael Allen Gillespie observed that “modernity has two goals – to make man master and possessor of nature and to make human freedom possible. The question that remains is whether these two are compatible with one another.”

Clearly these ideas and their contradictions have had a substantial impact on the world. First emerging during the transition from medieval to modern times, they gradually crystallized into the conviction that an ideal future civilization would bring freedom and prosperity to the world through the progress of science and rational governance. To many the United States of America embodied that promise.

The new ethos was grounded in the belief that a rational humanity, freed to recreate the world through the power of reason, must be capable of discovering effectual truth. It was under this dynamic influence that the American identity began to take shape.

The new nation became closely associated with the spirit of these expectations in the European mind. The idea of a promising future for humankind was powerful, inspiring confidence in the potential to free ourselves from the shackles of the past.

For the thousands of European immigrants disembarking in the New World, a working knowledge of philosophy was not required. Everyone knew what America represented, and the promise, however primal and unformed it might be, rooted itself deeply in the emerging American identity. Europeans were fascinated by the self-assured confidence of the American character. Americans were energized by their freedom from the fetters of European culture, institutions, and domineering governments.

Shortly before the American Revolution, the cause of American independence was articulated forcefully by Tom Paine in his brilliant and compelling pamphlet “Common Sense”. Paine called on Americans and all humankind to reject the past as a guide to the future.

“The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth,” Paine wrote: “Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province or a kingdom, but of a continent, of at least one eighth of the habitable globe. Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings. Now is the seed-time of continental union, faith and honor….”

Judith Shklar, historian and political theorist, describes the tenor of that period:
“Everything was to be new, and new was better. Newest of all was the expectation of a permanent, continental, democratic government. The very size of the new nation made all the old metaphors of politics obsolete…. It would be a marketplace where all nations would meet to exchange goods and ideas, a universe in its very character. …And the revolutionary call went out to all, not just to Americans…. There can be no doubt that for Paine the boundaries of democracy were meant to embrace all who loved freedom.”

From Common Sense: “Oh ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is over-run with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger…. Oh! Receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”

There were ample crises and controversies to arouse and vitalize the new nation as it struggled to find its feet. We did not agree on much. The country was saddled with the unfinished business of its European roots: the scar of slavery, the tensions between the moneyed and working classes, and the prejudices of religion, race, and nationality. Yet, a potent hopefulness prevailed as wave after wave of new arrivals powered the growth of a seemingly insatiable industrial economy. The ideas continued to generate a confident vision on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the nineteenth century.

But then things started to go terribly wrong. Dr. Gillespie describes the shock of events early in the twentieth century:

“The view of history as progress was severely shaken by the cataclysmic events of the first half of the twentieth century, the World Wars, the Great Depression, the rise of totalitarianism, and the Holocaust. What had gone wrong? Modernity, which had seemed on the verge of providing universal security, liberating human beings from all forms of oppression, and producing an unprecedented human thriving, had in fact ended in a barbarism almost unknown in previous human experience. The tools that had been universally regarded as the source of human flourishing had been the source of unparalleled human destruction. And finally, the politics of human liberation had proved to be the means to human enslavement and degradation. The horror evoked by these cataclysmic events was so overwhelming that it called into question not merely the idea of progress and enlightenment but also the idea of modernity and the conception of Western civilization itself.”

We have admired the generation of Americans who survived and stood firm in those nightmarish years. We like to call them “The Greatest Generation.” They remained proud and frugal throughout their lives, though many of us, their children, did not understand. We have indulged ourselves in complacency and materialism purchased with debt. How many of us today know what they knew?

What happened?

We have tried to walk away from the past with little understanding of it. Fear of debt, the Great Depression, and the horrifying perversity of total war have been repressed and lost to memory. Yet, many of the same threats, and more, hang over our lives today—the threat of social disruptions or disintegration, the fragility of global finance, the tyranny of dogmatic utopian visions of the future, and many others.

The Question That Remains

The new ideas and controversies that transformed European culture and influenced early American consciousness so profoundly remained with us throughout the twentieth century. They are with us today. We have become accustomed to them, but their problems live on in controversies and consequences that bedevil us.

Throughout human history, logical questions concerning justice or constraint have rarely met with objective consideration. We have not been willing to tolerate anything that stands in our way, not nature and not the once proud and independent native American peoples we forced onto segregated reservations.

Where does danger lie? If human beings have the ability to transcend nature and manipulate nature’s laws, we might reasonably ask why freedom and the domination of nature would—or should—be incompatible? The difficulties we are encountering in the conflict between freedom and necessity can be difficult to recognize and understand.

A freedom that is blind to the necessities of life—the needs of families, communities, and small businesses—is an illusion leading to disaster. To survive we must come to understand freedom in relation to the ordered stability upon which it depends. This may be a challenging consideration, but it is critical.

The problem is this: The thinking of scientists following the Enlightenment remains dominant today. We perceive nature as a mechanistic system which we can manage in line with human needs and interests. Many find it deeply disturbing when this assumption is questioned. Yes, nature can be manipulated. But, when scientists report that there are dynamic natural systems over which humans have no control, the information can appear to be a threat to freedom rather than an objective consideration. This can lead to emotional reactions, such as distrust, denial, and anger. Warnings about the potential collapse of natural systems may be met with outrage, and may be perceived as politically motivated—especially when they suggest changes in behavior.

Humankind has exhibited an extraordinary capacity to create an ever-advancing civilization. We have built great ships and tall buildings, traveled to outer space and created instantaneous global communications. We seem capable of doing just about anything. Yet, we are now recognizing clear limits to what nature can accommodate without damage to our own well-being. Any future we can now conceive of or influence, must accommodate the implacable realities of the physical world, which includes the requirements of the biosphere and the equilibrium of natural systems. Nature controls its own equilibrium absolutely—despite any efforts of ours to interfere with it.

We stand on the threshold of a future far beyond our ability to envision. Our well-being as individuals and as a society will depend on our readiness to learn and to adjust with equanimity.

In the course of the 20th century, we learned that human reason is not the source of wisdom it was once imagined to be; it is simply a tool. Like reason, the use of observable and measurable data to gain knowledge and test theories is also a tool. It is not a source of metaphysical values like liberty, justice, and equality. Science has nothing to say about ethical principles or moral responsibility.

Dr. Gillespie’s questions can no longer be left to classroom debate. Do we still think we can make ourselves master and possessor of nature? Is human domination of nature compatible with human freedom? Can the natural world support an advanced human society without intelligent stewardship? And, given the complexity and destructive potential that technology has opened before us, how will we construct guardrails and enforce limits?

The historic questions have taken on a contemporary character, but they are essentially the same questions. Earlier generations evaded them by exalting science and materialism. Consequently, the denial of a rational God and the suppression of a religious perspective diverted attention from a logical contradiction that transcends philosophy and belief.

When the constraints and limitations imposed by belief in an all-knowing and all-powerful God were displaced by the cry “God is dead!” they were immediately replaced by the constraints and limitations imposed by belief in the mechanistic natural world of 20th century science.

It was assumed that science would soon master nature, that human beings would succeed in perfecting rational governance, and that humankind would realize a supposedly absolute freedom. But nature proved to be far more complex than we expected. And, a mechanistic interpretation of the natural order disables reason and disregards the inviolable balance of ultimate design we find in the natural order. Having rejected the God of revealed religion, humankind has found itself confronted with a severe discipline imposed by nature, but without the grace or guidance of a loving Teacher.

And what of “rational governance?” We have witnessed in graphic terms the manner in which self-appointed leaders of “rational thought” led us into two world wars and the totalitarian nightmares of communism, fascism, and Nazism.

This past is not far behind us. If we are to reconsider the cataclysms of the first half of the 20th century and the disastrous consequences of bungled attempts to control human destiny, we might start to see the future more clearly. Indeed, we might then avoid potential disasters before they befall us.

Both human ego and the unresolved philosophical debates inherited from the past continue to distort our thinking. Of particular consequence is our failure to comprehend the inevitable conflict between freedom and necessity, a problem deeply embedded in the American psyche.

The Loss of Roots, Membership, and Belief

Perhaps individualism, which emerged early in the historical process leading to modernity, deserves further consideration here. While nurturing creative initiative and personal autonomy, individualism also led to the withering of the social structures of civil society that had long provided human beings with a sense of identity and belonging in medieval Europe. The patterns of community that had anchored individual self-consciousness and belonging in a stable order slowly evaporated as the primacy of individual independence took hold.

Robert Nisbet has described the close relationship between these trends and the dramatic consequences that followed. The growth of state power, Nisbet argues, cannot be limited simply by defending individualism. A thriving civil society must mediate between the individual and the state; without a balance, freedom cannot be sustained.

“The extraordinary accomplishments of totalitarianism in the twentieth century would be inexplicable,” Nisbet writes, “were it not for the immense, burning appeal it exerts upon masses of individuals who have lost, or had taken away, their accustomed roots of membership and belief.”

Community, he asserts, is an essential need of every human being. Yet Americans today have little experience with genuine community. Our “communities” are more physical than social. We are acquainted with few of our neighbors. And we are confronted with a variety of communication platforms that promote argument and hostile divisiveness that cannot easily be resolved. If we are to restore the vibrant spirit of civil society that flourished in the American past and resist the dehumanizing threat of the total state that some fear in the future, we must respond to the deeply ingrained human need for community.

On the following pages we will explore the dynamic purpose of community—how we can create and sustain it. We will consider the foundations needed to support civil order in a free society and propose a strategy to regenerate a community-based civil society reminiscent of the American past.

However, this very positive and liberating prospect will come to naught if we fail to confront the demons of our past. There is a compelling need to understand where we have been and to envision, in general terms, where we wish to go. Our love for liberty and our readiness to protect and defend it is an expression of the human will that manifests with an emotional, almost religious intensity. This is a hallmark of the American mind and a pivotal attribute of the American Idea. But, how have the strengths of the individual and community been subverted and submerged by the impersonal dominance of corporate culture? And why has our society been so prone to unrestrained violence and self-indulgent materialism?

If we are to ask ourselves what we mean by freedom, and where our love for freedom has led us, each question begs another. If our ideal is not the uncivilized liberty of wild animals, what is it we actually want? Can liberty exist at all without the disciplined mediation of moral responsibility? Is it possible to maintain a civil order that protects liberty from destroying itself, and does so without undermining the liberty it intends to shield?

History and Heritage

The destructive capacity of the unexamined and undisciplined human will has become painfully apparent following the political violence of the 20th century. The consequences remain on our doorstep. The economic devastation, social disorder, and spiritual emptiness confronting us today have brought us full-circle.

Frustration and anger are boiling over today. Mental health is beaten down by anxiety and antipathy. The disorder is displayed in social turmoil and domestic violence, mass murder and suicide. We have entered a reality in which we are forced to recognize the danger of the undisciplined human will, and its potential for overwhelming, life-shattering hostility. It would be easy to ignore the forces and failures that have brought us here. However, if we fail to understand the meaning of history, we make ourselves vulnerable to the worst possible consequences. We are not immune to the terrors of the past.

Humankind has often shown a weakness for the leadership of self-styled saviors, and governments today have acquired the surveillance technology to enforce absolute tyranny. Having distributed the tools for implementing spectacular violence, mayhem, and mass murder, we are confronted with a social problem that has accelerated to terrifying dimensions in our homes, schools, churches, and workplaces.

The violence and complexity of our circumstances require that we assert responsibility as self-respecting human beings. We can do this by defining our common values, identifying practical principles and confronting unacceptable behavior. We can integrate the learning process by taking active responsibility for developing trust and dependability in our local communities.

There has never been a time when freedom did not require responsibility and the disciplining of the human will, but the future depends on it now.

Reflecting on the legacy of two world wars and mass murder on a monumental scale, Hannah Arendt drives home the tough truth of a shattered heritage:

“We can no longer afford to take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion. The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live. And this is why all efforts to escape from the grimness of the present into nostalgia for a still intact past, or into the anticipated oblivion of a better future, are vain.”

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[i]      Reinhold Neibuhr argued that individuality was always grounded in Christianity, and goes on to detail the decisive influence of Protestantism.  However, the earliest open expressions of the concept appear to have been advanced by such early Renaissance thinkers as Plutarch and Erasmus. See Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity, University of Chicago Press (2008), pp. 44-68; and Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941), vol. I, p. 57-61.

[ii]     Isaiah Berlin, Freedom and its Betrayal, Princeton University Press (2002), see especially pp. 102-104, 122-130.

[iii]    Michael Allen Gillespie, op. cit., p. 42.

[iv]   Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Ronald Herder, ed., Dover Publications (1997), p. 18.

[v]     Judith Shklar, The Boundaries of Democracy, in Redeeming American Political Thought, Univ. of Chicago Press (1998), p. 136-137.

[vi]     Thomas Paine, op. cit., p. 33.

[vii]    Michael Allen Gillespie, op. cit., pp. 283-284.

[viii]     Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom, Oxford University Press (1953), p. x (Introduction).  He continues: “I believe, then, that community is the essential context within which modern alienation has to be considered.  Here I have reference not so much to a state of mind—although that is inevitably involved—as I do to the more concrete matters of the individual’s relation to social function and social authority.  These are… the two supports upon which alone community, in any reasonably precise sense, can exist and influence its members…. By authority, I do not mean power.  Power, I conceive as something external and based on force.  Authority, on the other hand, is rooted in the statuses, functions, and allegiances which are the components of any association. Authority is indeed indistinguishable from organization, and perhaps the chief means by which… a sense of organization becomes a part of human personality…. Unlike power, it is based ultimately upon the consent of those under it; that is, it is conditional.  Power arises only when authority breaks down.” Nisbet, op. cit., pp. xxvi-xxvii.

[ix]  Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (1951, 1966, 1976), p. ix. (Preface to the First Edition).