Corrupt ideas underlie most problems facing America today. We are informed and guided by ideas that not only debase the human spirit but corrupt our relations with other persons, nature, and God. Being so enslaved, spiritual alienation and its effects are destined to strike at our efforts to forge an integral human existence.
The mythology of the self-contained, autonomous individual is one such idea. This myth shapes much of American culture, including its socioeconomic and even religious life. But if the truth be told, the notion of the autonomous individual is only a mask that enshrouds an inner emptiness and aloneness. It is the same mask worn by Citizen Kane whose lust for power denied him the fulfillment he sought. It is the mask worn by Tom and Daisy in The Great Gatsby. It is a truth that permeates the paintings of Edward Hopper and the photographs of Robert Frank. It is the cry of anguish that radiates from the spirituals of the cotton picker, the painful stories of the rural and urban Blues artist, the social voice of 1960s R&B, and the modern prophet crying out from the wilderness of the street, the poetic artists of Rap and Hip Hop.
Neither power, nor wealth, nor reputation can free a man from his existential aloneness. Lurking behind every Horatio Alger story is a human tragedy waiting to unfold. Every person reels under the weight that disaffection lays on their soul.
Yet beyond individual autonomy and spiritual alienation lies a deeper truth. From the depths of one’s being, the person cries out for love. Love liberates. Without love no one can be free. It is only by being permitted and affirmed through the love of the other — and the Other — that alienation can be mitigated and the person be made whole. Such is the intrinsic logic of personal dignity. Such is the intrinsic logic of individual freedom. Such is the intrinsic logic of marriage. Such is the intrinsic logic of the family. Such is the intrinsic logic of an integral human society. And such is the intrinsic logic of human solidarity and the brotherhood of man.
To mitigate the corrupting influence of this myth, there is little we can do effectively beyond mounting a critique of its central ideas and unmasking the imprint its logic has made on our culture. No other course is open. But herein lies a conundrum. The persuasion of this myth already shapes how we observe, judge, and act. In large measure, it already determines the outlines of our imagination and creativity. For this reason, we are inclined to remain passive in its presence and oblivious to the collective fate its logic dictates. Isolation and disaffection is what we seek without knowing or wanting it.
But America’s problem runs much deeper than corrupt ideas. Beyond a crisis of ideas, logic, and truth exists a crisis of the intellect. American culture is essentially anti-intellectual. This anti-intellectualism is rooted in the nominalist and voluntarist traditions of modernity and is given explicit formulation and expression in the Enlightenment. America is founded on that tradition. But how can we address a crisis of ideas, logic, and truth when our culture is essentially anti-intellectual and when truth is judged a priori to be relative?
America’s default response to this dilemma has not been to correct the logical deficits inherent in corrupt ideas, but to mount practical solutions to what is presumed to be practical problems. Of particular note is the penchant to regulate and control human behavior by using extraordinary legal means.
Prohibition is a classic example of the instrumental use of law to control individual behavior. In 1920, the manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors were constitutionally banned in the US. While the intent was to improve the well-being of society, Prohibition created instead a huge demand for illegal alcohol and a dramatic growth in organized crime. Mob boss Al Capone controlled over 10,000 speakeasies in Chicago alone, and he supplied all the bootlegging business from Canada to Florida. Prohibition was clearly a failure. The American public was unwilling to uphold the law. For this reason, it was rejected by constitutional amendment in 1933.
More recently there has been a move to constitutionally ban abortion and gay marriage. Both efforts have failed in part because the nation remembers its experience with Prohibition. But analogous to Prohibition is a Nixon initiative, namely, the war on drugs. Like Prohibition, this legal tactic has been a dismal failure. Its most tangible effect has been to create a growing demand for illegal substances and spur an international drug enterprise to serve that need. But even worse has been its dehumanizing impact. The war on drugs has legitimized the incarceration and/or enslavement in the criminal justice system of over a million Americans each year. Despite a heavy hand, or because of it, the war on drugs has failed in every respect to achieve the ends for which it was created. Contrary to intentions, it has made America to be a lesser place for tens of millions of otherwise innocent Americans.
Whether it be the war on drugs, the war on crime, the war on homelessness, or the war on poverty, success never seems to follow the nation’s intent and effort. Even when every tool at the nation’s disposal is employed to force a reduction in the incidence of dysfunctional behaviors and dislocations, the instrumental use of the law, or a parallel system of economic incentives and disincentives, have been found to accomplish little beyond cosmetic alterations.
Indeed, hasn’t this been the principle outcome of the pro-life/pro-choice debate these past thirty-five years? What positive advances can anyone claim? The only truthful reply, or so it seems, is nothing has been gained whatsoever. This war, like so many others, has only encouraged further contradictions to erupt in our society. Social fragmentation has not diminished; it has increased. The incidence of abortion, and substance abuse, and homelessness, and poverty have not diminished; they have increased.
Contrary to general assumptions, then, America’s moral and spiritual crisis is not rooted in personal or institutional failings. It is not a mere function of behavior. Its ground runs deeper and penetrates to the originating ideas of the culture themselves. The crisis of the intellect and of truth constitutes the bedrock of our nation’s moral and spiritual predicament. It has bracketed-for-failure efforts to alleviate spiritual alienation and social fragmentation. Corrupt ideas such as the autonomous individual shape our culture. They shape our behavior and our responses to behavior. They shape our thought processes and the creativity of our imagination. They are the root causes of our national predicament and they must be unmasked and laid bare. Only from this starting point can we find a way to alleviate the dynamics of spiritual alienation and the social, economic, political, and religious fragmentation that are its symptoms.
In recent years, especially, US leaders have set the mind adrift and conceded the end to justify the means in policy deliberations. This recklessness has undermined stability at home and abroad. To bring order out of the present confusion, a new intellectual precision is required to ground policy debate. A person-centric logic and language must be developed to supersede the prevailing logic of numbers and ideology. Policy impacts lives in ways that are neither quantitative nor fanciful. Poverty, health and war are serious matters, and decisions made about them impact human lives in profound and lasting ways. Only a qualitative logic can attend to the concrete truth of the person and offer what we intuitively seek: an intellectual basis for sound policy formulation and a moral basis for leadership.
To that end, it is imperative to: 1) make proper use of principles intrinsic to personal dignity, individual freedom, and human solidarity; 2) craft a concrete political language based on those principles; 3) develop this language as the instrumental form of an inspired leadership; and 4) transform the national dialogue accordingly.
Sound public action needs to be bound inexorably to a just order of perfecting relations, a non-abstract order of fairness to all. To articulate and accede to the principles inherent in the person, freedom, and solidarity is to maintain faith with our common heritage, and the intrinsic yearnings of the human family. It is to unleash a dynamic that can unite each American in solidarity with one another and with the brotherhood of man. To refuse this course is to go on “running to nowhere.”
‘To that end, it is imperative to: 1) make proper use of principles intrinsic to personal dignity…’
Very true. But from what do we derive these principles? From ‘nature’? From a categorical imperative to respect persons? From the direct commandments of God? From a sort of common moral sense? Even Catholics appear to be divided on this point.
Gerald,
A great post and very thought provoking. There is nothing in the substance I could respond to with any disagreement; there are minor details which one can respond to, such as I might suggest “personal freedom” might be better to use than “individual freedom” in your imperatives at the end (to underly the fact that our personal, limited freedom can only exist and find its proper place in the unlimited freedom of the divine — since, by saying individual, it seems to be closed in on itself), but as a whole, I am in agreement with what you say here.
Gerald, I mostly agree with this thought-provoking article but I’m not sure that our society is historically rooted in anti-intellectual. However, I would say that anti-intellectualism does maintain a stubborn presence right from the founding of the republic. I guess what I am saying is that anti-intellectualism is rather a dangerous outcome of the corrupted ideas that you alluded to: these corrupted ideas (such as America as the guarantor of your rights to unhinged profit-seeking) have given rise to mental laziness that has naturally led to anti-intellectualism. So, an American leader can perpetrate a fraud on the people without serious debate in a suppossedly free society, just by suggesting that the guarantee is threatened and counting on moral outrage because people ‘of sound mind’ do not pause to ‘debate’ when a ‘sacrosanct’ American pricnciple is undermined.
While I concur with the assessment that the idea of the autonomous individual, underwritten by the relativization of truth to this individual, undermines the possibility of just society, I’m unconvinced that these issues are firmly rooted in anti-intellectualism. Anti-intellectualist tendencies do provide a cover to resist progressive critiques of contemporary society, but the source of this resistance runs much deeper. Autonomous individualism has become a central theme in the mythos under which the modern, capitalistic world operates. It can be said to be essential to the identities of a vast majority of Western peoples. To critique it is not merely an intellectual ploy, but calls into question the very existence of the individual whom one is critiquing. It is not, then, an aversion to intellectualism that continues Americans on their alienated plight, but an aversion to death/finitude/radical change. As you hinted at above, it is not intellectualism that might stand to pull them back from this precipice, but the liberating effect of love founded in truth.
SMB says: “But from what do we derive these principles?” “Even Catholics appear to be divided on this point.”
It would seem to me that what is essential here is not only a dialogue regarding the principles intrinsic to the person, but how the “person” is reflected in our culture which serves as the “background” for our “lived experience.” From there, we can focus on a practical application of these principles in regards specific challenges.
Regarding principles, whether one turns to Kant, Hume or Sola Scriptura, I suspect there will be discovered deficiencies in all three if a true dialogue were engaged. The existential reality of the person embodies an existential richness that most schemes fail to elucidate.
But to explore this existential richness in meaningful ways, I believe it is necessary to take the dialogue beyond philosophical disputation to a focus on the concrete where universals and particulars intersect.
US homeless policy can illustrate (or law, or public health social, or foreign policy, would be others other areas, e.g.). Social policy in America is predicated on the outcomes of “social science research.” In that context, “the principle feature of homelessness has been determined to be “the absence of a home.” Regarding causation, HUD says: “Homelessness is not a condition but an outcome. The causes of homelessness are as diverse as the full range of social and economic problems confronting the most impoverished among us. The unrelenting cutbacks in housing over the past 12 years have made a bad situation worse.”
The focus here is not on the person or on any aspect of interiority. Its domain is reduced to correlations objectively measured and considered. Since science seeks objectivity, human reality is objectivized in accordance with its demands. This is methodological reductionism.
But what if the reality of homelessness had something to do with interiority? What if causes and correlations were different? What if causes had to do with the urgings of the person to satisfy their “unmet need to belong?” What if correlations were not causes at all but symptoms of causation?
Insofar as US policy overlooks whatever fails to fit within the scheme of social science research, it can be argued and demonstrated that something significant has been left out of consideration, namely, the person. What are the consequences of this reductionism? Does US policy really grasp the nature of homelessness? Are we attempting to subtract symptoms without addressing the root cause of those symptoms?
It may well be that the radical failure of US policy on homelessness is reducible to a failure to address the ideas intrinsic to the reality of the person, e.g., the person’s intrinsically relational quality. Perhaps the autonomous individual lurks in the shadows of our failure. Perhaps it is our reluctance to address these ideas that explains our predicament.
Henry says: “… I might suggest “personal freedom” might be better to use than “individual freedom” in your imperatives at the end …”
Thanks for your kind words. I very much appreciate the insights of your posts and read them carefully for that reason.
On your critical point, I must agree wholeheartedly with you. I have been influenced by Maritain’s distinction between the person and the individual. Often times, as in the list of imperatives, I will assume individual freedom to be a priori “informed” by the notion of the person which is listed first in the series of imperatives. There is a material dimension to freedom which I believe must be preserved as well as a spiritual dimension. So I see individual freedom as having been given the form of the person. As for solidarity, I see this term as the end of freedom, its purpose. Freedom in this case is a means (it is also a state of being). So personal dignity flows through individual freedom and results in solidarity. Thus the uniqueness of the person is brought within the spiritual context of community. Herein lies concreteness.
But you are correct in what you say. How to encapsulate all this in a phrase escapes me?
arewak says: “I mostly agree with this thought-provoking article but I’m not sure that our society is historically rooted in anti-intellectual[ism].”
Nominalism denies the existential validity of universal ideas in things. Such denial emasculates the proper object of the intellect, thereby laying the ground for anti-intellectualism.
Nominalism and voluntarism underpins Protestantism. Indeed, when Luther speaks of the Fall one of the effects for the individual is that the intellect has lost its capacity to know universal truth. It’s a little step to go from this understanding of the intellect to the doctrine of Sola Scriptura.
Protestantism exists at the very foundation of America as does the Protestant Ethic. Both the doctrine and the ethic are intrinsically anti-intellectual. Indeed, the Protestant Ethic is voluntaristic for that very reason.
Even more, the influence of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes on the early formation of American society cannot be denied. The focus on the notion of the autonomous individual runs throughout their writings and our history. Both Locke and Hobbes make ideas to be fictions of the imagination, as does Hume. Ideas have no extramental validity. Locke, Hobbes, and Hume (along with Adam Smith) are all situated within the Nominalist tradition and therefore anti-intellectual.
The pragmatism of William James and John Dewey reduces the intellect to instrumental reason. This lies outside the intellectual tradition of earlier philosopher like St. Thomas who appreciate the validity of the intellect and analogical truth. Likewise, the idealism of Josiah Royce speaks of reason, but once again it is within the context of the self. Ideas have no extramental validity.
Much more could be mentioned to demonstrate the anti-intellectualism of America, but this should be sufficient to indicate that it exists at the very heart of America’s founding and culture.
Gerry, I think your posts are important — they are thought-provoking in a world that uses ear-buds and mind-buds. Here is a thought you provoked: to convince people of your message, you should phrase it with Thomistic precision. To me, you sound like Theillard de Chardin, circling around subjects like a bird of prey, from above. When will you swoop down from the subjective to the universal? In the meantime, thanks for reminding us of truths and the importance of every human relationship.