In a recent Jeremiad, James Howard Kunstler talks about who’s to blame for the ongoing financial meltdown, and in so doing, illustrates precisely the kind of thinking that is the true foundation of the problem.
What we’re also seeing is a crisis of authority on top of a crisis of capital, and it will probably lead to a crisis of legitimacy — by which I mean a catastrophic loss of faith that this society can govern itself at any level. Leadership across the board has failed, in government, in business, in what used to be called the press, and in education. Leadership in every sector went along with the program, marveling stupidly at their society’s ability to get something for nothing.
The general public did not perform any more honorably — due to whatever failure of civic norms they operate within — and indeed the nation as a whole may deserve all the suffering it faces. But however bad the general public’s behavior, or dark their fate, a failure of civic norms is ultimately a failure of leadership, which is about clearly stating the boundaries and terms of behavior. When anything goes, nothing matters. Since that was our leaders’ attitude, the public did what it naturally does: it follows the example set by leadership. [ed. emph.]
In a healthy society, leadership has nothing to do with civic norms. And a society in which it is generally accepted that civic norms depend on “clearly stated boundaries and terms of behavior” is doomed. Morality cannot be imposed from above; it must arise from below. It must be organic, not hierarchical. Lao Tzu saw this clearly:
The more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people will be. The more laws and orders are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be. Therefore the sage says: I take no action and the people of themselves are transformed. I engage in no activity and the people of themselves become prosperous.
So Kunstler, despite his clarity about the unsustainability of our present economic and political course, has bought into the very attitudes that guarantee its failure. His talk of a “crisis of legitimacy” reveals that all too clearly. There is no legitimacy in the current order, for it cannot, by its very nature, deliver what it promises. As Vernard Eller said,
[N]o program of human power politics can be the method of social justice—in that sinful humanity is simply incapable of exercising impositional power without being corrupted by it.
Buttressed by its malignant sacrament, the myth of redemptive violence, impositional power (or coercive power, or hierarchical power—call it what you will) is the same delusion the human race has suffered from since Babylon. Every civilization tries it, vowing that “this time it will be different.” But it never is. Can you say “lunacy?” It certainly fits the classical definition: trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
But it cannot be defeated using its own tools. Violence merely strengthens it. It thrives on revolution. The secret lies in non-violent resistance, in opting out wherever possible. Look to your friends and neighbors, to the natural, voluntary associations that are the true body of human life. Study the movement of birds, the graceful weave of a flock across the sky, and you will know that as the model for a truly human polity: no leader, just a delighted sensitivity to other lives. As Auden said, “There is no such thing as the State. We must love one another or die.”
Withdraw your consent!
