Foreword: In a meeting the other day, my friend (and Executive Director of the S1 Project) Chris Owen shared that what he is hoping to lift up within our common life today are “questions of meaning and purpose, character and virtue.” Chris’ sense is that the places/institutions where we used to consider such questions are disappearing, along with frameworks and even the vocabulary necessary to consider such things as what the common good (or goodness) looks like. I'm sharing a lengthy quote of his from the S1 Project website to open this reflection.
Today, we want to help you understand the nature of the moral battle being waged in our common life. The moral battle being waged today is different than the usual way we think of a moral battle.
The usual way we think of a moral battle is that it’s a contest of the good guys versus the bad guys. In Star Wars, it was the Rebel Alliance versus the Galactic Empire. In Harry Potter, it was Harry and his friends versus Voldemort and his gang.
You might be tempted to see what’s happening today as good guys versus bad guys, and that’s true to an extent. But it doesn’t go deep enough.
The moral battle today is a campaign to strip goodness of its authority to constrain behavior.
Again: the moral battle today is a campaign to strip goodness of its authority to constrain behavior. It’s an attack on the idea of goodness itself, and contrary to what you might think, this attack on the idea of goodness itself predates 2016.
In a healthy society with healthy leaders and healthy institutions, moral virtues like goodness and truth have authority to constrain behavior.
We might say to a friend or to a colleague or to a child, “You can’t do that. It’s wrong.” What’s good and right provides boundaries around what we do. Our actions are constrained by what is right.
Analogously, our words are constrained by truth. You can’t just say whatever you want and call it true.
In a healthy society with healthy leaders and healthy institutions, goodness and truth constrain behavior.
What happens when the attack on goodness is successful and the authority of goodness to constrain behavior is reduced to zero? What happens when goodness ceases to be a meaningful concept? Here’s what happens.
When goodness ceases to be meaningful in our common life, regular people like you and me feel deep unease, confusion, and instability. We know and feel, somewhere in ourselves, that when goodness and truth are abused, something precious is being violated. We feel unmoored.
These feelings can take the form of outrage, but unchannelled outrage eventually ends in exhaustion. This exhaustion, coupled with the hollowed-out social understanding of goodness, makes it easier for power-hungry people to accumulate more power. Goodness, rendered meaningless, has no authority to constrain them, and people are too exhausted to resist.
The title of this post is “Good People Do Not Exist.” By which we mean that if the word “good” becomes meaningless, then the possibility of our being “good people” disappears. It becomes a logical impossibility.
If “good” does not exist, then “good people” do not exist. This is the nihilist, valueless world that people like Musk, Putin, Trump, and others are trying to make.
As Chris suggests, this is about far more than the current administration, though widespread support of its policies suggests that we are already deep into the weeds of what necessary moral reflection, frameworks and behavior look like in a democratic society. Without the ability to reflect together about what a shared common life and flourishing (the common good) look like, we fall prey to the intoxications of radical individualism: “What is best for me is also best for others.” Any concept of compromise, let alone of self-sacrifice, suggests losing (where winning and losing - individually - are the only possible outcomes).1
Radical individualism is incredibly easy to manipulate; simply suggest that individual freedoms/rights are being taken away, and those who feel overlooked, afraid of other people, or unbalanced/disadvantaged by pluralism and cultural shifts will follow gladly, seeing hope in a “restoration” of their advantages, protections, and opportunities.
To be fair, though, without thoughtful religious communities, common education processes, and other forms of civil gatherings, individualism becomes the default moral framework. In other words, unless we are joined in efforts and conversations around what goodness and shared flourishing looks like, we all pull in different directions. And without any common goals beyond “do what feels good” (which is very much not the same thing as goodness…), the whole sense of “We, the people…” is meaningless.
The extent to which we recognize how we're (getting) lost may help us decide our involvement in this battle.2 I particularly appreciate that Chris (in a similar way in which I try to do with my reflections) offers some suggestions for us:
So what do we do?
This is a moral battle, so it’s first a battle of ideas. And in a battle of ideas, we have work to do that is located inside of ourselves.
So here are two tactics to employ, within the larger strategy of promoting the authority of the “good.”
First, protect your inner sense of right and wrong by limiting news consumption.
You don’t need to be aware of every morally empty thing that happens, as it happens. Exposure to too much morally empty news acts like a Dementor in the Harry Potter books: it sucks the life out of you. So protect your inner sense of right and wrong.
Second, find ways to affirm and assert the reality of goodness. Any assertion of goodness, anywhere, helps.
Make and appreciate beautiful things. Speak the truth. Join in-person groups that do good things.
These all may seem small and insignificant things to do, but be assured they are not insignificant. They are important and meaningful. The idea of goodness is under attack.
We fight back by affirming the reality, the power, and the authority of goodness, of truth, of beauty.
I really like his comment about avoiding consumption of “morally empty things.” (I also like his references to Harry Potter 😀). So, then, I offer some follow-up questions/suggestions:
What things are sucking the life out of you these days? And what might it look like to commit to avoiding (at least some of) them? I like to suggest “experiments” that you try for 2-3 weeks, but if that feels like too long, try a week just to see what you notice about your energy, your thoughts, and your perceptions of — among other things (as Chris suggests) — beauty.
Name 3-4 things that represent goodness in your life, and consider creating:
A “vision board” of pictures or images that remind you of those things.
A daily habit of reviewing where those things — or others — are showing up
in your life OR how you can be more attuned to noticing them when they do. AND consider with whom you might share what you notice (and how they might reciprocate).
Something in writing — poetry (Haiku poems are a great place to start) or prose — or other creative outlet (drawing, painting, fiber arts, photography, etc.) in which you further explore your connection to goodness, truth, and beauty.
Wendell Berry so often writes about such things in powerful ways. Here, by way of conclusion, is his poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front:
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
Peace, Dana
I started to contrast this with the idea that “What is best for others is what is also best for me,” but that is a more broadly socialistic idea that mostly ignores my perception of my gifts/desires/needs. Therein lies the challenge; finding middle ways between the two.
I confess that I do not like terms like “battle,” “war,” etc. BUT in extreme cases — of which I believe we are in one — we may need to choose our allegiance and focus our efforts with full recognition of the costs of not doing so.
Just catching up on this. I appreciate the riffs you’ve added. Resistance isn’t always street protest (although it is sometimes). Sometimes resistance is basic human connection—a smile, a gesture of generosity. Anything that affirms dignified mutuality