In this second part of this discussion, I’ll be looking at this question from a slightly more abstract or theoretical perspective. That is, do we have reasons to believe that Americans, or the citizens of any nation or federation of nations, have the ability to be a self-governing people in the context of the immense complexity of social and economic and political and cultural relationships in the modern world. This increase in complexity is driven by:
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- Pure, simple growth in population and in land under use and natural resources being exploitable.
- Increased complexity from such factors as improved knowledge of empirical reality along with the resulting technology and understandings of Creation.
Are we even capable of living up to our roles as citizens in modern, complex human communities?
Let’s be blunt. Most American citizens, most human beings alive anywhere on Earth in 2018, don’t understand much about complex systems such as the sorts of political systems necessary to and proper to modern civilizations…
Let me stop there and point out that Saddam Hussein wasn’t particularly brutal in his efforts to forge a nation compared to the likes of William the Conqueror and Henry II and Henry VII and the other kings/warlords who created the British nations—Ireland and Scotland as well as England and Wales which was so brutally suppressed by one of their own—Henry VIII. I should add Saddam also wasn’t particularly selfish in grabbing a disproportionate share of the fruits for his family and tribe and other allies. Local warlords and tribal leaders aren’t often soft men and aren’t ready to give up their own power or their people’s independence to central authorities, not even when that central authority (government and more) leaves a good amount of power and wealth in the hands of local political and other institutions. How many Americans could even dimly ask the questions which might lead to a new perspective on a man brutal but much like the brutal men who ended such things as the personal, not law-based, laws of tribal societies in what became the West?
The above is but one example of controversial and sophisticated thinking which seems quite beyond the average citizen of the US and of nearly all countries I know anything about; it also seems beyond the typical Senator or State Department/CIA official, and so on. At the same time, a good educational system along with a properly complex (sophisticated) culture in general can plant a good worldview in the minds of many citizens—certainly the ones smart enough to understand though not smart enough and creative enough to think thoughts which are new, at least to them. And here’s a sophisticated thought which would confuse many: An old thought in a new context can be as good as a new thought. Or as bad as it might have been the first time around. True thinking can’t be automated.
Intelligence isn’t the only issue. And lack of relatively high levels of intelligence on the part of most citizens is more a feature than a problem. Everyone has a role in life and some are given more powerful minds to serve their own needs and the needs of their communities, others are given generous hearts or drives oriented towards the good of their families or other communities, still others capable hands—that is, the skills and inclinations to turn good ideas and good `feelings’ into real-world results. Powerful minds aren’t an unqualified blessing—Einstein wasn’t omnicompetent and neither were the great inspirational leaders nor the great businessmen or politicians.
Americans are inclined to—sort of—respect famous intelligent people such as physicists who win the Nobel Prize and engineers who advance technology or famous professors from Harvard and Yale who justify the stupid and poorly-managed wars which—sort of—meet the political and economic and psychiatric needs of the rulers of the US. There is little respect among American citizens for those who have bothered to gather information on Iraq or Iran or the families engaged in banking or politics; there is little indication that American citizens realize that, while smart people don’t always think well and don’t always get to the right answer, smart people think thoughts about a complex situation which aren’t usually possible for most others to think; there is little realization that even a smalltown public library will have some books documenting the criminality of some American leaders from the 19th century and the stronger tendency to criminality as Wall St lawyers (such as the Dulles brothers) or investment bankers (such as the Rockefellers after moving to NYC or the Bush sub-clan of the Walkers) began to periodically and then consistently dominate international relations and then began to loot the country’s pension funds, mortgage guaranty funds, and who knows what else. See the disturbing story of the $21 trillion (as of 2018 or so) which is missing from the US government at the website of Catherine Austin Fitts at The Missing Money. “Banana republic” isn’t nearly adequate as a description of the US at this time.
High school students learn a great deal of mathematics and science and history (patterns) which were the results of the activities of great thinkers (Archimedes and Newton and the Founding Fathers); those thoughts were often great mysteries to all but smart people for generations as they were being absorbed into the communal mind and made accessible to those lacking in intellectual gifts. Often those so lacking in the abstract reasoning skills needed to understand, say, the so-called Big Bang—a phase change and not a creation event or lacking the somewhat different reasoning skills to understand the messy development of Western political systems, have quite a bit to offer in general but specifically in making decisions based upon that communal knowledge, but thinking to be independent-minded and intellectually freestanding they become pawns of demagogues and propagandists and fear-mongers.
And we are divided by our distrust of others who speak or write in complex sentences or who read too many books, of others who call us to account for our own crimes and sins or for those of leaders we support, of those who conceive great and noble projects which demand energy and sacrifices of various sorts.
The first Catholic Mass reading for 2018/09/18 makes the point:
Tuesday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading 1 1 Cor 12:12-14, 27-31a
Brothers and sisters: As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.
Now the body is not a single part, but many. Now you are Christ’s Body, and individually parts of it. Some people God has designated in the Church to be, first, Apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers; then, mighty deeds; then gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues. Are all Apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts.
[Lectionary for Mass for Use in the Dioceses of the United States, second typical edition, Copyright 2001, 1998, 1997, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine.]
The above reading gives the answer to more responsible and more capable citizenship in Christian terms. This answer can be restated in terms congenial to any tradition which respects the reality of communities. If you have real communities, you’ll have trusted members in each community including towns and cities and local churches who have:
- strong hearts to detect the presence of moral disorder or even outright evil as opposed to the claims of starry-eyed idealists or the corrupted powerholders and wealthholders, those strong-hearted human beings will be the true reformers;
- strong minds and a curiosity that seeks knowledge and truth to tell us what might be or is going on as opposed to the claims of powerholders and wealthholders, those strong-minded and curious human beings will produce plausible understandings of the increasingly complex events and structures of our world;
- strong hands to protect the communities against predators who would simply exploit youth or others in the community or those far more dangerous predators who seek to control or destroy all the intermediary organizations which are the relatively local communities.
No, Americans are not a morally responsible, self-governing people and can’t ever be such until we restore our families and local communities and local churches and local ethnic/social clubs and all the communities and institutions which lie between those most concrete, mostly deeply flesh-and-blood, communities and the central powers which currently are not true communities but rather institutions for exploitations of the naive, ignorant, or simply powerless by the sophisticated, knowledgeable and powerful. (Take this last comment in light of the type of sophistication and knowledge and power appropriate to corrupt human institutions, even those which have some of the characteristics of true communities—as the United States once did.)
And it’s our fault as much as the fault of our exploiters. It didn’t take threats to make us give up our communities. It didn’t even take substantial bribes. All it took was the offering of their cultural trash—the cultural Marxists were employees and not great revolutionaries—and we grabbed at it, more and more so, as our minds and moral characters decayed over a remarkably short period. We, the citizens of the US, watched Superbowls and trashy movies—has Hollywood not yet produced a movie for pseudo-adults about any of the comic book characters I lost interest in at the age of 11 or so?—and did nothing to maintain those foundations let alone to strengthen them against the cultural and intellectual acids which are a side-product of revolutionary changes such as we’ve seen in the West over the recent centuries. And now the superstructures of our once-great civilization are collapsing even as our exploiters make short-term profits by alienating (stealing) the contents and building materials.