If we want to make things better, we’ll have to do it ourselves.
“For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infallible leaders or some new technique they have access to a source of irresistible power.”
I have read The True Believer a number of times because it is a ridiculously powerful book. It is a roadmap for despots and revolutionaries, an insight on both human goodness and evil. It disproportionately influenced the way I thought about Strong Towns in the very early days when I would refer to this tiny niche blog as a “movement,” as if saying it enough would make it so. It did.
I was walking down the street
When I thought I heard this voice say
“Say, ain’t we walking down the same street together
On the very same day?”
I said, “Hey Senorita that’s astute”
I said, Why don’t we get together
And call ourselves an institute?”Gumboots by Paul Simon
As the nation was erupting in violence this past summer, I attempted with my friends and colleagues to describe a paradox that, in my view, made it difficult for many to understand Black Lives Matter and the reaction to the killing of George Floyd. I don’t think I was successful.
One narrative would have us understand the oppression experienced by Black Americans, historic and modern. A counter-narrative would have us recognize the enormous amount of progress that has been made, and how that struggle has been near the center of public consciousness for a long time. Both narratives speak in extremes, and both place the other’s extreme rhetoric at the core of a worldview they see as oppositional.
The paradox comes from The True Believer. As quoted above: “For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they must be intensely discontented yet not destitute….” Enormous progress has been made—Black America is no longer destitute, marginalized, and discounted in the ways it was half a century ago—and that standing has allowed room for not only a growing recognition of lingering inequity, but the “plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change.”
My observation is that the tension around social justice and Black Lives Matters is both a positive sign of progress and the inevitable downside of progress. Though we would wish for it, there is probably no completely orderly way to transition from forced destitution to a just society. I found the violence and mayhem horrific but, like many at the time, acknowledge that spurts of instability are the wages for long stretches of suppressed volatility.
Many have been quick to draw distinctions between the violence last summer and the violence this month in Washington DC. Many others have been quick to draw parallels. As narratives, they are revealing. More heavy-handed policing this month would not have been just, nor would a dominant media narrative that insisted that what happened was “mostly peaceful.” We all know this, and perhaps that is what we really mean, but mass movements—like the ones we are trapped in at the moment—allow us to say things we don’t believe, then believe them.
“It is true that the adherents of a rising movement have a strong sense of liberation even though they live and breathe in an atmosphere of strict adherence to tenants and commands. The sense of liberation comes from having escaped burdens, fears and hopelessness of an untenable individual existence.”
At the same time that rising minority power compels many to “plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change,” the “burdens, fears and hopelessness of an untenable individual existence” have taken deep root across formerly prosperous parts of America.
While the Hillbilly Elegy narrative was first embraced by progressive thought leaders seeking answers, then caricatured by many of the same, I have never met a conservative-minded person who felt compelled to read it. They should have. It was a painful self-examination.
Image by Pruiscilla Du Preez on Unsplash.
And while I was roundly criticized for sharing the insights of Charles Murray’s book Coming Apart, which focuses on the dissolution of the white middle class, I wish more progressives had read it. Again, read with a curious mind, it was a painful self-examination of how good intentions can go terribly wrong.
I spent the past four years interviewing people like Tim Carney, whose book Alienated America describes how the social isolation documented in Coming Apart and described first-hand in Hillbilly Elegy created the conditions for Donald Trump’s victories in the Republican primary. I also interviewed people like Sam Quinones, whose book Dreamland explained the evolution of the opioid epidemic. I did these things as I watched forces beyond my control pick and choose the narratives that comforted them, that neatly created an affirming worldview, most often by discounting the pain and suffering of others.
The fact that we are broken should not keep us from recognizing injustice. The fact that we live with injustice should not prevent us from seeing where people are broken.
Washington DC is built as a monumental city. The Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial rise above all the other displays of national pride and dignity on the National Mall. They are meant to inspire. Meant to humble. In dark and difficult times, it is this aura—this national myth—that is meant to summon us to be greater than ourselves.
I know George Washington was not a perfect man, but the ideal of George Washington as someone who cared more about the future of the country than his own power should be preserved as the model of a great leader.
I know Thomas Jefferson was far from a perfect man, but the ideal of Thomas Jefferson, and the idea that all of us are created equal, is an aspiration we can all embrace as the foundation for an expanding vision of a more just world.
I know Abraham Lincoln was not a perfect man, that his persecution of a horrific civil war was a case study in the compromise of ideals, but the profile of Abraham Lincoln as an honest, humble, American servant is one for which many of us would give the last full measure of devotion.
Four years ago, amid protests and marches that were filling the capital, I said on our local radio station, KAXE, that the way we get the best outcomes during the Trump presidency was to treat him, as the representative of the office of the presidency, with the utmost respect. Though he may not be deserving, the office was. Our country was. Our ideals and institutions are. Great societies always appeal to higher ideals and, in doing so, propel themselves to greatness.
We didn’t do that. None of us, myself included. When he went low, we collectively seemed to go lower. Which of us sit here today without an unhealthy level of disdain for at least one segment of our fellow citizens? Let he without sin cast the first stone. It won’t be me.
“When the old order begins to fall apart, many of the vociferous men of words, who prayed so long for the day, are in a funk. The first glimpse of the face of anarchy frightens them out of their wits.
Not so the fanatic. Chaos is his element. When the old order begins to crack, he wades in with all his might and recklessness to blow the whole hated present to high heaven. He glories in the sight of a world coming to a sudden end. To hell with reforms! All that already exists is rubbish, and there is no sense in reforming rubbish.”
The crossing of the Rubicon river by Julius Caesar’s army was a declaration of war on the Roman Republic. It was the culmination of the tearing down of many norms, those traditions and ideals that held in check the thin veneer of Roman civilization. Many of those traditions were despotic, and some of those ideals needed reform, but the chaos unleashed ushered in not only a devastating war but imperial rule.
It should be noted that the general population thought Caesar a hero and welcomed his breach of protocol, as perhaps they should have; he and his successors righted many wrongs and used the mighty power Rome had amassed to build a powerful empire, the Pax Romana. Yet, without the checks and constraints of a functioning republic, prudence would give into expediency. Decline set in rather quickly. In a couple centuries, with barbarians at the gates, Rome would decide to simply let them in to pillage and rape. Romans no longer had the means to keep chaos at bay.
Julius Caesar and the Crossing of the Rubicon, by Francesco Granacci and Domenico Ghirlandaio. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The crossing of a Rubicon is also important because it can’t be uncrossed. A norm breached is no longer a norm. We can all go back to a Rubicon, an unforgivable sin committed by our enemy that justifies all we subsequently support. If we are honest with ourselves, we can also all go back to our own Rubicon, the line we said we would never cross that events pushed us over. I don’t know how to undo this.
The only thing that seems certain right now is that no leader is going to emerge from the top to bring us out of this. The incentives there are all wrong, the power we have granted to those that divide too great to overcome by someone whose virtue approximates what is left of our national ideal. That may be a cynical view, but it is also a pragmatic one. I can’t make a counter argument that doesn’t depend on whimsical thinking.
This makes me more convinced than ever that, if we want to fix this, if we want to make things better, we are going to have to do that ourselves, starting in our own homes, blocks, and neighborhoods. The only way to fix what is broken is from the bottom up, starting with a covenant between each other. Here is a start of what that should include:
We will insist on seeing everyone first as a human, not as a political abstraction. We must get to know each other again.
We have to commit to not demonizing each other or allowing others to demonize in pursuit of goals and ideals we believe in. We should never portray, or allow others to potrary, another person or group as inherently wicked or inhuman.
We must work to uphold institutions, to insist on following established rules of procedure and protocol, even when—especially when—working to change those institutions.
We have to push to localize as much of our economy as we can. It is impossible to centrally legislate kindness, honesty, or morality, yet they are all essential to a functioning marketplace. Those values are most present at the local level, where transactions extend beyond the mere abstraction of an exchange of currency to something closer to human.
Came across this today. Obviously, Jones is an heroic man here, but note how far that generosity of spirit can take us. I don't demand or even expect this of those who are victims, but I think we can and should hold this up as an ideal to work toward.https://t.co/mmfrhWX7VR
— Charles Marohn (@clmarohn) January 10, 2021
A final observation. Last week I shared a video on Twitter. It told the story of a Black man who was sucker punched while getting run out of a Trump rally and the guy who punched them. It was a story of reconciliation and redemption. I thought it was important.
I have reached a point on social media where I can share just about anything and get a few dozen likes and retweets. The video of the reconciliation I shared received three likes. Twitter gave it 2,400 impressions, a tiny fraction of what one of my tweets normally receives.
Maybe I hit things at a weird time, or maybe there is some reason why the algorithm opted not to share this one, but we all know this kind of thing isn’t an anomaly. None of us are surprised to learn that these platforms are eager to show us things that stir our anger and reluctant to give us things that soothe our indignation.
If you can leave social media, I think you’d be better off. If you have to be there—I’m one of you—take active steps to curate your feed. Follow people who have a different viewpoint, so long as they are thoughtful and respectful. Mute or block anyone who demonizes others, who treats another person as inhuman, even if they are your friend. Don’t give warning and don’t apologize. Leave them isolated on Digital Hate Island where they can spend their day flaming other haters. You owe it to yourself and to everyone else in your feed.
“Not only does a mass movement depict the present as mean and miserable—it deliberately makes it so. It fashions a pattern of individual existence that is dour, hard, repressive and dull. It decries pleasures and comforts and extols the rigorous life. It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral.
To enjoy oneself is to have truck with the enemy—the present. The prime objective of the ascetic ideal preached by most movements is to breed contempt for the present. The campaign against the appetites is an effort to pry loose tenacious tentacles holding on to the present. That this cheerless individual life runs its course against a colorful and dramatic background of collective pageantry serves to accentuate its worthlessness.”
Those wanting to live a good life in a strong and prosperous place have a lot of work to do. That is our challenge. That is our burden. Let’s all start with ourselves and work outwards from there.
Christian Grey is the executive director of inCOMMON Community Development, an organization that aims to alleviate poverty at a root level by uniting and strengthening vulnerable neighborhoods.