New Renter: The Modern Humanist

I have a new blog renter this week, and one that is completely different from me. He calls himself the "Modern Humanist" in which case I'm the "Post-Modern Existentialist" I've been focusing almost exclusively on poetry lately, and now I'll take a stab at responding to some philosophy. I spent sometime today reading through his posts about a humanist's utopia, so I thought it would be no better way to start out endorsing my rentee than by totally disagreeing with him. A little dialog can't be bad for getting some hits, I'd think.

The Modern Humanist


In his post "The Humanist Utopia Part 5: Government" he goes on to say a few things which I find troublesome.

1) He writes:

Up to this point, the Democratic society, while flawed, has provided the best form of government for the time being. The problem with that form of government[...]leads to corruption.[...]with a less then fully educated and critical thinking populace have left the election process as little more than a combination popularity contest and beauty pageant. Added to this is the maddening and overwhelming bureaucracy that encompasses all governmental work and interaction.

The response to this is probably something akin to the Libertarian ideal of small government where private citizens and business are given more responsibility and the government is granted far less opportunity to control, thus reducing it’s influence and corruption (hopefully). I think the Libertarian model is a good one, assuming we were still going with democracy.

The trouble with thinking in terms of utopias, is that reality has a hard time matching utopias. The fatal flaw with imagining this sort of society in the world of today is that our country has grown too large to be disintegrated into a small government that relies on giving its responsibilities to individuals and businesses. Granted, our government is wasting more money than I can fathom right now on programs that aren't needed, but just try to imagine a society of 300 million people without a strong centralized government. Religious institutions would easily be able to dominate the political scene, and life would become even more fractured because of this. The largeness of our government helps to create barriers of entry to other institutions that aim to control and manipulate the masses, believe it or not, and though in the past 6 years we've seen an unprecidented rise in the lobbying industry, the American public isn't totally out of the loop. Chances are good that many corrupt politicians will be voted out of office soon, some have already resigned, and some lobbyists are heading to jail already. The media is slow and painfully weak in uncovering injustices, but it is, in fact, uncovering many of these injustices and the one-sided domination of the Republican House, Senate, and White House will likely soon see a little more polarity after the mid-term election.

The point - there is an ebb and flow in politics and in media trends. We are coming off the some of the worst six years in the history of the United States, but rest assured that there have been times that it has been worse. Consider the Spanish-American War and the disgusting jingoism of the time. Or consider the incessant racism against Asians during World War II leading to the internment of Japanese-Americans that were no threat at all to Americans at any point in time. Now, Bush's approval is at a near all-time low and people know about how we torture prisoners, how we're severely failing to secure peace in Iraq, how we were lied to in order to get into the war in the first place, etc. You see, the media has actually been reporting what is happening and the truth is trickling out. Is our society perfect? No... but it seems to be heading into recovery mode.

Libertarianism as a response to the disgruntledness of living in society today is a cop-out. Liberty can only be ensured when it is vigorously upheld by a strong government; when left to individuals liberty is only as strong as one's own might is. Additionally, problems of the tragedy of the commons expand exponentially unless the libertarian government somehow exists with strong regulations (which seems to be a major contraction in terms to me). If we want to move together with a vision of the future, a strong government is essential in this... the problem now is not that we have a strong government, it is that we're buying into the wrong vision. Look at JFK's vision: walking on the moon, expanding rights and encouraging civil engagement. What is Bush's vision: killing terrorists at all costs including everyone's personal liberties as well as making corporations even more wealthy in an attempt to recreate a modern feudal system. And this is what is truly missing from politics today - a sense of vision that people can buy into. Someone with a strong sense of vision can radially alter the direction we're going and this is a good thing. The narrative of our country is vibrant, regardless of how ashamed we are of many parts of it. The narrative defines me, my family, and my life choices. Without a narrative such as this, the good things about our country would probably never exist.

Consider Andrew Carnegie. A ruthless businessman robber baron. In his path to becoming the wealthiest man in the world he unleashed an unbelievable amount of pollution, cut wages, destroyed lives, and ran others out of business. But he also helped to make steel incredibly cheap spurring the United States into becoming the most industrial nation in the world - a budding superpower. And he donated thousands of libraries, museums, and other public goods that are still in use. Was Carnegie evil? Was he good? The answers are most definitely yes, and yes... as well as no and no. This pragmatic difficulty of deciphering good and evil and what is desireable to an individual and a nation is more complex than we may think. Certainly, if I lived in that time, I would have hated Carnegie and his empire... just as if I went back to the era of slavery and hated it as well. But these events have shaped us, and we can't take them back... a utopia can't be predicated on ignoring the past. In fact, a true utopia would be filled with monuments to the past with all of the links of the linear progression of humanity intact.

2) He continues:

But what if we re-imagined government? If we look at the original tribal model, government was merely an arrangement to help get things done. There was a council and different people were rotated through the position of elder and everyone had a job to do. The small size of the community made it possible to accomplish tasks without inherent corruption because everyone knew everyone. In contrast to this, the business model is also successful in terms of organization and working toward a common goal. The idea of profitability is also important and as a result waste and efficiency are paramount. There are lessons to be learned at all stages and lead us to a idea for a new way of governance.

Tribal politics and modern life are not compatible. Once people are alienated from the processes of labor and production that lead to existence in modernity with items and even food coming from unknown places and people, too many concerns known and unknown went into making decisions that affect everyone. Government and regulations lead to balancing these concerns in a way that benefits all, so long as those in charge aren't too corrupt.

3) He writes:

Elections are a silly process in general. They waste time, energy and money and never result in the best person for the job. Election is fraught with built-in bias and cannot be trusted to select the persons best suited to run the government on the local or national level. In addition the very idea of political appointments is beyond not useful, a fact we have seen with disastrous consequences.

To say that elections never result in the best person for the job is like saying that no job interview ever results in the best person getting the job. Maybe you dislike your representatives, but in many ways our representatives, as flawwed and disturbing as they are represent us much more than we'd like them to. As has been said before, in a democracy you get the kind of government that you deserve.

4) He writes:

In fact politics in general is not useful as it concentrates energy and attention on sectarian power instead of breeding cooperation.

I don't view government and politics as an avenue for anything other than dealing with natural conflict caused from competing points of view. Cooperation is often impossible when people want the exact opposite things. Consider issues such as "should torture be a legal option when dealing with suspected terrorists?", "should abortion be legal?", "should we have a trade agreement with Mexico?", etc. Decisions that affect our way of lives in major ways can't be made without a concentration of energy to deal with those issues.

5) He writes:

The business model is the best foundation from which to build our government, but it is only a foundation. Government is in the business of taking care of the country. The work, educational and social/community aspirations we have for our Humanist utopia are going to cost money to keep going. Those programs need to be funded and the failure of all socialist enterprises to date has been from trying to manage them from the wrong structural framework.

When people are allowed to profit personally from their efforts they tend to excel, but when they also control the level of profits and power, then corruption sets in. Communism on paper is an excellent idea, but in practice it was simply a party dictatorship. In order for our system to work, people need to be adequately compensated, but without the risk of corruption (as much as possible).

My main problem here, and in general, is that by looking at politics through the capitalist vs. Communist view of how to run things you fundamentally reduce people to their labor. The image of man as a worker becomes very complicated in your utopia. On one hand, we are to all work together to get what we need, but on the other we are to work for ourselves to excel and achieve to get, as you say "adequately compensated". How will this turn out for us now? We live in a service economy where jobs continue to be shipped overseas. How many people will choose to work at McDonald's? How many janitors will we have? Without going into detail with what you mention throughout the remainder of your post, you fail to - as I see it - address the fundamental laws of supply and demand in creating your economy which seems to be the focal point of your government (which you also consider to be a business). I also find it strange that you want to get rid of states, when from a capitalist point of view - states are essential for testing out new ideas and discovering whether they are good are not which can then be shared throughout the country.


In summation -

All in all, the Modern Humanist's utopia, to me - at least from analyzing his view on government, attempts to create a utopia out of thin air with no recognition of the past. Even if this were a completely hypothetical nation, there are problems with viewing government as a business. A huge portion of governmental work goes into things that are extra-economical and beyond the scope and understanding of most citizens. Government is large for some reasons, because there is just so much stuff to do. I think this view of government underestimates the natural conflicts that occur in systems that deal with power, and is particularly ineffectual when dealing with large numbers of people. Many feel that Rousseau's view of democracy is targetted only toward small societies, and maybe this utopia could exist as a closed small society, just as a direct democracy could be.

Personally, I'm unsure of what my utopia would be, but I have some ideas that I may share a later time.

In any event, please let me know what you think of this post. Check out my renter's blog and leave a comment. I'm always interested in dialog, and if you see something either of us are missing or are right on with, let me know.