Courage at the Center

Holding on to the Possibility of Human Agency

I wrote most of this comment originally in 2017.  None of its central core needed revision.  That is dispiriting enough, that we have not yet reached a better place.  So what I have added is more encouragement because we’re going to need more courage if there is to be any virtue remaining when the election concludes.

Yeats told us, “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”  This is not license, it is description.  Is it destiny?  Must it be so?  I see a plea not for God but for the powers of human agency.

I ‘ve taught the history of religions and moral philosophy for almost fifty years. I’m more than a little reluctant to prate at people about the need to create an ethical center, be that as individuals or collectively. We’re all asymmetrical, imperfect, and can evolve as persons. But it’s time to think about who we want to be and what kinds of human agency we’re going to effect even to sustain what remains of democracy in America. As goes America, so will go the world. That is not arrogance, that is just another fact of power’s power to determine outcomes.

I’ve made it a career to argue that even the notion of perfection, much less the claim for a perfect or “awakened” person diminishes our humanity and impedes our growth.  That said, there are the incorrigible, not only the recidivist who tells you again and again who he is but wicked, depraved, and menacing.  “Some men just want to see the world burn.”  

Such persons must be resisted; stopped by civilization itself.  That means people pausing to make serious choices armed with hearts of amity and the will to insist that the law prove just.  There are some for whom any moral core has collapsed, where there is a vacancy that no longer bears even the vestiges of decency.  Humans may not be capable of perfection but they are plainly qualified for depravity.  To be good is a privilege we must learn to make unremarkable, and that too is no small task.

What we are learning from Trump is how exhausting and daily traumatizing it is to be in the company of someone entirely bereft of any moral core whatsoever. We experience each other’s failings everyday but such ethical deficiency on such vivid display raises issues of human endurance and tolerance like we have not reckoned with in recent memory. We are more than off our center, we are questioning how someone can be so completely absent of elemental decency.

Shall we make a list of those who saw fit to support and work in his previous administration who are publicly warning us of the consequences of his reelection?  How do we reckon with the millions who will vote for him, I am sure some well-known to you, perhaps family?

We need make no excuse but understand also how entire media projects, including the most watched television “news” network spews his propaganda for gain.  Humans are subject to influence not because we are necessarily weak but because we need one another, especially when the stakes are high.

We must learn to think for ourselves by developing conversations rooted in seriousness, attuned to the powers of reason, sensitive to the depths of the non-rational.  Confronted with the irrational, we must not dismiss its power nor convince ourselves it can be reformed.

Some will recall when for a very brief time Dan Rather ended the evening newscast by looking straight into the camera and saying simply “Courage.” It was hardly well received and even mocked. But now I think would be a good time for us to take Rather’s arresting admonition to heart. Courage.

We can endure this together. The center does not hold but we must and we will.  But we must also act so that there is enough civilization remaining to create a future beyond the dystopia that has been promised by this wretched thug.  We may convince no one who has already chosen this failure but we can rally those who might rise to the occasion for the sake of something greater than their isolation and impassivity.