Individuality and the Common Good

Individuality and the Common Good

The excesses of individualism insulated from empathy.

Greed and inequity are the negative hallmarks of individualism run amok.  America in its capitalistic system is prone to these problems and we are facing them as I write.  Winning, domination and acquisition become the rule of behavior, a Darwinian interpretation of incentive to achieve.  This is packaged as the best way to deliver succor to the needy and it actually is a half-truth.  After all, something must exist, an economic engine, to provide that which people need.  Incentivized effort is necessary to produce and those who work need reward to keep on going.  It really is only fair.

The problem is that the rich would need to understand that they really are no longer feeding their needs when they devolve into greed.  They are a cult of individual excess that destroys significant portions of society.  It takes a while until the rot they generate reaches their gated sanctuaries, but eventually, in one form or another it gets there.

America is not purely this by any means, and there are many saving graces as long as we have free elections, a free and responsible press, and strong educational institutions with free speech.  But, there are crossroads along the way and America shows signs of some core decay as evidenced by the following of our current leadership.  Part of the problem of this decay can devolve into  the following problem as people rebel against failure.  The equation is simple: individualism is the problem, so the collective must be the solution.

Note: don't get me wrong, for I feel socially conscious democratic government is not what I am about to portray.

The failure of idealism trying to achieve the common good through subjugation to the collective as exemplified in Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago

Theatrical release poster design by Tom Jung

In the spirit of full disclosure, I was in love with Julie Christie's Lara Antipova all through my college years!  But, I grew more and more through the years to understand the import and message of the movie and even more so when I read the book.  Pasternak got the Nobel Prize in Literature for it, but was unable to attend and accept because of the suppression of the Soviet Communist Party.  They suppressed it for very obvious reasons.

The book chronicles so many aspects of the revolution of 1917 and its aftermath.  Lara's early husband, Pasha Antipov, was a revolutionary idealist actually run down and scarred early in the movie by czarist Cossacks during a protest.  His ideals were to deliver justice to the downtrodden in Russia.  From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.  It is an ideal that would seem fully in alignment with Christian compassion and spirituality.

Alas, as so often happens to revolutionaries, the revolution opens them to new power over their circumstance … kind of.  They now meet the difficulty of putting their ideals into practical application as we did in many ways coming out of idealistic youth in the 60's.  It is one thing to foment revolution, it is quite another to govern if, heaven forbid, you succeed.

Pasha's stubborn individualistic fire redirects in horrible directions and as the book describes it, "it becomes clear at once that this man represents the consummate manifestation of will."  He becomes the brutal military commander Strelnikov.

Besides the danger of destroying incentive, effort to subjugate the society to the collective is seldom a good solution.  The leaders of that collective are all too often no longer invested in the common good at all.  They are invested in their own aggrandizement, caught right back in the individualism traps.  Compassion and care fail and poverty is often simply enhanced, the common good giving way to the dominance of the individuals at the top.

So, it would seem that I am leaving no individuals a path to redemption.  Wrong, for their are other ways, but distilled to their essence, I think most of them boil down to:

Seeking the Tao

Kwai Chang Caine, played by David Carradine on Kung Fu, used to walk in serenity across the American West on our TV screens, a disciple of his master at the Shaolin Temple in Tibet.  The "grasshopper" learned as he went and, in turn, taught as he learned.

When asked in an episode what he was after, his reply was that he sought the Tao.  For an American generation dealing with a spiritual void in their lives, for they had questioned the classic church upbringing of their parents, it resonated.  It helped that there was that necessary American element satisfied when Caine was forced to kick someone deserving's butt.  I mean, bad guys were unavoidable on the path to enlightenment and it was nice to see enlightened justice meted out.  Serenely.

Seriously, though, many of us had spent time reading the Tao Te Ching in college.  My copy and the happy Buddha on my book shelf have traveled with me for close to 50 years now.  Over these years, my spiritual understanding has progressed with experience and contemplation.  It has progressed to the point that I am realizing how ephemeral and transient all "knowledge" is and I am left with wondrous mystery.  I, more and more all the time, embrace my controlled folly.  By not having an illusion that I can find ultimate answers, I am much more free to harmonize and just walk the path that almost magically unfolds.  I am not some serene Shaolin master by any stretch of the imagination, but this seed still grows through me of its own volition, uncovering the values that I fulfill.

But, what of society?  That is fine for an individual, but how does it serve the collective good?  For those who are not ready to understand that none of us can package "the answer" for everyone, the best available may be religion and its encouragement to compassion and care.  The sources of those religious focuses are Teachers who, after all, followed the Tao.  Each expressed the same essential truths in individual ways and humans are the best at contradicting the masters' understandings while supposedly following them.  This is uncontrolled folly at its most virulent, a loss of the sense of violation.

Humanity is a mix.  Not all is bad, not all is good, and not all of that is relevant.  The Tao is a fantastic abstract concept that cannot be described in a linear, strictly logical fashion, thus the seeming contradictions of what Lao Tzu had to say and the substitutions of linear concepts for people in church pews. Man's reach must exceed his grasp, else what is a parable for.

Religions come up short for so many because, as the Eastern mystics keep telling us, the follower has a Teacher (Christ among others) who points to the moon, but the follower becomes entranced with the Teacher's pointing finger and never sees the moon at all.  To follow the Tao, look at the moon that is actually your true self and start walking.  It will take eternity, since you never arrive, but the scenery is so nice along the way!  In your wake, you will shed blessings on those around you, fostering the common good.  You don't reject individualistic attractions to dominance and power over others, they just become uninteresting.

Unless you are in Hollywood, you most likely won't have to serenely kick somebody's butt.

Now for the voices of clarity I appreciate, check out my blog mates' takes on the same topic from Ramana, Sanjana, Padmum and Shackman!