Expanding on my comments about freedom under Rob Henderson's article about debating the Sexual Revolution.
Most of us aren't very good at freedom. The difficulty arises in who does the curtailing of others' freedom "for their own good." It is likely true that we are not fit to be our own masters. But others are even less fit than we are in authority over us. In our wisest moments we can see what limitations we should impose on ourselves, whether we call them fences, or disciplines, or structures. Marriage would be one, and parenthood another. Becoming a group member rather than a mere observer. Being a student (or teacher) instead of a receiver of entertainment.
I think it is parallel to Lewis's comment about democracy
I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure… The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
Zip in "the right to rule themselves" for "a share in government" and you will see what I mean. We don't deserve any such thing. We are quite certain to screw at least some of it up. It is only because the other choices are worse that we are stuck with being in charge of ourselves.
Those who want to fix things for everyone else make very good points about the general fecklessness of humankind. We do make terrible decisions, and it does sometimes seem that a few reasonable people, not necessarily Solomonic, but pretty good, could make things go more smoothly. In fact, sometimes they do. It's just that people we agreed to put in charge temporarily tend to have mission creep and want to stay longer; and people who are very good at being in charge of our chickens don't do as well with the pigs, somehow; and others start to think they are important and become insufferable, and even when they're right they are getting everyone's back up; and after not being in charge of parts of your life for too long, we all seem to forget the necessary vigilance and let things slide.
But quite simply, if you come back in two years, or twenty, or two hundred you find that all this great show-running is looking less impressive, with people leaving cigarette butts around and pinching the women when they think no one is looking.
I think we weaken our argument when we insist to governments or other authorities that we should paddle our own canoes because we are clearly so good at it. They will have a hundred entirely accurate examples why this is manifestly not so. Our best argument may be the childish one: "Who died and made you boss?"
Related: This is why I wail in despair whenever government wants to create a Comprehensive Solution. Such things do not exist. These are not more efficient, they are the opposite of efficiency, solving 50% of the current problem while giving us two new ones. We will have some homelessness. Even the Scandinavians have some, and they have a crazy strong work ethic there.
10 comments:
And when the Powers that Be insist that there can be no adverse side effects, then when the adverse side effects do inevitably occur TPTB tend to look for scapegoats.
Given the all-encompassing demands some of our betters make ("you are either an anti-racist my way or you are a racist"), "Who died and made you God?" might be more accurate.
"Gandalf as Ring-Lord would have been far worse than Sauron. He would have remained ‘righteous’, but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for ‘good’, and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great). Thus while Sauron multiplied [illegible word] evil, he left ‘good’ clearly distinguishable from it. Gandalf would have made good detestable and seem evil." -- J. R. R. Tolkien
The same goes for Dumbledore; as Minister of Magic, he'd have been worse than Voldemort precisely because his good intentions would have gone wrong.
I'm not sure I would have said that if it weren't from Tolkien himself, who had a good deal more time to think about it. But one of the common frustrations we experience now is how well we understand and even admire Satan in the first book of Milton's Paradise Lost. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven" has a nobility and courage to it that resonates especially with North American readers. Only gradually do we fully see through him, even though we see it coming because well, Satan.
Also, the temptations in the desert are not comic-book ones but quite real to Jesus. He condenses the story of the temptations down into a very manageable three bites. But the whole process went on for forty days and was likely carried out with great subtlety.
A corollary: It does the soul a great deal of good to learn to leave other people alone. The father has to discipline the son, but a good father tells his child all the time that "When you can do this for yourself, I won't have to do it anymore." The best father actually stops doing it when it's time for the son to be a man, even though it means the boy sometimes fails when he might have succeeded with a little external discipline.
A fortiori for other human relationships in which one is less charged by nature to be the master even temporarily.
If I recall correctly, Gandalf echoes the Tolkien quote from Korora in a conversation with Frodo early on in the story, either in the Shire or Rivendell. There's also echoes of those sentiments in the soliloquy Galadriel gives when Frodo offers her the ring, and the description of how Samwise feels when he puts it on in Shelob's lair.
"But the whole process went on for forty days and was likely carried out with great subtlety."
And I doubt Satan would have shown only the great kingdoms like China, Rome, and the Mayan realm but also other, not so great cultures in clear need of help. And in the great and not-so-great realms alike, I wonder if Satan showed some of the severe wickednesses and cultural dysfunctions to try to play on Jesus' desire to redeem and save.
However, failure was Satan's only option.
This post reminds me of something Milton Friedman said about the superiority of private business over government: It's not that businessmen in the private sector necessarily have better judgment than government bureaucrats do, it's that with government programs there's no good way to deal with the mistakes. A private business that loses money or harms its customers goes out of business. A government program that loses money or harms the people it's supposed to benefit gets rewarded with an increased budget.
Post a Comment