What makes the Great American Depression of 2017 political?
I contend that our present national depression is political, rather
than economic or cultural or individual, because this depression results from the
destruction of the public. Individuals, even groups of them, religions and
other cultural phenomena, and the neoliberal capitalist economy may persist
and, for some, thrive. Many of us attain private happiness, e.g. pleasure through the Sirens' songs or the lotus fields' odors, but
we do not have public happiness, which includes a sense of engagement and
meaning in relation to a higher power beyond our individual satisfaction.
This is an insightful tool and model for positive psychologists to
employ when treating individuals struck with the mental illness of debilitating
sadness or clinical depression, an illness that is spreading geometrically like
a contagion in modern society. But this diagnosis misses an important
distinction that underlies a fundamental dimension in human existence. That distinction is “public” and “private.”
Private happiness
takes place in the household (or “economy” in classical Greek). The economy is the realm of production and consumption with pleasure measured by the accumulation of
wealth. The engagement with others occurs and is defined by levels of authority or class. Its meaning is expressed in a culture that values individual
achievement of wealth through tribal religions with household gods and through
an education that fosters the rise from poorer, more dependent classes to
wealthier, more dominant classes.
Hannah Arendt maintains that the “pursuit of happiness” in Jefferson's Declaration means public, over
private, happiness. Its pleasure comes not from consumption of material goods, but from achievement of public good. Public happiness happens in the engagement
with others as equals in creating publics and extending the public realm. It enjoys the meaning
discovered and constructed through the free inquiry, speech, and action of
engaged citizens.
_________________
We live and act
in space-time. Some very learned scientists and philosophers would argue that
both space and time are constructions of the human organism’s interaction with
its environment. That is, they are products of our existence in the universe. There
is in human being a tension that is time—the before and the-yet-to-come in the
experience of being now. And there is
in human being a tension that is space—the back-there and the over-there
experience of being here.
And there is a
tension between space and time in which the human journey from past to future is
both private and public. There is no private without public. No privacy without
publicity. And vice versa. Notice how the lessening of the democratic commons
is also a lessening of privacy through autocracy.
There are two
dimensions of human being. Two sides of the proverbial coin of the realm. The private
realm of living (economy) and the public realm of action (politics). Liberty,
the absence of the necessity to be occupied in pursuit of life’s needs in the
private realm is one thing. Freedom, the capacity to participate fully
in the creation of public space is something else. Liberty is freedom from. Freedom is liberty for.
The liberty to
pursue private happiness has temporal primacy as does biological life. It comes
first in time. Freedom for public happiness through action is first in
space. Freedom has primacy ontololgically, i.e. in order of importance for us
as human beings. The private realm is the place of power over. The public realm is the place of power with.
There is both
biography and history; and they are interconnected. My journey from life to
death is a part of the story of the community, the nation, and the universe.
I personally
cannot be totally free until all my fellow travelers are free. My worth is
deeply connected to the worth of humankind. My personal peace requires social
justice.
All this is
saying that private happiness can never be achieved fully unless there is
public happiness.
My sense of
helplessness, unworthiness, ennui, insignificance is interdependent with others.
My private personal happiness requires public interpersonal happiness.
Life and the
fulfilment of its needs, liberty to engage with others voluntarily, and the
pursuit of public happiness in freedom. These are our rights and
responsibilities in being human.
__________________
To overcome our political depression requires a reckoning with our
social habits or institutions that pull us down. Especially the disorder that makes
private happiness measured by individual wealth the goal of our social order
and the measure of its success. This is the disorder of subjecting politics to economy,
of making our community and its governance dependent on private prosperity
which in the America today is the domination and destruction of democracy by
neoliberal economics or American capitalism.
The confusion between liberty (free from) and freedom (free for)
explains the new anti-democrats who have arisen today. For they teach that, when
decisions are made and the social order is constructed democratically, people will be bound by limits and regulations and so lack liberty. But democracy is exactly
that space where all persons shape the social order to limit liberty. For it is only within limits that all can be equal and free. Even the commons, the space of freedom, the public has boundaries without which there is no freedom. A free state is also a rule of law.
Liberty
for autocrats, usually the rich and would-be rich, abounds in a social
order dominated by a liberal economy, i.e. a plutocracy. Freedom abounds in a social order governed by all who see each other as equals with
dignity by nature rather than by race, religion, status, or class. That is a democratic republic.
How can we enjoy both liberty and freedom in our situation in
America today? How can we reclaim
democracy and resist autocracy? Those are the same questions.
To cure our political depression, we need to accept that democracy is threatened. Plutocrats reign
and sell their agenda to the public which are being reduced to individual
consumers. The measure of success for the nation is the quantity of production
and consumption, the worth of the dollar and of stocks, and the ability to force
this agenda on the rest of the world. We need to confront the plutocrats who engage in economic and cultural wars
to distract us from our political depression.
And we need to acknowledge our responsibility for this situation. We
need to accept that we in concert have the power to change this. To change our
addiction to wealth, we need to rely on our higher power which is the assembly
of free citizens in an open and just society. We need to resist the plutocratic,
anti-democratic forces of the Republic for which we stand. We need to renew and
reassert our democratic principles and institutions. As Jefferson advised, democratic rebellion is
the responsibility of each generation.
No comments:
Post a Comment