One Utah

The Bush administration’s myriad failures are connected to long term trends in social organizing and the loss of social capital.  In adopting a “go it alone” policy, the Bush administration and its neo-con theorists have taken an ideology of radical individualism and applied it at the level of national policy.

Radical individualism -beloved by Americans - holds that a person acting alone can change the course of history.  The idea that America alone could bring about a change through main force is perhaps the most crucial conceit of the neo-con theorists. It’s the hero theory writ large - the hero through virtue and strength vanquishes the bad guy and makes life safe for one and all. The Bush administration’s stage managed “Mission Accomplished” moment was rooted in the ideology that once the bad guy was vanquished, good would flourish. It’s a cartoon/comic theory of society, but one taken seriously by a great many people. In this myth, there is one bad guy, you kill him and all the frightened townsfolk come and go about their innocuous business. of course that image of the world is wrong, but when you have foreign based on it, based on the notion that a larger than life hero will save you, there’s no other expected outcome - you capture/kill Saddam and everything should be fine. It makes sense if you accept without question our cultural myths of individualism.

Robert Putnams excellent book Bowling Alone explores the complex way in which the last three decades have exhausted America’s Supply of social capital.  Putnam argues that America of the 1950s and 1960s had a rich and growing supply of social capital - widespread community involvement through churches, schools, clubs, and fraternal organizations.  Social capital isn’t just seen through involvement, however, it is demonstrated through diffused community knowledge - knowing how to join and belong to organizations, knowing how to be a good member, what you have to do as a member to sustain the organization.  You see this in the generation of people now in their 70s and beyond - they seem to just instinctively know how to be good members.  They give money and time readily - you ask them once and they start writing checks and giving time.

Community organizations provide a tremendous amount of social support.  When you are a part of a strong and thriving community organization, you have peers - people who are there as your friends, support, people you know and trust.  They provide an infrastructure for your life.  The values of these organizations are often taught implicitly - we learn to be good members by being subtly mentored by those around us.  In times of need, we have people who show up with food, baby-sitting, kind words and help.  Rather than having to go it alone, we have people walking with us and it makes difficult times easier.

The vital role such organizations play in creating vital and thriving communities has been - if not forgotten - then downplayed.  “Joining” a community organization has come to be seen as burdensome, as yet another challenge to be overcome as a threat to our individualism.  For 40 years now, we have drawn down our social capital - in some cases we’ve deliberately chosen to not learn membership skills.  In other cases, people have been raised entirely outside of community organizations and literally have no experience of “belonging” outside of places like the gym where you pay to belong.  The crucial distinction of course is that while your financial support is crucial for community organizations, often the dues are quite affordable and membership is rewarded through strong, voluntary social connections.  We live in weaker communities, with fewer means of support, as a result of the loss of social capital.

The pernicious effects of two generations of radical individualism are all around us in terms of low levels of activity in public life, poor turnout at elections, and poor participation in community organizations. It also appears in more subtle ways connected with leadership.  We haven’t just lost the skills required to be good members, we’ve lost the practice of creating good leaders, of training leaders as the arts of persuasion, of seeing institutions as serving the shared good and as being worthy of being sustained and nurtured and of nurturing people into leadership in such a way that they successfully lead and nurture institutions, that they see the ways in which organizations much change.  It comes as now surprise to me Barack Obama is such an effective and inspiring speaker and leader - he’s been deeply involved in organizations that have nurtured those skills.

By contrast, people who haven’t been involved with commuity organizations - which can include churches, but also Elks Clubs and PTAs and bowling leagues - don’t get a chance to develop and practice their leadership skills, to identify their leadership styles. They may possess native skills but those skills require practice. You can’t just jump in an lead. Community organizations provide a myriad of opportunities to learn to lead. It can be as simple as being in charge of the monthly dinner all the way up to developping and communicating strategic plans. Planning and leading activities is a good way of nurturing leaders, of helping people learn the skills of leadership - communication, organizing, persuasion, compromise and strategic thinking.

That may sound overstated, but look at it this way. You belong to your local Order of the Sparrows. You are put in charge of the monthly members’ dinner as a good member you have participated over the years and had good experiences. You’ve enjoyed the dinners and want other members to have a good experience. As a member, you show up with your casserole, eat and leave. As the organizer, the first thing you have to do is figure out what resources you have - you have to immediately start thinking differently about the event. you need to make certain there are tables and seating. You need to know about dishes and utensils. You have to think through the entire meal from beginning to end - set up, tear down, clean up. More than that, you have to figure out how to communicate with people about the food - is there a theme? Are you okay if everyone brings dessert? Do you need to assign certain items to make certain they’re provided? What if everyone brings punch and no one brings food? What is your contingency plan? How are you going to recruit help for set up and clean up and tear down?

It sounds simple, but it’s not. Many people new to leadership end up doing everything themselves. As people grow in leadership, they learn to recruit help, to assign tasks, to delegate. Effective leadership in community organizations is really effective mentoring. The trends Putnam pointed out in Bowling Alone have degraded this process. The primary effect is social atomization in many levels. People don’t know their neighbors and don’t want to, they have innate distrust of their neighbors. Socializing becomes a complex and difficult task, friends few and far between. (FWIW, I don’t think it is coincidental that we’ve seen with the decline in social capital a corresponding increase in economic polarization - the two trends would reinforce one another.)

So how does this connect to the Bush Administration’s myriad disasters? Bush and his neo-con cabal embrace radical individualism and bring a basic distrust of organizations to their decisions. Communitarianism flies in the face of the ideology. International organizations, such as the UN, are at odds with the idea of America as hero, standing alone against the baddies. As the individualist hero, we will vanquish the bad guy and save the townsfolk. That it was doomed to fail from the start was obvious. But Bush and his cabal were convinced of it, steeped in the American mythology of the lone hero. The much touted and mocked Coalition of the Willing exemplifies the problem - the hero really stands alone and the sidekicks jobs are to handle the other stuff - drive the van to the fight, fight the bad guys sidekicks. Frankly, the sidekicks are optional, they are cup-holders of hero work. Bush’s Coalition partners contributed precious little to the Iraq disaster beyond moral support and that’s really what a hero needs - he needs to know that the townsfolk are cheering him on from the sidelines.

The US was actually at its strongest and most influential when it was social capital creating nation. i don’t think that is accidental. As we’ve depleted our social capital, we’ve turned more and more to military might as an answer to problems. Influence, connections, the subtle web of relationships, have been allowed atrophy. As a matter of survival, we must relearn those skills.

At the same time, here at home, we must relearn to create and sustain social capital. I see it happening in increasing numbers of places. I see more and more people yearning for life in authentic communities (which are in fact distinct from the planned communities of developers). For many of us, living in these communities, these organizations is new and new skills have to be learned the hard way. Living in community is living within a web of sustaining relationships. To borrow a metaphor, we drink from our own wells which means we have to learn to steward our wells. There are times when we can be effective leaders, other times when need others to lead. If we don’t mentor new leaders we don’t have them to turn to when we need them. The power of intentionally creating community organizations, of sustaining them, of making choices about them, spreads from those organizations into social life. People who are effective leaders in the Elks or their church or their bowling league become effective leaders in their larger community.

A final thought. My congregation has a long history of nurturing leaders. It’s not an accident that this small congregation of 300 people had produced the current president of AARP Utah, or past presidents of the League of Women Voters. It not an accident that this congregation had a hand in creating and leading Friendship Manor and Crossroads Urban Center. It’s not accidental that members of this church have run for public office and are consistently active in the broader community. It’s not an accident that our past and current members include a former mayor of Salt Lake and a current member of the legislature. It’s not an accident that this years Susan G Komen run was organized by one of our members Lessons about leadership, being nurtured as leaders in one place, creates the confidence to lead elsewhere and to lead well.

This entry was posted Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 7:53 am and is filed under 2008 Election, American People, Religion, Society, This Blog. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.