Reinhold and Me: Thoughts on Reading Moral Man and Immoral Society

Since childhood I have had an abiding fascination with the question of how it is that "good" people create "bad" groups. Experiencing this paradox in family, church, the schools I attended, and the schools in which I taught, shaped me as someone with a fierce desire for changing this heartbreaking state of affairs. Inherently suspicious of perfectionism, I was never a Utopian, or zealot of any stripe. Rather I have a "let's roll up our sleeves and keep this place livable for all of us" sort of approach to life and work. (Call it blue collar impatience for big ideas without big willingness to get your hands dirty.....)

I'm pretty sure I read at least some of Reinhold Niebuhr's essays in undergraduate theology classes, but I only recently heard about his Moral Man and Immoral Society which explores "the basic difference between the morality of individuals and the morality of collectives, whether races, classes or nations." (Preface to second edition, May, 1960)
Niebuhr has been called "O'Bama's Theologian" and is said to have influenced Karl Rove, as well as neo-cons who believed in overthrowing (some) Middle Eastern dictators and installing democracies. (A range that.....)

Niebuhr published the book in 1932, and pulls no punches with his near-contempt for what he calls "romantic" notions that human beings, with the right moral education, will eventually evolve beyond the need for coercion and political conflict.

The "Romantics" he characterizes thus: .... moralists, both religious and secular, who imagine that the egoism of individuals is being progressively checked by the development of rationality or the growth of a religiously inspired goodwill and that nothing but the continuance of this process is necessary to establish social harmony between all the human societies and collectives. (intro., xii)

But no, says Niebuhr: They do not recognize that when collective power, whether in the form of imperialism or class domination exploits weakness, it can never be dislodged unless power is raised against it. (intro. xii)

This reminds me of new research showing that the most effective intervention for stopping bullies is the simple (?) one of children standing up to the bully, preferably by using their voices: saying no, telling what is happening, encouraging other children to do the same thing. But we knew that, didn't we?

My questions are about why power is still expressed mostly in fight (put up) or flight (shut up) extremes? And why speaking up as a disciplined and honed tool is less frequently seen and even less frequently taught? And why we mostly reduce speaking up to ranting and the mass hysteria of vent radio and tea bagger rallies during which those trying to speak up about their experiences of our health care and insurance industries are bullied into shamed silence?

I'll go on record as saying that I don't believe that any one expression of power is effective for achieving---much less maintaining---the delicate equilibrium that is justice-becoming-peace.

I have learned on the pulses, learned early and often, that the soft powers of compassion, of negotiation, of respect and relationship do not always win the day, as much as I believe in them, and will always lead with them. I also believe, with Niebuhr, that force must sometimes be used to displace immoral individuals and collectives.* Finally, I knoe the necessity of shutting up, when to speak would be to invite violence.

But for now at least, I throw in my lot with the kind of power Niebuhr doesn't discuss: power, not as coercive, and not as romantic, but power as transformative. When I write that word, I mean literally trans (crossing) into new forms. Changing the form, the shape, the tools of power (or maybe it's not changing but burnishing them and adding them prominently to the arsenal) that is work for my hands and for my heart--and brain.

Next on my stack of books : Power and Love by Adam Kahane. Don't roll your eyes and wonder about my mental health, I'm reading a new Italian cookbook too, and lots of poetry, and . . . I am writing and going to the gym and playing Bananagrams with my husband, and other non-crazy-making activities.....

More later.

* (Does any force on earth, have the power to displace the rampaging amorality of the "big banks," I wonder? This strikes me as a classic example of Niebuhr's argument. As individuals, many if not most in the financial class are likely pillars of their families and friendship circles. As collectives, the "too big to fail" ones have proven their insusceptibility to moral suasion, even to common survival sense in that no one, not even they "can eat money" once they've wrecked the planet and all that is valuable in culture.)