Category: Leading and Helping When People Want to Stay Stuck

How can we use our limited resources to make the biggest impact in the world?

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What Would Our Society Do with Peace and Prosperity?

If we had basic provision, leisure time, and peace, what would our society do with it? What should society do with it?

Most of our time and energy is consumed with making sure that we will have enough provision, food, clothes, housing, security, savings. This is true on an individual level, and this is true on a societal level. If we do not feel we have enough, we want to figure out how we can have enough. If we do have enough, we worry about threats that would keep us from having enough.

But what if we didn’t have to worry about that, either on a societal level or an individual level? What would we do with our lives? What is the purpose of human life beyond merely staying alive and well-fed?

That’s the question that Aristotle considers in his books on ethics and politics. He believed that the question of politics was a question of what form of state would allow the most people to realize the ideal form of life (Politics, 2.1). For, as he said, “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only . . .” (3.9). His answer was that the best form of government was one “in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily” (7.2). So, politics should ask not only what is the way for people to have enough, to have mere life, but, how can they live well, how can they live the best life, and how can they live a happy life. Continue reading “What Would Our Society Do with Peace and Prosperity?”

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Aristotle’s Politics: The Politics of the Golden Mean

Aristotle’s Nichomachaean Ethics is famous for its idea of the Golden Mean. Aristotle writes, “It is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess . . .” (2.2). Consequently, he argues that excellence is “a state concerned with a choice, lying in a mean relative to us” (2.6). It is important to note that not every characteristic could be understood this way. For example, “spite, shamelessness, envy” all are bad in themselves (ibid.). He also understood that it was not always easy to determine the mean. For example, in regards to giving and spending money, “to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy . . .” (2.9). All that said, Aristotle believed that the Golden Mean was an important way to understand what an excellent or virtuous individual would look like.

After reading carefully through Aristotle’s Politics, his politics seem to me to be a politics of the Golden Mean. Aristotle quotes Phocylides: “Many things are best in the mean; I desire to be of a middle condition in my city” (4.11). The Golden Mean, according to Aristotle, could help us understand what the excellent or virtuous state would look like. In fact, this concept may be more useful in politics than in individual ethics. Here I will demonstrate this briefly from Aristotle’s Politics, applying it to a variety of political issues along the way.

The basic question Aristotle sets forth for himself in Politics is this: “Our purpose is to consider what form of political community is best of all for those who are most able to realize their ideal of life” (2.1). In other words, what is the best possible state?

Aristotle begins his discussion in the abstract. However, he recognizes that the ideal is not likely to be possible. So, he says, we ought to

inquire what is the best constitution for most states, and the best life for most men, neither assuming a standard of excellence which is above ordinary persons, nor an education which is exceptionally favoured by nature and circumstances, nor yet an ideal state which is an aspiration only, but having regard to the life in which the majority are able to share, and to the form of government which states in general can attain (4.11).

Aristotle wants us to consider what is really going to work best for most people. This is important to ask because “political writers, although they have excellent ideas, are often unpractical” (4.1). Continue reading “Aristotle’s Politics: The Politics of the Golden Mean”

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7 Thought-Provoking Observations from Aristotle’s Politics

Aristotle’s Politics is one of the foundational political texts of Western civilization. At certain places, a modern person who reads it will no doubt feel offended or repulsed by Aristotle’s views (i.e., on slavery). On the other hand, the modern person will be surprised at how sophisticated it is in other places. It is really a collection of and reflection on the political wisdom of one of the most unique civilizations in the history of the world. In this way, Aristotle’s Politics can provoke thought, provide clarity, and produce wisdom. Here are a few of the quotes I have found most worthy of consideration.

1. “Hence some persons are led to believe that getting wealth is the object of household management, and the whole idea of their lives is that they ought either to increase their money without limit, or at any rate not lose it. The origin of this disposition in men is that they are intent upon living only, and not upon living well; and, as their desires are unlimited, they also desire that the means of gratifying them should be without limit” (Aristotle, 1.9).

2. On the common interest: “For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual” (2.3). That is why “[t]he true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest, but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one or the few, or of the many, are perversions” (3.7). Continue reading “7 Thought-Provoking Observations from Aristotle’s Politics“

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A Theology of Social Action

Without question, there is a need for social action. The injustices and the needs in the world around us call us to action. At the same time, social action is daunting. The social realm is a place of conflict and intense drama. Progress in the social realm does not come cheap.

So, how can we think about this extremely important yet extremely challenging field of endeavor while at the same time keeping our heads and not sliding into injustice ourselves? Reinhold Niebuhr believed that the Christian faith offered the perspective that we need in order to keep us involved, keep us from despair, and keep us from being consumed. Here is a summary of Niebuhr’s theological vision for social action. Under each point, I have offered a suggestion for its benefit for social action.

[Read a longer version of this article here]

Part 1 – Human Social Potential and the Human Social Problem

1.1. The Proper Way for Humans and Society to Function

God did not create human beings to exist in their current state of individual and social disfunction. God created human beings good and in a good society. This goodness was rooted in acknowledging their place as creatures in God’s universe. Humans are able to see a long way off but limited in their ability to change what they see. By a faith trusting God with what they could not change, they would be able to exist in tranquility, creativity, harmony, and productivity.

This trust in God would serve as a foundation for community. God created humans as social creatures. Freed from the need to establish their own significance or security, they could serve their communities. As they served others, they would be “drawn out of themselves to become their true selves” (The Children of Light & the Children of Darkness, 56).

Benefit: understanding we are social beings at root and created for social harmony.

1.2. Anxiety Tempts Humans to Sin

Humans are amazing creatures in that they can see far beyond their current situation, but they can only effect a small portion of it. Seeing this gap produces anxiety. The question is, what will they do with this anxiety? Will man be able to “accept his finiteness and to admit his insecurity”? (The Nature & Destiny of Man, 1.150). Or, will he attempt to “regard himself as the go around and about whom the universe centers”? (ibid., 1.124). Humans’ great abilities and yet their limitations tempt them to seek a greatness that is beyond them in order to overcome their limitations. This is a temptation to give themselves an outsized place in the universe that manifests itself in seeking an outsized place in the human community. This is the temptation of the human situation, but there is always “the ideal possibility that faith would purge anxiety of the tendency toward sinful self-assertion” (ibid., 1.182).

Benefit: understanding that social problems are not simply rooted in recalcitrant wills. They are also rooted in the anxiety of the human situation. Continue reading “A Theology of Social Action”

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Amazingly, Our Democracy Works . . .

Amazingly, our democracy works. It works somewhat like the free market. The free market employs the profit interest of human beings to get goods where they want to be. Amazingly, this process is better at getting goods and services where I want them than any central planning could be. It’s messy, competitive, and random, but it works. Democracy works in a similar way.

Democracy is a rough and tumble process that gradually moves nations in a better direction. This progress is not because the side that wins is competent and good. It is because each faction watches the other like a hawk ready to pounce on its prey. This keeps each side on their toes and gradually removes the dross.

People like to hear that we are all in this together and above power politics, but we all know this is not true. Each side loves to claim a purity for themselves, even though they are enmeshed in the fray. Each side sees very clearly the hypocrisy of the assertion of this purity . . . in the other side. Continue reading “Amazingly, Our Democracy Works . . .”

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