Thanks for writing this up. I look forward to continuing the conversation with you when I get the energy to whip my calendar out and suggest another time.
In the meantime, I think you're right to focus on your RC faith as potentially having some bearing on this conversation. My Methodist faith certainly has bearing on mine. In particular, old school Methodists preach a doctrine called either Entire Sanctification or Christian Perfection. It isn't that we can live perfect lives and never fall into sin, but that Christ's grace and love can so overwhelm our sin and wickedness that we are actually new creatures. Philosophically, it is a conviction that humans can actually be integrated and coherent, consistent individuals. We aren't nearly as limited and broken as we think ourselves to be, at least when we have the Holy Spirit.
I often suspect that our leaders have been so flawed because only very flawed people actually want higher levels of power. Certain narcissistic personalities are the primary ones comfortable with elevating themselves. I suspect that a great many others of higher virtue would actually be much better leaders, but they don't elevate themselves. I am somewhat utopian in my ideals, and what I think is that, if we were to expose, discredit, and disqualify narcissistic deeply flawed individuals, then balanced, integrated, boring folks could largely serve the public well. There always needs to be room for dysfunctional genius in the academy and technological sectors, but we need to get over our desire for drama in leadership. It's going to get us all killed. We need a Ned Flanders in charge, who can level things out with common sense and virtue. As I recall, Augustine was made bishop because his virtue was seen by contemporaries. They compelled him to serve, trapping him by force in a church until he agreed to the office. I think that's a better model of leadership than the one we have.
Of course, I don't think utopia would come about from this. Things would still go wrong and leaders would still have moral failings. It just wouldn't be quite so bad. And I'm in favor of 'not quite so bad.'
I get what you're saying. I don't think the doctrine of entire sanctification is entirely alien to Catholic theology. Catholicism puts a strong emphasis on the inherent working of grace in all aspects of nature, so there's not as strong a nature/grace divide as in some strains of Protestantism. In Catholicism, this connection between nature and grace includes a rigorous affirmation of the goodness of creation. So as we become "new" creatures, we're in a way fulfilling our original telos, which I suppose is a kind of perfection.
That said, the perfection of creation is a long slow process and won't be finished until the Second Coming, right? So it's a matter of how much imperfection we're willing to tolerate in different domains at different times. I read you as saying that it's easier to tolerate extreme moral failings in academics or techies than in political leadership. But power intrinsically has an edge to it, and the people who rise to — and more importantly, survive in — positions of power will for that reason just always have more of a tendency to throw their weight around, to take risks, to do dangerous things in search of leverage. With the Ned Flanders analogy, I envision a leader to whom that world of power and danger is fundamentally alien. Henry VI in English history might be a good analogy — he was so pious and otherworldly that he couldn't relate to his nobles or regular people, and was unable to make people take him seriously. I think my vision would be someone more like Alfred the Great: a somewhat flawed but fundamentally, I think, decent man who was forced to use military force and to shed blood, but who also used political power to revive learning and build administrative infrastructure in the Saxon Dark Ages.
So I guess I think leadership involves a lot of compromises, including moral compromises, and I see Alfred as being able to choose among those in a basically righteous if flawed way that a Ned Flanders character or Henry VI couldn't. This gets us pretty far afield from questions of ritual and ceremony, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless.
Regarding this point: "Is it always good.... to expose their foibles? ....Sometimes you need your leaders to play a role that serves a unifying, not an administrative, function... suspension of disbelief."
I appreciate how you describe something I've vaguely associated with JFK's popularity during his era. The public did not really want to know, at the time, what he reportedly told the British Prime Minister afer a long nuclear arms talk: "If I don't have a girl every 3 days I get terrible headaches." As someone who was born before JFK died (barely), I'm not as relentlessly critical (as is the younger generation) of powerful men's feeling of entitlement to women, at least not when those practices were normative for their era. FK's legacy was mixed but contained some achievements. I'm glad our country got to have that period of hope and optimism; the Moon race, a start on Civil Rights.
Regarding that last point -- Historians criticize JFK for being too tentative on Civil Rights, but when change is too fast, it elicits backlash. So glad we didn't have to see those warts at the time.
That's a great example. Kennedy was a bit of a swine, and I wouldn't want him anywhere near any young woman I personally cared about. But he was an inspiring and effective leader in a lot of ways. Would it have been better in the long run for all his womanizing and loutishness to have been exposed to public view at that very time? I dunno. Maybe? But surely there's a limit. We don't express to our spouses, friends, colleagues, etc. all the vile thoughts that pass through our minds, and if we did, life really *would* turn into Hobbes's state of nature, a war of all against all.
So we have to do some playacting, some selective public expression and suppression, in order to live together in society. To me, it seems that moral perfectionism or excessive emphasis on what Adam Seligman calls "sincerity" would — and does — destroy that public space.
Thanks for writing this up. I look forward to continuing the conversation with you when I get the energy to whip my calendar out and suggest another time.
In the meantime, I think you're right to focus on your RC faith as potentially having some bearing on this conversation. My Methodist faith certainly has bearing on mine. In particular, old school Methodists preach a doctrine called either Entire Sanctification or Christian Perfection. It isn't that we can live perfect lives and never fall into sin, but that Christ's grace and love can so overwhelm our sin and wickedness that we are actually new creatures. Philosophically, it is a conviction that humans can actually be integrated and coherent, consistent individuals. We aren't nearly as limited and broken as we think ourselves to be, at least when we have the Holy Spirit.
I often suspect that our leaders have been so flawed because only very flawed people actually want higher levels of power. Certain narcissistic personalities are the primary ones comfortable with elevating themselves. I suspect that a great many others of higher virtue would actually be much better leaders, but they don't elevate themselves. I am somewhat utopian in my ideals, and what I think is that, if we were to expose, discredit, and disqualify narcissistic deeply flawed individuals, then balanced, integrated, boring folks could largely serve the public well. There always needs to be room for dysfunctional genius in the academy and technological sectors, but we need to get over our desire for drama in leadership. It's going to get us all killed. We need a Ned Flanders in charge, who can level things out with common sense and virtue. As I recall, Augustine was made bishop because his virtue was seen by contemporaries. They compelled him to serve, trapping him by force in a church until he agreed to the office. I think that's a better model of leadership than the one we have.
Of course, I don't think utopia would come about from this. Things would still go wrong and leaders would still have moral failings. It just wouldn't be quite so bad. And I'm in favor of 'not quite so bad.'
I get what you're saying. I don't think the doctrine of entire sanctification is entirely alien to Catholic theology. Catholicism puts a strong emphasis on the inherent working of grace in all aspects of nature, so there's not as strong a nature/grace divide as in some strains of Protestantism. In Catholicism, this connection between nature and grace includes a rigorous affirmation of the goodness of creation. So as we become "new" creatures, we're in a way fulfilling our original telos, which I suppose is a kind of perfection.
That said, the perfection of creation is a long slow process and won't be finished until the Second Coming, right? So it's a matter of how much imperfection we're willing to tolerate in different domains at different times. I read you as saying that it's easier to tolerate extreme moral failings in academics or techies than in political leadership. But power intrinsically has an edge to it, and the people who rise to — and more importantly, survive in — positions of power will for that reason just always have more of a tendency to throw their weight around, to take risks, to do dangerous things in search of leverage. With the Ned Flanders analogy, I envision a leader to whom that world of power and danger is fundamentally alien. Henry VI in English history might be a good analogy — he was so pious and otherworldly that he couldn't relate to his nobles or regular people, and was unable to make people take him seriously. I think my vision would be someone more like Alfred the Great: a somewhat flawed but fundamentally, I think, decent man who was forced to use military force and to shed blood, but who also used political power to revive learning and build administrative infrastructure in the Saxon Dark Ages.
So I guess I think leadership involves a lot of compromises, including moral compromises, and I see Alfred as being able to choose among those in a basically righteous if flawed way that a Ned Flanders character or Henry VI couldn't. This gets us pretty far afield from questions of ritual and ceremony, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless.
Regarding this point: "Is it always good.... to expose their foibles? ....Sometimes you need your leaders to play a role that serves a unifying, not an administrative, function... suspension of disbelief."
I appreciate how you describe something I've vaguely associated with JFK's popularity during his era. The public did not really want to know, at the time, what he reportedly told the British Prime Minister afer a long nuclear arms talk: "If I don't have a girl every 3 days I get terrible headaches." As someone who was born before JFK died (barely), I'm not as relentlessly critical (as is the younger generation) of powerful men's feeling of entitlement to women, at least not when those practices were normative for their era. FK's legacy was mixed but contained some achievements. I'm glad our country got to have that period of hope and optimism; the Moon race, a start on Civil Rights.
Regarding that last point -- Historians criticize JFK for being too tentative on Civil Rights, but when change is too fast, it elicits backlash. So glad we didn't have to see those warts at the time.
That's a great example. Kennedy was a bit of a swine, and I wouldn't want him anywhere near any young woman I personally cared about. But he was an inspiring and effective leader in a lot of ways. Would it have been better in the long run for all his womanizing and loutishness to have been exposed to public view at that very time? I dunno. Maybe? But surely there's a limit. We don't express to our spouses, friends, colleagues, etc. all the vile thoughts that pass through our minds, and if we did, life really *would* turn into Hobbes's state of nature, a war of all against all.
So we have to do some playacting, some selective public expression and suppression, in order to live together in society. To me, it seems that moral perfectionism or excessive emphasis on what Adam Seligman calls "sincerity" would — and does — destroy that public space.