What makes a society healthy and the decline of politics...

I've been reading Curtis Cate's biography on Friedrich Nietzsche and I was struck by this...

 

What makes a society healthy, Nietzsche believed, is an ascensional or aspirational force, exerting its upward pull towards an ideal of improvement or perfection, towards something higher and better, and not merely more 'successful'--success being, as he once noted, 'the greatest of liars'.  Where this upward-pulling attraction (a form of respect or veneration) has lost its force or no longer exists, the prevailing social force becomes inverted and descensional.  Those who should be exercising authority become demoralized and conscience-stricken at the mere thought of having to lead and to direct, for fear of becoming 'unjust', 'unfair', or worst of all, 'unpopular'.  The healthy notion of 'authority' is tarred and feathered and takes on the sickly hue of 'tyranny'.  The result is a general flight from responsibility, a universal abdication.

 

This, Nietzsche foresaw with prophetic clarity, is what is happening today all over the Western world.  Parents abdicate before their undisciplined children, teachers before their lawless pupils, priests before their restless, time-rationed congregations, politicians before their assiduously flattered voters...

 

..No area of life is spared.  All 'traditional' values are challenged, any trace of 'elitism' becomes instantly suspect.  Ugliness, precisely because it is the opposite of the traditionally 'beautiful, is accorded an honourable status, just as what is incomprehensible... receives the stamp of profound 'significance' by cultural snobs in frantic search of 'originality'... (p. xxii)

I've been thinking about how frustrated and apathetic many of the voters (and nonvoters) I speak with are.  How distrustful of government they have become.  There is a thirst for the past and a fear that government and governance will only continue to decline--or at the very least sustain a status quo of dysfunction that can't be fixed.

 

In many ways these are symptoms of a decline in our culture--specifically our political culture--and in many ways are a consequence of the excesses and indulgences of a society that is sustained on permissiveness and all encompassing acceptance of all opinions, views, and positions--no matter how vacuous they may be. 

 

Parents abdicate before their undisciplined children, teachers before their lawless pupils, priests before their restless, time-rationed congregations, politicians before their assiduously flattered voters...

 

Can anyone deny that this is often the status quo of our modern society?  

We need ascensional and aspirational leaders--but they can only come from ascensional and aspirational citizenry.  They can only come via a refusal by such leaders to fall to the whims and will of "assiduously flattered voters" who expect (read.. vote for) test marketed campaigns and politically correct politicians--who, rather than forcing citizens to face up to facts and obligations, give them what they want in exchange for their vote (or lack of a vote...as they are often one and the same...). 

 

We need to be recruiting citizens to get into the process, we need to be nurturing citizenship, we need to be raising the standards and focusing on priorities of value--we need to end the cul-de-sac of voter apathy, career politicians, and money in politics. 

 

We need to be bringing in qualified candidates.  Last year during our candidate recruitment efforts I got so sick of hearing people lower the bar--picking the most qualified person willing to run for office is an acknowledgement that our most qualified citizens for many different reasons (the smear campaigns, and the low pay were the two most common responses to me last year) refuse to sacrifice some of their time.  At times like these, when our country, state, and local communities face many obstacles we need the most qualified---and yet they are far too often sitting on the sidelines.

This  aspirational cause is not one that can be "successfully accomplished"--as if we could ever end the natural check of self and business interests on our policies!  A politican can't fix anytying.  I've watched too many people fall into the "Obama will make it okay" nonsense. 

 

Good Government--check, end corruption--check.  No, these are not successfully accomplished goals, these are never ending struggles.  Good citizenship comes before good government, not the other way around--if history has taught us anything it is that we must never trust the state to do good for us.  As if we are somehow entitled to it. 

 

We have to expect more of our citizens.  Citizenship isn't just a luxury, its a responsibility. And I'm left with the question--Is it our politicians and government that are in decline or is it our commitment to citizenship, the duty and obligations so entailed?  

 

My hunch is the latter--though I'm always open to arguments to the contrary... 

Posted via email from Jim Nichols