Actually, no. I'd argue that love (or even simply belonging and security)
trumps freedom all the time, as people regularly and voluntarily give up
freedom for the sake of love (marriage, citizenship, employment, etc.).
Freedom is important, sure, but usually only in the service of something
else (e.g., religious freedom, freedom of association, etc.). Lumping all
of those into the abstract "freedom" is a huge leap, and not easy to justify
empirically. As the Arab Spring has painfully reminded us...
---
One is not capable of love unless he is free. One cannot volunteer unless
he is free to make that choice.
Here is my chapter on neighborliness:
CHAPTER NINE
Neighborliness
Neighborliness is the act of free people respecting and helping each other.
It requires free will and conscious activity. Neighborliness is an economic,
social, and spiritual concept. While neighborliness is sometimes
conceptualized as a one-way effort it is by definition a social action
because there is an actor and a receiver. Neighborliness is fundamentally a
two-way exchange of services, goods, or positive energies between people
exercising their free will for mutual benefit. The spiritual aspect of
neighborliness is obvious. When that mutual exchange of goods or energies
occurs, humanity benefits because each actor is improved and thus, in a
better position to transmit positive energy elsewhere.
What are the psychological requirements and ramifications of neighborliness?
Most importantly, one needs to embrace his own capacity to be helpful to
others and he needs to be able to accept help from others. Each of these
capacities is more difficult than it sounds because it opens one up for
vulnerability. Giving and receiving are risky. So, being a neighbor requires
a basic psychological centeredness that family therapist, Murray Bowen
termed differentiation that protects the ego from too much anxiety.[i]
Often, folks that struggle with neighborliness are either fearful of
abandonment or engulfment – being left behind or being smothered.[ii] It
takes a modicum of differentiation to be able to tolerate the closeness that
neighborliness offers. Differentiation is also known as the psychological
freedom to give and take without fear. So, given this definition,
neighborliness is a social action that requires a psychological capacity.
Some people grow up in stable situations with well-differentiated parents
that foster good differentiation and others are not so lucky. It takes some
work for those in the latter group to develop a better capacity for
neighborliness, and unfortunately, as an American community we are doing a
poor job at helping folks develop this capacity in their daily interactions
within the developmental landscape. So, it may take some intentionality for
some people to build a better relational capacity. Those efforts to build
stronger psychological muscles will pay dividends for individuals and
communities.
Free people make healthy communities because they have an investment in
creating the ordered liberty that will allow their families to thrive. They
understand freedom can only be sustained if there is also neighborliness.
This idea comes directly from the social contract theory that undergirded
the birth of the American nation. Freedom without neighborliness is what
sociologist Emile Durkheim referred to as anomie, the feeling of extreme
normlessness, which many socialists and anarchists consider an evolutionary
outcome of individualist free market Capitalism.[iii] Americans know it is
not inevitible that free societies get more and more atomized as long as
their citizens are an ethical people who are capable of neighborliness.
America thrives because we have an acculturation process that ensures
individual liberty and cross-cultural connectivity. Thus, one of the
greatest dangers we are facing as a nation today is that our growing ethnic
and cultural diversity will not also come with the requirement to embrace
American notions of neighborliness. Without neighborliness we cannot enjoy
the social connectivity that American communities need to flourish.
As Sociologist Robert Putnam points out, the more diverse a community is,
the greater the challenges it faces.[iv] According to Putnam, in more
diverse communities people tend to vote less and volunteer less and there
tends to be less civic engagement.
Therefore, the conventional wisdom, diversity is our strength, seems to be
an incomplete notion that demands further investigation. This conventional
wisdom may be true, but as Putnam points out there are greater challenges
with diversity than we may want to acknowledge. Diversity presents
significant challenges to social connectivity.
If one looks around the world he sees increasing division and strife as
diversity increases, especially in places like Europe and the Middle East
where religious and ethnic divisions are on the rise. America, which is one
of the most ethnically diverse nations on earth, seems to be handling its
diversity challenge about as well as anyone, a fact that our detractors
around the world are loath to admit.[v] It may be that our traditional
American notions of pluralism with voluntary neighborliness are thus
underrated and essential elements for any society that wishes to overcome
the challenges offered by growing ethnic and cultural diversity. We may have
something to teach the world.
Neighborliness within does not necessarily mean Americans can not also be
good global neighbors or that smaller enclaves can not also continue to
rejoice in their distinctness. On the contrary, when folks know who they are
and have pride in themselves and their immediate associations they also tend
to be better citizens in the larger world. Solid core identity actually
enhances inclusivity because the individual or the group does not need to
prove his cultural integrity to himself and to outsiders. He is not afraid
he will perish and therefore he does not strike out at challenges to his
core. Neighborliness is really having enough confidence in oneself and in
one’s community so he can expose his beliefs to other ideas without fear of
engulfment or annihilation.
In contrast with Europeans, Americans have always relied on the civil
society to uphold the promise of the social contract by forming
self-governing neighborhood associations. These associations were a means
for involved neighbors to support each other and to simultaneously foster
the interests of their families. Most Americans believe self interest and
community interest go hand in hand although in recent years institutional
power has begun to overwhelm natural supports in communities. This emerging
condition is most apparent in our urban centers where blight and government
interference are bedfellows, but it has recently crept into our smaller
communities too. Therefore, deconstruction and restoration will mean
creating pathways for more Americans to free themselves from
professionalization and institutionalization so as to (re)empower natural
support systems.
One of the aspects of American life that destroys neighborliness is the
perpetually expanding giant services sector of our economy, which is the
fastest growing segment of our overall economy. This is the central focus of
one of my favorite books, John McKnight’s The Careless Society.[vi] McKnight
makes the astute point that service providers need an ever-increasing supply
of clients in order to make a living, and thus we have developed an economic
system that goes about clientizing citizens. Instead of seeking healthy
lifestyle solutions and neighborly charity from friends we now tend to turn
to professionals with the misguided hope they will therapize, medicalize, or
social work us to health.
While this idea has been around since Aristotle, in the modern era this
critique was most prominently put forward by Ivan Illich, who like McKnight,
believed industrialized society was by its very function, causing deviance
and illness.[vii] Illich lamented the counterproductivity of
over-industrialized civilization and believed over-institutionalization was
socially and culturally iatrogenic. He believed many institutions had become
counterproductive to their original intent. If industrial society was to
rediscover healthier living, according to Illich, it would need to
deconstruct institutional systems and their reach so man could regain
control over his environment. Illich’s words are especially meaningful today
as we look at a behemoth health and social services system that is bankrupt
and broken while the social, physical, and spiritual health of the
population gets continually worse.
This understanding has created a lot of cognitive dissonance for me as a
service provider as I have seen the way the American community has evolved
toward a less healthy state to make room for our growing profession. The
phrase for this phenomenon is social and cultural iatrogenesis – the
proposed cure causes the illness. The incidence increase in depression,
divorce, unwed parenting, and many other social maladies as the numbers in
the services professions have grown, provides correlational evidence for
social and cultural iatrogenesis.[viii] McNight and Illich are right, that
we professionals need clients to expand our monetary bases. This phenomenon
presents an awful paradox that our nation needs to face.
Assuredly, efforts to deconstruct this iatrogenic helping system will be met
with tremendous opposition from those that have a monetary stake in
maintaining or growing the existing system. However, I believe if we were to
deconstruct the human services system in America in order to create more
simplicity, effectiveness, and efficiency, the health of the nation would
improve dramatically. We offer an organization-specific transformation
program to contribute to such a reform at A Place for Possibilities. [ix]
The current economic conditions in the United States may bring about a
necessary deconstruction very soon.
Medicaid and Medicare are in crisis. This is how I wrote about their
impending overhaul on June 8, 2010 on our blog, Free Spirits for Truth and
Common Sense:[x]
“The human services sector of the American economy is the largest segment of
the services sector, which is the largest sector of the American economy.
Public human services are largely funded by Medicaid and to some extent
Medicare, along with other public financing from government grants. Because
the burst in the economic bubble that was driven by the obscene national
debt is finally getting the attention it needs, the federal government will
no longer have the political clout it needs to borrow or print money at will
(although they will try for as long as they can). The Keynesian Economists,
with their emphasis on "stimulus" spending, which so far has largely been in
the form of continued payouts to services sector unions and other government
stakeholders and friends, are losing the economic argument. Therefore, it
appears that the federal government and many states will soon cut Medicaid
funding.
The states, that are completely dependent on the fifty percent federal
government match for all Medicaid dollars that is guaranteed by law, will be
unable to continue services as usual, services that have increased
dramatically during the bubble years. These cuts and associated shortfalls
are happening right now. It will create a huge outcry from the usual
cultural Marxist advocates who will claim the government is evil, unfair,
and racist, even though the motivation for the outcry will not really be
about client care but in reality, about the Medicaid created jobs, perks,
and pensions that are in jeopardy when these funds are cut. If integrity
prevails, the fiscal realists will win out and the funds will be cut in
spite of the rage. If the government gives in again we will merely be
pushing the problem a bit further down the road.
As this is happening in parts of Europe, it has lead to riots in the streets
by government employee unions and Communists. Unfortunately, that same
outcome is likely in the United States, although the overt Communist
presence will be muted. But if we keep our heads, when the dust settles we
will be left with a need for a new type of human services system that is
more efficient, necessarily, and less reliant on government funding because
there will be a lot less left to go around. What will that new system
entail?
If my generation does not have the courage to do the right thing,
millennial leaders should immediately go about the business of intentionally
de-funding and deconstructing our behemoth human services system in order to
improve the health of the nation. That step would renew neighborliness more
than any other systemic action. Of course it would be met with tremendous
opposition from stakeholders in that system so it will take real courage to
get it done. The time is now. Unfortunately because my generation lacks
courage, and politicians have been buying votes through that system for
decades, and consequently many of us are feeding at the human services
trough, it may take the full collapse of the economy to bring it about.”
In addition to the reasons above there are a couple of other factors that
have contributed to the dramatic shift toward a services economy. The
increase in women relative to men in university enrollment and the
corresponding rise of women in the professional workforce means there are
growing numbers of workers who tend to gravitate to the helping
professions.[xi] And as that sector grows it needs to sustain itself with an
ever-increasing supply of workers, most of whom are women. Conversely, as
the working population of women grows, that group needs an ever-increasing
supply of jobs. Most of the commentary on this social trend tends to be
positive although I have seen few studies that have looked at the long term
implications of this development and the effects it is sure to have on the
services and manufacturing sectors of the economy respectively.
This development coincides with the demise of the manufacturing sector of
our economy due to high labor costs and the inability to compete with third
world developing economies like China. Therefore ours has become a
professional services society with most of our great minds gravitating
toward financial and social services instead of engineering and science. We
are no longer making things people need but instead selling people our
services. At the same time we are convincing people they need more and more
of those services, which are themselves iatrogenic to community health and
wellbeing. Professionalization is thus an inevitible by-product of
prosperity but is paradoxically also destroying creativity and community as
McNight and Illich postulated.
My intention is to contribute to the reversal of this several decades long
trend as it not only skewed the landscape in favor of the feminine and put a
lot of men out of work, but it has also disempowered neighborliness.
Professional service providers are not neighbors. They are workers who are
offering pseudo-kindness for money. Recipients understand the provider-user
relationship is artificial and it leads to a lack of permanence and a kind
of pseudomutuality in day to day relationships. Furthermore, the
ubiquitousness of those professional relationships crowds out regular
neigborliness, which gives people a real sense of connection and self-worth.
Too much professionalism is thus anti-community.
A business associate is not a friend. He is a client. But many professional
people are conflating the two and have few unencumbered relationships. This
is creating an artificial society where people understand their
relationships have dual purposes, which interferes with the human need for
unconditional friendship. This phenomenon is also placing undue pressure on
romantic relationships and marriages because in this artificial world of
friendship people are asking for too much intimacy from their spouses. This
has created a situation in which the American community is failing to meet
the most basic needs of its members.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] Murray Bowen, Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (New York: Jason
Aronson, 1978). I am using neighborliness in the same way that Murray Bowen,
noted family therapist, talked about the capacity for relationship because
of a well-developed differentiation of self.
[ii] Marion F. Solomon, Narcissism and Intimacy: Love and Marriage in an Age
of Confusion
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), 135. A fundamental tenet of object-relations
theory, an outgrowth of psychoanalysis, is that relationship distress is
connected to early life developmental problems that have one growing up
fearing abandonment or engulfment.
[iii] Durkheim’s depiction of anomie is available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie.
[iv] Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the
Twenty-First Century,” The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture, Scandinavian
Political Studies, 30, no. 2 (2007): 137–174.
[v] Wikipedia Contributors, United States, “United States Public Debt”
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, accessed December 13, 2010; available at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States.
[vi] John McKnight, The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits
(New York: Basic Books, 1996), 8.
[vii] Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1976), 39, 211, 262.
[viii] Mark Tyrrell, “Major Depression Facts,” Clinical-Depression.co.uk,
accessed December 13, 2010; available at:
http://www.clinical-depression.co.uk/dlp/depression-information/major-depression-facts.
Benjamin Scafidi, “The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing,”
Combined report from the Institute for American Values, Georgia Family
Council, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, and Families Northwest
(2008).
[ix] Discovering Possibility Transformation System for Human Services
Organizations, available at:
https://home.comcast.net/~kervick/discoveringpossibilityprogram.htm.
[x] Kevin Kervick, Free Spirits for Truth and Common Sense, accessed
December 13, 2010; available at:
http://freespiritsfortruthandcommonsense.blogspot.com.
[xi] Maria Shriver et al., “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes
Everything,” Report from the Center for American Progress, 2009; available
at:
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/10/pdf/awn/a_womans_nation.pdf.
Order Discovering Possibility: A Common Sense Conservative Manifesto (For
Classical Liberals Too) at www.discoveringpossibility.com.
--
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