Civic Religion
I’ve been trying to describe the sadness of the last five plus years and have failed to grab a hold of it. There’s a nastiness that wasn’t there before. There’s a meanness that wasn’t there before. There’s a cruelty that wasn’t there before. I think each of us understands more acutely than ever that the pain didn’t come from one man. That man has always been a reflection of us. The seeds of our discontent were sewn years before.
The images of whatever this thing is get placed into the child we are preparing for the world. It took me awhile to fully understand that we are not only preparing the child for the world, but we are also giving the world our child. The world becomes an accumulation of all of our children. It becomes an aggregation of those children. It becomes an aggregation of their attitudes. It becomes an aggregation of their hopes, their dreams, and their sacred honor. It becomes an aggregation of their kindness, grace, or lack of kindness or lack of grace.
Civic religion refers to the way we treat each other as people that share this space. Religion obviously has negative energy for some folks, but in this case refers not to a particular God, but a particular mode of thought. In short, it refers to a source for our energy and what it means to be successful in this world.
The hardest lesson we have attempted to teach our daughter is the difference between being kind and being nice. For the life of me, I don’t know if we are being successful. There’s a balance between allowing things to roll off your back and sticking up for yourself. The problem with our civic religion is that self has become way too important. If we are kind then we treat people with kindness, but we don’t allow others to push us around. That balance is nearly impossible to teach.
Since the 1970s, success has slowly but surely been redefined. What we are seeing today is a culmination of that changing definition. I was brought up believing that success was measured by the positive impact that we had on those around us. How many lives have we positively impacted? Have we left a positive foot print on the world? That changed and morphed into what we see today.
The “Me” Generation slowly turned into the “Me Me Me” Generation. Success became about accumulation. It became a measurement of stuff. It became a step on your neighbor if that’s what you need to get more stuff. It became a glorification of the individual. The last five or so years simply became a reflection. Our leaders are a reflection of us. This is what we’ve become. This is an aggregation of the world we’ve created. This is who we are.
We live in a world that measures success by the strength of our devotion. We live in a world that openly brags on those successes as if they are our own. Our civic religion used to say otherwise. It used to say that someone’s success was all of our success and someone’s failure was all of our failure. What happened to the least among us mattered as much as what happened to the greatest among us. The real measure of success comes not in the strength of that devotion, but who or what we are devoted to. If it is only ourselves it matters not how strong it is. It is misplaced anyway.
You know those taglines at the end of emails where the sender reveals the pronouns?
1Like “he, him, his”?
I fear that many of us have adopted “me, me, mine”
for our pronouns.
So very sad and unfortunately a true reflection of our cultural norm, and for too many people, their weekly reinforced religious norm.
2This is a really great article about how insidious the January 6 mythology is evolving: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/donald-trumps-new-lost-cause-centers-january-6/620407/
3Carol, that’s a great piece.
4After reading it I ran across this Politico piece from the day after Biden’s election.
IMHO, the two pieces written 9 months apart compliment each other really well.
Sorry, I just realized I didn’t put the link.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/01/21/trump-civil-war-reconstruction-biden-lost-cause-461161
5I think we all know how the civic religion should work, however we’ve been living in a consequence free world. Does anyone go the speed limit anymore? Just a minor example, but when everyone knows or assumes there are no consequences for bad behavior, we do what we want.
6@Grandma Ada: Concerning consequences for bad behavior, I like this commentary from Charles P. Pierce at Esquire:
“Most of the attention concerning the January 6 insurrection this week has been on whether or not the people subpoenaed to appear before the special committee of the House will be treated as harshly as a 14-year old Black kid who jumps a turnstile and skips out on his court date. (Pro Tip: They will not.) But there’s even more intrigue now in the court proceedings concerning the rioters themselves. It appears they may have had more friends in the Capitol Police than we thought. Meanwhile, the kid who jumped the turnstile? He’s still in Rikers because he couldn’t make bail.”
7“There’s a meanness that wasn’t there before. There’s a cruelty that wasn’t there before.”
8Newt Gingrich. Mitch McConnell. Dick Cheney. The Clinton Haters {even though I’m not the biggest fan of Bill or Hillary.
The memes of Michelle Obama as a gorilla. The Swift Boaters. The rogues gallery of obstructionists who wouldn’t allow President Obama to do anything in his struggle to bring people together and move the country forward.. Squirrels are just rats in adorable costumes. The aforementioned Republicans are just t-Rump with larger vocabularies and better table manners. For at least 25 years the Party line has been to viciously lie and scheme, not to govern, but to destroy individual Democrats and the institutions that protect the weakest and most vulnerable Americans, those without the wealth to buy political power.
It’s been ugly for a long time. You’re just starting to notice. As it is put in a best selling work of fiction, “… there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose…” Time to arise, step off the safe road to Damascus and start some good trouble.
Nah.
America started as rebels against taxation w/o representation.
We enslaved Africans to provide a low-cost labor pool.
We colonized Cuba, Hawaii, Philippines, Guam, etc.
Post wwII, we sliced and diced the world.
We engaged in a reckless nuclear arms race.
We spent trillions terrorizing Vietnam.
We partitioned Korea.
We don’t have equalty, freedom, rule of law, medical care, education.
Don’t get cocky.
9Fair points Wally. Our politics have always had a nastiness to them. I suppose I am more focused on the day to day living for us in the hinterlands. I don’t know if my experience is similar to anyone else’s and I fully admit it might not be, but down to the neighbor level I haven’t recognized this level of hostility until the last five or six years. Sure, people badmouthed Obama and the like, but usually they managed to treat regular folks with a modicum of respect.
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