Abstract
My daughter and I were recently working our way through a maze in the magazine Highlights. She recognized what Menno Boldt knows: how we will get there is puzzling, but the ultimate destination is not really in question. For Boldt though, the target is not the finish line in some game, but nothing short of the fabled good society in which people are decent to one another.
The numerous factors aligned for further degradation of human society are well accounted for here. Nevertheless, ideas matter and we could conceivably make a multi-generational commitment to embark on a pathway divergent from our current trajectory, toward the good society, by embracing different ideas. Indeed, the author avers, history demonstrates an ineluctable pattern in human society for increasing unity and order. The first step toward a humane world is to grasp the main problems of this one. Inventorying and theorizing these problems is the primary agenda in A Quest for Humanity.
Pivotal ideas rooted in the Enlightenment underlie the failed leadership of current “elect bodies” (i.e., elites) in the West. In an attempt to wrest political control from the Church and its “synthetic” moral authority, Enlightenment philosophers successfully made the case for a secular, “amoral mode of social-order authority” (p. 80). (Synthetic moral order involves centralized control as opposed to the diffuse social influence of authentic moral order.) Dressed in morally neutral language, the subsequent constitutionalization of human rights enabled the commodification of legal rights in general, which is overseen by elect bodies to their own benefit—and has resulted in the loss of any authentic moral order. Likewise, instead of the appealing prospect of people collectively governing themselves, that is, the authentic democracy ennobled during the Enlightenment, we have a system controlled by money—a synthetic democracy. Despite only a minority of the citizenry taking part in political processes, this ruse is effectively hidden by a facade of partisanship that obscures oligarchic domination.
Such perverted expression of promising ideas is central to the dysfunctional confusion on the part of elect bodies who fail to understand or accept a fundamental pattern in social life: when two or more people interact, their relations increasingly become guided by a sense of interdependence. “Deterministic forces,” Boldt maintains, “bring all powers, authorities, and peoples into a unitary jurisdiction” (p. 15). There are countless bumps along the way, some of them calamitous such as world wars, which represent dysfunctional responses to the evolutionary globalizing tendencies of humanity. But over time, in the context of shared knowledge and understanding, different spheres of power realign to coincide with new, larger spheres. The current patterns of what is known as “globalization” involve uneven awareness of interdependence. Hence the need to explain it in this treatise.
That is also why, the author concludes, we need a new mythology that sets aside the fetishes and certitudes of both science and theology. This new consciousness must be built on a transcendent sense of humanity and mutuality that animates the causal power of love. Such a mythology could then facilitate the social power of authentic democracy and moral order in which the people’s interests and values are carefully negotiated and reflected in productive governance.
There is much to admire in this wide-ranging and learned book. The critique of the amoral rationality extending from the Enlightenment is especially illuminating. To recognize certain precepts of the Enlightenment as problematic in terms of logic and implication is not, Boldt suggests, tantamount to pre-modern anti-intellectualism or post-modern nihilism. An intelligible theoretical argument provides an edifice on which insightful empirical assessment of major institutions is offered. The picture of how the government, economy, law, religion, media, and family currently contribute to the misuse of power is not pretty. How the American power elite in particular wields its influence domestically and internationally to such unproductive or “dysfunctional” ends is vividly elucidated.
The author clearly defines familiar terms and introduces novel ones, but never lets burdensome jargon get in the way. His book articulates a sophisticated argument that will be of interest to scholars but could be read by a lay audience. It strikes a hopeful stance in light of the arc of history without ignoring the wretchedness of our time.
For this sociologist, the most important deficiency is an insufficient link between the abstract theoretical argument presented up front and the review of empirical patterns that follows. Needless to say, the functionalist presumption of order here cannot ultimately be proven or disproven. However, the penetrating critique of Western culture Boldt himself offers strains such optimism. For instance, it is hard to see how the radical dysfunction of ruling elect bodies will not continue to define the new normal. The most recent century entailed unprecedented expansion of human rights and the bloodiest conflicts in human history. The empirical patterns documented here are historicized in revealing ways. But the theoretical argument about them includes inadequate consideration of temporality and contingency. What theoretical factors account for key exceptions (e.g., dysfunctional leadership) to the deterministic model?
This disconnect is exacerbated by two other problems. First, in an attempt to present his own ideas in a lucid manner, Boldt makes the interesting choice to provide no specific citations in the text to the 350 references listed at the end. Relatedly, his disquisition barely refers to extant theories of power, morality, civil society, democracy, world systems or other important social forces. This does make the book more fluid in some ways, but diminishes the overall stock of evidence and how it relates to theoretical considerations.
How can we realize the human potential for decency and justice on a massive scale? This is an ambitious, difficult question we must keep asking even if the answer is elusive, as it is in A Quest for Humanity. Despite that inevitable problem and the other shortcomings mentioned above, the ongoing inquiry of this worthy topic will be enhanced by Boldt’s broad knowledge and nuanced insights.