Political scientist Sheldon Wolin (1922-2015), who died in October, fought
against a dominant approach in social science that constructs abstract
models to then be used in devising and evaluating public policy. Instead, Wolin
turned to the history of specific societies. From them he derived lessons that
apply to modern situations.
In a well-known essay, Wolin looks at the saga of twins Esau
and Jacob, as revealed in Genesis (See 25:19-34; 27:1-49). He then explores
the difference between an individual who lacks context and a relational
person who is rooted in family and community traditions. The older twin Esau,
you remember, sells his birthright to Jacob. Their father Isaac is then tricked
into bestowing the ancestral blessing on Jacob the younger brother.
A birthright, Wolin explains, is a unique and
irreplaceable inherited collective identity. A birthright is an honor, but it
implies commitment. It denies that solitary individuals are thrown into the
world and allowed to make unencumbered choices. Instead, the birthright
(which is one’s package of family and community traditions) bestows on its
recipient all the treasures of the ancestors, but includes the obligations as
well. Yet Esau and now many people in the United States, Wolin feels, would say
the disappearance of familial obligation, especially obligation to the elderly,
is not “a loss but a relief.”
Wolin calls this wholesale embrace of unencumbered
individualism the contract theory of society. It replaces thick stories of familial honor and obligation with
an assessment about the near-term additions or subtractions to an individual’s
interest. Little regard, explains Wolin, is given to the meaning of the inherited situation. Nor do individuals consider
“the possibility that [because of this or that choice] I could be better
off but that we [will] not.” The contract theory rests on shaky
premises, he writes.
The part of the Esau and Jacob story that many of us
miss is that Jacob’s little coup d’état was
a disaster for both him and his brother. They feared and fought one another most
of their lifetime. Only at the conclusion of Genesis does Jacob imperfectly attempt to end a pattern of
isolation, resentment, retaliation and more isolation.
In popular contract theory, individuals are autonomous
and society
starts afresh each morning. But in reality, Wolin continues, there is never a
single moment when all individuals “have no prior history” related to economic
class, religion, ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, geography, and
more. The contract theory “is deeply anti-historical.” It posits “a memory-less
person without a birthright.” The contract theory is really “collective
amnesia.”
Our goal as North Americans is not to be enslaved
by the past. The democratic idea that we are allowed to rise above the education
and economic level of family or class is an advance in God’s plan. But the
price for our ragged individualism is high. Far too many have become unattached
from a collective story. The large number of isolated and resource-impoverished
seniors is but one example of our lost sense of ancestral gratitude. A contract
society, as it turns out, is not dynamic. Today’s society is populated by free
roaming individuals making so-called free
choices, yet ours is a static society— economically and especially
spiritually. Individuals presume they are choosing, but they are not
participating. Without the power of collective memory, says Wolin, true
participation, which is “originating or initiating cooperative action with
others,” becomes a rarity, not the norm.
The challenge is to draw upon the best values of
our parents, grandparents, and other heroes in the faith as we create and
fashion what Genesis calls Eden: literally, “a
home out of the earth.”
Droel is the author
of Monday Eucharist (National Center
for the Laity, PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629; $8)
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