Remember the golden mean?
Aristotle believed that virtue occupies a middle ground between deficiency and excess. He called that middle ground “the golden mean,” and it was a key concept in his philosophy. Courage, for example, can be described as a mean between cowardice (a deficiency of courage) and recklessness (an excess). Confidence lies between self-doubt and arrogance. Etc.
Inherent in the notion of a golden mean is the recognition that even good things can be taken too far. The absence of a good quality is a problem we usually recognize, but (despite the adage) we less often understand that you can have too much of a good thing.
I recently came across an article from the Yale Daily News that reminded me of the importance of that golden mean. (I have no idea how I came to read the Yale Daily News….). The argument raised was hardly new; numerous scholars and historians–not to mention political pundits–have faulted America’s culture for an excess of individualism. Indeed, there is an entire philosophy, called communitarianism, built upon the premise that a good society is one in which citizens are “embedded” in the values and norms of their communities, and that the American emphasis on individual rights actually deprives us of the comforts and connections that make for a fulfilled life.
My own reading of communitarian philosophy is that it lies at the “deficiency” end of the spectrum–that the sort of society many of its proponents extol would smother creativity and penalize difference. Protecting individual rights against majority passions was, after all, one of the Founders’ most important and praiseworthy goals.
That said, the author of the linked article and many others who would not choose the degree of “embeddedness” that the communitarians appear to advocate argue that we have gone too far in the direction of excess.
As a matter of political philosophy, we, like many other countries, protect individual rights to protect the people from government overreach and maintain the mixed regime that our exceptionalism presupposes. But our politics and practices go further. They are built on the individual not just as a bearer of rights, but as the sole fundamental unit of society; in this vein, policy ideas are constantly evaluated on the basis of individuality. How does policy X affect an individual’s freedom to express their religion? How does policy Y burden an individual taxpayer?
This individualist mindset, built into the core structure of U.S. governance, is now inseparable from the American identity. I propose that our wholehearted devotion to the individualist perspective goes too far.
As the author points out, governments in much of the rest of the world have come to realize that serving the common good requires a combination of individualism and commitment to community welfare.
In America, we seem to lack the ability to prioritize the common good over individual rights, even when doing so would clearly benefit both individuals and the community. The author provides examples: the U.S. is the only Western democracy (assuming we still are a democracy) that declines to provide its citizens with universal health care. We refuse to prevent the leading cause of death for children and teens, thanks to our devotion to an individual right to bear arms. As he writes,
In America, community safety is understood — like everything else — through this same individualistic filter; the community is nothing more than a loose set of individuals. Therefore, community safety is as simple as putting weapons in the hands of each American so they can protect themselves. The American community as an end in itself is an empty concept.
This is probably not an optimum time to have this discussion–in the U.S. right now, the individual rights that do lie at the heart of the golden mean–free speech, separation of church and state, the right to due process and other protections of the rule of law– are under unremitting attack, an attack mounted primarily by a Christian Nationalist cult, and aided and abetted by a rogue Supreme Court. But it’s worth wondering whether people who were a bit more “embedded” in a system that looked out for their collective welfare–that guaranteed them access to health care, outlawed assault weapons, and provided a more robust social safety net–would be less likely to express their resentments by joining racist cults.
Devotion to the common good is entirely compatible with protection of individual rights. We just need to find the golden mean…
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