Two Conceptions of Reverence

The human emotion of reverence is vital to social cohesion and influences the people that experience it. There are two basic ways to experience reverence. One is to revere an external source of love, power, sustenance and authority. This experience forms the core of the orthodox identity, whose adherents tend to defend the socio-political status quo. The other is to revere a living system or society of which we are a part. This is typical of heterodoxists, who tend to advocate the decentralization of political, economic, and cultural power.

Despite more than three centuries of upheaval and breakneck change, America remains one of the most rigid and religious societies in the developed world. There have been powerful religious influences in American history, both in favor of stasis and of comprehensive reform. Strong religious ideas were on both sides of the New England Schism, the English Civil War, the Revolution, slavery, the American Civil War, the struggle over corporate power in the Gilded Age, the Progressive reforms and Prohibition, the turmoil surrounding the Depression, American involvement in The War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, Watergate, Abortion, and finally the endless series of skirmishes over domestic policy known as the “Culture War” over the last 35 years. Again and again, Orthodox and Heterodox versions of human purpose clash over policy.

The two sides in these disputes often seem like they are speaking two languages that use the same words. Freedom, Democracy, Respect, and Authority seem to beckon from both sides of the disputes over slavery, civil rights, or the environment. Like Shaw said of Britain and America, we seem to be “two countries separated by a common language.” The most important factor in the insolubility of these fights seems to be the impression, on both sides, that their opponents  lack respect for the most basic values. The orthodox factions are accused of lacking reverence for the undeniable fact, to heterodoxists, that we are all part of an indivisible system of living systems. There can be no separation of my interests and yours or of us and them.

I: The Orthodoxy

The Role of Authority in American Political Thought
To the Orthodox, this is a dangerous illusion. There is a range of sources of Orthodox ideas from the frankly irreligious to fundamentalist scriptural literalism. The common thread is the recognition of the necessity of power and authority. To the Orthodox, rigid authority is necessary for the most basic social functions. Orthodox thinkers are influenced by Thomas Hobbes’ vision of the state of nature. Hobbes famously wrote that in the absence of tyrannical power people would engage in a “war of all against all” where life would be “nasty, brutish and short.” Human societies are prone to the most violent upheavals and bloody atrocities. Humans are disloyal, untrustworthy, and riven with uncontrolled drives that render them functionally insane. Only the constant threat of force keeps ordinary people in line.

The more tightly bound a community is by commonalities in ethnicity, religion, class, and profession, the more likely it is to survive these upheavals. From this view, the civil rights revolution was at best missing the point and at worst represented nothing less than a deliberate assault on the cohesion of American society. By threatening that sense of reverence other ethnic groups were supposed to feel for the WASP core of American society, the Civil Rights Movement fragmented society and destroyed the cohesion necessary to survive in a hostile and unforgiving world. This is why the Right has consistently refused to believe that the leaders of the Movement were not witting or unwitting agents of Moscow.

Reverence, awe and fear are the cohesive forces in society. By maintaining fear of the State, wealth, men, or Whites, the continual strife of human life can be contained. Maintaining this state of fear sometimes requires force, but the alternative is the state of nature where meaningful human life is impossible, so virtually any sacrifice is justified.

External Reverence
In more settled times, reverence for external authority figures becomes an indispensable tool for social cohesion. Ultimately, God, Jehovah, or Allah would be the object of reverence for religiously-committed orthodoxists. For their more secular counterparts, the object of external reverence might be a (conservative) President, the Constitution, American power in the world, or in extreme forms, force itself. Regardless of the specifics, the source of authority must be external to the rest of society. It cannot be embodied within the people, collectively or singly. In the Orthodox view, all people are orthodoxists at heart and share their view that only the overwhelming power of an external force can capture the allegiance of the community. All other claims to legitimacy are invalid on their face.

In this paradigm, the use of power is a virtue regardless of its end. Limits upon power threaten the vitality of civilization. Private or public power may be revered depending on the interests of the individual apologist, but concentrated power is a common value of the Right, even if it comes wrapped in libertarian language.

Movements that usurp centralized spiritual, political, or economic power in favor of decentralized power are seen as dangerous and beside the point. By placing power out of reach of the vast majority of Americans, Orthodoxists can preserve social order in a number of ways. By minimizing the footprint of power, the pace of social change can be limited. By moving power out of sight, it can be a nebulous ideal that promotes obedience and deference rather than functioning as an engine of conflict. By removing power from the community, its imperfections can be masked. By hiding the petty disputes and insecurities at the heart of conflicts over power, external authority can be portrayed as impersonal and godlike, thus preserving its legitimacy. Decentralizing movements are therefore a threat to social cohesion and are tantamount to treason. This helps explain why civil rights and labor movements have been attacked as Communistic or anti-American regardless of the political orientation of their leadership.

External Reverence and Power
In contemporary America, the most common objects of external reverence are an imperial President, God, or a powerful and wealthy CEO. God is an archetype of power who may serve as a template for other holders of unlimited puissance. Churches are protected from external interference in any number of ways, and the most entrepreneurial and evangelical among them are the most likely to preach submission to god-like power as a socio-cultural ideal. In recent decades, churches that promote this view have been far more successful than those that focus on the ethical obligation of the believer to the physical and emotional well-being of other humans. This helps to explain the consistent policy successes of orthodoxists, regardless of changes in party power.

In this mindset, practical ethical concerns about human well-being diminished in importance. The perceptible consequences of human action are ignored in favor of the overwhelming importance of submission to external authority. In modern American history, the focus has been on sexual morality. Flouting of God’s plan to marry and reproduce in favor of fleeting pleasure is seen as ultimate insult to ultimate authority. The preference for the trivial over the monumental is a threat to the cohesion of society and to the Kingdom. The most egregious form of offense, of course, is homosexuality, but orthodoxists have defended the remnants of laws that prohibit non-reproductive sexual acts regardless of sexual orientation.

In political matters, the ultimate value is submission to the practically unlimited power of an Imperial President. The political Right, consistent allies of orthodoxy, has its own mythology about the meaning of the Constitution that persists in its appeal despite the paucity of support in the text. Regardless of copious evidence that the document was intended to limit concentrations of power in favor of competing centers, conservatives who champion the doctrine of the “unitary executive” insist that the phrase “commander in chief” embodies limitless executive power in all matters except domestic social programs, which are mostly opposed. The fact that limits on executive power are not considered dangerous during Democratic administrations is not evidence of inconsistency. Democrats are seen as outside the cult of power, filled with naive and dangerous ideas of interdependence and the solubility of conflict that, in conservative minds, threaten the foundation of social order and render them unfit for political office.

The appeal of the Imperial Presidency is inextricably linked to the attachment to force as the ultimate political value. The role of the State is the preparation for and prosecution of war. The promulgation of threats is either a reason or excuse for the rush to war, but in either case, war is seen as having a value of its own. By promoting the values of the cult of power and the danger of external threats, continual war increases the cohesion of society and negates the appeal of heterodoxic values. Adversity in war serves this function, but defeat is unthinkable as it would threaten to discredit the values that motivate it. Therefore, the actual threat and power of the enemy places the function of war at jeopardy. This impetus draws the State into war with a series of weak states and non-state actors. These wars with tribal forces generate their own cycles of vengeance and counter-vengeance which explain much of the violence and disorder that characterize much of the last decade. Orthodoxists value these wars precisely for their tribal nature, knowing that despite their use of ideological and historicist language to promote these conflicts, the effect they have on American society is to tribalize those classes that comprise or sympathise with the warriors. By removing any stance between support for Us and for Them, these meaningless tribal conflicts promote the power totemism of orthodoxy and prevent the reemergence of heterodox values in mainstream thought.

The remaining form of revered power is the power of the modern Corporation. Large corporations employ many Americans, particularly in the politically vital suburbs. They dominate the American economy and culture. They supply most of the money for research and development and they make and sell the products and services which form the texture of modern life.

Most important for our purposes, however, is the role that corporations play as the primary contemporary practitioners of the art of Propaganda. American business has been using Psychology to convince Americans to buy things they don’t need since soon after the First World War. Freud’s American nephew, Edward Bernays, pioneered the use of subconscious appeals to tie specific products to primal drives. In doing so, he was applying techniques he helped to develop while serving in the Office of Public Information during the First World War.

Before these developments, advertising was focused on the promotion of necessities by their functional virtues. This placed sharp limits on sales and on growth. Besides being a threat to the profits of corporations and the wealth of their shareholders, this was touted as a threat to the social order. By limiting economic growth, this focus on necessities tended to decentralize power and posed the danger of individual and community independence at a time that America was becoming a world power. By helping to nationalize the economy and channel economic and cultural energies toward consumption, an economy based on the manufacture of desire would enforce political conformity and permit the gradual identification of political and economic power.

Commercial propaganda increased in power as the means used to disseminate it became more evocative and less social. Newspaper chains began the process, followed by movies, radio, television, and the Internet. Each technological innovation has produced a leap in immediacy and versatility, giving the practitioners of propaganda more tools to manipulate the emotions of consumers, convincing them that this or that consumer product will fulfill some primal drive, be it sex or belonging or even love. Without these tools, and the economic growth they make possible, the corporate-state order would collapse. Our currency, financial markets, and socio-economic hierarchy are structured to rely on year-on-year growth and large profits that a necessity-based economy can not provide.

Of course, the content that media companies have created to sell these advertisements to consumers have become important components of economic growth in their own right. Movies and television in particular create a vivid cultural space where the primacy of desire and pleasure are promulgated and celebrated. While some products may seem to corrode social cohesion and order, the overall effect is to reinforce the habit of passively accepting the judgements of others and standardizing aesthetics and ethics. By distracting Americans with fictional worlds and manufactured values, mass media serve an important function in diverting individual energy to the ends of economic and political interests allied with the orthodoxy.

Conflicts and Contradictions Within Orthodoxy
Modern American orthodoxy and its institutional allies form a vast complex of interconnected systems that defies easy explanation. There are many mechanisms, however, that tend to support common purpose. By sharing values of power and order, the Orthodoxy ensures that conflicts about legitimacy do not threaten the prevailing order.

The most obvious contradiction within the Orthodox ranks is the alliance of the movement with Libertarian political thinkers. Modern American Libertarianism is, however, a bizarrely specific creed. Only public power is seen as a threat to political liberties, and prominent Libertarians and Quasi-Libertarians seem chiefly concerned with those measures which threaten corporate control over the economy, wasting little time examining such trivial phenomena as the enormous National Security state. In this way, Libertarianism has been effectively harnessed to the broader objectives of the Orthodox bloc even if individual Libertarians may object more to the characterization than the reality.

The hedonistic message of corporate mass media would seem to conflict with Orthodox political and spiritual values, but again this is deceptive. By channeling individualistic impulses into conformist channels, a repeat of the upheavals of the late Sixties can be averted. Identity is diverted from action to culture, from how we exercise our sacred duty as citizens to how we exercise our sacred duty as consumers. Dissent is thus defanged, proceeding no further than the Billboard charts. The permissive message of media provides a handy fundraising tool for Orthodox political and religious organizations while the pro-corporate values embedded in the heart of the movement ensure that media power is never effectively challenged. The result is a neat symbiosis that provides a steady flow of power to elites.

In all, the cohesion of the Orthodox bloc is the most remarkable achievement in modern politics. It can be difficult to escape the conclusion that this cohesion is largely engineered by the corporate elites who have funded the various arms of the orthodoxist movement and who have benefited so remarkably from its ascent to power over the last 40 years.

Next, we will examine the opposition.

II: The Heterodoxy

Opposition to orthodox values in modern America has often been a tenuous affair. Dissidents have been murdered, imprisoned, tortured, blacklisted, declared insane, sterilized, marginalized, and ignored. Heterodox values have often been expressed in emotional terms in difficult circumstances. At times this has given acts and words of defiance a monumental character, but in other times has left us with incoherent rants mimeographed cheaply. Either way, Heterodox values have served as the conscience and engine of American history.

Integral Reverence
The emotional core of heterodoxy is the experience of reverence, awe, or agape (brotherly love) when faced with the realization that one is inextricably intertwined with, not only the ecosystems of the planet, but the entire universe. Not only are we dependent on things as small as bacteria or as large as supernovae for our existence and survival, but everything we do affects everyone and everything around us. We are bound in an interdependent web whose boundaries have not been discovered. In particular, other living beings are vital to both our survival and our search for meaning. The experience and implications of integral reverence thus form the root of heterodox values, placing ethical obligation to others and to the world over moral command from an external source of authority. These ethical principles were codified during the Axial Age of the first millennium BC, when most of the faiths and major cultural traditions of the Classical and Modern ages were formed. The religious traditions founded in that era have been powerful forces in the dissemination of heterodox values.

Integral Reverence and American Religion
The experience of integral reverence is associated with liberal religious movements; the Religious Left, mainline Protestantism, Reform Judaism, and mainstream American Catholicism. These faiths place an emphasis on service to others as opposed to doctrinal purity. This focus is more consistent with the Axial Age prophets than is the modern focus on scriptural literalism and its obsession with eschatology (end-times prophecy).

The focus of heterodox religion is thus on works and on the world as we find it. The search for rewards in the afterlife is either discouraged or ignored, as such a quest would tend to devalue the meaning and purpose of ethical conduct, which should depend on service for its own sake. This recognizes the interdependence and moral identity of human life: service to others is service to self by definition.

Heterodox religious movements have been at the center of the collisions over values that have served as the engine of American history: The Patriots, Abolitionists, Civil Rights Movement, and the opposition to Vietnam were heavily dependent on those who saw service to God as, first and foremost, service to Man, particularly the downtrodden and powerless. These movements were placed into fundamental conflict with established power in America that limited the growth in their congregations even as it maximised their contributions to history. Religious communities that validate the interests of economic and political power have always enjoyed a share in that power, while those that challenge power often struggle to pay their bills.

The result has been that, while these faiths have stagnated over the last thirty years of rightward backlash, fundamentalist and evangelical churches stressing obedience to an angry God have exploded in numbers and power, often dictating policy on education and sexual morality. For reasons already discussed, such religious movements enjoy a natural alliance with the political Right.

Integral Reverence and Secularism
Secularism, the pursuit of values and meaning separate from religious observance, has a long and colorful history in America. Since the nation was established in the secular Enlightenment, its political values have been profoundly secular, pioneering the absence of an established church and of religious tests for office. This secularism allowed the new nation to attract the best and brightest of a Europe still wracked by Inquisitions and religious rule.

Because the core of integral ethics is about tangible action rather than belief, heterodoxy has always been more tolerant of secularism and secular values of function over form and ethics over morality. Heterodox religious movements, with their emphasis on works over faith, are more tolerant of socially-minded secularists and free-thinkers than are conservative faiths that see conventional religious doctrine as a moral shibboleth.

This allows liberal and heterodox practitioners to be more tolerant of the natural and social sciences. This is key to making the heterodoxy more compatible with modernity than orthodox cultural and religious movements.  Scientific popularizations, like Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series, have often played a valuable role in spreading Heterodox values and encouraging the public to see itself as interdependent and as an integral part of a larger Universe.

Integral Reverence and Politics in America
From the earliest days of English settlement in the New World, Heterodox values and their adherents have played major roles in American life. From the proto-Universalism and religious tolerance of Roger Williams to the Abolition and Progressive movements, those who saw their duty to God as serving others seen by the Orthodox as beyond God’s grace have been revolutionary forces in a nation tolerant of abuses in the name of order.

The core of heterodox political ambitions has been to empower the powerless, whether directly or by giving voice to the voiceless. The tone of these movements has varied from the embarrassingly paternalistic to outright libertarian, but the unifying theme has been one of social revolution, bring the high down and raising up the low. From the women’s movement, to abolition, and continuing in the struggles for gay rights and against poverty, those who believe that humanity rises or falls together have always chafed at the prevailing social order.

There have, however, been missteps on the road to social and economic progress. Progressives have committed two great errors in their fight to transform American life, characterized by an arrogant paternalism toward those they professed to protect. The first was the Eugenics movement. By accepting the skewed, primitive, doctrine of Social Darwinism, early Progressives advocated sterilizing, imprisoning or even killing those they deemed defective, believing they could eliminate poverty and crime. Thousands were forcibly sterilized in states like Virginia where Eugenicists and their Progressive allies held sway. Even more embarrassing were the personal and doctrinal connections between American eugenicists and the German eugenics movement which became part of the Nazi Party.

The second error stemmed from a combination of paternalism and the hubris of ideological certainty. By imposing Prohibition on American society, Progressives hoped to mitigate poverty and the abuse of women. But by helping to create new criminal empires and fostering the most authoritarian government agencies, Prohibition worsened the plight of the powerless and diverted attention from more serious injustices like the violent suppression of labor movements. The failure of Prohibition marked the end of the attempt to ameliorate the root causes of poverty and injustice. Progressivism moved beyond Utopian ideals, to an attempt to reform the margins of American society.

Losing power after the Second World War to a coalition of evangelical, nationalist, and conservative forces, Heterodox movements peaked in importance in American politics between 1958 and 1966. These years saw some of the great triumphs of heterodox thought but gutted heterodox power until the present day. Movements for racial and economic justice which drew heavily on heterodox traditions were at the center of American life in these years.

The struggle for equal rights for America’s “Negroes” had existed in organized form since before the Civil War, of course, but its interracial support base was limited. Built locally through black churches and historically black colleges, as well as small legal and activism groups like NAACP and CORE, the Civil Rights movement struggled on the back burner of the American agenda until a charismatic leader attracted public attention to the cause, drawing many of the institutional organs of the heterodox community into its orbit. The mainline Protestant churches joined the struggle, enhancing its stature in the Northern middle class and giving the Civil Rights movement more national political power as well as identifying it with the northern wing of the Democratic party.

The alliance between heterodox social and religious movements and the political left enjoyed a brief moment of supreme political triumph in 1964-65 as the most liberal President in American history was re-elected and, flush with political capital, twisted Congressional arms to enact the Great Society, the most sweeping legislative agenda in any two-year period in American history. Medicare, Medicaid, anti-poverty programs, and two major civil rights bills decisively swung political and economic power into the hands of those who have been traditionally disenfranchised in America while provoking a backlash in corporate America and the white working and middle classes. Johnson’s war in Vietnam degenerated into a deeply unpopular quagmire. As Dr. King tried to drag the Civil Rights movement into broader issues of poverty and peace, he faced increasing opposition from Northern whites and the mainstream press. The coalition that enacted much of the liberal agenda was demoralized and fragmented.

Cold War politics and white backlash rapidly destroyed the New Deal coalition that facilitated these victories and ushered in the contemporary era of conservative rule. The Republican party took 47 seats in the House in 1966 and rehabilitated the political standing of Richard Nixon. Nixon ran successfully for President in 1968 using the same coded appeals to racial and class resentment that characterize the wildly successful conservative movement today. Evangelical churches and political movements associated with them began a period of cultural emergence that continues to this day. A large and powerful evangelical subculture has emerged, with its own schools, colleges, and media. Ordinary small businesses advertise in local publications with the fish symbol of authoritarian evangelical Christianity. The Orthodoxy owns as much political, economic and cultural power as it has in our history.

Heterodox people and institutions continue to press for social and policy changes today, but in smaller groups with less visibility and substantially less economic power. The labor movement, whose political power was built on a thoroughly heterodox philosophy of “all for one and one for all,” has been decisively weakened by economic and policy changes that have shifted economic strength from manufacturing to financial services. Labor is now fighting to defend the remnants of the protections it secured during its heyday in the mid-20th Century. The result has been a concentration of wealth in the hands of the few almost unprecedented in American history. This has destabilised our economy and society in ways that threaten America’s power and vitality.

While technological and cultural changes permit peace activists to turn out more demonstrators earlier in a conflict’s course than ever before, their influence on centers of power is greatly diminished. American governments resort more often to force than ever before in the nation’s history. Contemporary America is a deeply militaristic society. International diplomatic and security bodies at the core of the liberal policy agenda are distrusted by the public while the military is seen as the most professional and competent tool to solve America’s foreign policy problems.

Science is deeply distrusted, with large minorities or majorities deeply distrustful of scientific ideas about evolution, anthropogenic climate change, and the value of comprehensive sex education. In a polarised ideological environment, data is seen as propaganda and cultural change as a threat to traditional authority and order. Heterodox cultural movements, focused on worldly results rather than codified moral doctrine, lack the vocabulary to sway literalist religious movements on issues of life, death, and sexual morality. The result has been a slow degeneration of American education and innovation. Universities have had to look overseas to find graduate students in Engineering and the natural sciences as more and more students flock to Business, Law, or schools in the Evangelical subculture.

Heterodox movements continue to fight for gay rights and have moved the agenda forward. This seems, however, to be more closely connected to demographic change than to any surge in the values associated with integrative reverence or the Heterodoxy. Younger people are less disgusted by deviance from sexual and gender norms as “coming out” has become more common. They are less willing than their elders to use the power of the State to penalise those who choose to openly express their sexual and gender identity.

The Future of Heterodoxy
Heterodox movements and individuals will not disappear. The experience of reverence for the world of which we are a part has been an eternal part of human life and, if anything, will become more common as we take instant global communication for granted.

The crucial threat to Heterodox values will be that holders of economic power are convinced that their interests lie in strengthening the Orthodox hand. This alliance between corporations and the cultural Right, examined in the previous chapter, cannot be permanent but can last long enough for the imbalance in cultural, political, and economic power to threaten social cohesion and economic well-being.

The arts have always been a source of heterodox values, and new information technologies are spreading the ideas inherent to integrative reverence farther and wider than ever before. Never have the content of our ideas been more separable from our time and place. More powerful than ideas in earnest, however, is a new golden age of satire. By slaughtering sacred cultural cows, satire is an inherently heterodox force. The more sincere the Orthodoxy’s prophecies of doom if the heterodox agenda is enacted, the more spoofable the dire predictions, and the overblown media figures who sell them, become. Young mainstream Americans are exposed to continual ridicule of traditional cultural values, fueling the cultural segregation of the evangelical subculture.

Heterodoxy’s willingness to heed evidence may be key to its reemergence as a cultural force. As American society enters a period of interlocking crises, the secular awareness of the world and its problems that is the hallmark of heterodox thought will become more compelling. There may, in addition, be something necessary in the cyclical nature of cultural trends. The power of one movement may invite its leaders to overreach, discrediting the movement as a whole.