Please stop by survivors and say something brilliant.

Find your Tums first-you’ll need them…

Merry Christmas to all!

I wanted to respond because, well, my commentary isn’t just a misunderstanding. Collectivism is all through your life lesson post and it isn’t limited to those in need of drug rehab. I can appreciate you didn’t intend to advocate anti-individuality: that is why I can cut you—and others like you—some slack. However, your .02 cents is illustrative of my original point. Your advocacy is so implicit that you don’t notice its origin or the logical outcome of your life lesson.

Being the wordy sort, I have mucho verbosity on this particular subject. So, I have too much to say about what you wrote to address in this post. Actually, I have lots to say about how collectivism gets introduced into the Church and intellectual and theological failures that advance collectivism. Of course, your brief post does not contain all of these… or even many of these events. Your advocacy to collectivism is implicit… and that goes to my initial point: average church folk embracing collectivism without knowing its source, and outcomes.

Hence, the Borgification of the Church.

First, let me address your contention that your post was aimed at those looking for help with drug addiction. While I do notice that you listed drug addiction in your list, the assertion—even on casual reading—seems like an oversimplification. I’m not trying to play “Gotcha,” but I am trying to point out how the life lesson is presented.

First, the title of your post: “Change is a COMMUNITY Project.” You start the post with a rejection of national speakers and life coaches and their corresponding philosophical assertion that Change is from within. There is an overt logic in the Church that says personal growth is a function of group participation. The logic advocates accountability—meaning group scrutiny—as the agent of change. By your own commentary, individuals do not have the power to change within: the inconvenient truth is real change only takes place in quality, COLLECTIVE relationships.

To summarize, I count no less than 3 separate types of “community” solutions for change in your post.

Individual Change
Social Change
Civic participation

Furthermore, I noticed that the fix for your personal and social ills always revolves around participation in a group. I will address in later posts why personal change has nothing to do with group participation, the true source of “Collective Wisdom,” Isolation vs Individuality, and the myth of Group Accountability. (I have briefly addressed this myth in The Myth of Accountability and Team Leadership and will dissect this further in subsequent posts.)

And lastly, your book recommendation, Bowling Alone, stands as one of the most glaring collectivist advocacy.

I browsed Bowling Alone and did some brief research on Robert Putnam, the author. He didn’t originate the ides of Social Capital, but his book does deliberately set out to advance and expand the concepts behind Social Capital.

Putnam (among others) defines social capital like this:

Whereas physical capital refers to physical objects and human capital refers to the properties of individuals, social capital refers to connections among individuals – social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them. In that sense social capital is closely related to what some have called “civic virtue.” The difference is that “social capital” calls attention to the fact that civic virtue is most powerful when embedded in a sense network of reciprocal social relations.

I am not going to respond to all of his work, but to say that this is really collectivism lite. It remains curios to me that DEFENDERS of DEMOCRACY believe that by advocating the “society” or “greater good” or “civic mindedness” they are protecting the power of the individual. For all of these vague entities to benefit requires the sacrifice of the individual.

Putnam is an intelligent man so I am perplexed by what comes across as a profound misunderstanding of American governmental form and social organization. America is a Representative Republic (NOT a democracy) and the social organization of America is laissez-faire capitalism. (Well, it was capitalist for the first one hundred years of its existence. And then for the last hundred years or so, it was a mixed economy until recently. In the last eight years, America has taken a profound turn towards National Socialism. But I digress.)

Putnam, beyond offering a whole bunch of non sequiturs, seems to be mostly interested in redefining Democracy to really mean anything and everything civic—anything and everything “common good”.

His logic goes something like this: “Oh… look at all the pretty leaves on the trees. Now notice the leaves come from branches. It must be branches that make leaves, therefore to have lots of pretty leaves we must all be branches.”

Putnam’s cause and effect of “Social Capital” and the cause and effect of a vibrant American Life utterly misses the root causes of human interaction. Metaphorically speaking, he seems oblivious to the function of dirt and sunshine or seeds: the seeds of my metaphor being the function of capitalism, rugged individualism, that the governing philosophy that protected all men in their individual pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness.

I contend that there is no such thing as “Social” capital. Putnam’s presumption of social capital is really a tragic failure to identify cause and effect—which was the point of my leaves and branches, dirt and seeds metaphor. All “social” capital is really individual value being bequeathed to the group whether they have earned it or not.

Anyway, Cameron, as I said in the beginning, if you are not intentionally advocating collectivism, then that makes my original point that much more potent. My original point: the average churchgoer advocating elements of Collectivism with little or no critical review of its content, outcomes, or history.

For those of you who are interested in my take on what really drives successful social interactions? I will whet your curious mind with these thoughts. I am working through a theory on what drives successful interaction. And so far, I have identified these elements. This list may or may not be complete but I’m inclined to think it is pretty close.

Individual Sovereignty
Elective Benevolence
Common Values (Objective)
Proportional Justice

I am not going to expand on these in this post. But I offer them as fodder for the overarching conversation. The elements of this list are biblical and eventually, I will explain where they come from. For now remember, collectivism in its compulsion eliminates all of the above.

Keep your ears open, dear reader, for those who exhort to join the Brotherhood of Man and the sacrifice to the “Greater Good.” When you hear the collectivist crying Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, know that bloodshed is just around the corner.

the movie I’m referring to is the subject of this wikipedia article.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(film)  if you watched the National Geographic version, you probably got a more historic rendering of spartan life.  but the movie was REALLY fun.

“We have seen how ardently Luther and Calvin emphasized the wickedness of man and taught self-humiliation and self-abasement as the basis of all virtue.  What they consciously had in mind was certainly nothing but an extreme degree of humility.  But to anybody familiar with the psychological mechanisms of self-accusation and self-humiliation there can be no doubt that this kind of “humility” is rooted in a violent hatred which, for some reason or other, is blocked from being directed toward the the world outside and operates against one’s self.”

have obvious application to many human motive choices.  I wouldn’t have put in it his words but I do think people “escape freedom” I think people ABANDON Freedom. 

Since I don’t know the length and breadth of his rationale, I don’t know what else I might agree or disagree with. 
 
Where does his psychoanalysis fit into your thinking?  I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts?