I once found myself in the impossibly wealthy beach community of Hilton Head, South Carolina. I had been working at an inner-city school outside of Birmingham, AL, and the trip to a house in Hilton Head, owned by the relatives of a roommate, was an odd but mostly welcomed respite from an extremely tough year, both professionally and personally. Though beautiful, the contrast between prominent ghettos and poor rural communities of much of the South, and the serene yet lavish beachfront properties of the South Carolina coast made me more than a little uncomfortable, and even a little guilty. The first night there we went to a bar, where one of my housemates heard some of the local inhabitants make a racist remark about another of our housemates, who is black. Though this exacerbated to my discomfort at our surroundings, it somehow has not since nagged at me in the way of another, much more innocuous occurrence. Specifically, a yacht that I discovered docked in the marina, with a single phrase scrawled across the hull: “Pursuit of Excellence.”
For some time, the name of this yacht has bothered me. Initially, I mocked it as an almost cartoonish stereotype: I imagined the smug millionaire proudly sporting a blue blazer and starched captain’s hat as he steered his prized vessel. Whatever my motivations, this image was a cheap source of entertainment for me, based solely on my assumptions of a complete an utter stranger. I had imposed judgment on this person knowing nothing about him or her, other than that he or she owned a yacht, and had chosen to emblazon it with a phrase which, in all honesty, should be fairly inoffensive. I was reflecting upon that phrase recently, however, and what it means for my own life and society at large. We make much in my country of excellence, and how those that pursue it will reap the benefits of their noble efforts. In fact, much of our concept of freedom – economic, educational, vocational, etc. – is based largely on the notion that we as a society must protect the right of the individual to pursue excellence. Furthermore, we often argue that an excellent society will necessarily erupt when that individual freedom is ensured.
But what does excellence mean? If we fail to define it and its ramifications, then we will continually fail to understand, persuade, and cooperate with one another towards its achievement. I see this most strikingly in current debates about poverty and prevailing models of capitalism, domestically and globally. Are businesses that seek to maximize profits for shareholders, no matter the cost to employees, acting unethically, or merely answering the call to perform in an exemplary manner? Is demanding that employees work twelve hour days merely expecting an appropriately rigorous commitment to their work, or actually destroying a rigorous commitment to family and the community? How can we agree on how to design social welfare programs if we cannot express what people ought to be able to achieve and how they might do so?
I do not aim here to answer all of those questions, but instead to propose a notion of human excellence, one which guides much of my thinking on political and social matters. Let me first say that this notion is predicated and two fundamental understandings arising out of my faith: firstly, that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, and secondly, that God is love. While this may not appeal to those of you that do not share my faith, they are fundamental to my thinking. It is also important to note that, for me, this means that even those that do not share mine or any religious faith are still constructed in this way, and are thus oriented towards love and solidarity. In a more secular vein, I can say that I believe that humans are intrinsically social, that we seek justice, and that we are most content when we live in peaceful, just, free societies centered on solidarity between all people. Based on this understanding, I would argue that the pursuit of excellence is actually the cultivation of the moral/spiritual, intellectual, and even physical self towards advancing peace, justice, and freedom rooted in the common bonds of love. I will tackle each of these categories of excellence and their ramifications in reverse order.
PHYSICAL EXCELLENCE
First, I am making explicit mention of the need for physical excellence, and the ability for citizens of a free society to pursue it. I recognize the dangers inherent to this emphasis: that we can become overly motivated by vanity or the pursuit of power. However, you cannot separate the pursuit from the end goal of fulfilling our capacity to love, nor can you separate a single area of excellence from the others or the whole. To take care of our bodies, then, through exercise, proper diet, and appropriate rest, is actually aimed at making us more able to commit ourselves to others. We are happier when we eat healthily and exercise regularly, and we are more productive and attentive to the needs of others when we are properly rested. On a sheer existential level, we are also only able to fully focus on intellectual and moral/spiritual cultivation when our basic physical needs – rest, shelter, nutrition – are met.
Of course, when we shift from pursuing physical excellence to physical perfection, we become too inwardly focused and lose sight of the overall goal. Personally, I struggle with this balance. I try to exercise for one hour three or four days a week, and to walk my dog twice daily. Too often, though, I become transfixed with critiquing my physical appearance, especially as someone that has dealt with weight issues since adolescence. The point, though, is to be healthy in a way that allows me to fulfill my capacity to love and care for others. In the recent past, an illness consumed my life, and consequently that of my wife in caring for me, eventually leading to the loss of employment and massive medical debt. Even after returning to physical health, the debt alone hindered me in the ability to be of service to others.
The social ramifications of the importance of physical excellence, then, are huge. Most Americans believe in the ability to pursue happiness as a central human right. If human happiness is at least partially dependent on physical well-being, then we need to guarantee the ability to pursue genuine physical health. This that means providing access to affordable, healthy food becomes vital to our social well-being. This means that affordable health care becomes a central right for all citizens. This means re-orienting our concept of work to prevent exhaustion and excessive time away from friends, family, and exercise. This means limiting environmental hazards in our air, water, and food supply. I think that we all would agree that it is important to encourage physical health, but we need to step back and grapple with the question of whether and how we as a society fully allow it.
INTELLECTUAL EXCELLENCE
The second area of excellence which I wish to highlight is intellectual excellence. Here, I think that the quality and purpose of that excellence may be subject to debate. People that have known me for any length of time know that I love to debate multiple subjects (sometimes, it seems, any subject). Because it is my nature to challenge, question, and contradict, I continually grapple with the challenge of abandoning argument for its own sake, and orienting myself towards uncovering truth in the pursuit of love and justice. I believe that a willingness and ability to debate are intellectual gifts with which I have been endowed and which I am responsible to pursue, both for my own health and to play a positive social function. Again, that positive social function is the critical goal, and will ultimately fulfill me in that as a human being I am naturally oriented towards serving others.
We err in highlighting and pursuing intellectual excellence for its own sake. In my case, this could mean using any knowledge or debate tactic merely to win an argument, as opposed to uncover and promote justice based in truth. For others, this may mean using leadership skills solely to amass power or wealth, social intelligence to take advantage of rather than empower others, scientific or engineering expertise to engender hate or destruction rather than peace or positive creation – the list goes on. On a societal level, the recognition of the value of true intellectual excellence to the human person and humanity itself requires that we both encourage an intelligence that is focused on the common good, and allow as many people to pursue their intellectual gifts as possible. This requires, at minimum, a truly free and fair education for all, one which helps people succeed no matter their economic, family, regional, or national situation. It requires an education system that is oriented not only towards monetary success, but deep intellectual growth. It also requires a social/work structure that allows people to cultivate and pursue their intellectual gifts. This means guaranteeing access to knowledge, forming strong community centers, and shifting radically away from the work-survive-rest expectation for individual existence, especially for those whose employment does not offer sufficient intellectual challenge and growth.
MORAL/SPIRITUAL EXCELLENCE
The final category of excellence that I am touching upon here is, in some way, notable in its absence from much of our concept of excellence. When I read the name of that yacht in Hilton Head, for instance, the idea of moral and/or spiritual excellence did not even cross my mind. Moral/spiritual excellence is more profoundly distinct, however, in that the ideal stands most firmly outside of the individual. I realize that many might balk at this claim: we often frame either moral conduct or spiritual leanings as personal – my personal values, my personal relationship with God, etc. While morality and spirituality will always be framed by personal experience and understandings, it does not negate the fact that there are non-relative rights and wrongs, nor does it negate the reality of God.
The religious claim may be easier to make. God is God, and how we ought to act in the world is necessarily defined by our being made in God’s image, not God in our own. On a strictly moral level, while acting ethically in the world is not always a clear-cut proposition, we do accept certain moral truths, such as the inherent dignity and equality of the human person, that stand as self-evident. Thus, whereas the heights of my possible physical and intellectual excellence will always be limited by my inherent capacities – I will never, for instance, play professional sports or work for NASA – moral and spiritual truths are inherent to themselves. That does not mean, however, that I can ever fully grasp them. Because we recognize our own limitations, we must recognize that we are at best moving towards moral/spiritual excellence, but remain extremely far from achieving it.
Again, it is of the utmost importance that we encourage and allow all people to pursue moral excellence, both for their own well-being and the well-being of the human race. This may at times dramatically challenge our notions of excellence itself: if I am not producing as many products as possible, working as hard as possible, earning as much money as possible, am I succeeding? The answer will vary between person and situation, because it will be contingent upon the ability of the individual to grasp and execute that answer. The key is that we need to instill the importance of asking these questions in the first place, provide a solid framework for people to engage in answering them, and to allow people to make moral decisions without undue harm.
I would argue that the social implications of this last point are massive. When people face a severe and insurmountable existential threat for acting ethically, we are not truly allowing for the pursuit of moral excellence. For instance, those who spoke out against racial segregation in the United States in the 1950’s and 1960’s were routinely beaten and killed for acting upon the moral truth of human equality. In many cases, the severity of the consequence for moral opposition was so great that many oppressed people understandably chose life and security for themselves and for their families over further violence and death. Society is charged with ensuring to the furthest possible extent that people are able to act morally without severe existential consequences. This means, for instance, that people should not have to choose between crime and basic survival. People should not have to choose between advocating for livable wages and keeping their jobs. People should not have to choose between getting the illness of a family member treated and being able to afford their rent or mortgage. Although there will always be times when people will choose to suffer excessive or even deadly consequences for a moral/spiritual stance, we have a social imperative to identify and eliminate these injustices at every turn.
CONCLUSION
We orient so much of our personal and collective lives towards excellence and the exceptional that I wanted here to engage in a discussion of what this truly means, what we truly aspire to, and what this requires of us both as individuals and as a human race. Every individual has a responsibility towards the social pursuit of excellence, and every society is charged with encouraging and allowing the individual pursuit of excellence. However, I feel that, too often, excellence is defined in terms of end gains that are not grounded in the pursuit of love, peace and justice. If we accept that a free society must ensure the ability of all of its members to freely pursue excellence, then we need to be abundantly clear about what excellence truly means.
I would argue that a system that views excellence as the endless pursuit of material gains is fundamentally misguided. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this system actually inhibits our pursuit of excellence. For those struggling economically, it forces all energy towards survival, and for those prospering economically it denies the ability of their true moral/spiritual, intellectual, and physical self to come to life. It is critical to note that I am indeed discussing a single self. Our physical well-being is prerequisite to our intellectual and moral/spiritual well-being, our intellectual well-being requires that we are morally grounded, and our moral/spiritual well-being requires strengthening our intellectual health. Of course, each individual may face limitations in certain areas, but it is vital to that individual and society that he or she be allowed to excel in each and every way to the furthest extent possible. Only then will we become truly excellent as individuals, societies, and a human family.
No comments:
Post a Comment