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The Meaning of Institutions to the Individual
Institutions give us more meaning than rugged individualists would like to admit. When those institutions fail, people can have a crisis of meaning.
If you will forgive a personal example, I have recently come to the conclusion that Academy is utterly corrupt to the core and is now a hindrance to humanity rather than a boon. Like any sensible conservative, I was aware of the utter vanity and foolishness that took place on college campuses. But all human institutions are corrupt and academics have been a kooky lot since we built the first university somewhere in the Middle East.
Now I am growing more and more convinced the poison is slipping into the heart. It is probably necessary to dramatically cut funding and enrollment and start creating other means of education, accreditation, and I.Q./social class sorting.
In a similar fashion, the college newspaper has been equally disheartening. There is no expectation that they should talk to anyone who disagrees with the most current version of progressivism. Perhaps I’ll write another essay later about the corruption of these institutions, but I wish to focus on individual meaning for the purposes of this essay.
I felt a loss of meaning when my institutions had failed me. Suddenly it didn’t matter if I got an A on a test or if my article in the college newspaper got twenty likes. The class and the newspaper weren’t worthwhile, so my contributions weren’t worthwhile. It follows that my life itself had less meaning and purpose because the world around me had become much less meaningful and purposeful.
Now I don’t have faith, so it’s quite arguable that institutions have a bigger effect on me than they would on a man of faith. “3 Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” Pslam 146:3. Alternatively, GrannyDude provides a fascinating counterexample (link) to my own experience. She is struggling with the Unitarian Universalist Church and its devotion to wokeness over inclusion and debate. However, she believes in the G-d and Jesus, so she seems better able to cope with the myriad of weaknesses that inhabit the children of Eve.
What seems to be true in the micro seems to be true in the macro. Robert Putnam, Charles Murray, and Tim P. Carney and many other brilliant and well-researched writers have been describing what happens to people when institutions fail. It’s not great. We’ve all heard of the dysfunctions in the Rust Belt: the corporations move out, people stop going to Church, and the drugs move in creating a big increase in suicide, divorce and absent fathers.
In an interview with Andrew Heaton, Tim P. Carney mentions that when institutions fail, people become isolated and they lack hope and purpose. After all, Alexis de Tocqueville believed that American exceptionalism was based on our ability to create dynamic social groups that can fix our own local problems. We don’t need some Duke or Viscount of the whatever to do things for us. We could do things for ourselves.
When people aren’t plugged into larger institutions, they find it harder to get jobs, take care of their kids and their mental and physical health are more likely to decline. I recommend listening to the whole interview with Tim P. Carney,
He has this nice line that the best way to feel less alienated is to belong to an organization that is about something you are interested in and that has a higher goal than the individuals in it. It is this higher goal that gives meaning to people, Newspapers provide jobs and income to otherwise unemployable people. But more than that, when a Newspaper serves the higher purpose of pursuing the news, it gives the reporter a sense of meaning. Parallel to the macro is the micro example of Ravi Zacharias who describes his suicide as emerging from a lack of meaning.
India is a culture of academic excellence. If you’re not doing well there you’re in trouble, and it’s also a culture of shame when you’re not succeeding academically. So, I did the horrific thing. Till this day embarrassing me because I don’t like talking about it… I attempted suicide when I was 17 and it was not out of any neurological disorder, it was not any biochemical thing. It was the fact that I just didn’t have meaning, there was no purpose in life for me,
Now the choice to attempt suicide was done by the individual Ravi Zacharias and the responsibility falls on Ravi Zacharias. However, were I a doctor at the young Zacharias’s hospital bed and I asked him if he had strong connections to other meaningful institutions, I’m pretty sure he would have said no.
In conclusion, institutions matter intensely to people. They literally get sick if they aren’t connected to institutions. The core of the classically liberal conception of human rights is rooted in the dignity of the individual. And that’s how it should be when it comes to law and government. However, when it comes to civil society, a culture of individuals is a miserable place.
Published in General
The Academy sucks. Except for Hillsdale. They are doing everything right. Do what we did. Abandon your real alma mater, and adopt Hillsdale as your surrogate alma mater. Support Hillsdale College.
Exactly right.
@rushbabe49, precisely what we have done, albeit while maintaining the usual mania for LSU Football — especially this year!
But I must note I did turn at least a little shade of green when I saw that you all had gone up to the Hillsdale campus for the big anniversary celebration! That is something I have long wanted to do… maybe soon, I hope!
Sincerely, your kindred spirits, George and George.
Definitely go! I liken a visit to Hillsdale to a religious pilgrimage. Maybe attend one of the CCAs.
John Lennon once said “I’d rather have a band than a Rolls-Royce.” Yeah, there’s just something about playing in a group.
How many rockstars kill themselves once they get so rich they get lonely because they are surrounded by yes men but are totally alone?
8 There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail.
9 Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.
10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.
11 Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone?
12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
13 Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.
14 For out of prison he cometh to reign; whereas also he that is born in his kingdom becometh poor.
Everyone wants, with his dying breath, to look back over the grand sweep of his life and think, “That was worth it.”
Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more difficult to lead a worthwhile life — partly because of the decline of institutions, and partly because modernity places an immense spiritual burden on people. In the modern view, we find ways to distract ourselves, and then we perish. That’s it. That’s all there is.
I can pour time and energy into personal projects, but what’s the point? Nobody (except me) cares. I can scream into the digital ether all day, and nothing becomes of it. I can venture into the world in search of something worth my time, but I find only noise.
Henry, your contributions to Ricochet are always insightful & valuable.
For me, the missing word in your essay is choice. Institutions fail when choice disappears. Choice and the individual are connected.
I think Trump’s nomination and election as POTUS fits this pattern of failing institutions, in this case political parties providing inadequate choices from what some might call the normal processes, so large numbers of individuals made a different choice. Thus we have Trump.
I.M,
I may get back to your Comment and slap a Like on it. I just can’t decide.
It’s so true.
But John Lennon said it.
But, it’s so true.
But…John Lennon said it.
…
I sympathize with your sentiment but I cannot agree that there is anything is new under the sun. Everything you just said was lamented by Solomon and probably there were Kings and wisemen that existed a thousand years before him who said the same things. Lamenting that pleasure is fleeting and our works are small compared to the grandness of the world is far from a novel idea.
However, it is our lot as humans to experience what everyone else has experienced before as though it were new.
Ecclesiastes 2
18 Yea, I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.
19And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool? yet shall he have rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured, and wherein I have shewed myself wise under the sun. This is also vanity.
20Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the labour which I took under the sun.
21For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil.
22For what hath man of all his labour, and of the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the sun?
23For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night. This is also vanity.
To my understanding, this is the heart of the matter. Each individual needs a higher purpose than personal projects or self-development. But an individual may not be able to identify an appropriate purpose on his own; in which case some inspiration from outside of himself is required.
If I pursue this line of thinking, I find it requires that a higher purpose [God, or if not, god] exists which can provide that outside inspiration. Of course, this is me, this is the path my life has taken, and I don’t doubt you can find better authority than that. But do seek purpose, and don’t reject it out of hand if it isn’t what you expected.
I think what you’ve expressed here is admirable and certainly contains validity. How do you perceive what has happened and is continuing regarding the institution of marriage and the family, which I view as in a state of serious decline, insofar as it affects the ability of individuals to achieve what you have described?
All folks have always been attached to institutions, beginning with the family, and everything on up. However, the big ones, the ones that are remote, the Federal Government all institutions run by it, or funded by it, big state governments, and the things they fund, do not play the same role for individuals they claim to serve. The individuals that run them, of course, enjoy the role those institutions play. Centralization, which all government is, in a large place like the US just doesn’t play the same kind of role for individuals. Manufacturing and other private sector producers whether stuff or services, in contrast are different. The employees are part of an institution like government employees in a particular office but the users, the consumers don’t care, they just look at prices and quality and do not have to use the service, the good, the stuff because there are an infinity of other items to choose from so these have to provide things desired or they die. The difference is everything. Government in all forms at best and at its best is a burdensome monopoly and can’t substitute for freedom ever. These become a problem only when they have political power and can bend the government systems in their favor.
Governments are inefficient and corrupt and corporations have to be ruthlessly profit-driven. They shouldn’t be the go-to institutions for meaning.
What are the go-to institutions for meaning: I’ll list some of my thoughts: marriage, family, the arts, religion, teaching and education, scientific research, development, and inventing, various associations and institutions that derive from these. Most of this is now heavily intruded or emasculated by our federal government and has lost any value of meaning for individuals.
(Sorry I wasn’t able to respond earlier).
Again, I won’t presume to respond in general, but will briefly give my own experience. When I was in my twenties I lived in Southern California, where the divorce rate was an astounding (for that time) 50% or greater. I determined that I would not contribute to that statistic, so when I eventually did marry I took my marriage vow VERY SERIOUSLY, as also did my wife. So our commitment isn’t just to each other but to all the witnesses, both mortal and divine, to those vows. I believe this perspective helped us through times of difficulties when personal strength of character wasn’t enough. I am no longer young but I am still finding grievous flaws in my character, so I continue to seek help where I am deficient.
A previous president so famously said (although not in so many words) that the nation was plagued by a sense of malaise, of a lack of purpose. I believed at the time, and still believe, that he was correct in his assessment. He was excoriated for making a diagnosis without prescribing an effectual cure, but he was right. And so I think the present crisis of our failing families is both a symptom and a cause for our national woes. I suppose I would liken it to a fever, which is caused by a deeper sickness but which itself contributes to the problem.
Definitely check out Dr. Bastiat’s post about being a Doctor with modern bureaucracy. It’s uncannily similar to what I wrote only the prose is more evocative.
I read that.
Think about how this is happening.
The Affordable Care Act was/is the culmination of the destruction of the institution of medical practice.
The IRS has destroyed the institution of accounting practice.
The DoJ and the CIA have destroyed the institution of integrity and the rule of law.
The Federal Reserve has destroyed the institution of economics, if there ever was one.
Shall I go on?
I am starting to understand Trump’s appeal. While not particularly eloquent, his protestations that the system is rigged by the elites seems more accurate than I had previously thought.
However, newspapers and the academia are also rotten but I can’t blame the government on those two.
That’s true. I think this is picking up in recent weeks with the NBC failure with Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein stuff and now the ABC and CBS fiasco around the hot mic words from Amy Robach. You said newspapers, but the tv networks are atrocious.
I went back and read your post again. The last sentence stuck because recently on other threads there have been comments raising the issue of individualism and using that term. Most of the comments about ‘individualism’ and using that term were negative. I don’t use that word because I’m not sure what it means to people or how it would be interpreted. I do use individual frequently when speaking of individual liberty, free agency, a right to bear arms, a right to free association, freedom of speech, the need for individuals to have choices available, on and on. An individual’s right to free association appears to be important when we are addressing our cultural institutions but what does it even mean when the institutions disappear?
It means that human beings are super social and we are better thinking about them as being super social. The Enlightenment had many good parts to it that contribute to our culture and our democracy to this day but it overly emphasized the individual in my estimation.
My criticism of individualism does not negate the importance of individual rights. All men are individually given the rights to life, liberty and property. Your father, your tribe, your Church or your government have no write to negate those individual rights as they come from heaven and not Earth. However, freedom isn’t enough to live a happy and decent life. You need to be connected to other people and do meaningful work. Our institutions aren’t doing that so I wrote my essay.
I’m with libertarians on how corrupt government is and I’m an absolutist on freedom of speech and all of that. But libertarianism (particularly Randians) view the human being as a reasoning individual that can choose to separate themselves from family, community and traditions. It is this mischaracterization of human nature that I object to.
I think we are seeing this similarly. My last question, about the institutions disappearing, was really geared to the idea, for example, that learning institutions are being homogenized to a sameness that tends to erode the benefit of choice by individuals. And institutions of all forms are experiencing this sameness that reduces individual options. I know we, as a people, feel overwhelmed sometimes with the choices we have to make, but are the choices about the meaningful things?
Lantern in hand I have searched the world over, and at last I have found a true Conservative. Well spoken, Henry.
Every person who is dedicated to the ideal of the human dignity is in a sense individualistic, but not everyone who is individualistic is dedicated to the that ideal.