The Faith of an Average Man

"Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course."

― Reinhold Niebuhr, "Moral Man and Immoral Society: Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)"

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Dear Kate,

I am sure you can tell yesterday I was writing with a mask on, one of a provocateur, a Shakespearean fool, I wished I was.  I wish you knew.

Maybe you didn't.  It would be stupid of me to feel the need to make this clear now.  So here you have it, I being stupid.

In today's quote, from one of Obama's favorite philosophers, who also happened to be just as preeminent a theologian and pastor, Reinhold Niebuhr, something was spoken about the stupidity of the "average" human.

The "average man."  Did he mean a bourgeois?  Someone like you and I who are too busy, too preoccupied with our own daily little winnings that we must cast away our doubt of the possibilities of losing on a national level by contracting out the moral dealings in our society to those who wouldn't mind getting their hands dirty and feet closer to hell at our behest and on our behalf?

If you are going to read one book about politics, let it be this one, "Moral Man and Immoral Society."  It's published in 1932, written yesterday.

It's a busy morning for this bourgeois; I have no time to write more today.  Niebuhr spoke about a "naive faith" in today's quote.  Let me send you off with another quote of his, also about faith but of a different sort:

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.”

Yours, Alex

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Dear Alex, 

As I write tonight, our friends and spectators of gladiator grandeur - the Americans - remain fixated on the suspense of a century homebound: who will win the presidency?

In the low lights of common sense, removed from the political colosseum and roaring, we are stuck perhaps with more perplexities over the nonsense in neon unanimity. We know that the president is picked by the Electoral College or state-designated electors, not by national popular vote, a historical evolution laden with archaic assumptions steeped in slavery and suffrage. Our American neighbors have been dueling for 200+ years on bloody battlegrounds for the pursuit of liberty by convention.

Yet the best-minded polls predicting the presidential playoff over the past 4 years have plumbed the depths of our curiosity. How could our seers be so right in erroneous judgement of presidential outcome and so wrong about the coming out of the platitude: expect the expected. Expect allegiance to the romancing of justice and freedom in the boldest nation by standards of currency and science. Or, do you have a better idea in managing your home or country?

If not for democracy and innovation, then what more can man make of himself?

And perhaps this is how sidelined we have roamed in the injury of thoughts. We cannot make anything more or less in the most fundamental composite of creation. We are not meant to swing to any state, wielding conceit and entitlement as our first-born rights. We are, after all, just eyes and ears with ridiculously tight ranges of capabilities compared to most four-legged mammals but still massively enabling in our wobbling strength and shifting season to bow for reconciliation.

Yours, Kate