{"id":16633,"date":"2016-03-28T09:27:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T13:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16633"},"modified":"2016-03-28T09:27:40","modified_gmt":"2016-03-28T13:27:40","slug":"the-limits-of-civic-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16633","title":{"rendered":"the limits of civic life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(Phoenix, AZ), While I am here today as a guest of Arizona State, I will give a version of the following talk:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Back to the Future  New York 2015   Peter Levine\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ld8HPiy9RCQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The video summarizes my view of civic life in about 10 minutes. By \u201ccivic life,\u201d I mean applying our minds, voices, and bodies to improving the world. We can do that alone, but inevitably civic life is collaborative, because individuals rarely achieve much alone and because we need other people\u2019s opinions and perspectives to inform our goals and values.<\/p>\n<p>Civic life is important, but it is by no means the only important thing. It\u00a0represents one\u00a0circle\u00a0in this Venn diagram, which\u00a0also includes circles for\u00a0politics&#8211;meaning\u00a0all the ways that human beings govern ourselves\u00a0and create a common world&#8211;and the good life.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-16635\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/images\/Screen-Shot-2016-03-27-at-11.51.21-AM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2016-03-27 at 11.51.21 AM\" width=\"266\" height=\"130\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In civic life, certain ways of interacting are possible and desirable. We can and should be <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15205\">highly interactive<\/a>\u00a0while we are in smallish groups dedicated to improving the world. We\u00a0can be <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15835\">responsive<\/a> to one another\u2019s needs and opinions\u00a0and strive act in concert.<\/p>\n<p>But a\u00a0good life should\u00a0sometimes be solitary and inward-looking, or directed to nature or God instead of fellow citizens. And politics\u00a0should sometimes\u00a0involve competition instead of\u00a0deliberation and cooperation. For instance, we\u00a0want incumbent politicians to be regularly challenged by outsiders who criticize them and strive to unseat them. We don\u2019t want incumbents to get too cozy with\u00a0their challengers. The same is true of business competitors and\u00a0contending attorneys.<\/p>\n<p>In the video, I argue\u2014and I strongly believe\u2014that civic engagement can enrich our inner lives and offer us psychological and spiritual benefits. But so can <em>non<\/em>-civic activities, such as observing and appreciating nature, understanding and making art, or loving and caring for other people intimately. Although I think that the spiritual benefits of civic life are often overlooked\u2014and improving our civic culture\u00a0would strengthen those benefits\u2014I still resist the argument that the good life equals civic engagement.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a typically subtle case: I love to walk in the woods with my family and dog. Enjoying those loved ones in a natural setting is not a form of civic engagement. However, it is only thanks to the Massachusetts Audubon Society and our state government\u2014and the individuals who work in or with those organizations\u2014that the woods have been preserved and opened for us to use. The worthy activity (a family walk) is not civic, yet it depends upon other people\u2019s civic engagement. Still, it\u2019s far too narrow a view of nature and of intimate personal relations to reduce them to products of civic life.<\/p>\n<p>By the same token, civic life doesn\u2019t exhaust politics or offer adequate means to improve politics. Large, impersonal institutions\u2014such as markets and companies, governments and armies, and scientific and technical disciplines\u2014play leading roles in 21<sup>st<\/sup> century politics. You and I have limited leverage over these institutions. We can form opinions about what <em>they<\/em> should do, but those opinions do not always imply meaningful actions for <em>us<\/em> to take.<\/p>\n<p>If the institution in question is the United States government, I have a tiny but greater-than-zero form of leverage in the form of my vote. If the institution is Coca-Cola, I can decide whether to purchase its products or not. Allocating votes and money are worthwhile acts but hardly constitute a robust civic life. And if the institution in question is the Chinese Government or the market for oil rigs, my leverage approaches zero. In the video, I say that citizens ask, \u201cWhat should <em>we<\/em> do?\u201d rather than \u201cWhat should be done?\u201d But sometimes reasonable people realize that something should be done and yet\u00a0cannot find anything to do about it themselves. That is the zone of politics that lies outside of civic life in the Venn diagram above.<\/p>\n<p>In the video and almost all my work, I emphasize that \u201csmall groups of thoughtful and committed citizens\u201d have the capacity and responsibility to change large systems. I began my professional career helping to advocate\u00a0for political reform as a research associate at Common Cause, and while I worked there, Common Cause was losing its membership base due to the shrinkage of American civil society that Robert Putnam would soon diagnose in &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=13329\">Bowling Alone<\/a>&#8221; (1995). I came to think that American politics was corrupt <em>because<\/em> citizens were not adequately organized and active, and I have spent the subsequent two decades working on civic engagement as a precondition for better government. Still, political reform eludes us in the face of hostile Supreme Court decisions, technological developments, and tenacious political opposition. When reform\u00a0does come, it\u00a0may be because of a massive scandal or a well-placed leader, not directly because of active citizens. In some other countries and in global markets, the scope for civic life is even narrower than it is in the US.<\/p>\n<p>To discount the importance of citizens in politics is cynical, but to imagine that\u00a0intentional civic action is <em>all<\/em> of politics is naive. To the extent we can, we should work to expand the overlap, so that civic life\u00a0is more politically influential as well as more\u00a0spiritually rewarding. But I think we will always be left with two hard questions (among others):<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>How should we think and act and feel when bad systems are genuinely beyond our control? The Stoic and classical Indian answer was: seek equanimity and acceptance. Epictetus <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=16375\">advised<\/a>: &#8220;For if the essence of the good lies in\u00a0what we can achieve, then there is no space for ill-will or\u00a0jealousy. Rather, for yourself, don\u2019t strive to be a general or an office-holder or a leader\/consul, but to be free. The only\u00a0road to that is contempt for things not in your power [<a href=\"http:\/\/www.perseus.tufts.edu\/hopper\/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0237%3Atext%3Denc%3Achapter%3D19\">XIX<\/a>].&#8221; I am unsatisfied with that answer,\u00a0because\u00a0I think we have responsibilities to the world even when we cannot see a direct way to address\u00a0its problems. But what are those responsibilities, exactly? And &#8230;<\/li>\n<li>When an aspect of the good life conflicts with civic responsibilities, how should we choose between them?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Phoenix, AZ), While I am here today as a guest of Arizona State, I will give a version of the following talk: The video summarizes my view of civic life in about 10 minutes. By \u201ccivic life,\u201d I mean applying our minds, voices, and bodies to improving the world. We can do that alone, but [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civic-theory","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16633"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16644,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16633\/revisions\/16644"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}