Descartes in Front of the Horse

Flag Day, 2010. I’m feeling  patriotic.

Do you ever wonder if our country’s founding fathers and mothers could have dreamed up THIS country you and I live in today? At 300 million plus with an African president; totally wired to the rest of a rapidly developing world of mega cities (two of which are now ten times larger than the entire population of the 13 original colonies); mobile via jet to the farthest reaches of the planet in a few hours; obsessed by media, celebrity, instant news, sports, entertainment, and a range of diversions born of affluence; with satellites tracking our enemies in remote deserts and pilotless drones doing the dirty work; all the while as a thick pillar of thousands of gallons of carbonized dinosaur fat spews from a British-made hole a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico?

I know they’d be flat-out amazed. I wonder if they’d be feeling pride or some other set of emotions as they considered the current scene.

It’s pretty clear that things have changed, and so I offer an idea that runs counter to a superficial understanding of what our founders were trying to do. Today, we need to think as much about interdependence as independence. Both are needed. This is an “AND.”

That said, I think we overdo the independence stuff. And that may be because most of us have heard of Rene Descartes and few have heard about Martin Buber.

Rene was a 17th-century French philosopher who famously wrote “Cogito ergo sum.” or, “I think, therefore I am.” Following on from that classic line was a theory and explanation of the primacy of the individual human consciousness, starting with “I.” Big breakthrough in the 1600’s. A foundation of the scientific revolution and Enlightenment. Huge influence since, especially in the West, where personal autonomy and independence became so highly valued, especially on this continent.

And others have come along since to suggest that Rene got it exactly…

WRONG.

One of those was Martin Buber, a 20th-century German philosopher. Had he been around then to ask, he may have questioned where Rene got his idea of “Cogito ergo sum” in the first place. Was he not raised by caring family? Did he not attend good schools? Was he not influenced by earlier philosophers? Yes, yes, and yes.

So Buber suggested the premise of existence as encounter. We are born into a world where others happen to be. A world of “I” AND…what? Buber said we had a choice. We could come to see the world as “I” and “Thou” (us together as equals and teammates) or “I” and “It” (you as a lesser being needing to be carefully “managed”). Wow. That’s something to”cogito” about.

And here is all I have to say about flags and founders and dinosaur fat today: If we taught our children and ourselves about how to honor the others we encounter as equals, with courtesy, consideration, AND self-confidence, and not merely with aggressive competitiveness and defensiveness as somehow less than equal, it would be a transformed world.

We can talk about leadership until the cows come home (that’ll be just before the BP well gets capped), but if we can’t work together in community–in our families, workplaces, churches, or country–we will have become ungovernable. And where that leads isn’t pretty.

If you are somehow feeling a need to learn how to become a better “Thou,” I recommend you pick up a copy of the book, The Anatomy of Peace and read it. I’ll bet it changes you.

In the meantime, happy Flag Day. I’m glad we’re in this together.