Beyond Solutionism …

A former student of mine recently sent me an article by David Brooks entitled The Service Patch. Like many New York Times Op-Eds, the article addresses a wide range of loosely interconnected themes:  the preference of students from elite schools for the financial and high tech sectors over “production capitalism” and for the nonprofit sector over traditional service professions such as the ministry, the military, and government. He notes the tendency to substitute community service for a sense of meaning and value –and for the goals of such altruistic pursuits such as work on climate change, sustainable development , or ending poverty to be framed in largely utilitarian terms. The article concludes with a suggestion that it is not so much what one does that is important as how one does it and a recommendation that students spend less time mastering spreadsheets and more time reading Dostoevsky and the Book of Job.

These are all, of course, interesting observations and –up to his point– his observations are useful. But like so many insightful conservatives he misses the underlying forces behind the developments he bemoans. Students are drawn to finance and high technology because these are rising sectors and the rate of return on both capital and skilled labor is higher than in “production capitalism.” And many do seek to enter traditional service professions. Most liberal Protestant denominations are experiencing a clergy glut and entry into elite diplomatic, military, and intelligence organizations remains very competitive.  The appeal of the nonprofit world is largely that of a philanthropocapitalism which is parasitic on the financial and high tech sectors and which shares their underlying ideology: that there is either nothing wrong with the larger system of global capitalism or, more likely, nothing that can be done about it, but that great minds with great ideas and good business sense can go a long way towards solving particular global challenges. Behind it all lies a deeper emerging civilizational crisis. One hundred and fifty years ago the elites, at least (including revolutionary elites), believed that scientific and technological progress, or the creation of a collective political subject (the democratic state or revolutionary party) would allow humanity to transcend finitude and contingency. Today, after two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the failure of both capitalism and socialism to deliver on their utopian promises we know better.  Under such circumstances the temptation is either to just make as much money as possible or, for those who want to do something, to think small and in ideologically neutral terms  and develop the one great idea which will solve on particular problem (or to do both in that order).

The disease is serious and well advanced, and it needs stronger medicine than just a dose of Dostoevsky and a shot of the Book of Job. To be sure, I am inclined to agree with Brooks that the skepticism towards modernity and secularism which engagement with these two texts encourage (skepticism –not fanatical, mindless rejection) is a good first step. We need to re-engage the great spiritual traditions of the Axial Age and bring them into dialogue with each other and with modernity and postmodernity and see what have to tell us about what life means and about how we might approach the crisis of secularism and of capitalism and of socialism globally rather than just copping out and making money or losing ourselves in “solutionism.”  But this requires exemplary leaders who are living such an engagement themselves. It requires a university experience which more nearly resembles a religious novitiate than career preparation.  And it requires these things in a spirit of openness to diverse perspectives (religious and secular, left and right) and of respect for the right of students to make up their own minds.  In other words, we need to actually pay for our young people to spend time “finding themselves” and at the same time give them the tools they need to actually do so.

This kind of university experience is, unfortunately, hard to find. The majority of our universities have become factories producing skilled intellectual labor under the false pretense that the degrees they confer will also confer a monopoly rent on skill that just isn’t going to be there in a global information economy.  Elite research universities and liberal arts colleges have become more nearly agents of civilizational crisis than of civilizational renewal. They do a good job of teaching their students what is wrong with axial traditions, modern traditions, and now even postmodernity. But the education they offer does not engage students in a real and hopeful search for meaning.  The result is the cynical solutionism Brooks bemoans. A handful of religious universities offer more coherence and more respect for the search meaning and value, but only at the price of failing to fully engage modern and postmodern critiques and a globally pluralistic public arena in which people demand to make their own decisions regarding questions of meaning and value and do so in a way which explores questions and answers across as well as within traditions.

We need a new kind of university, one which allows students from all social classes to seriously engage questions of meaning and value in an open, critical, and pluralistic way, under the leadership of scholars who themselves actually embody the principles and values they teach and who are serious both about the search for meaning and about the future of human civilization. I, for one, think it would be a great investment.

Where are those philanthropocapitalists when you need them?

 

This entry was posted in Political Theological Analysis. Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *