Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Compartmentalization

At the very beginning of his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit (Poetry and Truth), Goethe describes the house he grew up in, with special emphasis on one room in particular. It was a large, open room located on the ground floor. It had a sitting area for the household staff with a partial opening on to the street, so that visitors and passers-by could come and go easily. Goethe and his sister could play in this room, and could also easily communicate with their friends and neighbors. This room brought work and play together, as well as the public and the private. Goethe concludes his description with this sentence: “One felt free insofar as one was comfortable with the public.”

This room exemplifies the proper integration of different aspects of our lives we must seek to achieve in our own lives, and which we as a society must strive to achieve. The nuclear family did not feel under siege from the outside world, nor were recreation and labor mutually exclusive. Family life was important, but it did not need an oppressive shelter to flourish. This older arrangement of the household is at odds with our modern approach. Today, Goethe's father (a wealthy, influential citizen of Frankfurt) probably would have lived in a suburb with restrictive zoning laws not allowing stores or businesses anywhere near homes. Furthermore, no extended household (including servants) would be allowed on the property, or at the very least would be strongly discouraged. If Goethe and his sister wanted to play, their mother would probably have to drive them to a park. Goethe’s last sentence today would have been: “One did not feel free unless one’s private (non-economic) life was completely separated from one's public (economic) life.” However, family life today is weaker despite the efforts we make to protect it from the outside.

This separation of the public from the private, of the economic from the non-economic, is present in other areas of society, and I will give three specific examples below: art, exercise, and nature. What unites all three examples is that in each case we attempt to protect a particular good from the encroachments of the economic by assigning it a separate compartment. Yet we fail precisely because each good, once it has been restricted to a distinct sphere, is less able to influence the economic realm and everyday life.

First, consider art museums. Many philosophers and artists in the 19th and 20th century established a strict dichotomy between work and art, in order to glorify art all the more, with some even elevating it to the status of a religion. Accordingly, many shrines to art have been erected in the form of grand museums. The Art Institute of Chicago, for instance, is a world-famous museum housed in a building reminiscent of a classical temple—and it even has two lions to guard the sanctuary. Yet how relevant is art today? Has the separation of art from other institutions in society really improved modern man’s aesthetic judgment and his overall taste? Probably not. Visiting an art museum on vacation is merely a civic duty, rather than true enrichment.

Second, consider exercise. More than one commentator has remarked on modern Americans’ worship of physical perfection, embodied in a nearly obsessive concern with exercise (think of gym memberships), yet the average American grows fatter from year to year, despite warnings about the dangers of obesity. We have, on the one hand, lengthened the average person’s life expectancy by relieving him of the necessity of performing hard physical labor in order to earn his daily wage, but we have simultaneously harmed his health by relieving him of this necessity. We separate work from physical activity to help ourselves, but in the end only create new problems.

Finally, think of how America sets aside more and more land as “nature reserves” and some environmentalists seem to worship nature, yet fewer and fewer people are really in touch with nature on a daily basis. At best, the average American spends a week camping or hiking in a national park, but out of touch with nature for the remaining 51 weeks of the year. One writer (Nicolás Gómez Dávila) has even warned of the danger that an “age is upon us in which nature, displaced by man, will not survive except in arboretums and museums.”

Priests and pastors have long admonished their congregations not to restrict religion to Sundays; instead, they must let their faith permeate their daily activities. The same applies to all other areas of life. Art, exercise, and nature must be released from their holding cells and be free to influence society at large. There is no easy way to do this. However, I would suggest that one rule will apply generally: The only way to integrate all these separate goods into society is under the aegis of a single “architectonic” institution with the breadth of vision to encompass them all, to allow them all space for development yet also impose limits on them. Art and nature will not be worshiped, but nor will they be denigrated; each in its proper place. Until we recover some conception of an architectonic institution that can give order to the various goods, our compartmentalization of these goods will only hurt them in the long run.

3 comments:

Aaron Linderman said...

These posts auto-feed to my Facebook page, where, from time to time, they attract comments. This one has called forth a couple worthy questions. Thus, I reproduce the comments below.


From Sean Lewis: 'You had me in this excellent essay until the very end.

'Something of which I think conservatives (including myself) are often guilty is decrying the evils of the contemporary world without offering even a hint at a solution. Ignatius J. Reilly of "A Confederacy of Dunces" comes to mind. I was so thankful for a suggestion of a solution at the ... Read Moreend of this essay, then found that the solution proposed was the recovery of some conception of an architectonic institution. So the only way out of our mess is to wait for another Athenian polis, Italian city-state, or New England township to take shape? This kind of solution seems like less of a solution and more of a wishful thought.

'I think that personal choice--choosing to spend more time in nature, choosing to adorn one's home with quality art (within one's means!), choosing to avoid needless mechanization (do you really need to drive 2 blocks?)--may be the start of the move towards something that may be--hopefully--architectonic.'


From Catherine Minerich: 'Have you been reading Ayn Rand?'


From Christopher Brown: 'On the one hand, I would have thought you would really like F. A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom... but the book's purpose is to purge any hope and delusion set upon an "architectonic aegis." I'm with Sean here -- change and improvement has to come from the individual and the natural nuances of culture, not some benevolent directorate.'

Aaron Linderman said...

My own question (which may require it's own blog post to answer) is this: What is an "architectonic institution"? (I have a general idea, but a definition might be helpful.) And, as follow-up, how do they come about? What has been the case historically, and under what circumstances might it happen again? What would an architectonic institution look like today?

Stephen said...

Catherine: No, I don't read Ayn Rand. Maybe it's because of my own closed-mindedness, but she's never really sounded that appealing to me.

Christopher: I actually read "The Road to Serfdom" quite recently, and he's about as classic liberal/libertarian as I can stand. I think his critique of collectivism is powerful, and I like that he's not your stereotypical libertarian ("government=source of all evil"), but I think he ultimately places too much value on the economy.

Sean: I appreciate your complaint, especially since I was stuck wondering what kind of solution I could propose. And, I'll admit that I might be indulging in some wishful thinking here, but I would at least like to think that I'm proposing some kind of goal towards which we can work, though certainly not reach it in our own lifetimes, and perhaps never really reach it on this earth. The quick answer is that there is no quick solution. Just as obviously, personal choice is the beginning of the answer. The aim of personal choice, however, should not be personal choice, because no culture survives on personal choice alone (though no culture survives without it), and because the problem with the predominance of the economy lies precisely in our belief that personal choice solves everything.

Aaron: I actually was thinking of adding a couple paragraphs at the end, but decided that the post was already long enough. That would require much more.