Self-Renewal

The Individual and the Innovative Society [First Edition]

John W. Gardner

• Editore: Muriwai Books
• Anno: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789120073
• Argomento: Psicologia
• Categoria: Storia e teoria della psicologia

"The only stability possible is stability in motion."—John William GardnerIn his classic treatise Self-Renewal, John W. Gardner examines why great societies thrive and die. He argues that it is dynamism, not decay, that is dramatically altering the landscape of American society. The twentieth century has brought about change more rapidly than any previous era, and with that came advancements, challenges, and often destruction. Gardner cautions that "a society must court the kinds of change that will enrich and strengthen it, rather than the kind of change that will fragment and destroy it."A society's ability to renew itself hinges upon its individuals. Gardner reasons that it is the waning of the heart and spirit—not a lack of material might—that threatens American society. Young countries, businesses, and humans have several key commonalities: they are flexible, eager, open, curious, unafraid, and willing to take risks. These conditions lead to success. However, as time passes, so too comes complacency, apathy, and rigidity, causing motivation to plummet. It is at this junction that great civilizations fall, businesses go bankrupt, and life stagnates. Gardner asserts that the individual's role in social renewal requires each person to face and look beyond imminent threats.Ultimately, we need a vision that there is something worth saving. Through this vision, Gardner argues, society will begin to renew itself, not permanently, but past its average lifespan, and it will at once become enriched and rejuvenated.

 

CHAPTER 1—GROWTH, DECAY AND RENEWAL

THE EVER-RENEWING SYSTEM

Every few years the archaeologists unearth another ancient civilization that flourished for a time and then died. The modern mind, acutely conscious of the sweep of history and chronically apprehensive, is quick to ask, “Is it our turn now?”

Rather than debate that overworked topic, I am going to ask another kind of question: “Suppose one tried to imagine a society that would be relatively immune to decay—an ever-renewing society. What would it be like? What would be the ingredients that provide the immunity?”

We now know enough about the nature of human organization to specify the ingredients of such a society—not one that will last forever, but one that will extend its vitality far beyond the usual span.

If longevity were the only virtue of such a society, the whole venture might prove to be numbingly dull. But a society that has learned the secret of renewal will be a more interesting and more vibrant society, not in some distant future but at once. And since continuous renewal depends on conditions that encourage fulfillment of the individual, it will be a society fit for free men.

Though the only society that can renew itself over a long period of time is a free society, this offers no grounds for complacency. We are not living up to our ideals as a free society, and we are very far from meeting the requirements of an ever-renewing society. But both are within reach.

 

Neither the popular nor the scholarly theories that have sought to explain the rise and fall of civilizations have stood up under critical scrutiny.{2} But the Spenglers and Toynbees of the future need not despair. We are just now discovering facts about institutional growth and decay that will make better theories possible.

It is not a subject in which simple generalizations will ever be possible. Patterns of growth and decay vary from one society to another. Various kinds of renewal disrupt the simple “rise and fall” trajectory. A decaying society may have exceedingly vital elements within it, and the vital society is never free from decay. In short, we are talking about processes of great complexity—but not so complex as to defy understanding.

It is necessary to discuss not only the vitality of societies but the vitality of institutions and individuals. They are the same subject. A society decays when its institutions and individuals lose their vitality.

Recently a government official, describing an old-line government agency, said, “It doesn’t get much public attention, and it has gone quietly to sleep. When there is a change of administration, it stirs fitfully—but it doesn’t wake up.” Every businessman knows of some firms that are “on their toes” and others that are “in a rut.” Every university president recognizes that some academic departments are enjoying exceptional vitality while others have gone to seed.

What are the factors that account for such differences? It is a question that has never been examined systematically. Closer study will reveal that in all the examples given the same processes are at work. They are the processes involved in the rise and fall of human institutions. Rome falling to the barbarians, an old family firm going into bankruptcy, and a government agency quietly strangling in its own red tape have more in common than one might suppose.

When organizations and societies are young, they are flexible, fluid, not yet paralyzed by rigid specialization and willing to try anything once. As the organization or society ages, vitality diminishes, flexibility gives way to rigidity, creativity fades and there is a loss of capacity to meet challenges from unexpected directions. Call to mind the adaptability of youth, and the way in which that adaptability diminishes with the years. Call to mind the vigor and recklessness of some new organizations and societies—our own frontier settlements, for example—and reflect on how frequently these qualities are buried under the weight of tradition and history.

Similarly the infant is a model of openness to new experience—receptive, curious, eager, unafraid, willing to try anything and above all not inhibited by fixed habits and attitudes. As the years pass he loses these priceless qualities. Inevitably he accumulates habits, attitudes, opinions. If he did not, he would remain infantile and wholly incapable of coping with his environment. But each acquired attitude or habit, useful though it may be, makes him a little less receptive to alternative ways of thinking and acting. He becomes more competent to function in his own environment, less adaptive to changes.

All of this seems to suggest that the critical question is how to stay young. But youth implies immaturity. And though everyone wants to be young, no one wants to be immature. Unfortunately, as many a youth-seeker has learned, the two are intertwined.

Most of the processes that reduce the initial flexibility and adaptiveness of societies and individuals are, in fact, processes of maturing. As such they are not only inevitable but, in their early stages, desirable. The process of maturing may have made our frontier communities less vigorous and venturesome, but it also made them more liveable, more orderly and in important respects stronger. Everyone who has ever shared in the founding of an organization looks back with nostalgia on the early days of confusion and high morale, but few would really enjoy a return to that primitive level of functioning. Babies are charming but no one would wish to keep them forever at that stage of growth.

In short, we would not want to stop the process of maturing even though it narrows potentialities and reduces adaptability.

The reader may ask, “Is there no possibility, then, that an individual (or an organization or society) might advance toward maturity without advancing toward rigidity and senility? Isn’t it a question of knowing the difference between the two and stopping short of the latter?” Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. There may be a point at which raw young vitality and mature competence and wisdom reach a kind of ideal balance, but there is no possibility of freezing change at that point, as one might stop the motion in a home movie. There is nothing static in these processes.

Does this mean that there is no alternative to eventual stagnation? It does not. Every individual, organization or society must mature, but much depends on how this maturing takes place. A society whose maturing consists simply of acquiring more firmly established ways of doing things is headed for the graveyard—even if it learns to do these things with greater and greater skill. In the ever-renewing society what matures is a system or framework within which continuous innovation, renewal and rebirth can occur.

Our thinking about growth and decay is dominated by the image of a single life-span, animal or vegetable. Seedling, full flower and death. “The flower that once has blown forever dies.” But for an ever-renewing society the appropriate image is a total garden, a balanced aquarium or other ecological system. Some things are being born, other things are flourishing, still other things are dying—but the system lives on.

Over the centuries the classic question of social reform has been, “How can we cure this or that specifiable ill?” Now we must ask another kind of question: “How can we design a system that will continuously reform (i.e., renew) itself, beginning with presently specifiable ills and moving on to ills that we cannot now foresee?”

 

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

A modern view of the processes of growth, decay and renewal must give due emphasis to both continuity and change in human institutions.

It is not true, as some seem to believe, that awareness of change is a twentieth-century development. Nicholas Murray Butler used to insist that in the Garden of Eden, Adam paused at one point to say, “Eve, we are living in a period of transition.” But no sensible person would assert that earlier centuries experienced change as the twentieth century has experienced it. A radical speeding up of the tempo of change is at the heart of the twentieth-century experience and has gained a powerful grip on the modern mind.

I Many Americans have a sentimental and undiscriminating view of change. They think it is, without qualification, a good thing. But death is a form of change. So is deterioration. A society must court the kinds of change that will enrich and strengthen it, rather than the kinds that will fragment and destroy it. Who among us has not been startled in recent years by instances of runaway growth, of expansion so rapid that it outruns all control. Faced with such instances, even the most forward-looking man may be forgiven for thinking: “This is change gone wild. This is growth so destructive of other values as to be cancerous!”

Renewal is not just innovation and change. It is also the process of bringing the results of change into line with our purposes. When our forbears invented the motor car, they had to devise rules of the road. Both are phases of renewal. When urban expansion threatens chaos, we must revise our conceptions of city planning and metropolitan government.

Mesmerized as we are by the idea of change, we must guard against the notion that continuity is a negligible—if not reprehensible—factor in human history. It is a vitally important ingredient in the life of individuals, organizations and societies. Particularly important to a society’s continuity are its long-term purposes and values. These purposes and values also evolve in the long run; but by being relatively durable, they enable a society to absorb change without losing its distinctive character and style. They do much to determine the direction of change. They insure that a society will not be buffeted in all directions by every wind that blows.

A sensible view of these matters sees an endless interweaving of continuity and change. The scientist engaged in momentous innovations in his laboratory may seem to be the personification of change, yet he functions effectively because of certain deeply established continuities in his life. As a scientist he is living out a tradition several centuries old in its modern incarnation, thousands of years old in its deeper roots. Every move he makes reflects attitudes, habits of mind and skills that were years in the making. He is part of an enduring tradition and a firmly established intellectual system; but it is a system that provides for its own continuous renewal.

This brings us to the modern emphasis on process, an emphasis suggested, in its broadest implications, by Arnold Toynbee when he said, “Civilization is a movement...and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.”{3}

Emphasis on process—and the complex interweaving of continuity and change—plays havoc with old-fashioned conceptions of liberalism and conservatism. As Peter Drucker has pointed out, in a world buffeted by change, faced daily with new threats to its safety, the only way to conserve is by innovating.{4} The only stability possible is stability in motion.

CHAPTER 2—SELF-RENEWAL

DO-IT-YOURSELF JAILBIRDS

“Keep on growing,” the commencement speakers say. “Don’t go to seed. Let this be a beginning, not an ending.”

It is a good theme. Yet a high proportion of the young people who hear the speeches pay no heed, and by the time they are middle-aged they are absolutely mummified. Even some of the people who make the speeches are mummified. Why?

Unfortunately the commencement speakers never tell us why their advice to keep on learning is so hard to follow. The people interested in adult education have struggled heroically to increase the opportunities for self-development, and they have succeeded marvelously. Now they had better turn to the thing that is really blocking self-development—the individual’s own intricately designed, self-constructed prison, or to put it another way, the individual’s incapacity for self-renewal.

A prison is not quite the appropriate image because the individual does not stop learning in all aspects of his life simultaneously. Many young people have stopped learning in the religious or spiritual dimensions of their lives long before they graduate from college. Some settle into rigid and unchanging political and economic views by the time they are twenty-five or thirty. By their mid-thirties most will have stopped acquiring new skills or new attitudes in any central aspect of their lives.

As we mature we progressively narrow the scope and variety of our lives. Of all the interests we might pursue, we settle on a few. Of all the people with whom we might associate, we select a small number. We become caught in a web of fixed relationships. We develop set ways of doing things.{5}

As the years go by we view our familiar surroundings with less and less freshness of perception. ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1-GROWTH, DECAY AND RENEWAL
• CHAPTER 2-SELF-RENEWAL
• CHAPTER 3-VERSATILITY
• CHAPTER 4-INNOVATION
• CHAPTER 5-OBSTACLES TO RENEWAL
• CHAPTER 6-TYRANNY WITHOUT A TYRANT
• CHAPTER 7-CONDITIONS OF RENEWAL
• CHAPTER 8-ORGANIZING FOR RENEWAL
• CHAPTER 9-INDIVIDUALITY AND ITS LIMITS
• CHAPTER 10-COMMITMENT AND MEANING
• CHAPTER 11-ATTITUDES TOWARD THE FUTURE
• CHAPTER 12-MORAL DECAY AND RENEWAL
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER