March 11, 2010
Ask Fr. Spitzer
What Is It About Our Culture That Needs “Transforming”?
Q: The press release about Fr. Spitzer’s new mission talked about his desire to “transform the culture” through the Spitzer Center and Magis. What sort of transformation are you talking about, and is the work of the two organizations linked in some way or very different?
A: My first book was called Healing the Culture, and as the title made clear, I think there’s something wrong with our culture that needs to be fixed. People describe the root causes of our cultural problems in different ways. Some call it materialism or hedonism; others call it atheism or nihilism. Whatever you call it, I believe there’s a deeper problem beneath these “isms,” and in my view, that problem is despair. Our culture is suffering from a progressive waning of hope.
By hope, I don’t mean mere optimism, but something more profound. I mean a hope grounded in our awareness that there is a transcendent reality to which we are called, both individually and collectively. We can sense that this reality is perfect, unconditional, and eternal … it explains and fulfills our longing for perfect goodness, love, truth … and it is the source of our ultimate dignity as human beings. Our sense of hope increases when we feel that we’re moving toward this transcendent reality, which forms the ultimate horizon of human activity and aspiration. That’s when we thrive as human beings; that’s when our love thrives; and that’s when we realize that we don’t have to be heroes and save the world by ourselves. We just have to be instruments of the true God, who is the true hope of the world.
So what happens to people when a culture loses this hope? For starters, you stop looking to the horizon. You limit your awareness of your own dignity and the possibilities you possess, and you also limit your view of other people and their possibilities. Faced with these limitations, you’ll still try to find some way to bring sense and order to the world. But there aren’t many options.
The programs we provide through the Center introduce people to the idea of Level 3 happiness and show them how to achieve it in their own lives and in the organizational cultures they lead or work in. That’s a message that resonates in every environment, religious or secular, because once you explain the benefits of moving from Level 2 to Level 3 – from egocentric and materialistic success to noble and enduring success – people see it very quickly. They understand it and they want it. |
You might turn to Marxism; that’s one option. Or you might go with unfettered capitalist reductionism, which is what you get when you reduce other people to units of production and consumption, and your only goal is to produce as much as possible as efficiently as possible. You can try to build a society based on John Stuarts Mills’ social utilitarianism. It sounds fairly idealistic with its emphasis on doing the greatest material good for the greatest number of people.
But all these systems have a big problem: They have no horizon beyond the material world. They are materialist philosophies that lead to materialist cultures. When it comes to nonmaterial ideals – things like hope, love, or goodness, beauty, etc. – materialist cultures don’t view such things as important, or even as real. They see them as subjective and intangible, and materialists have no use for intangibles. When a culture has no horizon beyond the material world, people themselves get reduced to their material value. Our human dignity is eradicated.
In terms of the Four Levels of Happiness,® cultures rooted in these philosophies thrust people into Level 2. Materialism can’t make sense of Level 3, and it certainly can’t make sense of Level 4. So you wind up living in a culture that has the limited desires of Level 2 (more prestige, more possessions than others, fame for its own sake, power over other people, etc.), as well as all the negative emotions of Level 2 (anger, fear, arrogance, jealousy, etc.). When we talk about “transforming the culture,” these are the sorts of problems we’re trying to fix.
Both the Center for Ethical Leadership and the Magis Institute are addressing these problems, but from different angles and with different audiences. The programs we provide through the Center introduce people to the idea of Level 3 happiness. We show them how to achieve it in their own lives and in their organizations. That’s a message that resonates in every environment, religious or secular. Once you explain the benefits of moving from Level 2 to Level 3 – from egocentric and material success to noble and enduring success – people see it very quickly. They understand it and they want it. When we help people to make that move up to Level 3, we are definitely increasing the amount of hope in the larger culture. We’re also reminding people that Level 4 is out there on the horizon.
Magis is also working to instill hope and transform the culture. We’re doing it by making the reality of God more present in the lives of high school and college students, and eventually with adult audiences as well. We’ve just started a new Faith and Reason Institute, and we’re developing books and curricula that confront materialism and atheism head on. We’re exploring contemporary discoveries in astrophysics, philosophy, psychology, and historical exegesis. In each case, I think we can show a close connection between the perspective of faith and the perspective of reason. Once you see that connection, you realize that the hope I spoke of earlier isn’t irrational or subjective. It’s as real as real can get. It’s the ultimate reality.
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