Politics and Conscience: Our One Fundamental Task, "Resist irrational momentum of power"

Human relations begin as soon as we are born. We unwittingly act out to those who care for us and develop reactions of which we are equally unaware. For some, this relation to others stays confined to a personal level. But for many, there is the realization that another realm of interactions take place. It remains placed amid the relationship with others, but can also be impersonal. It has to do with the organization of people and the methods of persuasion employed in that effort. In a single word, politics.

For many, this a word fraught with disdain. As many others would agree, "for good reason." Be that as it may, it is possible to regard politics as an inherently shameful enterprise but still find it of interest if only because it deals with humans and their relations among the wealth in resource, location and humanity around us.

The Czech political dissident who later became president, Vaclav Havel, was foremost a writer. One of his essays is an astounding prescription for keeping a clear conscience amid politics and all its mind changing exhortations. I will quote a section of it while leaving the remainder for you the discriminating reader to peruse.

However, there are two anecdotes related in the speech which help to highlight the imperative some feel to question government, corporation and organized faith. One is the choice a person makes to fill this role and the other is the realization of the forms and ubiquity of the forces out to change our conscience.

The first relates to the political status he held as one who disagreed with the government and made his displeasure known through word and deed. He was a dissident. He was known among the West in this role and he describes how visitors would commiserate with his lot and wish for his safety. He responds by saying that he has put himself in that spot by his own actions and if he wanted to feel safer, he could simply stop disagreeing.

The second is his further response to those from the West who appreciate his ideology and pledge their support. He tells them that if there is any place where people need to stand up to disingenuous government, it is in the West.

And with these instructive anecdotes in mind, here is a passage which everyone of us, especially those in the United States, can take to heart.

"It seems to me that all of us, East and West, face one fundamental task from which all else should follow. That task is one of resisting vigilantly, thoughtfully, and attentively, but at the same time with total dedication, at every step and everywhere, the irrational momentum of anonymous, impersonal, and inhuman power - the power of ideologies, systems, apparat, bureaucracy, artificial languages, and political slogans. We must resist its complex and wholly alienating pressure, whether it takes the form of consumption, advertising, repression, technology, or cliche - all of which are the blood brothers of fanaticism and the wellspring of totalitarian thought. We must draw our standards from our natural world, heedless of ridicule, and reaffirm its denied validity. We must honor with the humility of the wise the limits of that natural world and the mystery which lies beyond them, admitting that there is something in the order of being which evidently exceeds all our competence. We must relate to the absolute horizon of our existence which, if we but will, we shall constantly rediscover and experience. We must make values and imperatives the starting point of all our acts, all of our personally attested, openly contemplated, and ideologically uncensored living experience. We must trust the voice of our conscience more than that of all abstract speculations and not invent responsibilities other than the one to which the voice calls us. We must not be ashamed that we are capable of love, friendship, solidarity, sympathy, and tolerance, but just the opposite: we must set these fundamental dimensions of our humanity free from their 'private' exile and accept them as the only genuine starting point of meaningful human community. We must be guided by our own reason and serve the truth under all circumstances as our own essential experience."