The lies we tell ourselves

Some not-fully-formed thoughts on solidarity without proximity, civic renewal without economic renewal, and democracy without participation.

I spent 2024 unintentionally getting sucked into the philanthropic and pseudo-intellectual worlds, both of which seem to specialize in the work of abstraction and fantastical thinking. In these rooms, we express solidarity for the “unseen” working class while attending the Aspen Ideas Festival and Harvard Kennedy Forum (not a joke). We host private “invite-only convenings” on how to strengthen participation in democracy and civic life (also not a joke). And we do lots of “building” — of organizations, of coalitions, of fields (an inordinate amount of fields, really) — without ever using our hands (making Waka proud).

Of course, none of these abstractions or contradictions matter, because very little matters to professional funders or thinkers. (Last year, I got paid to think – and think I did, big thoughts, too! — so I implicate myself in this group). Rarely, if ever, do we have skin in the game for the issues. Rarely, if ever, do we have actual accountability for our bad ideas or bad decisions. And, rarely, if ever, do we have to be in relationship with the people who face the brunt of the consequences of these bad ideas. So, we get to live in a fantasy land where we choose lies that soothe us over truths that challenge us.

What follows is my first “Seedling” piece — some not fully-formed thoughts that may become the basis of more fully-formed essays in the future — on three of the most pernicious lies I think we tell ourselves about democracy, civic life, and community in America. These lies have been eating at me for much of the past year, and this is my initial attempt to put words to my unease. Of course, all of these reflections are works in progress (and, perhaps, a bit provocative, too), so challenge them, build on them, and let me know what you think.

Lie 1: We can have solidarity without proximity.

“... the core problem, Orwell argued, is that most social justice activists, in virtue of being elites, have no robust or organic connection to the people they purport to be championing or representing. They have no idea what ordinary people care about. They have little knowledge of workers’ lifestyles or challenges, to say nothing of their aspirations, preferences and priorities. They don’t know how others think, and as a consequence, don’t perceive how large the distance actually is between themselves and everyone else (the same holds true today).”

-

Musa al-Gharbi

, “Book Review: The Road to Wigan Pier”

Talk of “solidarity” — a relationship of mutual indebtedness within and across groups — seems to be all the rage these days among funder and intellectual types. Almost without exception, the ones touting the need for solidarity have college degrees (often fancy ones!). Almost without exception, they are talking about having solidarity with a multicultural “working class” of Americans without degrees. And, almost without exception, no one from this abstracted working class is in the room for these conversations (and very few are in relationship or community with these funders and intellectuals). It’s as if the working class is better kept at a distance than in proximity. It’s as if solidarity feels better as an abstract concept than a lived practice of mutuality.

But a genuine commitment to solidarity (in any form) requires a genuine commitment to proximity and mutuality. My favorite colloquial definition of solidarity is “to carry each other’s burdens”; this definition alludes to how solidarity is both a physical act and a spiritual act. It requires being in physical proximity — in our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our third places, and our living rooms — with those who are different than us. It also requires a spiritual mutuality: they need to need us, and we need to need them, not just as a one-off, but consistently over time.

Without this sustained proximity and mutuality — talking about solidarity in Aspen and Cambridge but not practicing it in our communities — we’re just engaging in a new type of virtue signaling.

Lie 2: We can have civic renewal without economic renewal.

“If you are dependent on people who do not know you, who control the value of your necessities, you are not free, and you are not safe … those who wish to help communities to survive had better understand that a merely political freedom means little within a totalitarian economy.”

- Wendell Berry, “Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community”

This is one that I’m particularly guilty of. So much of the discourse and the practice around civic renewal in the U.S. implies that we can regenerate communities without shifting our underlying economic structures. It’s as if new civic opportunities can just be sprinkled on top of existing infrastructure — a new third place here, a new program there, a little bit of funding here and there — and, voila!, communities will begin rebuilding themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I think this can help. We’ve all heard stories of the new third place that turns around the neighborhood or the new organization that becomes an anchor for civic life.

But this approach is simply not enough. A local community is fundamentally enmeshed in its local economy, and the nature of that economy will shape the nature of civic life in that community. If workers do not have stable and predictable work, they will face difficulties consistently participating in their communities. If community groups do not have sustainable economic models, they will struggle to remain viable stewards of their communities. If business and housing ownership is concentrated among distant owners, community members will lack agency over their community’s direction.

Our capacity for participation and membership is downstream of our capacity to exercise agency, and our capacity to exercise agency is downstream of our political, socio-cultural, and economic structures.

Lie 3: We can have democracy without participation.

“... careerism tends to undermine democracy by divorcing knowledge from practical experience, devaluing the kind of knowledge that is gained from that experience, and generating social conditions in which ordinary people are not expected to know anything at all. The reign of specialized expertise … is the antithesis of democracy.”

- Christopher Lasch, Revolt of the Elites

Over the past year, I’ve been called a “democracy practitioner.” I’ve been invited to “invite-only convenings” on the future of the “pluralism field” and “democracy space.” I’ve even been asked to share my “expertise” on “connection.”

All of this gives me the heebie-jeebies, not only because I’m no “expert” on “connection” (as my family and friends can attest), but also because I’ve become increasingly skeptical of “spaces” and “fields.” Why? When we create a space or build a field, what we end up doing is professionalizing and specializing a set of activities. And when we professionalize and specialize these activities, we signal to everyone that these activities are only for some people and not for everyone else. For some activities, like medicine, professionalization strikes me as the right approach. I don’t want my neighbor treating my torn ACL. But many other activities — care, civic life, and democracy perhaps chief among them — are better kept as shared, collective responsibilities.

This shared participation is one of the essential ingredients of democracy. Unfortunately, our avenues for participation have narrowed as professionalization, specialization, and technocratization have expanded. The professionalization of care has increasingly made care more bureaucratized and less participatory for family, friends, and neighbors. The professionalization of civic life has shifted the “everyday democracy” responsibilities of community participation and community membership to the domain of nonprofit management. I fear that the professionalization of a democracy “space” — with its “democracy practitioners” and “invite-only convenings” — will unintentionally make democracy an activity that’s only for some people and not for everyone else.

The answer, instead, is to do the very opposite of professionalization and technocratization. It is to, as the infinitely quotable

Pete Davis

recently explained, “promote public participation in governance and civic life” and “do the long-haul work of blurring the line between insiders and outsiders.”

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