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A NU BEGINNING TO A BETTER CENTURY by Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon For all of its technical accomplishments, this was not a century to celebrate, except for its passing. The 20th century is done, more or less, and in many ways the best thing we can say is "good riddance!" It was a century obsessed with ideology, with -isms, from communism to fascism to socialism to nationalism, which dominated the intellectual and political agenda through World Wars and genocides and Cold Wars. It was a century that celebrated sweeping claims about historical inevitability, yet saw butchers of literally unparalleled brutality controlling-and often ending-the lives of a majority of the world's population. It was a century that focused on utopian dreams of collective human fulfillment and equity, "accomplished" by means of murder, torture, concentration camps and despotism. For all of its technical accomplishments, this was not a century to celebrate, except for its passing. And yet, as we move to a new era, it is startling to realize how many of these terrible elements are essentially gone. So much of what the 20th century focused on-in fact the very essence of what we thought was important just twenty years ago-seems as passe as the Crusades. No one, outside of China, Cuba and a few leftover political science professors, believes Marxism has any answers for the 21st century. Although still present in the small, dangerous despotism of minor countries, Fascism is not currently a serious threat in the civilized world. The collectivized dream of state-controlled economies, of a unified socialist world, is everywhere in retreat. Even nationalism has taken some lumps of late. So what important ideology remains standing at the beginning of this new millenium? Nothing about history is ever really clear in the short run. But we can safely say that of all the great ideas that have captivated minds through the last hundred years the only one that remains relevant, important, and influential as we enter the 21st century is also the messiest of them all: representative liberal democracy. It is, in essence, an individualistic ideology, tempered by democratic limitations and the human need for community. It is an odd, ancient notion that each of us should be free to pursue our own destiny, to seek success and fulfillment in life in an environment that allows and encourages others to seek the same. It is neither a new ideology, nor an intellectually sexy one. It is, simply, a good one, because at its heart it is interested in the aspirations of the individual human being. There is a fine new movie entitled Bicentennial Man, based on a short story by the great Jewish science fiction writer Isaac Asimov. Ostensibly about the gradual evolution of an individualistic android robot toward humanity, it is in fact a profound celebration of the difficulty and beauty of the human condition. In a life of constant robotic service, he nonetheless seeks humanity. As he becomes increasingly more human, he comes to realize that his essential destiny, his fulfillment is to love-and then, being immortal, to lose those he loves to death. Ultimately he chooses to accept mortality himself, so that he might finally, in death, become fully human. In a sense, his destiny, after a life of 200 years, is to fully value and express the joy and tragedy of being an individual human being. In a way, it should be ours as well. Perhaps the most important element that the popular ideologies of the past century denied was the human need for spiritual fulfillment-for mysticism, for religion. It is no accident that fascism, communism, and socialism alike shared a distinct preference for atheism-even decreed that it should be the prevailing theology of the educational systems. For religion, although communally based, is essentially an act of conscience, of personal belief, of human seeking. In a state-controlled system, the very notion of such seeking is dangerous and destabilizing. In my recent visit for ARZA-World Union to Budapest and Prague I was reminded yet again that communist regimes simply did not tolerate the teaching of religious ideas to teens or young adults. Now that the controls have been gone for close to a decade, there has been an explosion of interest and commitment to religion. Liberal democracy, in contrast, is a system that allows for-even encourages-the personal quest for God and meaning. And it provides a remarkable opportunity as we enter a new age, an opportunity to seek meaning and depth in our own lives. At the beginning of the 20th century Max Weber, the founder of the discipline of sociology and a brilliant thinker, wrote of the tremendous danger he saw in the creeping bureaucratization of life. Larger and larger bureaucracies were being created to meet the needs of the industrialized world, and he saw in them a tendency that was inimical to the needs of human beings, an impersonalization. If everyone was simply a number, no one could achieve any kind of human fulfillment. It is fascinating, almost a hundred years later, to see even the most bureaucratic of institutions coming to realize that their long-term success is predicated on whether they can become warm and responsive to their customers and consumers. It is a cold calculus, perhaps, based on what people really want nowadays and are willing to pay for. But in businesses and service organizations and even in synagogues we are coming to realize that "success" lies in providing people an opportunity to grow and learn in an environment that welcomes and embraces them. This marriage of freedom of opportunity to human warmth is an idea even more ancient than democracy. It was first expressed in the Torah, in the careful arrangement of laws for human interaction that allow for personal freedom tempered by respect for every other person's needs. And it is, I believe, a powerful and rich marriage that can lead to a society-and perhaps, even, a world-that is both caring and good. And then our descendants may be able, at the conclusion of this century, to celebrate a much better hundred years. From the January 2000 Temple Times |
