Summary: Superhero films dominate theater box offices. They also show our greatest weakness. We are a powerful citizenry broken into powerless individuals who see collective action as futile, or even corrupting. We have a second set of myths that show the path to a better future for America. Let’s take this first step to recovering our strength.
“People need stories, more than bread, itself. They teach us how to live, and why. …Stories show us how to win.”
— The Master Storyteller in HBO’s wonderful Arabian Nights.
.
Larger than life heroes play a big role in our history. There was James Fenimore Cooper’s frontier hero Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo (The Leatherstocking Tales
Some are billionaire Jesus figures who sacrifice themselves for the peons, such as Green Arrow and Batman. At the other extreme are actual gods like Superman, Wonder Woman, and Thor. They operate outside the system alone or in small groups, often despite orders of their incompetent organizations — or fighting it after it turns against them (as in the Bourne and Mission Impossible films). We see all these elements in Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Somehow all this has become neurotic, making us weak. It’s always High Noon
They show how we have lost the ability to take collective action, or even see that as our greatest strength.
Another and better vision
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
— Joan Didion, The White Album(1979).
(1979).Until now fantasies of individual empowerment existed in creative tension with our true greatest strength — collective action. Teamwork and powerful institutions protect us in both our history and legends.
- GI Joe fought COBRA,
- UNCLE fought Thrush,
- SHIELD fought high-tech organized crime,
- Ian Fleming’s British Secret Service fought SPECTRE,
- In science fiction Heinlein’s Space Patrol
kept the peace, EE Smith’s Triplanetary
fought evil aliens, and Star Trek’s Federation brought civilization to the stars.
kept the peace, EE Smith’s 
fought evil aliens, and Star Trek’s Federation brought civilization to the stars.These were bigger versions of the organizations that built America: abolitionist societies, wagon trains, cattle drives, Franklin’s Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire (our first property insurance company), the Boy Scouts of America, the unions that built the middle class, progressive groups fighting for clean food and water, and for civil rights for Blacks, women, and gays.
How did these visions of collective action fall from our imagination?
When it went sour
During the 1960’s and 1970’s we became alienated from our institutions. Organizations which should have led us into the future, like NASA, failed us. Organizations that should have protected us, like the FBI and CIA, were shown to be criminal oppressors. Institutions which we admired, like the military, displayed gross incompetence in Vietnam.
Our response was not reform, at whatever cost and effort. Instead we retreated into fantasy. We exult in our individualism while our social cohesion frays — wrecking our ability to work together. The popularity of libertarianism is an extreme example of this (see this, one of the best web posts ever, for a rebuttal of this pernicious ideology).
A better path to the future
“Myth supplies models for human behavior, and gives meaning and value to life.”
— Mircea Eliade in Myth and Reality (Religious Traditions of the World)(1963).
(1963).The 99% have numbers and great resources, against which as individuals we are helpless. As the Founders knew, only collective action makes us powerful. But instead we’re fed dreams of power as individuals, our “opiates of the masses“. As children we read comic books. As adults we are fed follies like those described by Charles A. Beard in “The Myth of Rugged American Individualism“ (Harper’s, December 1931) — and its more recent repackaging by Ayn Rand telling us to become Objectivist Übermensch.
So we dream of either being superheroes, or having superheroes fix our problems. Neither paint visions of a heroic future in which teams reform America. These seduce us from the real path to successful self-government, through the difficult work of organizing ourselves.
We saw this self-crippling in the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements. Their members chose not to select leaders. Instead the Tea Party became GOP shock troops and the OWS became street festivals.
As individuals we are dust in the wind. The first step to gaining political power is organization — from School Boards to Congress, from the Pilgrims to the movements of tomorrow. That means selecting leaders, giving them authority and holding them responsible. Our forefathers did this well; it’s how they built America. It was neither easy nor fast.
- In May 1764 Samuel Adams took his first steps to end British rule in America (see here for details). That same year a small group of people in Boston formed the first of the Committees of Correspondence. The Revolution ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
- In 1774 Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush founded America’s first anti-slavery society. In 1868 we ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. In the mid-1960′s the great Civil Rights legislation ended the government-sponsored oppression of Blacks.
We can do equally great deeds in the future. We need no new myths to do so. The old ones remain potent; when we wish to act we will find them as inspiring as they were for our forefathers. Today we lack only the will to put aside fantasies and act together as citizens.
For More Information
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about heroes, about reforming America: steps to new politics, and especially these…
- The problem with America lies in our choice of heroes.
- Robocop is not a good role model for the youth of Detroit.
- We want heroes, not leaders. When that changes it will become possible to reform America.
- Hollywood’s dream machine gives us the Leader we yearn for.
- Are our film heroes leading us to the future, or signaling despair?
- Captain America: the Winter Soldier – high-quality indoctrination for sheep.
- Why don’t our dreams of a better world inspire us to act?
“Their members chose not to select leaders.”
Is there good reason to believe that in conflicts between people organized into hierarchies and those organized as networks, the hierarchies always triumph?
The obvious contemporary examples would be terrorist organizations and Anonymous. They can deliver disruption; but I wonder if there are any examples in history of networks overcoming hierarchies in constructive ways?
If there are none, I would find that depressing… but a necessary truth to know, if truth it is.
Coises,
I too would be interested to see examples of networks defeating groups with leadership structures (I’m not fond of “hierarchy” in this context).
“obvious contemporary examples would be terrorist organizations and Anonymous.”
Most large powerful terrorist organizations have leadership structures. I don’t consider Anonymous an effective political or social agent.
“If there are none, I would find that depressing”
Why? I don’t share modern romanticism about leaderless groups. IMO it’s a characteristic of pawns. It is one of the characteristics that make them pawns.
It is perhaps a lack of experience or imagination on my part… I can’t picture a group of politically significant size that can have chosen leaders without being a hierarchy. Even networks have de facto leaders, in the sense that some people are more respected and receive more attention and consideration, usually because they have been around longer and/or have done more of the work than most. Once you choose leaders, though… you’re creating “authority” in the de jure sense; and I can’t see how that covers more than a few dozen people without turning into “the leaders confer authority on the regional committees, who in turn recognize the local committees”… and most of the actual people are once again sheep valued primarily for their allegiance and submission to the hierarchy.
It always seemed unfortunate to me that the imbalance of power between workers and employers was addressed by creating unions as another power structure to oppose employers, leaving individuals just as powerless as ever. A real solution would have been figuring out how to restructure things so that individual workers don’t need their jobs any more (or less) than their employers need them. A difficult proposition, I grant you.
The thing about leaderless, non-hierarchical groups is that they actually do have hierarchies and leaders. That is a inherent characteristic of social animals. The no-leader ideology does not in effect remove leaders, but makes them invisible and immune to challenge. It also makes the process by which they are elected opaque, and for most people subconcious. It makes leader selection have no relevance to the policies they intend to enact in the group.
With friendship groups, the closest analogue, that is not usually an issue. The groups are small enough and the group does not control that much resources. With thousands of people you are likely to see a groups of few dozen interconncted people runnign the show, but they can not be challenged because they are not the leaders, and God help you should you point out their leadership position.
Tony,
“The no-leader ideology does not in effect remove leaders, but makes them invisible and immune to challenge.”
That’s true, of course, But the explicitly no-leader ideology of both the TP and OWS movements made their informal leaders far less effective than in organizations that create formal leadership structures. For example, descriptions of OWS meetings usually include their incredible length, inconclusive nature, and endless bickering.
“The first step in gaining political power is organization..” and the first step in organization is honest conversation.
Is honest conversation possible on the internet?
think,
“the first step in organization is honest conversation.”
That sounds unlikely to me.
“Is honest conversation possible on the internet?”
No more or so than by any other media.
Would be interested in you analysis of why such a “first step” would be unlikely.
My assumption/guess, based to some degree on personal experience, is that we often set down with close friends/associates in some kind of private setting (living room/porch/dorm room/kitchen) and exchange our honest opinions about the ways of the world/our country/our community/our neighborhood etc and how it can be fixed/modified/changed. Such private conversations/gripes may go on for a lifetime without being successful in figuring out how to connect to the larger society, but on rare occasions, such a connection(to a broader environment) may actually take place and some type of organizational structure is born (through such initial conversations).which then has the potential to change things.
Such conversations/activities become the often invisible foundation of an organization, with little official historical record– but aren’t they necessary as a first step?
Think,
Talk is the natural state of humanity, like breathing. A first step means moving beyond talk to action.
Honest talk is not a prerequisite. Willingness to act is.
For more about this see my posts at Reforming America: steps to a new politics. Especially see these:
About taking responsibility, the first step — Everything starts with this.
A third try: The First Step to reforming America — Organizing!
Five steps to fixing America — Things you can do as an individual.
How you can start the campaign to reform America.
Pingback: Enough with the Superheroes: No One is Coming – It’s Up to Us – Centerline Rumble Strip