Another Independence (4th of July) Weekend Marriage

Posted by jlubans on July 04, 2016

(From the vault #4. This essay first appeared on July 8 2014. Yesterday, July 3, 2016 I was in Augusta, Maine to celebrate the wedding of my niece Mandi to her fiancé, Jay. This posting includes a toast which is entirely fitting to offer Jay and Mandi.)

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Caption: The Statue of Liberty obscured, NYC Harbor, one foggy morning in 2014. Photo by author.

A few days after my essay on “The Un-hierarchy” I was in New York for my granddaughter’s July 4 wedding.
Now, you may be thinking what does a wedding – especially one on a celebration of national independence - have to do with the un-hierarchy. Actually, quite a lot.
One of my recent readings is “The Good of Government” by Roger Scruton. Scruton addresses the mistaken perception that conservatives desire no government; indeed that any and all government is THE problem. While liberals might say “What’s new?” to that, in reality conservatives – when they really think about it – want a good government, one in which all of us are thinking partners, not subservient participants. As I read Scruton, I got the glimmer of a new and fresh kind of toast for the bride and groom at their wedding banquet.
The 4th is more than an opportunity to blow a finger off with fireworks; it is a heartfelt celebration of American independence and the astonishing philosophy behind it: We are a society of free individuals. What does this mean? What does it mean to be a free society? “People become free individuals by learning to take responsibility for their actions.” And, good government and good organizations and good marriages develop through this mutual accountability.
When we hold each other accountable – to the best of our ability – then we have a free and growing, mutually respectful, relationship.
Scruton: “When, in the first impulse of affection, one person joins in friendship with another, there arises immediately between them a relation of accountability. They promise things to each other. They become bound in a web of mutual obligations. If one harms the other, there is a “calling to account,” and the relation is jeopardized until an apology is offered. They plan things, sharing their reasons, their hopes, their praise, and their blame. In everything they do they make themselves accountable. If this relation of accountability fails to emerge, then what might have been friendship becomes, instead, a form of exploitation.”
So then, what is a hierarchy? I suspect the hierarchy is less about individual freedom and mutual accountability than it is about top down domination. However you dress it up or down, the autocratic boss is regent. And, as individual freedoms must of necessity be limited in a regency, we may wind up with an organization based on exploitation rather than a mutually accountable partnership. Scruton explains the leader in good government is bounded by those governed, one is not subordinate to the other. In our complex world, we relinquish necessarily some responsibilities to the good leader (the unboss), but we never surrender our right to self-government and self-responsibility. Hierarchies function on domination, on creating a dependent class; the un-hierarchy thrives on partnership, collaboration, and individual acceptance of responsibility and a wide distribution of mutual respect. I can hardly think of a better definition of a marriage between two free and abundantly affectionate individuals.
So, there was my toast of to Tom and Te’sa on the day we celebrate a wedding and freedom for a nation and its individuals.
And, now, felicitously, that’s also my toast to Mandi and Jay, wife and husband on July 3, 2016.

@2014, 2016 Copyright John Lubans
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