Does Occupy Hold The Secret To Keller's Plea?

A while back, Tim Keller (click here for a bio) wrote a blogpost that repeated Rodney King's plea that we all get along. Keller wrote this blogpost in the month preceding the 2016 Presidential election as he called for 'civility in the public square.' What Keller was pleading for was what a book by John Inazu called for. Inazu called for a 'confident pluralism' (click here for info on the book). Such pluralism, according to Inazu, would result from people demonstrating to their neighbors virtues such as tolerance, humility, and patience (click here for Keller's blogpost). Keller went on to define those virtues

In making a genuine plea, Keller avoided the mistake that political elites who opposed Donald Trump made: he acknowledge the faults and sins of his own group. This should come as no surprise to those who are familiar with Keller's writings. Keller acknowledged that some of the blame for the lack of public civility rests with his own tribe, his fellow Christians. He shows no interest in blaming any other group. Keller readily acknowledges that during the 1980s and 1990s when Christians had more positions of influence, they showed little interest in creating a confident pluralism where they failed to practice the virtues of tolerance, humility, and patience.

Keller goes on to say that to develop public civility, we must first practice those virtues in our neighborhoods. He also said that churches should be molding their members to practice these virtues in the public square not just for the sake of creating a truly pluralistic society, but to remedy the association that those Christians from the 1980s and 1990s made with the Gospel. Because of their arrogance and intolerance, Christianity was perceived as being a toxic religion--a not so new development in Church history when one considers how the Church has often supported wealth and power despite the suffering for the rest such supported caused.

So far so good for Keller's message about civility in the public square. Keller correctly identifies an important problem that existed then and is with us now. Thus, Keller answered the what question. In addition, Keller points to his fellow believers as partially creating the problem. By doing that, Keller partially answers the who question. And really there is nothing wrong with what he wrote.

But of course there is a problem. The problem lies with what Keller did not say, he did not address the why question. Why have people, including my fellow Christians, worked against a real pluralism that includes civility in the public square. And here, perhaps a lesson from Occupy would help us to do better. For the decision making process in Occupy did not revolve around conquering by winning some majority in order to push one's own interests to the exclusion of the interests of others. Instead, the decision making process practiced in many Occupy meetings revolved around keeping people together by identifying and removing what an individual or group would regard as a deal breaker. We made decisions that 100% of the participants could stand behind.

It's not that we were perfect in how we tried to address the legitimate concerns of member in our groups. I remember from my days with the Global Justice Working Group of Occupy Wall Street, we had to learn how to disagree with one another. But once we did that, we learned how to work out our differences. And the structure of our meetings revolved around making decisions that could either be supported by everyone in the group or avoided any deal breaking positions.

Certainly we can't use the same processes and structures in our nation's political processes that were employed by Occupy. And it is unrealistic in such a large and diverse nation to expect the kind of consensus agreement we used in Occupy. However, the goal of caring for both our own interests and the interests of others in the decision making process so that we can produce as much consensus as possible is a worthy goal that not only contributes to, but requires civility in the public square.
 
Now so far, I have, while praising some of the practices of Occupy, failed to answer the why question that Keller did not address. Why has the land of the free and the home of the brave so miserably failed at sustaining civility in the public square? I believe that if we look at America's two most important institutions, one answer is more than apparent. Those two institution consist of our democratic processes and the free market. The former, perhaps to an inadequate degree, promotes egalitarianism with a one-person, one-vote system. And if we think about democracy as a state of being for the nation, then there should be egalitarianism in terms of how we share society with others. That we should want America to equally belong to all of its citizens rather than allowing America to belong more to some than to others.

But the free market is not about egalitarianism, it is about competing with and defeating others and even making conquests. There is no egalitarianism in the free market because in that market, we have a one-dollar, one-vote dynamic where one is only responsible to advance their own interests. Thus, as one wins, they earn more dollars that, in turn, gives them more power. And to maximize one's profits, one must eliminate at least some of one's competitors. And that will result in gaining even more power that leads to gaining more profits.

So the why question can be answered by answering the following question: Is our democracy more influenced by values promoted by the free market or is our free market influenced more by democratic values? The more our democracy becomes a gateway to conquering our opponents and winning power and control, the more our democracy is influenced by the free market. Similarly, the more we share our wealth rather than accumulate it, the more our free market is influenced by democratic values.

At this point, the why there is such little civility in the public square is answered. That the why has more to do with how the free market influences our democracy more than with how our democracy influences the free market. Our growing wealth disparity supports this point as with wealth disparity comes power disparity. And it's not that Keller's admission about fellow Christians is wrong. It is that such a truth bears less relevance to the problem of our lack of civility in the public square. And that can be seen in how many conservative Christians from the 1980s and 1990s both were strong supporters of the free market and looked at our democratic processes as a way to consolidate power and advance their own agenda only rather than to share power with others as equals and advance their concerns as well.