6 minute read
The Big Ideas - Diplomat with The New York Times
MALKA OLDER, a faculty associate at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, is the author of “The Centenal Cycle” trilogy. (CREDIT: Allana Taranto/Ars Magna)
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Institutions are shared fictions, dependent on a collective suspension of disbelief to make the structure of modern life possible. Society agrees that pieces of printed paper have value, a fiction that lets us avoid the inconveniences of barter. Most of us cede authority to the government and abide by the principle that the declared winner of an election is legitimate, therefore saving ourselves the death, disruption and destruction of armed conflict. Every year on a designated day, part of the world adjusts its clocks to pretend that dawn is one hour earlier than the day before, and this effectively becomes true because enough of us believe it.
These and other institutions — formal organizations, as well as processes and procedures, patterns of behavior, and unwritten social mores — order and standardize our lives, allowing people to work together on a macro scale. But while our ability to believe in shared fictions has its benefits, too much belief can be problematic. Loyalty can veer into unquestioning allegiance as we fixate on the symbolic auras that institutions amass over time. While a shift in belief can be a troubling jolt, threatening an order so ingrained we took it for granted, it’s probably a sign that we should be challenging these systems. Loss of faith is a signal to pause, step back and carefully look at what we believe: Are we upholding an institution because we believe that it serves a legitimate function? Or are we venerating a flawed tradition for its own sake?
As a science fiction writer, part of my job is to reimagine institutions for the future worlds I create. To do this, I peel off layers of embedded assumptions and reverence, and pinpoint what the institutions we live by are supposed to do and how they might do it differently.
Institutions begin as new ideas, often controversial ones that not everyone believes in. If they have enough adherents, they get put into practice. If an institution works, many more people will start to believe in it, and then act accordingly. At some point, the institution becomes “real” in a de facto sense; it simply becomes the way things are done. Hopefully, the establishment of this institution makes things better for most people, but there is a degree of inertia involved too. At some point, the institution passes a legitimacy horizon: It becomes not just the way things are done, but the way things should be done. Some institutions grow even more powerful as they accrete a halo of symbolic value well beyond their actual function. The sports world is full of championship competitions, but the Olympics are different. They have a cultural influence — built on an ancient tradition with only a tenuous resemblance to the modern games, tied to nationalistic fervor and carefully cultivated by the television companies that broadcast the events — that far outweighs the athletic competition involved.
But when the symbolic meaning of something can’t be measured or defined and gets disconnected from its original purpose, our belief in institutions becomes something closer to an unquestioning allegiance. This is why cities are willing to make vast investments in order to host the Olympics, even when those investments are both ethically dubious and unlikely to be profitable by any measure. When we stop critiquing our institutions, they become opportunities for misuse, appropriation and even corruption.
Consider the institution of the American presidency. It started as a new idea: a form of leadership that wasn’t a monarchy. Not everyone believed it would work; many feared that the presidency would eventually transform itself from an elected position into a type of monarchy, which of course was exactly what it was meant to replace.
But George Washington turned down a third term, and America’s nascent democracy stayed independent and kept electing leaders. The presidency clearly existed by this point; to not believe in it would be absurd. And that was when the magic started. After many generations, speeches, election campaigns, official portraits, history books, hagiographies and political caricatures, the presidency became more than its function or its incumbent. It came to embody the country’s growing clout — the president became known as “the most powerful man [sic but not really] in the world.” The presidency took on aspects of democracy and meritocracy, so that, “You could grow up to be president,” became shorthand for anyone being able to do anything.
These days, belief in the presidency doesn’t mean believing the idea will work, or believing that the office exists. Instead, the concept of the presidency encompasses a vague and diverse set of connotations, drawn from half-remembered history lessons and picture books, news montages and Hollywood movies. Exaggerated symbolism obscures the reality of how the institution functions. For decades, our media coverage and common discourse has been about the idea of the presidency, rather than the critical, real-world role it plays in our government. Voters choose a president based on what they think the job is, rather than what it actually requires. That’s why we’ve ended up with candidates who want to be president in order to be thought of as powerful and important, instead of candidates who want to do a job in the government that makes the country better.
The monarchy is another example. What started as a validation of military might was exaggerated into a tradition of divine right and inherited nobility, until a combination of particularly awful incumbents, local grievances and the possibility of something different made the institution untenable. This allowed it to be replaced, in some countries, by the presidency.
If our politicians praise democracy while passing bills that make it more difficult to vote, then it’s no wonder that we would start to doubt our most critical institutions. And while that can leave a dangerous opening for apathy and conspiracy theories, it is also a reminder for us to look beyond the glossy trappings of power and tradition, and fix whatever isn’t working.
Losing faith in our institutions is a sign that, at a minimum, we need to reassess the exaggerations of our faith; we probably also need to reassess the institutions themselves. Are we really as democratic as we claim to be? Does what we call our justice system actually enact justice? Does our vaunted economic system do what it claims?
Institutions offer us powerful hope that when we work together we can create abstractions that order and coordinate our efforts, amplify our potential and outlast individuals. But they are a means, not an end. We don’t owe them our belief or our allegiance. Institutions, and the societies they delineate, are ours, to make and remake. Like fiction writers, we control the narrative for our institutions. With critical thinking, imagination and collaboration, we can change them. Our collective responsibility — to ourselves and to future generations — is to make each institution better than the last.
