A generation trained to dismantle but not to build is not
liberated. It remains dependent on the inheritance it condemns and
incapable of replacing it.
I have been turning over a question that sounds simpler than it is:
What should formation actually produce?
It is easy to answer with character, discipline, confidence and
independence. I use those words myself. But I am less satisfied with
qualities that never have to prove themselves. Formation should produce
a human being who can carry weight, do useful work and make part of the
world more dependable than he found it.
That is not what much of our culture is forming now. We have taught a
generation to approach its inheritance as a prosecutor.
Find the defect. Expose the hypocrisy. Identify who was excluded.
Question every assumption. Tear away whatever appears unjust, outdated
or imperfect.
Some of that work is necessary. I do not believe an inheritance
becomes sacred merely because it is old. Every inheritance contains
failure and some institutions protect themselves after they have stopped
serving their purpose. Genuine injustice should be confronted.
But suspicion is not judgment and criticism is not construction. We
can identify what is wrong while remaining helpless to produce anything
better. We can inherit roads, laws, businesses, families, knowledge,
associations and habits of cooperation, then mistake the ability to
dismantle them for proof we could rebuild them.
Usually, we could not.
Demolition can clear a site. It cannot raise a
house.
Criticism Is Not Creation
I understand the appeal of criticism. A builder needs to see cracks
and failing foundations. A society that cannot criticize itself becomes
brittle. A person who cannot admit error cannot improve.
The problem begins when criticism becomes the highest form of
intelligence and dismantling the most admired form of courage. Finding
fault is cheaper than accepting responsibility for the whole. The critic
can demand perfection without choosing among competing goods or
answering for what comes next.
The builder has no such luxury. He must decide what can be saved,
what needs strengthening and what must be replaced. He works with
limited time, incomplete knowledge and stubborn materials. When the
result fails, he cannot retreat into pure intentions. The roof either
holds or it does not.
I keep coming back to that difference. Destruction produces immediate
evidence of power. Remove the statue. Close the institution. Break the
rule. Construction moves slowly. It requires skill before recognition
and maintenance after celebration.
That difference matters. A culture that rewards the spectacle of
demolition will produce more demolition crews. A culture that intends to
survive must form builders.
Opposition Is Not a Self
I have never been convinced that rebellion alone is independence. A
person who defines himself primarily by what he opposes has not yet
developed a self. He remains directed by the very thing he rejects.
If an inherited belief says left, he goes right. If his parents
valued restraint, he celebrates appetite. It can feel free because it
breaks a rule. But it is still borrowed direction. The rejected
authority continues to set the course.
Formation has to build something more substantial. A young person
needs standards he has examined, purposes that can survive disapproval
and commitments that remain after rebellion passes. He must ask not
only, “What am I against?” but “What is worth doing, protecting and
creating?”
That is the next step after the agency I described in Why Boys Need
Formation. Discovering that your choices matter is essential. But
agency is capacity, not direction. The ability to act becomes valuable
only when it is placed in service of something worth building.
Formation Has to Produce
When I use the word formation, I do not mean a polished young man who
sounds virtuous. I mean a person whose internal order becomes visible in
what he can be trusted to carry.
Discipline is not the final product. Neither is confidence,
independence or competence. A thief can be disciplined. A tyrant can be
decisive. A destructive person can possess extraordinary skill.
Ability needs an end.
Formation should produce a person with enough internal order to keep
his word, enough competence to do useful work and enough responsibility
to consider what his actions leave behind. It should create a life that
produces more value than it consumes and strengthens more than it
weakens.
Booker T. Washington understood that competence creates an
independence argument alone cannot supply. A person who can make,
repair, grow or organize something useful gains evidence that his effort
matters and room to act. That is the governing idea behind The
Formation of Competence, Volume IV of the Formation Series.
Work, skill and self-reliance are part of becoming someone others can
depend upon.
That does not require everyone to build the same thing. One builds a
business. Another raises a family, repairs engines, teaches or cares for
the sick. The work varies. The obligation to become constructive does
not.
This is why The
Formation Protocol treats formation as preparation for
responsibility rather than a collection of correct ideas. The test
eventually moves outside the mind. Can you decide well, produce a useful
result and maintain what has been entrusted to you? Can another person
safely place weight on your judgment and work?
Formation must build a person who can answer yes.
Evolution Is Saner Than
Revolution
This is also why I trust evolution more than revolution. Functioning
human arrangements usually contain more knowledge than any one reformer
can see.
A family custom, market practice or local association may perform
several functions at once. Some appear only after the structure
disappears. The distant reformer sees the defect. People within it
understand connections and local conditions the grand plan ignores.
F. A. Hayek’s Nobel lecture,
“The
Pretence of Knowledge”, warned against controlling complex social
processes with knowledge no planner possesses. I read that not as an
argument against reform but as a demand for humility about what we know
and what our intervention may disturb.
Evolutionary reform preserves enough continuity to learn. One step
can be tested before the next is forced, leaving room to correct
consequences. Karl Popper defended this kind of
piecemeal
reform because limited changes can be evaluated and adjusted in ways
utopian reconstruction cannot.
This is not timid reform. It is accountable reform.
Revolution promises a clean beginning. Human beings never receive
one. It inherits the same limited knowledge, imperfect people and
stubborn realities it claimed to sweep away, plus the resulting
damage.
The utopian dream is dangerous because perfection has no working
parts. It has never survived appetite, scarcity or ordinary limits. It
condemns compromise because it has never carried anything heavier than
an idea.
The known next best step is less exciting. It is also more likely to
have legs.
My Presumption Is Liberty
My presumption is liberty and, wherever possible, decentralization.
People closest to a problem possess knowledge distant authorities do
not. They know its people, risks and history. They also bear the
consequences when a decision fails.
Let people live and let live. Allow families, communities, businesses
and voluntary associations to solve problems differently. Let successful
practices spread because they work, not because a central authority
imposed them everywhere.
Uniformity is not the same as order. Sometimes it is merely the
visible shape of concentrated power.
Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel-winning work on
polycentric
governance showed that people can organize successfully around
shared problems without relying on a single centralized solution.
Decentralization gives failure boundaries. When one community or
organization errs, damage can remain limited and others can learn. A
centralized error travels farther. The greater the power to impose one
answer, the greater the cost when it is wrong.
This is where formation and liberty meet for me. A decentralized
society depends on people who govern themselves, honor agreements,
accept consequences and cooperate without constant supervision. If
people cannot carry responsibility, centralized control will present
itself as the answer to the disorder they create.
Live and let live is not moral indifference. It is a presumption
against coercion. Disagreement alone does not justify force and human
variety is not a problem waiting for a national solution.
Injustice Still Requires
Action
None of this lets us hide behind prudence when someone is being
wronged. Some arrangements inflict real injustice, deny basic liberty or
protect direct harm. When that is true, action should be taken.
The question is not whether to act. The question is how to act
without replacing one injustice with another.
Begin with what is known. Stop the immediate harm. Protect the person
being wronged. Restore the liberty being denied. Take the next workable
step and watch what it produces. Preserve the ability to correct course
when new facts appear.
That will not satisfy the person who demands perfection before
accepting improvement. But refusing a real gain because it does not
deliver utopia is vanity paid for by people who must continue living
with injustice.
Urgency does not make every remedy wise. Good intentions do not
supply missing knowledge or erase consequences. Will the remedy reduce
the harm? What function will be lost? Who carries the cost? What if the
prediction is wrong? Can the decision be reversed?
True injustice may justify rapid action. It does not justify
pretending that good intentions can turn an untested dream into a
working replacement.
Preserve, Repair or Replace
The framework I find most useful is simple: preserve, repair or
replace.
Preserve what works. Maintenance is not glamorous, but every durable
life and institution depends upon it. Some inheritances have survived
because generations tested them against realities we have not yet
encountered.
Repair what can be repaired. A failing part does not always condemn
the whole. Repair respects the value already present and the possibility
of improvement.
Replace what cannot be repaired. No arrangement deserves immortality.
When it no longer performs its function, causes serious harm or a better
working alternative exists, loyalty to the old becomes
sentimentality.
But replacement carries a burden criticism does not. What purpose did
the old structure serve? Can the new arrangement serve it? Has it worked
outside the imagination of its advocates? Who will maintain it? What
happens to people who depended on the old structure?
Those are not the questions of a coward afraid of change. They are
the responsibilities of anyone who claims the authority to rebuild
another person’s world.
Build Close to the Ground
The older I get, the less impressed I am by declarations that carry
no weight. Most worthwhile construction begins close to the ground.
Build a self that is more than appetites, grievances and reactions.
Build habits that survive inconvenience. Build judgment through
decisions with real consequences and competence through work that can
fail outside the protection of applause.
Build useful things. Repair the fence. Start the business. Teach the
child. Improve the process. Keep the promise. Care for the inconvenient
person. Maintain what everyone notices only when it stops working.
Adults forming young people should remember that construction cannot
be learned through discussion alone. Young people need real work,
imperfect materials, limited resources and responsibility for results.
That principle runs through Homeschooling
Boys: More Than a Curriculum, but reaches beyond homeschooling.
People learn to build by carrying something that matters.
Local work teaches humility. The closer we stand to consequences, the
harder it is to pretend slogans are solutions. Repairing a roof,
balancing payroll, raising a child or sustaining an organization teaches
that every decision has costs and good results require cooperation.
That may be one of decentralization’s greatest formative strengths.
It places freedom beside consequence and ideals beside reality.
Can People Depend Upon
What You Built?
This is the question I keep coming back to:
Can other people depend upon what you built?
Can they depend upon your word after the mood changes? Can they
depend upon your work when no one is watching? Can they trust the
bridge, the business, the family, the friendship or the institution
after you move on? Did your reform leave people with something more just
and more workable or merely fewer restraints and more ruins?
A life can attract attention without carrying weight. It can be
expressive, defiant and celebrated while producing almost nothing
another person can safely rely upon. Formation demands more.
It must build a self that is not borrowed from opposition, work that
produces real value and relationships capable of carrying
responsibility. It should prepare people to preserve what is good,
repair what is failing and replace what is truly broken without
confusing destruction with courage.
A culture with enough builders can confront injustice without
consuming itself. It can change without pretending history began this
morning. It can leave room for different people to live differently
while acting decisively when liberty is genuinely violated.
That is what I believe formation must finally do. It must build
something.
And when the work is finished, someone besides the builder should be
able to stand on it.