Independence Is A Habit

Our nation has endured for 247 years, but how much longer will that be the case? How can we set up our lives, each of us, to ensure that we might keep the Republic like our Founders charged us with?

America has celebrated 247 years of independence as an sovereign nation—a feat that was accomplished on the backs of great men with stunning brilliance and willpower. We, as a nation, have persisted through a Civil War, worldwide economic collapse, two World Wars, and countless other conflicts, both internal and external threats alike. Our Founders, concerned with the independence of the individual developed a guide for us to follow in order to preserve rights that are inalienable to all people.

This guide, our Constitution, is not only a series of maxims posited by the Founders as helpful for the functioning of a prosperous nation, it is much more than that. It is our very essence as as American citizens and constituents of the Republic. This cornerstone of freedom set forward an unprecedented list of rights each person was created with and were to be protected from, by law, infringement by any power set against them. The new system of governance was thought to be a paragon of individual autonomy and independence—to live as one felt they ought to within the boundaries given.

How then, after nearly two and a half centuries have we steered far from what they pictured at the outset?

When a nation functions well, we receive the fruits of the labor as its citizens. These fruits, unless invested for the sake of the following generations, will grow rotten and turn the youth rancid. We appear to be seeing the mold growing on the fruit left unsewn in the past. Today, our government, and its citizens, are engaging in habitual secrecy, collusion, scandal, dishonesty, abolition of educational standards, and censoring of rightful political candidates.

Certainly, the Founders knew what ends were at stake when they initiated this new form of government, as is clear in some cautionary statements:

Benjamin Franklin

"I agree to this Constitution… and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."

John Adams

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

George Washington

"It is important... that... those entrusted with its administration... confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department any encroachment upon another.... The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create... a real despotism."

When someone feels healthy, it is never the result of some immediate cause from some remedy; that would be merely symptom reduction. Health comes from habitual action in a direction beneficial to the organism over time. For human beings, health is a habit of proper diet, regular exercise, frequent sunlight exposure, meaningful relationships, and adequate education. Each part can meet the demands and is in line with the whole.

Likewise, governmental health is a habit of transparency, representation, accountability, cooperation, advancement of education, and increasing opportunities of the citizenry. Gatekeeping is minimal, transparency of operational proceedings is apparent, representation of the electorate, cooperation with the citizens toward the advancement of the pursuits of the nation, and honesty when mistakes occur. These are crucial repetitions in a healthy political body.

So then, how have we strayed from the path the Founders intended? How come we promote the patriotism of parties and emotions over the proliferation of righteousness and rationality?

Apathy Toward Politics

Aristotle's Politics outlines that the governing body, the polis, is the highest and all encompassing factor of the varying communities that mankind forms.

"But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good."

To aim at the highest good is a noble task, yet the sentiment surrounding politics in America today does not embody this view in the slightest. Most people see politics as that necessary evil—the thing we are better off leaving out of the conversation if at all possible. Yet, this has not allowed politics to become clearer and more transparent as we, the regular body of citizens, have let it be, but rather the state of politics of the United States have become far worse.

The correlation, not equating to causation, of the disinterest of the regular citizen in political matters and the functioning of the government appears to be negative: the decline in interest of the common man in politics coupled by the increase in disorder of the body of governing representatives. This is likely due to American citizen's trust of the government to do what's right being at a virtual all-time low, right at 20% in May, 2022.

We do not interact with or even care about things we don't trust. That is the purpose of trust, to establish a safety net that would keep us from harm. To mistrust something is to recognize its disposition toward chaos, destruction, and deceit. If most people recognize that about our government, then we have been doing something wrong since we (you and I) are pieces of that composite substance which we call a republic.

On the whole, the habit, and thus the disposition, of Americans tends toward the shying away of political dialogue which has sewn the seeds of conflict.

Why does avoidance breed conflict?

When we avoid conversations, especially difficult ones, with someone important, say a spouse or boss, those individuals continue acting out the presuppositions that are based in a congruent and well-ordered world. To find out that you hold a dissenting opinion about a company process or "favorite" homecooked meal disrupts those presuppositions and opens a vacuum for enmity to seep in.

As you might imagine, the longer you agree with something that is maligned to your actual opinion, you begin to distance the persona from the actual self—the mask you put on in the presence of other people becomes disintegrated from you, which causes you to lose sight of who you are. As Carl Jung said, "everything that acts is actual".

So then, if we allow these things that are disagreeable to us to continue unabridged with the sentiment we hold, then we are

1) disingenuous to ourselves which weakens our will to act rightly and

2) allowing disorder to grow behind the curtain because you failed to confront it outright.

Remember, as you act you create an actuality of yourself that, over time and left unchecked, becomes what you actually believe you are. That true you is still inside somewhere, but you subverted it's control and have allowed others to dictate who you are. Diminishing your Self is concurrently diminishing your will.

This leniency toward the will is exactly what we need to abolish if we are to maintain our Republic and, subsequently, the whole of Western Civilization.

How do we increase our willpower?

William James, the father of American Psychology and the founder of the philosophy of pragmatism, believed "Habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent". James believed rightly that the things we do automatically are some of the most important. This is especially evident when he quotes the Duke of Wellington,

"Habit is a second nature! Habit is ten times nature".

Effecting something ten times more powerful than nature seems like an important and vital task for any activity, but for one orientated toward the highest good, that is the maintenance of the governing body, it essential.

James lays out the what habit is and how crucial it is to proper functioning, which we can apply to both the individual and polis.

Habit is first begotten by some reaction, some automatic push toward or away from some stimuli: think of an infant coming into contact with the first food it dislikes, it spits the food out and pushes away the spoon. This push was an initial involuntary response, but soon comes to be useful as it senses that distasteful mush is near and pushes away the spoon to avoid coming into contact with something undesirable. We continue this process until we have a whole host of reactions that slowly become chosen, when choice is allowed, to choose something more favorable to satisfy a need or (when older) a desire, which is in this case to satiate hunger.

This then becomes a choice to avoid the food because our perception of it is undesirable, thus starts a habit. As children, we are subject to little choice of our own, even when it comes to preferences, but as we grow older we are allowed more freedom as our habits and education of them grow. This is why James says,

"The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation."

He understood the importance of conscious discipline of our willful efforts as they relate to the fortification of virtue. But none of that is helpful if there is not some guide, a "how" to the "why". This is where he outlines four maxims of habit; two from Alexander Bains, a Scottish philosopher, and two of his own additions, culminating in a practical guide to forming beneficial habits. Here are James's four maxims:

1) "we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible"

2) "Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life"

3) "Seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain"

4) "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day"

Between stimulus and response, we have an ever present ability to choose. After that initial reaction we can decide whether that was to our benefit or not. That choice is an expression of our will, our free will—the ability to choose what but never whether for there is always a choice in front of us. James, being a pragmatist, believed that it was better to start at some point than no point at all.

So then, let us choose that which counts toward our flourishing rather than our demise. Begin today what has been pushed away for too long, for it is easier to encounter hardship when we have fortified our bulwark prior to the battle, whatever that battle might be.

It is important to note that James believed that attention was synonymous with effort and that habit reduced the conscious effort needed to carry out a task, thus freeing the mind for higher-order tasks; i.e., memorizing the keyboard in order to center your conscious attention on the idea rather than having to continually look at your hands and forgetting the idea that you were trying to write about. This scales up, of course, as communities and larger political bodies form habits as well in order to both regulate themselves and focus on higher order tasks.

What habits are critical for our Republic?

Above all, the proper education of the individual will lead to the conservation and flourishing of any nation. We might be tempted to say that Americans are now more educated than any other generation and thus at the height of our capacity, but that statement is no longer correct.

A very powerful way to assess the state of education is to look at the test scores of students at different point in the last few decades. Luckily, we have that data, but it is tough to look at. According to research gathered by The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized measure used to gauge math and reading abilities. In the 13 year-old population, scores have dropped dramatically since 2012, which was the all-time high since the assessment began in the 1970s.

Learning has taken so bad a hit that it was sent back nearly 50 years and does not appear to be recovering. What could have led to the decline in education that has culminated into the degradation of our political system?

Many ideas circulate around the cause of both these effects, but one appears in both conversations and has a growing body of research which, at a minimum, eludes to the instigation of these effects. That would be smartphones and time spent on social media.

How could smartphone usage impact the functioning of a nation?

During the 2020 election, there were countless claims of social media companies censoring candidates, promoting others, blocking opposing news stories, and other strategies of interference. This is a problem, not only because of the dishonesty and malice but also because our habits have revolved around spending copious amounts of time on social media and distracting ourselves from responsibility and removing ourselves from meaningful connection.

Our smartphones have become dopamine on-demand devices, allowing us to make ourselves "feel good" at any moment. We do this by disconnecting from uncomfortable circumstances, surrounding ourselves with like-minded opinions, and filling our feeds with the material that triggers our "feel good" circuitry. The continual blast of dopamine, a sensorial phenomenon, reduces our higher capacity to will something great. Ironic that it's labeled a "feed".

In a recent newsletter, I spoke of the Selective Avoidance taking place online in America and how that impacts our communication, especially in increasing our proclivity for group-think and demonization of the opposition. The latter in particular is dangerous because when we can no longer set the idea apart from the individual, all dignity is lost because they are lost. If you are the embodiment of an idea, an active agent of the ideology, then you have become the cancer. That exact notion is what led to the myriad catastrophes of the 20th Century.

All of this culminates into the escape from reality. When things get hard, modern man loves to slip into the little virtual hole he's built himself—isolated on an island of pleasure. No calls of greatness are answered when we cannot hear the knocks of necessity.

Keeping the Republic

Examining the lack of willpower in our society, the dependence on bread alone, means that we should do our part to see what we might do advance ourselves beyond the immediate. The maxims laid out by William James gives us an idea of what that might look like, but we must understand what we are aiming toward. Aiming at a whim is as unhelpful and potentially more dangerous than what we are currently doing.

To make a habit of independence, we must first start with ourselves. Educating ourselves begins by reading our nation's founding documents: the Constitution and The Bible. They are our cornerstone—our legacy depends on our familiarity of both. Without these frameworks, we cannot begin to know the house we live in.

Healthy nations are run on a habit of maximal education. It is crucial that we educate ourselves to determine where we need to go; as individuals and as a nation.

Reading is not enough, however. It is imperative that we enter into a dialogue about hot-button topics and contentious issues. It is not for the sake of winning arguments, but for the sake of bettering the function of our political system now and for those several generations from now.

Like a car that's run out of oil, we have run out of willpower to endure virtuously in hard discussions. Instead of changing the oil regularly and ensuring it is high quality, we have let it leak and burn off slowly. We insist that we just need more gas.

Regular maintenance demands that we know what the thing is—to know how to fix a human problem, we must know what a human is. It also is necessary for us to know enough about it so we don't get duped at the shop. Few things are worse than getting taken for a fool and having to pay for your ignorance; although that is what has happened.

I would like nothing more than to continue to make assertions about what we are, but that would take us far off-track; another article will make assertions of that kind.

Censorship is the antitheses to the well-being of the nation. Unfortunately, we have endured a great deal of censorship through the last few decades and it is only becoming more overt which is why we have begun to notice. Exposing the fraud, negligence, greed, and ignorance begins through education and the proper order and the will to speak what is true.

"For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed." John 3: 20

Bringing light, illuminating the darkness of ignorance, is the greatest thing we could do for our republic. Continuing to ask questions, push for transparency, and elevate the maximal education of all rather than call for the equity of ignorance—these are all things that each can take part in every day. It is favorable for everyone that you become as educated as you can manage to keep the republic.

Thank you for Reaching for More!

See you soon,

Devan Rohrich