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Chapter Six: The “Drive to Reform” and Its Discontents
- University of Notre Dame Press
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C S The “Drive to Reform” and Its Discontents S The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was by the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. —G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy A Secular Age offers many lessons, but perhaps the most interesting is one that, ironically, challenges the book’s very title. For in the book, Taylor suggests that the defining characteristic of modern times is not the much152 debated rise of the secular,but the universalization of the drive to Reform— the imperative to take active responsibility for the progressive improvement of the world.All those who live within the orbit of the modern West and its dominant institutions, which are now global in scope, live under the relentless glare of this commanding impulse. However much we fail to satisfy this impulse in practice, however much we manipulate it to suit our respective interests and inner longings, we, as Western modern people, cannot lead our lives without paying homage to it, even when that homage comes indirectly in the form of resistance, evasion, or escape. Believers and unbelievers alike, we cannot avoid the burden of taking responsibility for ourselves or the world. Evidence of this is everywhere. Today, examples abound of people trying to enhance the human condition by reforming social relations on a yet more prosperous, just, sustainable, and peaceable footing. Such examples are at once extraordinary and routine, geographically ubiquitous and historically unique. Consider the armies of the humanitarian, development, public health, refugee, human rights, environmental, educational, and social justice INGOs that today cover the surface of the globe. Think of the cadres of experts, advocates, practitioners, celebrities, and philanthropists who have dedicated themselves to various causes,from ending extreme poverty and global pandemics such as HIV/AIDS to fighting climate change to promoting the rights of indigenous peoples. Their activism is predicated on a powerful and historically distinctive ideal: that we can and should work for the betterment of other humans, even strangers beyond our shores, as well as the welfare of other species and the health of the planet; that neither the natural nor the social and moral condition of humankind is static or determined, but rather subject to our own creative and interventionary powers.1 These are only the most conspicuous of examples. The animating impulse reaches still deeper and is more pervasive. Francis Bacon’s classic formulation of humanitarianism as the“relief of man’s estate”has long functioned as an ideological rationale for modern organizations of all kinds, from universities and hospitals to scientific bodies and international organizations . But it is ontologically constitutive as well, stamped into the DNA of the modern organization itself. Consider the persistent need modern organizations have to articulate their world-reforming aims through The “Drive to Reform” and Its Discontents 153 constitutions, charters, and mission statements, as well as their (and our) persistent desire to monitor their effectiveness in meeting their constitutional aims. Is GDP going up or down? Are malaria rates or childhood obesity rates rising or falling? What about literacy? Maternal mortality? Infant natality? Internal population displacement? Biodiversity? Teen pregnancy ? Violent conflict? Modern organizational structures act in this way as vast accounting mechanisms that, taken together, provide a barometer on how well we are doing and where we are still failing to improve the world. The modern social order is thus organized and legitimated around managing and solving a universe of discrete social problems in the name of improvement and reform. To rework an apt analogy from the sociologist Peter Berger, this imperative to improve the world is the shadow cast by the “sacred canopy” of the modern West upon the entire world. Taylor is right to identify the imperative to Reform as so fundamental . He is also right to diagnose this imperative as riddled with tensions and contradictions. Through the fissures of repeated frustration and failure , in the unbridgeable gaps between our idealizations of the world and the world of actual experience...