Opinion Living by the rules
Institutional thinking gets a bum rap these days,but it stands between us and our weaknesses
A few years ago,a faculty committee at Harvard produced a report on the purpose of education. The aim of a liberal education the report declared,is to unsettle presumptions,to defamiliarise the familiar,to reveal what is going on beneath and behind appearances,to disorient young people and to help them to find ways to reorient themselves. The report implied an entire way of living. Individuals should learn to think for themselves. They should be sceptical of pre-existing arrangements. They should break free from the way they were raised,examine life from the outside and discover their own values.
This approach is deeply consistent with the individualism of modern culture,with its emphasis on personal inquiry,personal self-discovery and personal happiness. But there is another,older way of living,and it was discussed in a neglected book that came out last summer called On Thinking Institutionally by the political scientist Hugh Heclo.
In this way of living,to borrow an old phrase,we are not defined by what we ask of life. We are defined by what life asks of us. As we go through life,we travel through institutions first family and school,then the institutions of a profession or a craft.
Each of these institutions comes with certain rules and obligations that tell us how to do what were supposed to do. Journalism imposes habits that help reporters keep a mental distance from those they cover. Scientists have obligations to the community of researchers. In the process of absorbing the rules of the institutions we inhabit,we become who we are.
New generations dont invent institutional practices. These practices are passed down and evolve. So the institutionalist has a deep reverence for those who came before and built up the rules that he has temporarily taken delivery of. In taking delivery, Heclo writes,institutionalists see themselves as debtors who owe something,not creditors to whom something is owed.
The rules of a profession or an institution are not like traffic regulations. They are deeply woven into the identity of the people who practice them. A teachers relationship to the craft of teaching,an athletes relationship to her sport,a farmers relation to her land is not an individual choice that can be easily reversed when psychic losses exceed psychic profits. The connection is more like a covenant. There will be many long periods when you put more into your institutions than you get out.
In 2005,Ryne Sandberg was inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. Heclo cites his speech as an example of how people talk when they are defined by their devotion to an institution: I was in awe every time I walked onto the field. Thats respect. I was taught you never,ever disrespect your opponents or your teammates or your organisation or your manager and never,ever your uniform. You make a great play,act like youve done it before; get a big hit,look for the third base coach and get ready to run the bases.
Sandberg motioned to those inducted before him,These guys sitting up here did not pave the way for the rest of us so that players could swing for the fences every time up and forget how to move a runner over to third. Its disrespectful to them,to you and to the game of baseball that we all played growing up.
I thought it worth devoting a column to institutional thinking because I try to keep a list of the people in public life I admire most. Invariably,the people who make that list have subjugated themselves to their profession,social function or institution.
Second,institutional thinking is eroding. Faith in all institutions,including charities,has declined precipitously over the past generation,not only in the US but around the world. Lack of institutional awareness has bred cynicism and undermined habits of behavior. Bankers,for example,used to have a code that made them a bit stodgy and which held them up for ridicule in movies like Mary Poppins. But the bankers code has eroded,and the result was not liberation but self-destruction.
Institutions do all the things that are supposed to be bad. They impede personal exploration. They enforce conformity. But they often save us from our weaknesses and give meaning to life.
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