EQUALITARIANISM IN UTILITOPIA 

Most theologians agree that the humanism to enter the church, which gave rise to liberal theology which in turn gave rise to the secular politics of liberalism, has its roots in the Middle Ages.  It flowered in the Renaissance and was countered by the Reformation.  It re-emerged in the Enlightenment, and was a major influence on many of our nation’s political founders.  The Pilgrims, on the other hand, who arrived much earlier, were bearers of the Reformation.  America is a child of mixed parentage.  But without doubt, humanism, both inside and outside the church, has emerged again as the dominant force.  Humanism’s other identity, rationalism, combined with Christian doctrine to become known as religious liberalism.  Religious liberalism has allowed the rise of moral relativism.  Moral relativism denies there is a moral absolute, that is, that an authoritative truth originating from such as God cannot be determined, and maintains that everything, including truth, is therefore relative.  It says that truth is what is verifiable through rational thinking.  Rational thinking by way of pragmatism says truth is practical.   

It puts man at the center of creation, rather than God, making man the measure of all value; that whatever is worthy is what man deems worthy.  In a socio-political frame it means that day-to-day truth is a matter of opinion, and the big truth is what most people say it is. 

American democracy, with its wide-ranging freedoms, was bolstered on a divine ethos, that is, on the belief in an absolute truth by way of God.  Based on that, our judicial notion of what constitutes a “peer” can therefore only be where there is shared experience based on the same moral basis from which to make interpretations.  Rex Lex, law is king.  But, how is man to interpret law once the lens of Christian perception of the moral basis on which it has rested is removed - how is it to be understood?  Recent court trials are illustrative of how difficult modern men and women find it now to bring in verdicts of guilty in even the most heinous cases of murder.  This is the natural result of moral relativism having replaced absolute values that stem from belief in a particular, personal God who insists on them. 

Our early notions, as a nation, of political equality were also based on the same Godly ethos, but which in the climate of modern liberalism emerges as equalitarianism - everyone equal, everyone the same - regardless of moral commitment. 

Now, what I am leading to as concerns music is the equalitarianism that has come to full bloom in the latter part of the 20th century, the sort I came up against not long ago in one of our modern socialist nations, The Netherlands.  I objected to untrained, inexpert musicians without musical standards being given equal status and the same performance opportunities as skilled and studied musicians.  In an article I was asked by a Dutch publication to write, entitled Politics Versus Excellence, but which was ultimately not published due to its critical nature, I said: 

“It would appear that The Netherlands state, under pressure from certain improvising musicians acting in union, is crumbling to the notion that mere excellence in art is no criteria of value when, if by honoring excellence, the state denies exposure to the work of all artists equally. . .   I would say this presents quite a problem. . .  [I]t appears with this advent of egalitarianism in the arts, the student is being taught a new and alien musical message: develop your politics first.  With this as lesson number one, it is become a social must that a place be made on the stage for any and all who, by working their politics right, wish to ascend there, regardless of qualifications.”

A version of this equalitarianism in America says that the 3-chord guitar player is a musician in the same degree as the orchestral composer.  It minimizes not only the value of talent but also achievement gained from hard study and work.  By way of a skewed sense of piety, it check’s God’s gift, as though to satisfy the Godly warning against being a “respecter of persons.” 

Following the Second World War, a marketing strategy developed, conceived from the manner of wartime production.  An American soldier, member of the Normandy Invasion force, commented on the fighting equipment they had: “It wasn’t as good as what the Germans had, but there was plenty of it.”  A lesson not lost on American pop music producers.  Cheap is easy, easy to find, easy to copy.  Accustom an audience to cheap.  Who needs talent?  Besides, who is to say it isn’t talent?  So it isn’t great, whatever that is.  So what!  People buy it.  That’s all that matters.  This is the totality of mercantile-ism.  Nothing else - absolutely nothing else - matters.  As to what Puritans felt about talent:

“Philanthropy. . .  was an infinitely Puritan and rational response to social conditions that,. . . were dysfunctional to the best use of talent in promoting an efficient division of labor, or hierarchy of callings.  In contrast to charity, the systematic philanthropy of the Puritans lacked sentimentality; it transformed society, inadvertently bringing power and authority to the participants in the emerging world of careers open to talent.”⁵⁶ 

 “We can assume that natural talent is and always has been as great in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania as in Boston and Massachusetts.  It is the values and the moral milieus that make for the differential distribution of accomplishment and fame.  Talent is natural and morally neutral; fame is cultural and normative.”⁵⁷ 

“The Christian consensus gave a basis for people being unique, as made in the image of God, but this has largely been thrown away [in the post-Christian climate].”⁵⁸ 

And each person unique, in the sense that God has a purpose for each individual in his creation.  But this latter day washing away of differences stems from the modern panic that man is nothing.  “Modern man has been told that reason has led to the conclusion that man is a zero,”⁵⁹ non-different from non-man, as Schaeffer characterizes it.  A product of something that came from nothing, simply a combination of elements which will eventually blend back into the material universe, to become something else in time.  His person has no infinitude. 

This is a very lonely feeling.  I used the word “panic” above for a purpose.  It is disturbing to believe that you are a zero.  That you have only one life to live, so you must get something from it when you can, and by any means.  Going with the popular is one way to always have a crowd around you.  That helps.  It gives you an identity.  But, there is still something missing.  In school you are told to express yourself.  A zero especially wants to be something.  Even if we are zeroes we still have feelings.  If there is no objective standard for morals, then there is no objective standard for art.  Everybody likes music.  Why not be a musician.  Pick up an instrument, learn to play a few notes, sing.  Who is to say it is not art, especially if people like it.  Talent is whatever a man says it is.  Making decisions based on qualitative distinctions is being elitist, precisely the charge levelled by the Freeform musicians in The Netherlands  against those who insist on standards of excellence.  I was told several times by socialists there that their political ideology stemmed from the egalitarianism of the 18th century French Revolution, which grew out of the Age of Enlightenment. 

“Rationalism means that man begins from himself and tries to build all the answers on this base, receiving nothing from any other source and specifically refusing any revelation from God.”⁶⁰ 

In music it can be called idiosyncratism - making what is peculiar to the self without historical connection.  It is the sine qua non of “novelty” music, what lies at the root of most “developments” that occur in our pop music industry - by usually unstudied performers whose musical limitations unique to themselves might appear as intentional genius.  This sort of “artistry” that fails to connect by way of history, of the sort that permeates our pop music culture, is much like the finite point of Jean-Paul Sartre: “A finite point has no meaning unless it has an infinite reference point.”⁶¹  Mankind’s history, despite its notorious lapses, makes reference to God.  And its traditions, imperfect as they invariably become, have meaning insofar as they touch, or have touched, upon humankind’s relationship to the Infinite. 

“Unless the particulars have a universal over them, the particulars have no meaning.  Whether a particular is an atom, or a chair, or you, there must be a relationship to something which gives it meaning, or these things all become zero.”⁶² 

It is also naturalism in music.  “But . . . . nature provides no sufficient base for either morals or law.”⁶³ 

Humankind, feeling cut off at the source, that they are just a bunch of disconnected individuals, is desperate.  This human must figure it out for himself, to be a standard unto himself.  The time it takes to tie-in with what has gone on before in history is felt to be a waste.  Plumbers make more than professors, and pop stars more than conservatory graduates.  Life is too short, soon to be over and, zap - nothing!  Get it while you can.  If you got it, sell it - doing whatever comes natural.  Unconcerned about his beginning, unconcerned about his end. 

I am reminded that America is a culture of the unstudied, where maintenance personnel are higher paid than teachers, and waitresses (at least in Los Angeles) receive more in tips than trained musicians do in salary.  This goes beyond even equalitarianism.  It elevates the unstudied above the studied - economically, where it matters most in the capitalist system.  Money is the only distinguishing quality in a putative classless society.  As mentioned above, America is a child of mixed parentage.  We do not necessarily say people are the same.  But we have been trained to see America as the Land of Opportunity for anyone to make money.  Therefore, everyone is assigned the task of making money.  Of course, finding the “opportunity” in that early conception is no longer true.  Such opportunity as existed when that notion first took hold ceased when “free” land was no longer available, and bureaucracy began its rise to power.  But, making money is still Americanism.  If you do not make money, then you are nobody. 

In Europe a poor, but accomplished, artist is regarded as having a worthy occupation.  He is made to feel welcome.  American artists are especially appreciative of that feeling when they arrive there.  Whether or not it earns him a living there does not reflect on his value as a respected, respectable, contributing member of society.  At a point in my own life when I was poor, living in Europe and needing medical care, a doctor upon learning I was a studied musician was glad to treat me without charge.  Imagine that happening for that reason in America. 

Being an accomplished artist is not good enough in America.  In America a person’s worth is based on his usefulness, his utility.  That is shown by his earning power.  A person may be an artist.  But unless it is clear that someone is making practical use of his services, he is not a respectable member of society.  Until he can satisfactorily answer the question as to what he does for a living, beyond being an artist, he is suspect. 

Artists are, for all practical purposes, non-persons in America, unless they earn money.  Money is the measure of value in America.  That, of course, is not a novel charge.  It is virtually a patriotic necessity to be either a job holder or a job provider.  Actually, being a consumer is a mark of good citizenship. In future, it may be the only one.  Making money is Americanism.  It is practical, and practicality is an American virtue.  Whatever is practical is useful.  In Utilitopia everything must be useful.  Whatever is expedient is certainly useful. 

Of course, somewhere in this kind of world - and unremarked even as a footnote - someone in the economic pecking order must work for free.  A man somewhere must get another to work for nothing.  Of course, this goes against how we like to see ourselves.  We like to think we have abolished slavery.  We have not.  Instead of providing food, clothing, and shelter for slaves, we pay them barely what is needed for them to provide their own food, clothing, and shelter - a system equal to that of sharecropping in its grip, where the worker will never get out from under.  We hold this to be enlightened.  Is it not interesting that the Age of Enlightenment gave rise to the Industrial Revolution which put women and children for the first time into factories twelve to sixteen hours a working day, and created the first slums in history? The concept that justified such exploitation was called “utilitarianism.” 

Utilitarianism is a doctrine of the Industrial Revolution.  Utilitarianism is 

“the teaching that utility is the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions. . . .  [S]lave owners used the arguments of utilitarianism to plead their cause. . . . [W]hen utilitarianism is made the standard - if there is no absolute standard to judge it by or if the standard existing in the Bible is not courageously applied - then the concept of ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’ is easily manipulated.”⁶⁴ 

Pastors and church boards rely on utilitarianism to not pay musicians for their services, though they pay the maintenance personnel, the electricians, the carpenters, the painters, the secretaries, the various administrative assistants, et al.  Most will also give to anyone needing a handout.  But, being unemployed due to being an accomplished musician is not sufficient grounds for needing a handout.  Not in America.  The pastor’s attitude is that he can always find some musician to work for free.  A principle of utilitarianism, it is pragmatism, i.e., “doing what seems to work without regard for fixed principles of right or wrong,”⁶⁵   Modern China is an example of pragmatism at the state level. 

“Christian values, however, cannot be accepted as a superior utilitarianism, just as a means to an end.”⁶⁶   That is Francis Schaeffer’s opinion, but clearly not in agreement with other Americans. including most pastos.  

Music for Revivalist evangelism is a utility, an expediency shackled to language.  Anything music might do beyond serving up words is not in the Christian interest.  The objection is to say that if the means are not fair, Christian to Christian, then what moral example is being presented for the Christian purpose? 

So this child of mixed parentage does a number on being nobody.  Modern philosophy, by way of scientific rationalism, says you are nobody simply for being an accident of creation.  And capitalist America, by way of Revivalist Protestantism, for which music is an expediency, says you are nobody if you think to make art beyond utilitarian needs.   

There are no stewards in Utilitopia.  All things being equal in Equalitarianism, stewards of what and for whom?  Individualism - success of the individual - is what matters. 

“[W]henever the ideals of equality and democratic individualism (Quakerism) are stressed in a society, ambitious men and natural aristocrats [elite of disparate individuals, not a class] will come to the fore through a series of petty power struggles; they will of necessity have small rather than large ambitions involving power and success rather than great accomplishments and fame . . . When an upper class has no pride in authority and has come to love comfort, and when a society is marked by mobility and small ambition, so an upper class will be marked by the same.  When, on the contrary, a society is marked by the ideals of hierarchy, class authority, and aristocratic social cohesion (Puritanism), ambitious men, both natural and sociological aristocrats [class], men of inherited position and those of achieved position, will tend to be driven to accomplishment and fame and be less likely to rest on power or privilege alone.”⁶⁷ 

This is likely to shape up for culture in our greater society only if responsible stewardship is taken seriously by the Christian [also see CRIMINAL AS ARTIST {Segment 12}]. 

“Equalitarians holding. . . extreme views have tended to believe that men of great leadership capacities, great energies or greatly superior aptitudes are more trouble to society than they are worth.  Lionel Trilling says, ‘. . . all the instincts or necessities of radical democracy are against the superiorness and arbitrariness which often mark great spirits.’  Merle Curti reminds us that in the Jacksonian era in this country, equalitarianism reached such heights that trained personnel in the public service were  considered unnecessary.  ‘The democratic faith further held that no special group might mediate between the common man and the truth, even though trained competence might make the difference between life and death.’  Thus, in the West, even licensing of physicians was lax, because not to be lax was apt to be thought undemocratic.

 “This same impulse may be observed in some of our local political contests, in which voters favor the candidate whose folksy, ungrammatical, thumb-in-suspenders style seems to say that he is not in any respect superior to the average voter, and is perhaps a little inferior.  “Friends, red-necks, suckers, and fellow-hicks,” was Willie Stark’s greeting to the voters.”⁶⁸ 

It is difficult to figure Willie Stark and his kind, who are still firmly around, resulting in the same country as those most remarked on as having founded it:

“One who studies the Pilgrims is impressed by their almost sacred regard for learning.  They had their own printing press in Holland; they established schools wherever they went; they insisted on having highly educated teachers and ministers.  The Mayflower, though barely furnished with the necessities of life, had an abundance of good books.  Bradford’s library alone contained 300 volumes.  If we consider how scarce and expensive books were in 1620, this would equal a library of perhaps 30,000 volumes in our day.  And many another astonishing collection might be found in the log cabins of Plymouth.  Thus, Brewster had over 400 volumes, including 6 philosophical works, 14 books of poetry, 60 histories, 230 religious works, and 54 miscellaneous treatises covering every branch of knowledge.”⁶⁹ 

From Walter Lippman comes the following:

“Our rulers today consist of a random collection of successful men and their wives.  They are to be found in the inner circles of banks and corporations, in the best clubs, in the dominant cliques of trade unions, among the political churchmen, the higher manipulating bosses, the leading professional Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Irish, Germans, Jews, and the grand panjandrums of the secret societies.  They give orders.  They have to be consulted.  They can more or less effectively speak for, and lead some part of, the population.  But none of them is seated on a certain throne, and all of them are forever concerned as to how they may keep from being toppled off.  They do not know how they happen to be where they are, although they often explain what are the secrets of success.  They have been educated to achieve success, but few of them have been educated to exercise power.  Nor do they count with any confidence upon retaining their power, nor of handing it on to their sons.  They live therefore from day to day, they govern by ear.  Their impromptu statements of policy may be obeyed, but nobody seriously regards them as having authority.”⁷⁰ 

Written in 1929, it still speaks today.  The media-made celebrity must now be added to this leadership group  [see Celebrity-Ism]. 

Having a Hit Opinion 

Having an opinion and stating it loudly has long been a characteristic American ideal. 

“Eighteenth-century Philadelphia, as we have seen, was an open society with little of Boston’s intellectual and religious deference to authority.  ‘The poorest labourer upon the shores of the Delaware,’ wrote Jacob Duche, assistant to Richard Peters at Christ Church and St. Peter’s, ‘thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiments in matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar.  Indeed, there is less distinction among the citizens of Philadelphia, than among those of any civilized city in the world.’   And Gottlieb Mittelberger, a visitor to the Pennsylvania German back country in the 1750s, was  horrified at the egalitarian manners he found there.⁷¹

“‘I myself would rather be the humblest cowherd at home than a preacher in Pennsylvania.  They have a saying there: Pennsylvania is heaven for farmers, paradise for artisans, and hell for officials and preachers.’”⁷² 

To which, of course, we can add, that having an opinion is writing a “Hit” song; and stating it loudly needs no further amplification; and equating triteness to, and rewarding it equally to, any of the world’s great achievements is historically demonstrated in grand award-winning ceremononial fooforah. 

Before it became debased into the extreme anti-authoritarian individualism it was to become, the individual freedom the Pilgrims stood for was the “freedom to obey the Word of God.”⁷³