The Problem of Conformistic Avoidance

Pope Francis recently addressed a conference in Trieste, Italy, on the theme, “At the Heart of Democracy.” He began by invoking Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo’s definition of democracy: “that civil order in which all social, legal, and economic forces . . . cooperate proportionally for the common good, ultimately benefiting the lower classes predominantly.” Francis then wryly comments, “In today’s world, democracy—let’s be honest—is not in good health.” He urges us to “think about the crisis of democracy as a wounded heart” because it limits the participation of some citizens, particularly “the poor, the unborn, people who are vulnerable, the sick, children, women, young people and the elderly.”

What is needed, he argued, is not just access to the ballot box, but real consideration of the voices and concerns of all people. This requires that citizens be “trained” in democracy to create the conditions that empower everyone to “express themselves and participate.” At the root of all these problems, Francis finds indifference: “Indifference is a cancer of democracy, a non-participation.” The “healed heart” of democracy is achieved with the equal participation of every person, for “democracy always requires the transition from partisanship to participation.” For this reason, “fraternity” and “political love” are the solution to polarization, for they enable people to move beyond divisive special interests and seek a true common good.

There is no doubt that Francis’s analysis resonates with Americans this election season, whose experience of democracy conjures images of partisan division and discontent. What I would like to consider, though, is how it also resonates with a little noted but brilliant insight of a papal predecessor, Karol Wojtyła. In Wojtyła’s analysis of beliefs that undermine the common good, he makes a seemingly incidental reference to a phenomenon which he labels “conformistic avoidance.” I will show how this notion perfectly captures the dysfunctional tenor of contemporary political society.

Interestingly, Wojtyła defines this phenomenon as a rejection of participation; but his use of that term has more profound implications than what we—including Pope Francis—typically intend. Thus, Wojtyła’s analysis of what participation entails, and how non-participation repudiates the common good, helps us appreciate more fully the nature of the “wounded heart” that plagues the West today. It is also no surprise that Wojtyła’s solution, although couched in different language, is ultimately the same as Pope Francis’: true democracy must arise from a love of neighbor in recognition of our common humanity.

Wojtyła makes this argument in his phenomenological analysis of the human person in Person and Act.[1] Instead of pursuing the metaphysical analysis of human nature typical of the Aristotelian-Thomistic school, Wojtyła starts with the lived experience of human action in order to reveal the essence of personhood. The final chapter is dedicated to one particularly significant kind of action: a person acting “together with others.” While in substantive agreement with those earlier traditions, Wojtyła’s phenomenology is able to reveal new aspects of the social nature of the human being by emphasizing the subjective attitude of the agent and not simply the action accomplished.

The difference is evident in his assertion that social acts are characterized by participation. This is not merely the political participation urged by Francis. Rather, it is a social act that fully embodies the agent’s free choice to act with others for a common good.[2] Such acts manifest, in Wojtyła’s terminology, “transcendence,” the self-determination exercised only by free agents, that is, persons.[3] Wojtyła then argues that lack of participation—lack of freely willing the common good—is the source of social division. I believe this more profound understanding of participation best illuminates the partisanship and division that beset democracy today.

Before considering Wojtyła’s argument, we must first make clear that division is not the same as disagreement. On the contrary, disagreement ought to be seen as one of the positive fruits of democracy. Any attempt to order society to a common good will necessarily involve a multiplicity of opinions about how best to attain that common good. For this reason, any society of rational beings will be characterized primarily as deliberative. That is, because there naturally is disagreement, we just as naturally will join in argument to resolve our differences. John Courtney Murray eloquently makes this point:

The specifying note of political association is its rational deliberative quality, its dependence for its permanent cohesiveness on argument among men. In this it differs from all other forms of association found on earth. . . . Hence the climate of the City is likewise distinctive. It is not feral or familial but forensic.[4]

These ongoing arguments give a community the opportunity to continually re-examine its principles and its laws in light of the common good. A flourishing community, therefore, invites amicable disagreement, by which its assumptions are subject to scrutiny for the sake of progress toward the common good. Indeed, Murray notes that a society breaks down whenever argument is suppressed:

If the public argument dies from disinterest, or subsides into the angry mutterings of polemic, or rises to the shrillness of hysteria, or trails off into positivistic triviality, or gets lost in a morass of semantics, you may be sure that the barbarian is at the gates of the City . . . Barbarism threatens when men cease to live together according to reason . . . Conversation becomes merely quarrelsome or querulous. Civility dies with the death of the dialogue.[5]

If Murray is correct, the “arguments” found in contemporary media are in reality a siren beckoning barbarians to conquest. This is a remarkably prescient description of our tribulations from a thinker who was so sanguine about the “American proposition.” What Murray makes clear, though, is that our dividedness is not due to simple disagreement; rather, our dividedness is caused by our refusal to engage in argument, our refusal to be rationally human.

This is where Wojtyła’s idea of participation is instructive, for it explains how we can disagree without falling into division. The most important aspect of human action for Wojtyła is that is manifests our agency, our rational ability to determine not only what we do, but who we are as unique and unrepeatable persons by means of our free choices.[6] In the truly social action worthy of “participation,” we retain this personal agency in choosing to act together with others in pursuit of a common good. Wojtyła is clear that not all communal activities embody this participation; for example, a chain gang might be working at the same time and in the same place, but there is no subjective commitment to be with the others for the sake of a common good. In participation, by contrast, I give myself to others for the sake of a goal that is not purely my own. It is this capacity to make a gift of one’s own agency that most fully manifests personal transcendence and so fulfills our need for communion through participation.

Note, though, that it is often impossible to determine the person’s attitude simply from external behavior: groups acting together all look more or less united, as in the case of the chain gang. This is why a phenomenological analysis of personal experience is required to reveal the purely subjective aspect of commitment. Accordingly, Wojtyła explores various attitudes persons might have toward others in social actions. This allows him to distinguish participation from those attitudes which impede communion with others. He identifies two “authentic attitudes” and two “non-authentic attitudes.”[7]

The most fundamental authentic attitude is solidarity, which he describes as the readiness to accept one’s responsibilities as a member of a community. Solidarity leads us not only to fulfill our communal duties, but to do so for the sake of the common good. Thus, one is disposing oneself to exist for the good of the community. This requires that we subordinate our own desires and opinions to those of the community. Wojtyła’s point is that without an attitude of solidarity a society might materially function (at least for a time), but it will never be humanly fulfilling because it lacks the personal and spiritual commitment that gives life meaning.

As a corollary to solidarity, Wojtyła describes the attitude of opposition. Opposition is not a rejection of solidarity because it is not a rejection of the need to work for the common good. Rather, opposition recognizes that there can be disagreement about a society’s approach to the common good. Opposition is therefore an attitude of constructive criticism that encourages a society to a more adequate vision. Murray’s description of society as forensic relies on just such an attitude. For this reason, all who are dedicated to the common good ought to welcome opposition, for it is the crucible through which all flourishing societies must pass.

In contrast to these authentic attitudes are attitudes lacking in participation, that is, attitudes deprived of a transcendent commitment to the common good. These non-authentic attitudes impede human fulfillment in communion because they are anti-personalistic caricatures of solidarity and opposition: conformism and avoidance. Where solidarity is a commitment to dedicate oneself to the common good, conformism is simply going along with the customs of society. Instead of giving oneself to others, the person is utterly passive. From the outside, the person might appear to be acting for the common good, but there is no subjective commitment to other people. This lack of commitment reflects an underlying individualism that prioritizes self-interest over the common good. As a result, conformism leads to mere performative uniformity, not the spiritual unity we need. In the long run, conformism tends to the dissolution of society because individuals seek their own interests in place of a life of common fulfillment.

Avoidance is essentially an attitude of opposition deprived of participation. Where opposition is disagreement for the sake of the common good, avoidance is an individualistic attitude of disagreement without reference to the common good. This is again reflective of an underlying individualism, for the person disagrees with others on the basis of purely private expectations. But to privilege personal interests over the common good means that the person essentially ostracizes himself from the communal enterprise. This selfish rejection of the common good self-defeating, for the personal drive for truth and love require participation in the community.

Now we come to Wojtyła’s most intriguing insight. After presenting these non-authentic attitudes, Wojtyła notes, almost as an afterthought and without explication, “At many points, the attitude of ‘avoidance’ coincides with the attitude of ‘conformism,’ not to mention the fact that sometimes there can occur something of a ‘conformistic avoidance.’”[8] While Wojtyła does not tell us what conformistic avoidance would look like, I think it is precisely this attitude that ails democracies most severely today. To test this hypothesis, let us construct a likely description of conformistic avoidance.

First, as conformistic, the person would be passively adopting the opinions of others. They would not exercise any real agency, but instead simply be informed by values given to him by a group. This conformism, because it lacks rational agency, is indifferent to the true and the good. Second, as avoidance, these values would not reflect any orientation to the common good, but would reflect insistent personal desires. When combined, one gets groups of people who reflexively represent special interests and who can only see those outside the group as threats to their own aspirations.

It is clear that a society in which conformistic avoidance predominates would be unable to engage in meaningful argument, since there is no shared rational order. It follows that that society ineluctably would fall into partisan division because people define themselves in terms of fragmenting identities and interests. Under these conditions, democracy cannot be a forum for deliberation and compromise, but is instead an arena for combat in which victory for one entails the defeat of the other. It is a society with a deeply wounded heart, for it is a society based on a thirst for power which effaces the human dignity that accrues to people in light of truth and love.

It might be of small comfort to recognize that this eventuality is not a new concern for democracies. The authors of The Federalist Papers consciously aimed to mitigate the effects of factions on the nascent republic.[9] Their trust that Americans would be united in the give-and-take of solidarity and opposition has been validated—for the most part, but with some notable breaking points. But that participative ethos of former generations has clearly given way to a conformistic avoidance in which balkanized special interests alienate citizens from one another. This is why many claim democracy does not work whenever the results are simply not what they would have preferred.

Ironically, this broken condition is evident in how we use the word “politics.” In my experience, politics is now understood to refer to the operations of the state, the functioning of the government whose job is to mediate between interests and claims. Sadly, government is now seen to be the one thing we all have in common. But for the Western tradition, politics is not primarily about the government. Rather, it is about the people coming together for the common good.[10] However, when the common interests of the united people are disintegrated into antagonistic special interests, political argument inevitably becomes political division. Because political division leads the state to act as the referee who metes out favors to competing sides, public attention is inordinately focused on the state. By contrast, if we focus our attention not on government but on our neighbor, our coworker, the people with whom we share the roads and shops, we can rediscover the unity of our shared humanity, a shared personal common good. By fostering participation in terms of mutual gift to others, government would recede to its natural role as servant of the people acting for the common benefit of all.

Both Francis and Wojtyła clearly indicate what we must do to realize the only viable solution to political division. Francis calls for fraternity and political love; Wojtyła calls for an attitude of participation which unites all people no matter what groups they might identify with. Wojtyła does acknowledge that it is natural for each person to participate in several specific communities, and to hold some interests closer to the heart than others. Nevertheless, he insists that beneath all these differences is our participation in the most comprehensive community: humanity. As a human being, I am a neighbor to all humans. Wojtyła comments, “The ability to participate in the very humanity of every man constitutes the core of all participation and conditions the personalistic vale of all acting and existing ‘together with others.’”[11]

In other words, prior to any special interest or identitarian group, we must recognize the Gospel commandment to love all persons. Thus, participation is not only a political act, it is the most fundamental moral action a person must take. To see all people as neighbors makes conformistic avoidance impossible because we seek their welfare, not their subjugation. Freed from conformistic avoidance, each person can participate in the respectful dialogue that is the lived experience of the common good for which we were created.

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