Decoration Day St Thomas, Ontario (1959)*
Week 3: Chapter 8
Key points:
- Leo XIII's vision of a good social order is one based primarily on the family and the 'small platoons' of civil society
- The state has a role in preserving these societies, but must be careful not to undermine them
- The modern Western state is tending to undermine these societies
My synopsis:
This chapter really develops the themes of the previous one: the natural human need for society is primarily satisfied through those associations or societies with a human face: the family, the guild, or the workplace where there is a genuine friendship between employees and employer. Perhaps a quote best expresses this:
Leo's ideal is not State control, with individuals as wardens, but a society built up of societies: a culture truly social, based on human friendships and family ties and alliances. (p.164)
My critical discussion:
Esolen starts the chapter not with an artistic reference this time, but to a vignette from his childhood: a memory of Memorial or Decoration Day. There isn't an exact equivalent in Scotland for this North American practice (see here for details) but it is a near relative of Remembrance Sunday, albeit with an addition of a more personal, intimate tone given by the practice of decorating relatives graves.
The essential point here is that Decoration Day, at least as practised in Esolen's childhood, involved both public elements and also an intimacy. As well as the public acts of commemoration, this was also a 'family' space where genuine emotion for specific individuals, living and dead, could exist.
Esolen in this chapter says rather more perhaps about what the State shouldn't be than what it should be. In this, he is echoing a frequent complaint that the modern state is too powerful: it has taken upon itself functions that rightly belong to other, smaller societies such as the family. The problem with this encroachment is that it depersonalises society: instead of the existence of social spaces which foster friendship, the State replaces them with an impersonal bureaucracy which is not only depersonalising, but inefficient.
From a European viewpoint, it might be wondered whether Esolen says enough about the positive role of the State. The centralisation of State power is a feature of European life since (at least) the Late Middle Ages where the establishment of a strong national monarchy was at least in part justified on the grounds of establishing the rule of law over local, powerful individuals. (A cynic might well point out that the Mafia after all is a small platoon with a human face.) Whatever details remain to be worked out here, however, the general picture within that vignette of Decoration Day is an organic relationship between Church ( the town's ceremonials involve both Protestant and Catholic clergy), State (the commemoration of national sacrifice by legally appointed civil representatives against the background of a national (American) culture), 'guilds' (the associations of civil society such as the American Legion) and the family. It's also worth stressing the individual here, or at least that individual human being, Anthony Esolen. It is his memory of the events that is being relayed here: it is a public, impersonal ritual which has become, through the multiple attachments of the 'small platoons', something meaningful for him.
Questions:
- There is a nostalgic element to Esolen's vision. Does this undermine his argument?
- Is the modern State (in the UK or in your own country) too powerful?
- Is there something oppressive about living in a 'small platoon'? (The synopsis of Iain Crichton Smith's 'The Red Door' captures this thought here.)
*[Details of image: Licensed under Creative Commons from Elgin County Archives. Full details here.]
[That was the last post for this week! I'll be posting on the final chapter (with critical reflection on the book as a whole) starting from 14 September 2015.]
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