Radicalism Reconsidered

Peoples and nations have only just begun to awaken from their long intoxication with ideology. Several of my friends from the former Soviet Union have used the parable of Procrustes’s^[1] bed to describe the domination and victimization of people by ideology. When we pause to think of the enormous sacrifice and the toll of human suffering that have been the price of attachment to ideology, it is clear that the search for integrating principles must be conducted with great caution. This search cannot be transcendent but must be entirely human in scale, directed at our inner lives. For the essence of our quest is the recovery and revival of the totality and unity of human experience that are being so disastrously eroded by accelerating fragmentation.

In an interview published in the Soka Gakkai’s daily newspaper, the Seikyo Shimbun, pioneer researcher in psychopharmacology Dr. Joel Elkes astutely observed: “Healing is a restoration to the whole. …The words healing, whole, and holy all derive from the same root. To be holy is to be complete, connected as a person and with other persons, connected with the planet. Pain is a signal that the part has become loose from the whole.”^[2] This observation applies not just to physiological pain but to all that ails our contemporary civilization, whose fundamental pathogenesis can be found in the breakdown of human wholeness.

It has been some time since expressions such as “the totality of humanity” have ceased to summon a vivid image to our minds. “Human wholeness” might be conceived as a generic term embracing our potential for wisdom (homo sapiens), our entrepreneurial skills (homo economicus), our ability to work transformations (homo faber), or our playfulness (homo ludens). But this is little more than an array of definitions and as such is too simplistic to capture the essence of “human wholeness.”

Start With the Sun

In the final chapter of his admonitory work Apocalypse (1976), D. H. Lawrence (1885 1930) repeats his frequent appeal for a restoration of wholeness, delineating the problem with great clarity:

What man most passionately wants is his living wholeness and his living unison, not his own isolated salvation of his “soul.” … What we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections, especially those related to money, and reestablish the living organic connections, with the cosmos, the sun and earth, with mankind and nation and family. Start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen.^[3]

What Lawrence expresses with such poetry has a remarkable parallel in the words of Eduard Heimann (1889–1967), whose macroscopic analyses of social dynamics have invited comparison with Marx and Schumpeter. Heimann advances the idea that the term organic growth can be applied to those modalities of social development in which the wholeness of the human person and the unity of life are left intact: “If we may be permitted for present purposes the use of a dangerous analogy, ‘the organism’ of society lives and evolves, growing and changing while maintaining its identity.”^[4] Needless to say, modern society has drifted far from any semblance of healthy, ideal “organic growth.”

“Human wholeness” refers to that vibrant state of being where we can absorb and embody the immanent rhythms of cosmic life in new patterns of action and activity, and in so doing, give vital meaning to history and traditions. The experience of human wholeness is one of deep fulfillment, enabling us to manifest the qualities such as composure and generosity, tolerance and consideration that have been considered virtues since ancient times. Conversely, people who sever themselves from history and tradition, from others and the cosmos, are fated to an uncontrollable process of degeneration and loss of self, leading to nervous torment, instability, and, finally, madness.

It is sometimes suggested nowadays that Nietzsche’s “last man” is the image of modern humanity, yet the very idea itself is but another aspect of instability and loss of self. The “last man” is anything but history’s victor. He seems inescapably trapped within the “false, inorganic connections, especially those related to money” of which Lawrence warns. If this is the contemporary homo economicus, what a long and sad decline from the independence and dynamism of the original economic man portrayed by Adam Smith! The transformation in this single aspect conveys incontrovertible evidence of human wholeness sundered, as we advance into modernity.

How can we restore wholeness to the human condition without jeopardizing the benefits of modernization, among them the work being done to eliminate hunger and disease? It is my belief that balanced, steady gradualism will allow us to rein in the terrible momentum of disintegration and develop new principles of integration. Such an approach may strike some as circuitous, but in the long run it represents the most direct and fundamental way to provide lasting solutions for the ills of our age. As we take on the challenge of this daunting task, there are a number of points to consider, the first of which is the importance of the gradualist approach to change.

Case for Gradualism

The year before last, the seventy-year experiment of communism in the Soviet Union culminated in abject failure. Some observers remarked that the Russians had ended the process started by the French Revolution. In other words, the dissolution of the Soviet Union thoroughly undercut attempts to view history as a linear, causal process in which, for example, the bourgeois revolution in France must inevitably lead to a proletariat revolution in Russia. To me, such a diagnosis of the failure of what might be called the “radical rationalist approach to history” is convincing.

The historiographical premise behind that approach is the a priori existence of a blueprint for the rational development and advancement of history; it is a method that judges and seeks to remake reality against a single theoretical model. This approach reflects the unquestioning faith in reason that swept through nineteenth-century intellectual history. As it relates to the question of human wholeness, it exalts the one faculty of reason to the exclusion of all others. It was this mistaken sense of having mastered immutable laws of history that produced the repulsive intolerance and heady arrogance characteristic of so many modern revolutionaries. The sad irony is that most of them were originally motivated by good intentions.

There is a natural relation between rationalism and radicalism. If all events can be understood by rational processes, from which the blueprints for a rationalist utopia can be drawn, theoretically they can be sped up, and the sooner the utopia is realized, the better. Equally “natural” is the quick resort to force in dealing with counterrevolutionary elements who refuse to adopt this utopian vision as their own.

This kind of radicalism does not necessarily have general appeal. Consider, for example, the words of the Kyrgyzstanborn novelist Chingiz Aitmatov (1928–2008), one of the leading lights of contemporary Russian literature. In the introduction to the volume containing the dialogue he and I have carried on over the past several years, Aitmatov has written:

Second, a piece of fatherly advice: revolution is riot. Young people, put no trust in social revolutions! For nations, people and society, it is mass sickness, mass violence, and general catastrophe. We Russians have learned this fully. Seek instead democratic reformation as the way to bloodless evolution and the gradual rebuilding of society. Evolution demands more time and patience, more compromise than revolution. It requires the building and cultivation of happiness, not its forceful establishment. I pray to god that younger generations will learn from our mistakes!^[5]

Interestingly, Aitmatov’s trenchant critique of revolutionary radicalism echoes the charges Edmund Burke and Goethe leveled at Jacobinism.

Not only revolutionary radicalism but any worldview that bases itself on “historical inevitability” fundamentally denies the human capacity to create our own destiny through our own efforts. We must always resist the temptation to treat individual lives or history as mere objective things or facts; their truth can only be known through active, living engagement and participation. To be of real and lasting value, change must be gradual and inspired from within. The application of external, coercive force will always destroy some aspect of our total humanity and compromise the balance and integrity of life.

In this regard, there is considerable validity in the economist Friedrich A. Hayek’s (1899–1992) analogy of a gardener to describe the attitude a true liberal takes toward society. The growth of plant life is both spontaneous and gradual. At most, the gardener can create conditions propitious to growth. In the same way, Hayek urges, we must utilize the “spontaneous forces of society.”^[6]

Coincidentally, the gardener analogy also leads us to consider the need to respect diversity within society. One of the most critical questions today is how, after the fashion of a skilled gardener, we can create a harmonious garden from the manifold human talents and qualities, while respecting the unique and sacrosanct individuality of each person. By adopting an inner-directed and gradualist approach, we can find ways through which the diversity of our experience can become a source of creative energy. The tradition and experience of Americans, I believe, qualify the United States to assume a special mission to demonstrate a pattern for the entire world.

Let me also stress that just as radicalism is fated by its nature to resort to violence and terror, the most potent weapon in the arsenal of the gradualist is dialogue. In Socrates, we see the steadfast commitment to dialogue, to verbal combat from which there is no retreat, and an intensity that is, in some literal sense, “death defying.” Such dialogue can only be sustained by resources of spiritual energy and strength far greater and deeper than will be found among those who so quickly turn to violence.

Discipline and Dialogue

It is only within the open space created by dialogue whether conducted with our neighbors, with history, with nature, or the cosmos that human wholeness can be sustained. The closed silence of an isolated space can only become the site of spiritual suicide. We are not born human in any but a biological sense; we can only learn to know ourselves and others and thus be “trained” in the ways of being human. We do this by immersion in the “ocean of language and dialogue” fed by the springs of cultural tradition.

I am reminded of the beautiful and moving passage in Phaedo in which Socrates teaches his youthful disciples that hatred of language and ideas (misologos) leads to hatred of humanity (misanthropos).^[7] The mistrust of language that gives birth to a misologist is but the inverse of an excessive belief in the power of language. The two are different aspects of the same thing, which is a frailty of spirit unable to cope with the stresses of human proximity brought about by dialogue. Such spiritual weakness causes a person to vacillate between undue trustfulness and suspicion of other people, thus becoming easy prey for the forces of disintegration.

To be worthy of the name dialogue, our efforts for dialogue’s sake must be carried through to the end. To refuse peaceful exchange and choose force is to compromise and give in to human weakness; it is to admit the defeat of the human spirit. Socrates encourages his youthful disciples to train and strengthen themselves spiritually, to maintain hope and self-control, to advance courageously choosing virtue over material wealth, truth over fame.

While we cannot regard modern mass society in terms of the values of ancient Greece, we must not overemphasize the differences between them. In his classic study Public Opinion (1938), Walter Lippmann, for one, repeatedly calls for Socratic dialogue and Socratic individuals as the keys to the more wholesome formation of public opinion.^[8] When
I recently met in Tokyo with President Jack L. Stark, we all agreed fully on the primacy of education among social values. Education, based on open dialogue, is far more than the mere transfer of information and knowledge; it enables us to rise above the confines of our parochial perspectives and passions. Institutes of higher learning are charged with the task of encouraging Socratic world citizens and spearheading the search for new principles for the peaceful integration of our world.

Incidentally, Shakyamuni, who is often mentioned with Socrates as one of the world’s great teachers, spent the last moments of his life exhorting his grieving disciples to engage him in dialogue. To the very end, he also continued to urge them to question him on any subject, as one friend to another.

Character and Human Wholeness

My final point is the central importance of character, another name for human wholeness or completeness. The integrating principles to which I have been referring are not just abstractions but something that must be sought inwardly by people striving to grow in character. It is character that, in the end, holds together the web of integrating forces.

Almost contemporaneous with the establishment of Claremont McKenna College, my mentor in life and second president of the Soka Gakkai, Josei Toda, emerged from a two-year imprisonment by the forces of Japanese militarism to initiate a new humanistic movement in Japan. In his efforts, he always focused on raising people of character, one person at a time, from among the populace. I have many fond memories of this compassionate man, whose love for youth knew no bounds and who encouraged us to be great actors on the stage of life. Indeed, the power of character is like the concentrated energy of an actor who has given himself or herself entirely over to the performance of the part. A person of outstanding character will always, even under
the most difficult circumstances, retain an air of composure, ease, and even humor, like an accomplished actor playing a part. This is nothing other than the achievement of selfmastery or self-control.

Goethe, who was an outstanding stage director in addition to his other talents, responded when asked what he looked for in an actor: “Above all things, whether he had control over himself. For an actor who possesses no self-possession, who cannot appear before a stranger in his most favorable light, has, generally speaking, little talent. His whole profession requires continual self-denial.”^[9] Goethe’s idea of self-control corresponds to the concept of moderation in Platonic philosophy. Self-control is not only an essential quality for actors but is arguably the foremost prerequisite for the development of character.

One of the central teachings of Buddhist philosophy bears directly on the question of character formation. Buddhism classifies the states of life that constitute human experience into Ten Worlds or realms. From the least to the most desirable they are: the world of hell, a condition submerged in suffering; the world of hunger, a state in which body and mind are engulfed in the raging flames of desire; the world of animality, in which one fears the strong and abuses the weak; the world of anger, characterized by the constant compulsion to surpass and dominate others; the world of humanity, a tranquil state marked by the ability to make reasoned judgments; the world of rapture, a state filled with joy; the world of learning, a condition of aspiration to enlightenment; the world of realization, where one perceives unaided the true nature of phenomena; the world of bodhisattvas, a state of compassion in which one seeks to save all people from suffering; and finally the world of Buddhahood, a state of human completeness and perfect freedom.

Within each of these ten states or worlds is likewise to be found the full spectrum of the Ten Worlds. In other words, the state of hell contains within it every state from hell to
Buddhahood. In the Buddhist view, life is never static but is in constant flux, effecting a dynamic, moment-by-moment transformation among the states. The most critical point,
then, is which of these ten states, as they exist in the vibrant flow of life, forms the basis for our own lives? Buddhism offers a way of life centered on the highest states, those of
bodhisattvas and Buddhahood, as an ideal of human existence. Emotions—joy and sorrow, pleasure and anger—are of course the threads from which life’s fabric is woven, and we continue to experience the full span of the Ten Worlds. These experiences, however, can be shaped and directed by the pure and indestructible states of bodhisattvas and Buddhahood. Nichiren, whose Buddhist teaching is the base of our organization, did more than merely preach this doctrine; he lived it, providing a remarkable model for the future. When, for example, he was about to be executed by the iniquitous authorities of the time, he reproached his lamenting disciples saying, “What greater joy could there be?”^[10] After overcoming the greatest trial of his life, he even had sake brought for the soldiers who had been escorting him to his execution.

Because of these qualities, I am confident that Buddhism can deeply affect the formation of character that is the key to the restoration of human wholeness. As a practitioner of Buddhism, it is my hope that, together with our distinguished friends gathered here today, we will set off on a courageous journey in search of those new principles of integration that will determine the fate of humankind in the coming century. I would like to close by quoting a passage from Walt Whitman, whose poetry I have read and loved since my youth.

I see male and female everywhere,
I see the serene brotherhood of philosophs,
I see the constructiveness of my race,
I see the results of the perseverance and industry of my race,
I see ranks, colors, barbarisms, civilizations,
I go among them, I mix indiscriminately,
And I salute all the inhabitants of the earth.^[11]