Once, when giving a talk to a room full of young men, I told them to consider asking their parents to hold them accountable for what they did on the internet. Guffaws rippled through the crowd. "Our parents? Is he serious?" It wasn't that they couldn't imagine limits being placed on their online activity. (As teenagers, they were only too familiar with limits.) It was the idea of willingly putting themselves under someone else's authority – even the authority of their own parents – that was too bizarre for these young men to consider.
It's not just teens. Very few modern-day Americans are comfortable with authority. We are a nation who cast off the shackles of tyranny and stand tall, as individuals, on our own two feet. American poet and essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson spoke for many when he wrote: “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. … [T]he only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.” Freedom, for most Americans, means nobody tells you what to do.
The problem with romantic individualism like this is that it doesn't work. We need someone to teach us right and wrong, to show us where we need to improve, and when we haven’t had that person, we feel the lack deeply. A man who uses himself as the measure of all things will never grow. As it says in the biblical book of Proverbs, “Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid.” Put bluntly, the only way to improve yourself as an individual is by willingly submitting yourself to a legitimate authority. Submission is the path to freedom.
If this is a contradiction, it's one we accept regularly. When a child obeys his mother's instruction to stay on the playground, he can play without fear. When a soldier obeys his commanding officers, he can perform his duties. When a carpenter learns to work with the grain of the wood instead of against it, he is on his way to becoming a master of his craft.
In Douglas Hofstadter’s book, “Le Ton beau de Marot,” he discusses poets who flourish under very specific limitations, such as a strict rhyme scheme or only using one vowel:
If you do a good job in selecting what you need in order to accommodate your self-imposed constraints, you will appear to be in control of your medium, rather than the reverse.
This is a bit like a great ice-skater, who has become so at one with the constraints under which she is operating that her maneuvers seem for all the world to show the ice who’s boss, rather than the reverse. The truth of the matter is, however, that over many years, it was the ice who showed her who was boss, until finally it had trained her so well that she now knows what to avoid and what to do in order to give an untrained audience the impression that she’s on top. It takes a long apprenticeship to a set of constraints for this apparent reversal – this beautiful sleight of foot – to take effect.
In other words, if an ice skater wants to master the sport, she cannot behave however she wants on the ice. She may want to “be an individual” and follow her own whims, but eventually, the ice will catch up with her. Only by submitting to the constraints – the “authority” – of the ice can she be free to skate well.
Authority and constraints are part of everyday life. The best path forward, then, is to accept the fact that we are limited and find ways to thrive under those limits. Willingly submit to the ice, and you will be able to stay upright.
This doesn’t mean becoming a pushover. Some of the toughest people on the planet put themselves under others’ authority in order to perform at their highest levels. In their book “Extreme Ownership,” ex-Navy-SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin describe how a good team leader inspires each individual member to do his absolute best. When the team members put their egos aside and pursue the goal the leader sets for them, they don’t just succeed as a team, they become more independent and effective soldiers.
In fact, appealing to a higher authority is the only way to assert your own independence, as the founding documents of our nation attest. America was not founded on some abstract idea of individual freedom, wherein teenagers can refuse to let their parents look at their cell phones. Our freedoms are firmly rooted in an appeal to a higher, legitimate authority – specifically, the authority of our Creator. Personal freedom blossoms under the same conditions. If modern day Americans want to be the rugged individuals we see ourselves as, we need to turn back to that same legitimate authority.
Christian Leithart is a writer and teacher and the co-founder of Little Word, a children's book publishing company. He lives in Birmingham with his wife and two children.
This culture article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News. To comment on this article, please email [email protected]. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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