Is it possible to have too much freedom? Since the Enlightenment, Western liberal democracies have marched steadily in the direction of maximizing individual liberties and freedoms. Earlier constraints imposed by religion, the state, communities, and the family have been relaxed or have disappeared altogether. Even physical limitations present at birth, once considered permanent, can disappear: almost overnight, Bruce Jenner can become Caitlyn Jenner. Very few things in Western societies today are permanent. And that may be the problem.
Has all of this freedom been good for individuals? Are people happier with their lives today than when they lived under earlier systems of moral, religious, social, or legal restraint? As one of Dostoevsky's characters, Shigalyov, says in Demons, "Starting from unlimited freedom, I conclude with unlimited despotism."
Earlier this year, two important books appeared - one, a French novel; the other, a non-fiction meditation on character-building. Both books raise profound questions about the West's preoccupation with maximizing individual freedom. The novel, Soumission, is by the controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq and will appear in English later this year, translated as "Submission" by Paris Review editor Lorin Stein. The non-fiction book is columnist David Brooks's The Road to Character, which presents several short profiles of people who exemplify strong character traits, especially the submission of their personal desires to some cause or goal greater than themselves.
Houellebecq's novel appeared, quite literally, just before Islamic terrorists in Paris murdered 12 members of the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Charlie Hebdo already had been threatened and was under police protection because of its cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed. Houellebecq's novel hit a nerve, because its plot involved the 2022 election of a moderate Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohammed Ben Abbes, as president of France. The novel was instantly denounced as inflammatory and anti-Muslim. This flirtation with political fantasy - even through fiction -- proved too much for some people in France. Houellebecq abandoned his book tour and immediately went into hiding.
Which was a shame, because his novel is not really anti-Muslim. Houellebecq is probing much deeper social and cultural issues than the status of Muslims in a legally secular, nominally Catholic France. Undoubtedly, the fictional election of a Muslim French president was intended to shock and provoke controversy, but Houellebecq's real intention was to examine the underlying values of the rampant individualism characteristic of contemporary capitalism.
The new Muslim president shares power with the other main political parties, the Socialists and the UMP (recently renamed the Republicans), but he chooses a Muslim to head the education ministry. Reviewing Houellebecq's novel in the April 2, 2015, issue of The New York Review of Books, Mark Lilla observes that the new president's decision about the education ministry shows that he "understands that a nation's destiny depends on how well it teaches young people fundamental values and enriches their inner lives. He is not a multiculturalist and admires the strict republican schools that he studied in, and that France abandoned."
Houellebecq's novel is a meditation on the moral weakness of modern France and the West in general - the loss of values, standards, rigor, and belief. Secular humanism is a spent movement that has left in its wake self-centered, decadent, self-indulgent, overly indebted people. "Soumission," Lilla notes, "serves as a device to express a very persistent European worry that the single-minded pursuit of freedom - freedom from tradition and authority, freedom to pursue one's own ends - must inevitably lead to disaster."
If anything, Houellebecq's novel presents a positive view of Islam. One may debate that religion's values and customs (although Houellebecq's usual obsession with high volume sexuality suggests to the novel's protagonist that polygamy is worth considering), but at least there is a structure that, says Lilla, "projects onto Islam [qualities that are] no different from those that the religious right ever since the French Revolution has attributed to pre-modern Christendom - strong families, moral education, social order, a sense of place, a meaningful death, and, above all, the will to persist as a culture." After first resisting, Houellebecq's protagonist finally submits, embraces Islam, and regains his former teaching position at triple its previous salary. Happiness is to be found only when one submits to a higher order or calling.
And it is precisely this point that runs throughout David Brooks's new book. The similarities with Houellebecq are striking. Brooks profiles Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, Dwight Eisenhower, Dorothy Day, General George Marshall, civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, George Eliot, Augustine, and Samuel Johnson. The common thread among these highly accomplished individuals is their submission to a goal, cause, or purpose greater than themselves.
Of Perkins, Brooks says that "[s]he is willing to surrender the things that are most dear, and by seeking to forget herself and submerge herself she finds a purpose that defines and fulfills herself." Eisenhower's mother "emphasized the importance of practicing small acts of self-control...." The general is described as "a passionate man who lived, as much as his mother did, under a system of artificial restraints." He is someone "who had been raised to check his impulses...."
In the chapter on George Eliot, Brooks describes love as "submission, not decision. Love demands that you make a poetic surrender to an inexplicable power without counting the cost." For Augustine, man was to submit to God's will: "The point ... is to surrender, or at least suppress your will, your ambition, your desire to achieve victory on your own." "Dorothy Day learned as a young woman the vocabulary of simplicity, poverty, and surrender. Marshall learned institutional thinking, the need to give oneself to organizations that transcend a lifetime." When the individual becomes the central focus of his own life, society tends to come apart.
Brooks has a tendency to step back from his profiles and sermonize - but the sermons are worth pondering. Noting that we now live in an age of "institutional anxiety" that celebrates individuals over institutions, Brooks says:
"We tend to prize the freedom to navigate as we wish, to run our lives as we choose, and never to submerge our own individual identities in conformity to some bureaucracy or organization. We tend to assume that the purpose is to lead the richest and fullest individual life, jumping from one organization to the next as it suits our needs. Meaning is found in these acts of self-creation, in the things we make and contribute to, in our endless choices."
For Brooks, this approach to life is fundamentally bankrupt; he clearly has a preference about what the good life entails:
"Life is not like navigating through an open field. It is committing oneself to a few of the institutions that were embedded on the ground before you were born and will be here after you die. It is accepting the gifts of the dead, taking on the responsibility of preserving and improving an institution and then transmitting that institution, better, on to the next generation.... In the process of subordinating ourselves to the institutions we inhabit, we become who we are. The customs of the institution structure the soul, making it easier to be good."
Brooks captures his message in one sentence a few paragraphs before the last page: "There's joy in freely chosen obedience to people, ideas, and commitments greater than oneself."
Both Houellebecq and Brooks share a similar nostalgic, cultural conservatism. In doing so, however, they face strong headwinds that have been nurtured by a long-running "self-esteem movement" in the United States and a rampant "autonomy ethos," according to Brooks.
The "Me Generation" is not new, but we've transformed it through technology and made it pervasive. We have smartphones that can facilitate everything from overnight hookups to the ubiquitous selfie. Individuals can further customize their individuality through Facebook postings, unique body piercings, tattoos, and miniature "art" on their fingernails and toenails.
Today's good life is too often measured by the amount of individual self-gratification one can achieve. Concepts like country, community, or family are considered quaint. Brooks puts it this way: "If you organize your life around your own wants, other people become objects for the satisfaction of your own desires." Houellebecq's earlier novels often include sex-obsessed characters, loners free of individual and social commitments. Masturbation is for Houellebecq a metaphor for self-esteem and autonomy. These characters are outcasts, not heroes. They elicit pity, not praise.
Have we gone too far in today's society in abandoning the legitimate constraints necessary to build cohesive societies and citizens with character? This is the question posed by Houellebecq and Brooks. Can we voluntarily find a way to restrain our selfish impulses and channel our cherished freedoms in the direction of critical institutions like family, community, and country?
More than 40 years ago, a close French friend used to tell me: "il faut avoir un systeme" - one needs to have a system. He was correct. Houellebecq suggests that, even with its shortcomings as seen by the West, at least Islam offers a different, voluntary, more structured, systemic approach to life. Not everyone will embrace it, but it cannot be dismissed out of hand. This cultural critique of the West is worth considering.
Neither author has clear answers as to what comes next or how to restore the values they cherish. For their courage and their insights, however, they deserve credit. The least we can do is to take the time to consider carefully their ideas - to submit to their thinking and then to think for ourselves.
Charles Kolb served as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy from 1990-1992 in the George H.W. Bush White House. He was president of the French-American Foundation - United States from 2012-2014 and president of the Committee for Economic Development from 1997-2012.