Carl Benjamin’s article in Islander VI is insightful and well worth your time. Benjamin draws out an aspect of Saruman and his effect on the Shire which is highly relevant to the state we find ourselves in, here in the West, pointing out a tendency which, though Benjamin does not bring up this point, is central to ‘ideology’ as a phenomenon (as Benjamin has otherwheres stated). His insight, however, is not perfect, counting as its greatest flaw its divorce from God, and this article is dedicated to taking it just a bit farther in several places, with a hearty recommendation you read the original (if it’s still available).

The Part I’m Answering

On pages 27-28 of the magazine, Benjamin finishes his narration of the Scouring of the Shire (a part I’ve analyzed from a more literary perspective), wherein he has taken care to emphasize the points relevant to his explication, concluding with a return to the self-reveal of “Saruman of Many Colours” to Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring. He then sets out in more propositional form the experiential wisdom he sees in Tolkien’s work.

Benjamin writes of how breaking a “thing” down into its rational components, as natural as it may seem, can and very often does miss the point, the purpose, and the fullness of what is broken down; the parts, analyzed, do not add up to an understanding and implementation of the whole. Without the whole, then, the parts do little good and possibly much evil; they become detached from their purpose. In sum, he writes, “… while you may be able to rationalise how this next step logically follows from the step before, if your view is too narrow, then it may become apparent that the thing you have created is undesirable. Wisdom is the ability to keep in mind the broad and living picture in which each action is placed” (p. 28).

This understanding Benjamin then applies to modern managerial society, of the sort which Saruman has placed over the hobbits during Frodo’s absence (albeit, I say he applies when he also derives the idea from this section; such is the nature of the interplay between narrative and principle, between principle and life). He writes of the managerial state, “… industry will side with evil for reasons of productivity” (p. 28). The managerial system has broken down productivity and life into constituent parts, then assembled them in a perfectly rational order (or… we’ll get to that momentarily). But that rational order is vile, horrific, and ultimately destructive, as we now see.

This managerial order, Benjamin continues, must be removed. We cannot merely retool it to our ends; we cannot use the structure of Saruman to emplace and perpetuate the Shire. No, it must be replaced with a different societal substrate, one built not on reducing man to mechanism but on bonds of relationship between fellows and of relationship with the whole (with locale). He writes, on this, “The homely beauty of the Shire was not the product of a centralised committee, but the work of many hands, each investing its world with love and consideration for what came before, what exists now,and what will come after.”

He parts, then, with an urge that we may not ‘leave evil at our backs.’ If we do, we will find it grown when we return, more difficult to strike. (At times, I would add, one evil requires dealing with before others can be addressed; Saruman may be more pressing than Sauron for Rohan, though Sauron may never be forgotten, and if the hobbits had delayed their journey in order to deal with Saruman’s infiltration, Sauron would likely have mastered Middle Earth. The price of strategy must be recognized, however; the easily fatal error is to forget, rather than to strategize, or to relent without ensuring reformation.)

So far for summarizing Benjamin (but seriously, go read the article); where do I diverge, develop, or disagree?

The Error of Managerial Society

The way Benjamin approaches the problem reveals that the error in managerial society cannot lie at a merely procedural level; ‘industry’ (in its managerial form) does not choose evil merely because it is a rational system. No, it chooses evil because it “does not rely on men of good character. It can use ruffians as enforcers. It is a regime built on compliance instead of trust” (p. 28). The issue of managerial society is not merely how it was assembled; it is also (and significantly) what it was assembled from.

Because compliance and mechanical participation are valued over ability, enterprise, and integrity, managerialism produces a degrading society. It requires that all men perform their mechanical function, and it punishes them for doing more. The result is a slide downwards, as the average (or a standard deviation below it) becomes the enforced maximum, forcing the mean ever lower in a vicious cycle that stops only when the weight of the system collapses inward.

Moreover, managerialism is devoid of long-term thought. It cares not for what is to come; it cares only that the machine works now. If the future components threaten the machine, then they must be made to fit; thus, public education. This devaluation of the long term rises necessarily from the preference for compliance and enforcement over trust (relationship) and discipline (reformation). (The desire for compliance means also that judgement, such as the death penalty, is no longer acceptable; the piece must be made to fit, not destroyed.) Men of good character consider the long term; men of evil character may do so on occasion or for a time, but in the end they will abandon that desire, turning instead to their own vile interests. Sin corrodes both men and the systems they compose.

Managerialism has an error in its structure. Trying to dis-assemble the world and then re-assemble it in an image pleasing to the rationalizer is foolish and destructive. It is not the disassembling, however, which is the problem; Gandalf was not shocked to discover that light had many parts to it. Nor is the re-assembly, in itself, for bright colors spill across the Free People without error. The problem is in re-assembling not according to truth or justice but according to one’s own desires and priorities, on the assumption that one’s understanding is complete, has missed no relevant element. Thus, the error of managerialism cannot be reduced to its theoretical underlying rationalization; we must look past that process to the sin which caused it to go awry, to the sin of hubris also, which reveals itself in the presumption to try to improve upon God’s design.

Rationality Under Telos

The solution here is not a refusal of rationality, of investigation, or of organization. A relationship is built in part upon rationality, after all, and without rationality, the relationship becomes meaningless, being incapable of justifying action. The solution is to unite reason with its companions: the triad of telos, ethos, and pathos, beneath true credos. In other words, rationality must unite with morality.

Rationality is a tool to find what is. When applied in investigation, it enables us to determine truth from falsehood and to find in a truth all its implications. When applied to intention, however, rationality too easily takes on an appearance of authority. We speak of the ‘reasonable thing to do’ and ponder what is the ‘rational approach’ to life. This ignores that rationality is a tool, not a purpose; it exists in context of what it is used for. In other words, rationality serves to fulfil desires. We use it to accomplish a goal, whether that goal be truth, the mass extermination of a people, or eating more chocolate cake.

Whenever we use rationality to determine what we will do, its dictates are determined from the outside: by the goal we assign to it. We establish a goal, consciously or unconsciously, and rationality illuminates a way to reach that goal. For the managerial society, the goal of its rationality varies with the person in question, but we see the outworking in what the system preserves and what it disposes of. Clearly, the goal of the managerial society is congruent with compliance, with mechanical efficiency, with bureaucratic inefficiency, with short term profits; it either disregards or abhors virtue, long term prosperity, human happiness, and relationship.

This goal is the telos of the system, its purpose. The system exists in order to reach the goal. The origin of the mechanical system Benjamin describes, therefore, is that after disassembling the world to see how it functions (and presuming, with breathtaking audacity, to have plumbed the depths sufficiently for the purpose, something true only if the purpose were destruction (which, in a sense it is)), after this disassembly the system was produced by assembling the pieces in an order designed by reason (actually an irrational, self-contradictory human form thereof) to achieve the designer’s goal. Of course, all systems which do not make God their highest good make rebellion against Him central to their goal (Ps. 53:1; Matt. 12:30), and certainly all sinners make sin integral to their goal, including their particular brand of perversion into their telos.

Man, however, has a right and proper purpose: “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with [our] God” (Mic. 6:8). Man’s telos is our relationship with God, as Matthew 12:26-40 and Mark 12:28-32 confirms. Mark 12:28-32 confirms also that our relationship with man is entailed by our relationship with God (as Genesis 1:26-27 and Matthew 28:18-20 necessitate). We are to love God, and therefore we are to love our neighbor. Love, moreover, is defined in Romans as fulfilling the law- signified by the Decalogue (Rom. 13:8-10)- in fullness (James 2:8-16).

Here we have the triad mentioned already. Telos, purpose, leads to ethos, that we do justice, and pathos, that we love kindness (Mic. 6:8). We are given standards for these, moreover, by the sum of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17). The purpose of man (telos) leads to the way he should live (ethos), a way which includes his purpose (telos) and requires a certain shape to his motivation (pathos). All of these, moreover, are assured, founded, and defined by credos: that we know Him in truth (John 17:17), that we know Him in relationship (Mark 1:15; John 8:31, 17:8). ‘Credos,’ of course, means ‘faith.’

The Nature of Wisdom

Return now to Benjamin’s definition of wisdom. He writes that, “Wisdom is the ability to keep in mind the broad and living picture in which each action is placed” (p. 28). His definition is true, but it is fatally incomplete. Wisdom is the lived ability (being meaningless without application) to “keep in mind the broad and living picture in which each action is placed,” including God, His righteousness, and our relationship with Him and others, so as to choose what most perfectly accords with our telos, ethos, and (proper) pathos, all according to the credos He has given us.

This wisdom thus includes the humility to recognize that our disassembly of the world must lead to a re-assembly aimed towards fruitfulness as His stewards (Gen. 1:28; Mark 12:1-12). The managerial society aims to remake the world completely, without respect for God; it is a rebellion. Its reassembly pretends to have the sovereignty to know God’s creation with sufficient completeness and to re-order that creation according to a plan other than His. The result is misery and eventual implosion (or explosion), as with all sin. The reassembly is, after all, contrary to reality and cursed by God.

We must rather have humility to recognize the boundaries of our knowledge, that we are given sufficient to our purpose of stewardship, not to sovereignty. We can know (disassemble), but we must order that disassembly to His purpose in the re-assembly. Only by according our disassembly and assembly with His can we achieve true and worthwhile results.

A crucial tool in this pursuit, one too often disregarded by Christianity, is beauty. Beauty is our God-given perception of how creation reflects the Creator, one initially instinctual, increasingly understandable, never complete on this earth, and integrally experiential. Sight of beauty is sight of the “broad and living picture in which each action is based.” Our perception of beauty may be wrong, of course, whether by misperception or by a too-small perspective (for we are finite). But a cultivated, disciplined, God-driven sense of beauty serves as a powerful aid to the Christian.

The Necessity of Wholistic Sanctification

And now come to Benjamin’s conclusion: that the system as a whole must be torn down, leaving no evil in our rear and abiding none before us. Here, as often before, he is right, but he is not complete. The system we have is rotten and sinful. Though not completely evil, it is pervasively evil: no part of it is untouched. This system must be reformed towards the pattern He provides, towards the telos, ethos, and pathos He provides us, towards the credos He delivers men through (John 14:15; Matt. 28:20).

This reformation must be complete. Every part of our society, including ourselves, must be inspected and weighed against justice, against righteousness, against the law, that we may be holy as He is holy (Matt. 6:10; Eph. 5:11). No matter how innocuous it is, no matter how functional it seems, everything must be made holy. And remember, nothing is yet fully holy; all our rituals and institutions and customs are imperfect.

Here, priority is necessary. We do not start with everything; we start with the beginning. First, we strive towards holiness in ourselves, receiving it from Him and not by our own skill (Is. 26:12) (for we in ourselves would hate nothing more). Second, we make our relationships with others holy (this, and the rest, are part of that first), particularly within our families. Third, we find what part of the world each of us is called to take dominion over, and we bring holiness to these, in business, in church, and in civil government. Evil will not be ended by our hands; that is God’s prerogative (1 John 1:10; 1 Cor. 15:26; Dan. 7:13-14). But He is pleased to use our hands to sanctify His creation, including us, just a little more each day, till at last all things are made new (Is. 65-66).

God bless.

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