Editorial - The crises of a system or organization cannot be explained or overcome as long as you remain within the same system that generated them. To achieve this you must be ready to make some radical choices.
by Luigino Bruni
Published in Avvenire 15/06/2023
To learn to look away from oneself, is necessary in order to see many things, this hardiness is needed by every mountain-climber.
(F. Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
«Experience teaches us that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one that marks the first steps towards reform». This phrase by the philosopher and politician Alexis de Tocqueville (The old regime and the revolution, 1856), is the basis of the so-called Tocqueville's "effect" or paradox. To really understand it, it is useful to read it together with another passage: «The hatred that men nourish towards privileges increases in proportion to the reduction of the latter, so that democratic passions seem to burn more fiercely precisely when they have less fuel... Love for equality steadily grows with equality itself» (Democracy in America, 1840). Tocqueville's (brilliant) paradox therefore suggests a complex relationship between the intentions of the reformers and the unintended effects of the reform, which are always the most important part. The expectations raised in the people by the first signs of reform cannot be satisfied by the results achieved by the reformers. This "law" or "effect" is not only useful for understanding the history and present of dictatorial regimes that often collapse just as a democratic reform begins, or just for understanding why other regimes resist with violence in the face of the first requests for rights, in fact Tocqueville's intuition has a much broader scope, because it can be applied to any reform process of any organization, business and community.
Take a company experiencing a serious crisis connected to the necessary exit from the stage by its entrepreneur-founder who, however, continues to hold power and control. If the founder, faced with the requests from the corporate body, begins to delegate part of the power, this participatory process could easily end up causing a real crisis to explode. Because, as Tocqueville suggests, due to a chronic lack of democracy, as soon as the collaborators in crisis see the first signs of change, they begin to ask for much more than what the elderly entrepreneur wants and above all can do. These requests will therefore be perceived by him as excessive and unjust, and often produce the interruption of the participatory process while exacerbating the ongoing crisis. A corollary of Tocqueville would therefore say that the best solution during these "end of regime" phases is a complete transition to a new ownership and/or management, while the founder retires and forgoes the process of self-reform altogether.
Tocqueville's intuition, however, is also particularly valuable for understanding something of the processes that many ideal-driven organizations (IDOs), such as charismatic communities, associations and spiritual movements founded in the 1900s, are experiencing today after the disappearance of their founders, while finding themselves amid a reform process. First, this effect sends a clear message to any reformer: when you start a serious reform, be aware that criticism will increase and explode, because the expectations from the reform will grow much faster than the actual reform itself. However, there is more. If we observe these ecclesial and civil institutions, we realize that many of those who are attempting to implement a reform are fueling their own crisis. Why? To remain within the realms of the suggestion by the French philosopher, the governments of the communities that are leading the transition today are inevitably "bad" - not in a moral sense but on a practical level, as in unfit, unsuitable, for the new challenges they must or should face.
One of the main reasons for this objective inadequacy has to do with the difficult management of the legacy of the past. The inherited form of government was designed based on the founders' people and their specific idiosyncrasies and charismatic characteristics, as such it could only work with and for the founders. That first governance was a suit that was custom made according to the measurements of that first generation. And even when, in a best-case scenario, the founders have done everything to disengage their "ruling" from their people, they still end up failing because they could not have succeeded. The "reality is superior to the idea", and the only reality that the founders and their collaborators had in front of them when imagining their form of governance was their own concrete reality, the future was not a resource at their disposal. Hence, they proceeded to design a governance in their image and likeness and therefore adequate to manage an institution in that particular historical period, with those specific issues and problems. They could not have acted in any other way. They then imagined that whoever would come after them would continue the same relational dynamics of that first generation and that the people would change, but not the "skins" (structures) or the "wine" (charisma), which would remain the same, from the presidency to the most peripheral roles. Nevertheless – and this is the decisive point – no successor could ever hope to perform the exact function of the founder because it was in fact unique, unrepeatable and therefore non-replicable, as was the specific governance model centered on his or her figure. And as if that wasn’t enough, with the beginning of the new millennium the speed of development of history has transformed twenty years into two centuries, turning everything upside down.
Thus, a crucial conclusion: the first radical reform to which a post-founder community should deal with is precisely that of the governance conceived by its founders. If, on the other hand, it considers the first form of governance as an essential part of the legacy, as an element of the unchangeable core of the charism, the transition between the first and second generation could get jammed and fail.
There is a big problem, nevertheless: many spiritual communities prefer making small-step reforms, in order to be able to involve all the protagonists in decisions, listen to disagreements, evaluate and then make a change, which is perfectly understandable, because all of this is value. However, Tocqueville's paradox says something different: once the founders are gone there is a need for an absolute and radical discontinuity of governance and government, because the crises of the system cannot be explained or overcome as long as one remains within the same system that generated them. We are therefore faced with a series of difficult choices: we need to decide whether to go slowly to involve everyone, if possible, with the very real risk that when we get to the end the "disease" will have become too serious and incurable; or make partial choices, with little to no participation, that are fast but capable of taking care of the body while there is still time. This second option requires those in charge of the reform to have some idea of the diagnosis and perhaps of the therapy to be applied – which rarely is the case, however, because they fail to grasp an essential factor: the governance is not the only thing that needs to evolve, the charism, which changes because and as long as it is alive, needs to change too (an unchangeable charism is a dead charism).
When he began his great religious reform, righteous king Hezekiah was faced with a decisive choice: what to do with the legacy of Moses? Among the "relics" of Moses was the bronze serpent with which he saved the people from the serpents in the desert (Numbers 21). Hezekiah «broke into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made» (2 Kings 18,4). The just king was able to make that decisive reform because he had the courage to eliminate a part of Moses' legacy: the serpent had originally performed a good function but in that phase of the reform it had become an obstacle - it had taken on idolatrous traits. Hezekiah kept the Ark of the Covenant but not the serpent: both wanted and created by Moses, but Hezekiah distinguished, separated, decided and cut. He made a choice, and the Bible thanked him for it.
Every reform ends up getting stalled or producing adverse effects if one does not try to distinguish the ark from the serpent, if everything is saved (both ark and serpent) or nothing at all (both are destroyed). You must choose, even at the risk of saving the serpent and destroying the ark – the wrong choice is preferable to no choice at all. Most probably the first form of governance desired by the Founder is part of the serpent, even if it is often confused with the Ark. Hence, for fear of betraying our origin we end up betraying the future.
