Inspired by, but only tangentially related to, a post by drownedinink, here are some thoughts on the role and power of the institutions we support and create.
1. The originating purpose of every institution is to serve society in some way.
Governments, churches, schools, are all developed to deal with some perceived need. That need may or may not be shared by all members of society, and institutions sometimes work at cross-purposes depending on their originating purpose. Sometimes, as in the case of divided government, that is a good thing.
2. Institutions become dangerous when they shift from serving their originating purpose to existing for their own sake. This process is nearly inevitable as the originating need is met or if the power over the institution is turned over to those other than the ones who created it or as the institution becomes recalcitrant (see below).
This danger is lessened if the institution still more-or-less meets its originating purpose, or if it is benign. If a church, for instance, still meets the spiritual needs of a preponderance of its adherents, even if it mainly exists for its own sake, it will probably be tolerated. If an academic institution still educates, even if it mainly exists to maintain its own momentum, chances are it will not be shut
down.
But when an institution fails to address or addresses inadequately its originating purpose, or when the need for it no longer exists, it may become a danger to those who would dissolve it, or it may simply leech a society dry. The Christian church prior to the Reformation, for instance, began to exist for its own sake and therefore began to seek greater and greater power and influence. It
accomplished this through taxes, tithes, and indulgences, through excommunications, executions, and wars. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the princes and peasants who found themselves caught in the middle.
3. Part of an institution’s move to exist for its own sake is recalcitrance brought on by the vested interests of those within it. Institutions are not independent beings able make their own decisions (not even the market, contrary to what many economists maintain). Rather, those within them make decisions to uphold or increase the power of their institutions in order to maintain their own
roles within them. Clearly, a pastor, politician, or professor will defend her institution because it upon those institutions that she relies for her livelihood. But it also guarantees that the institutions to which people belong will move toward being unresponsive to their originating purpose and will move toward existing for their own sake.
4. The aggression of an institution is often a mark either of its own irrelevancy or the perceived need of those within it for unity. When those within an institution begin to feel that the institution no longer fulfills its mission, it often becomes evangelical or begins to eat up other institutions. Big business in America has sought to either diversify or refocus in response to its market relevancy. But its social relevancy has long ceased, as it is more than able to provide for the needs
and desires of most people. It is so irrelevant to social needs, in fact, that it has created mass marketing in order to create desire for its products.
As its originating purpose recedes into the social distance, big business seeks not just emotional power by creating desire, but also political power in order to maintain its existence even as it threatens the livelihoods of the consumers upon which it relies, demanding that it be granted rights and that it receive subsidies, tax breaks, and protection from offshore competition.
Fundamentalist religion seeks constant growth in membership largely because it has lost its ability to meet the spiritual needs of Modernity. Contemporary megachurches appeal to parishioners through building community through self-help classes, coffee shops, and gyms, not through genuine spiritual attention, and certainly not through almsgiving and assisting the poor and imprisoned. Fundamentalist religion’s metastasis is much more a function of its vast irrelevance than of its actual spiritual appeal.
Wars are as often a result of internal politics as they are of external pressures. Political institutions, failing at home to meet the basic needs of the people, take to war to reinforce (or re-create) their need to exist. Arguably, the most recent war in Iraq was waged more to consolidate the fading Republican Revolution of 1994 than it was to oust Saddam Hussein. The Third Reich was based almost entirely on the principle of a failing or irrelevant government creating the need
for itself through wars of expansion.
Since institutions are necessary in order for complex societies to exist, we should perhaps consider most highly when creating institutions not how best those institutions should function, but under what circumstances they should be dissolved.