From: alanf@tekig6.PEN.TEK.COM (Alan M Feuerbacher)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc,alt.atheism
Subject: The Dangers of Organizations
Date: 27 Jan 93 08:36:34 GMT
Followup-To: talk.religion.misc
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.

The following apparently old article applies to a wide
spectrum of human activities.
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                      IMPRISONED IDEAS

                     by W. P. Brown, MP

             A member of the British Parliament
              outlines the dangers of becoming
          a slave of institutions or organizations

   There are many classifications into which men and women
may be divided--as upper, middle or lower class; rich, well-
to-do and poor; religious, skeptical and theist; Conserva-
tive, Liberal, Labor, Catholic, Protestant, master and man;
and so forth and so on, ad infinitum.  But, as I think, the
only categorization which really matters is that which
divides men as between the Servants of the Spirit and slaves
of the organization.  That classification, which cuts right
across all the other classifications, is indeed the funda-
mental one.  The idea, the inspiration, originates in the
internal world, the world of the spirit.  But, just as the
human spirit must incarnate in a body, so must the idea
incarnate in an organization.  Whether the organization be
political, religious, or social is immaterial to my present
argument.  The point is that, the idea having embodied
itself in an organization, the organization then proceeds
gradually to slay the idea which gave it birth.

   We may see this process at work in many fields.  Let us
take one or two by way of illustration.  In the field of
religion, a prophet, an inspired man, will see a vision of
truth.  He expresses that vision as best he may in words.
He will not say all he saw.  For every expression of truth
is a limitation of it.  But he will, so to speak, express
the sense of his vision.  What he says is only partly under-
stood by those who hear him;  and when they repeat what they
understand him to have meant there will already be a consid-
erable departure from the original vision of the prophet.
Upon what his disciples understand of the prophet's message,
an organization, a church will be built.  The half-
understood message will crystalize into a creed.  Before
long, the principal concern of the church will be to sustain
itself as an organization.  To this end, any departure from
the creed must be controverted and, if necessary, suppressed
as heresy.  In a few score or a few hundred years what was
conceived as a vehicle of a new and higher truth has become
a prison for the souls of men.  And men are murdering each
other for the love of God.  The thing has become its oppo-
site.

   In the field of politics, the dispossessed dream of
social order which shall be based on righteousness, a system
in which men shall not exploit their fellowmen, in which
each shall contribute according to his capacity and each
shall receive according to his need.  Upon this conception a
political party is built.  It gives battle, over the years
to the existing order of things.  As with the church, it is
not long before the primary concern of the party is to sus-
tain itself.  Here again, any departure from the political
creed must be repressed.  The "party line" must be kept
straight and dissent kept under.  In the course of time, the
party achieves power.  By this time, it is no longer led by
starry-eyed idealists, but by extremely tough guys--who then
proceed to use their newly acquired power to establish a
stronger despotism than the one they overthrew, and to sew
up all the holes in it that they themselves discovered in
the old.  What emerges is not freedom and social justice,
but a more comprehensive and totalitarian control, used to
maintain a new privileged class, which, because of the ear-
lier experience of its members, is still more ruthless than
the old.

   Similar illustrations could be drawn from all fields of
life.  But these two will suffice to demonstrate the truth
with which I am here concerned.  It is that, the idea having
given birth to the organization, the organization develops a
self-interest which has no connection with and becomes inim-
ical to, the idea with which it began.  Now, the thing which
permits this process of diversion to take place, so that the
organization comes to stand for the opposite of the idea
which originally inspired it, is the tendency in men and
women to become Prisoners of the Organization, instead of
being Servants of the Spirit.  In this tendency there are
many elements.  There is a sense in which you cannot run an
organization without becoming its prisoner.  Organization
has its own necessities, in the interests of which the orig-
inal idea has to be somewhat qualified.  As soon as the idea
passes from the unmanifested and embodies itself in the
actual, it begins to be invaded by what the poet called "the
world's slow stain."  In this, there need be no conscious
infidelity on the part of the leaders.  Better, they may
well argue, that the great idea should be only partly mani-
fested than that it should remain a mere idea in vacuo.
Better half the ideal loaf than no bread at all.

   Next, the wider the area to which the idea is introduced,
the larger the circle of men and women to whom it is propa-
gated through the organization, the more it must be "stepped
down" for propaganda purposes.  The idea which gives birth
to a party which wants to establish the cooperative common-
wealth, must be translated into practical proposals, such as
the eight-hour day, the five-day week, and what not, if it
is to attract a mass backing.  And so the organization
becomes less the vehicle of the idea than a channel through
which particular interests must be served.  The service of
such particular interests attracts the backing of other
organized bodies more interested in the limited objectives
which the organization has now adopted than in the great
idea itself.  And the pressure of such bodies is felt by the
organization, with the result that the idea tends to retreat
into the background in favor of less ambitious objectives.
In this world, the Devil walks, and it is necessary some-
times to hold a candle to the Devil.

   Another element is this:  Prophets always stand a good
chance of being bumped off.  This chance is increased if
they come down from the hills into the marketplace, and
still further increased if they come down unarmed.  Prophets
should only go unarmed into the marketplace if they think
that their work is done, and are prepared to depart hence.
Some prophets take to arms.  Even where the original prophet
does not, his disciples may do so.  The Devil must be fought
with the Devil's weapons.  This is argumentatively sound but
practically disastrous.  For it means that the servants of
God, the disciples of the idea, tend to descend to the
Devil's level.  As the organization grows, it deteriorates.
Its leaders are not the men they were.

   Among the rank and file many things combine to keep them
in the organization, even when they become uneasily con-
scious that there is a dawning, and even a yawning gap
between organization and idea.  First there is the force of
inertia.  It is easier not to resign than resign.  Drift is
easier than decision.  Next there is the factor of senti-
ment.  All of us tend to project onto the organization of
which we are members, the virtue we would like it to have,
and to be blind to its defects.  And, finally, men are gre-
garious creatures and dislike falling out of the ranks away
from the comrades of years.  Gradually the organization
changes.  As it changes it attracts new elements which
approve the change.  Not because of conscious calculation,
which comes much later, when the idea has been deserted, but
because organization develops its own logic, its own raison
d'etre, and because men tend to become the Prisoners of the
Organization, the organization can finish up by standing for
the precise opposite of the idea which called it into being.

   What is the moral to be drawn from all this?

   One moral, it would not be wholly facetious to suggest,
might be that the first rule for an organization should be a
rule providing for its dissolution within a limited period
of time.  "This organization shall be dissolved not later
than . . ."  But the deeper moral is concerned with our
attitude to organization as such.  The moral is that, even
when we are members of an organization, our attitude to it
should be one of partial detachment.  We must be above it
even when we are members of it.  We should join it in the
knowledge that there we may have no abiding place.  We
should be weekly tenants, not long-leaseholders.  We should
accept no such commitments as would prevent our leaving it
when circumstances make this necessary.  We should reckon on
being in almost perpetual rebellion within it.  Above all,
we should regard all loyalties to organization as tentative
and provisional.  The whole concept of "my party, right or
wrong," "my union, right or wrong," "my church, right or
wrong" should be utterly alien to our thinking. We must be
Servants of the Spirit, not Prisoners of the Organization.
We must keep in touch with the sources of life, not lose
ourselves in its temporary vehicles.  And whenever the
demands of the Spirit, the categorical imperatives of the
soul, conflict with the demands of the organization, it is
all contained in one of the legendary sayings of Jesus,
which bears all the marks of authenticity:

   This world is a bridge.  Ye shall pass over it, but ye
shall build no houses upon it.

   Bivouacs.  Yes!  Tents.  Maybe!  Houses.  No!

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Alan Feuerbacher
alanf@atlas.pen.tek.com