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Lately I\u2019m reading the political scientist Francis Fukuyama after hearing him speak on struggle. Specifically, on how struggle gives us meaning, and how humans need something to struggle toward. In the absence of struggle and challenge, something rushes into the void. As a writer and reader of fiction, I recognize the given: Every story requires conflict. My husband, a longtime literature professor, declares it definitively: \u201cThere is no story without conflict!\u201d I would say this includes our own stories. This leads me to wonder why we are constantly surprised by struggle.<\/p>\n
The discussion of humanity\u2019s need for struggle dovetails with my presumption that all humans are religious<\/a>. I know I harp on this\u2014the idea that religions are meaning systems with shared stories, values, and rituals, and that all of us have religions ordering our lives, whether consciously or unconsciously. As people move away from dominant faith traditions, they continue to be religious; they just participate in secular religions that work in their lives in ways similar to traditional religions. Religions are meaning systems we all need. The most important question is whether a religious expression is healthy or unhealthy; my favorite way of posing the question is this: Does it make one more loving in action or diminish loving actions and increase one\u2019s prejudices?<\/p>\n Religions are about as old as humanity; we are inherently religious. What Fukuyama has me pondering is whether humans\u2019 inherent religiosity is tied up with our need for struggle. Religions infuse our lives with challenge and, in a unique way, with meaning and purpose\u2014whether dominant faith traditions or spirituality or secular religions like politics, capitalism\/consumption, or sports, or some combination thereof. And I\u2019m pondering whether a correlation exists between a general lack of struggle in modern life, and the ferocity with which fundamentalisms have arisen, both religious and political fundamentalisms. Also, I have long wondered whether the increasing sympathy for authoritarianism we see around the world is because modern democratic, technocratic life has made us complacent and, to use Fukuyama\u2019s word, bored.<\/p>\n I quote him:<\/p>\n \u201cExperience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.\u201d (Francis Fukuyama in\u00a0The End of History and the Last Man<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In a recent interview<\/a>, he riffs on this, saying:<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026[H]uman beings in some sense want to struggle. They don\u2019t want to be content just with being fat and happy. They want higher goals. They want to be recognized for great achievements.\u00a0 \u2026I think that\u2019s why in certain ways, some of these political developments go in generational cycles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Fukuyama is not despairing, necessarily, because he notes that people do learn over time. I see this as the \u2018three steps forward, two steps back\u2019 dynamic. Even with the back-stepping, we achieve progress over the long run. Presently, with the democratic backsliding seen around the globe, we are, it seems, in a grievous two-steps-back phase. It requires us to struggle all the more for democracy and the common good.<\/p>\n In this struggle, I\u2019m drawing a lot of strength from my religious tradition and am reminded frequently of how forebears in my own faith\u2014Jesus and the earliest Christians, but many others as well, from St. Teresa of Avila to Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Quakers\u2014have modeled ways to operate in struggle. Struggle is truly at the heart of great faith traditions and of most enduring philosophical traditions. Not only struggle in the daily living out of these religions, in the challenges we face as we try to live up to our values, but also struggles in the histories of our faiths. Indeed, religions are built around story (another topic I often return to), and as I mentioned, stories require conflict<\/em>. The stories forming the foundations of our religious faiths are stories of struggle.<\/p>\n I am not saying that the human need for struggle is the sole explanation of what is happening in the world today in democratic slippage and in the accession of fundamentalism and political radicalization on both the left and right. What I am suggesting, is that we heed the truth in Fukuyama\u2019s insight: We all need something worth fighting for.<\/p>\n What do you have that is worth struggling for?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If you liked this article please leave me a comment below; I am interested in your perspective. To support my writing, please subscribe<\/a> and share with a friend! Wren, winner of a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal<\/a><\/p>\n Winner of the 2022 Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction; Finalist for the 2022 National Indie Excellence Awards.\u00a0<\/em>(2021) Paperback publication of\u00a0Wren<\/a>\u00a0,\u00a0<\/em>a novel. \u201cInsightful novel tackles questions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship with finesse and empathy \u2026 with striking descriptions of Oregon topography.\u201d \u2014Kirkus Reviews\u00a0<\/em>(2018) Audiobook publication of\u00a0Wren<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lately I\u2019m reading the political scientist Francis Fukuyama after hearing him speak on struggle. Specifically, on how struggle gives us meaning, and how humans need something to struggle toward. In the absence of struggle and challenge, something rushes into the void. As a writer and reader of fiction, I recognize the given: Every story requires […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4674,"featured_media":3816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[21,27,852,1325,490,1322],"class_list":["post-4286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay","tag-autocracy","tag-democracy","tag-forgiveness","tag-francis-fukuyama","tag-struggle","tag-trials"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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