1. Some History of Ethics

The idea of "self-work" may evoke the legacy of the "me" generation. So we hear, in the 1970's American middle class liberals became self-absorbed, worked on themselves, got in touch with their feelings. If true, this parody of self-work helped the conservative agenda that has taken over America. After all, the 1980's saw Reagonism and family values take over the national agenda by way of making private life the scene of political discussion. Meanwhile, the public sphere became off-limits: questioning our social structure has become synonymous with something "un-American" in mainstream discourse. The conservatives won in large part by making the public private, ideologically when they made family values rule over questions of the common good and espouse charity over justice, and materially when they privatized schools, national forests and so on. In the context of conservatism, the "me" generation and self-work are wonderful concessions to the conservative project of making people turn to inspect their private lives rather than to failures of our social and political systems, let alone our relation to the rest of the world. In the age of global warming and resource wars, why talk about "self-work"? Shouldn't we talk about "global justice work"?

I agree, the age of self-help plays in poorly to the conservative agenda. But self-work is not just self-help, although self-help draws on the tradition of self-work. This tradition goes all the way back to Greek and Roman philosophy, and was a mainstay of ascetic practice in the Middle Ages. Twentieth century existentialism was an odd -and romantic- outgrowth of this classical tradition of self-work. The key with the tradition is to disassociate it from merely self-absorbed self-help. In fact, true self-help already does this.

Self-work and true self-help (a) develop people's soulfulness and (b) free people up to pursue what matters most in life. For the ancient philosophical tradition, self-work freed people into becoming truly philosophical, as when daily meditation on death allowed people to become courageous in pursuing ideals. For the medieval monastic tradition, self-work freed people into God, as when periods of silence allowed one's prayers to become pure. Likewise, true self-help allows people to become, for instance, free of hate, or able to manage time when pursuing worthy goals and having personal relationships. Self-work should not be confused with self-absorbtion. True self-help should not be conflated with navel searching.

2. Politics and Self-work

What I want to consider is the self-work of becoming political. What work do we need to do on ourselves so as to become truly political? First, there are two questions: (1) What is it to be political? We can't know what is truly political, without having answered this question. (2) Should we want to become political? After all, conservatives would argue normal people should not want to become political. Leave that, they might say, to the experts and life-time politicians. Turn instead, they might say, to your private life, making money, having kids, choosing a good car, going on priceless vacations in the Rockies. Let's give provisional answers to these two questions.

(1) Answer: To be political means to be a member of one's society. "Political" is an adjective drawing on the Greek word for city-state, "polis." A political person is, technically, a person who is a member of a city-state. To be political, then, is to be a citizen. But what is a citizen? A citizen is a member of a society. What is it to be a member of a society? It is to participate in one's society. And what is that? To participate in one's society is to contribute one's part to the overall aims of a good society. Think of it like a team. You cannot be a member of a team in the proper sense of "being a member" if you do not promote the aims of the team by playing your part in the team. A goalie is not a proper member of a team when she runs up next to the striker and says, "Hey! I thought I'd come get some time up front at the other team's net!" Analogously, being a proper member of society is conditional on your (a) knowing your part in society and (b) playing that part well for the sake of the overall aims of a good society. In short, to be political is to know your part in society and to promote the aims of a good society through that part you play.

(2) Answer: Absolutely, we should become political. There are many reasons why. The simplest goes like this: We should become political, because we are indebted to our society for our well-being. We could not flourish as full humans without society. What would we do without school, an economy, laws to regulate even traffic crossings? We might survive in the woods alone. But what would we do when it came to illness, or worse, the illness of our kids? We could let our kids die in the woods outside of society, but should we want that? Society gives us benefits like an economic and legal structure allowing us to have hospitals for our sick children. Suppose we do not benefit from society? The homeless down along the river and train tracks may not be indebted to society. I agree, although many homeless people do feel indebted -there is a parody of homelessness that sees it as being outside citizenship; and yet most homeless people I know are more proud of being a member of society than their home-owning counterparts. Still, even if someone has been shafted by our society -as is the case with many Black males in Chicago- there is still a reason to become political. We should become political, because we should stop bad governments from hurting us or our fellows.

These answers leave us with two areas to work on: (1) What is your part in society? (2) What are the aims of a good society, and how can you promote them through the part you play? These questions form what political self-work is. We become political by working to answer these questions and freeing our soulfulness and time to live out the answers.

3. Interactive Answers to On-going Questions

To figure our your part in society as well as the aims society should promote and your place in them is an on-going process. Given we evolve in our understanding of such issues, we should think of strategies for answering these questions in a way that allows us to keep growing through them. I believe such strategies are what you might call "interactive answers." Interactive answers are answers that emerge through action we take with others and institutions. We get an interactive answer to what our part is in society, for example, when we go to meetings and discover that we are helpful in clarifying issues people are wrestling with concerning political action. Interacting with others at the meeting, we discover some of what our part in society should be. I am advocating we search for interactive answers to becoming political. Self-work in becoming political should take the path of seeking interactive answers to what one's part is in society and how one can promote the aims of a good society.

Consider the example of an interactive answer to the question of what the aims of society should be. Imagine you do not know whether a good society should let illegal immigrants work here. An interactive answer to this question involves more than just talking to your friends about the issue, although that is a start. A good such answer should also involve talking with immigrants, visiting border-patrols sites, consulting lawyers and sociologists, etc. It could involve working in social services as a volunteer -services that help illegal immigrants. Does the work help immigrants? Does it exploit them? What are the options?

In short, finding interactive answers to our on-going questions about citizenship is a public form of self-work. You do work on yourself here when you explore policy-options first hand, especially by interacting with your fellow humans and in scenes where the issues are at stake the most. Where political self-work departs most from self-help as we know it in bookstores is here: self-work takes the form of public interactions, discovering answers to on-going questions with the help of experience and other perspectives.

4. Human Being and Citizen

The key to political self-work is becoming a citizen by becoming a human. Humans become more human by interacting with their fellows and sharing in common life. That is what conservatives and narrow self-help literature do not understand. Citizenship, however, is simply the expression of being human in a society. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that since becoming human involves becoming social, learning how to be a good member of society is par for the course in humanization. Citizenship and humanization go hand in hand. In this way, political self-work is work in humanization, and is so by being social, in the best sense of that word.

Now to politics. How will you work on yourself this election year? That is your work, not someone else's. But however you answer the question, I urge you to take interactive strategies --the answers to how to become political this year start when you get yourself into situations where you discover your part in society and how to promote the aims of good society. Getting out there to figure out how to help the common good is humanizing. There is every good reason to invest your time in that. Both you and others will grow.