Orchestrating institutional revival
On college applications, Alexis de Tocqueville, and the skill set we need to sharpen amid a whole lot of institutional decline
A perfect storm, resulting from the “silver tsunami“ of Baby Boomers withdrawing from work and other active pursuits, the widespread lockdowns and shutdowns of 2020, and the digital world’s ever-expanding way of crowding out experiences in the face-to-face world, has assaulted the health of countless social institutions. Religious attendance in many denominations has taken a hit. Civic and service groups are struggling to hold the line. Businesses once owned by proprietors or small groups of partners are being traded around like baseball cards.
■ What may be needed more than ever is a whole movement to train and mobilize people to orchestrate institutional revival. Notwithstanding the fad for putting the title of “founder” on college applications, what we really need are people who can lead processes of renewal and revitalization inside existing worthwhile organizations.
■ That tends to be a less glamorous task than “founding” something new. The tech sector’s obsession with “disruption” doesn’t help matters, either, particularly when that sector is in the midst of a fairly evident bubble that is crowding out both capital and human investment in other areas.
■ Age is no guarantee of perfection, either for humans or their institutions. But the groups we form do tend to take shape around corrections encountered along the way; just as the Constitution is better now after 27 amendments than it was in 1787, so too do most institutions end up improved by reforms that accrue over time. (Most, not all: There’s no redeeming some awful organizations, but they’re usually broken from the start.)
■ The decay and collapse of good institutions ought to be a concern of us all. Nobody can be a member of every group, nor should anyone want to be. But the need for people to be able to work together for useful purposes is good for all. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it all the way back in 1835, “There are no countries in which associations are more needed, to prevent the despotism of faction or the arbitrary power of a prince, than those which are democratically constituted.” Orchestrating the revivals needed by so many institutions right now will take both talents and skills, but there’s precious little time to waste.
