As Americans, we tend to take a very individualistic view of the ourselves, our country, and our world. We idealize the vision, determination, and hard work of the individual as dominant forces in shaping his or her world. Fate, luck or the help of others is often downplayed. The self-made man is just that: a product of his own making.
What we often neglect to acknowledge is the environment in which this self-making occurs. This environment, we forget, does not exist everywhere in the world. We take for granted the rule of law, stable financial markets and currency, access to healthcare and public education, roads and bridges, electricity and WiFi.
When we pause and take a moment to consider these, we do so many times in the shadow of an institution. Our three branches of government have created, interpreted, and enforced the body of laws that protect us and keep us free.
Regulatory agencies created and empowered by these government institutions monitor our stock market and our water quality. Universities educate and mold young people. They conduct valuable research and stir passionate debate. Churches, mosques, and synagogues appeal to our higher nature. Huge corporations and small, family run businesses generate goods and services, profits and prosperity. Banks offer safety for our money. Hospitals offer healing for our bodies. If you lose your job, you can receive unemployment benefits from an state or local agency. A mostly free press investigates and informs the public with the facts they need to know in order to make choices in a democracy. To preserve it and to improve it.
Institutions around the block and on the other side of the country shape the way we live and the way we think. They form a safe, predictable cocoon in which creativity can flourish and in which progress can stretch its legs. They act as guardians of norms and arbiters of what is acceptable..and unacceptable.
There is an element of corruption and undue influence, of course. No institution is without these. But the contributions usually outweigh the rot. If they do not, the institution tends to decline and die.
So beware when someone walks in, proclaiming the obsolescence, unfairness, or evil of an institution. Reform is a valid argument, when presented with verifiable evidence of a problem within and a well thought out plan to restore, replace, or renovate the existing institution.
But wholesale destruction, the gutting of a functioning and enduring institution is a dangerous idea. Look to the motives and recent history of the party clamoring for change. These will tell you much.
Also be aware that the destruction or hollowing out of an institution will not change things for long: for soon it will be necessary to create another institution. This new organism may or may not work as well as its predecessor. Those who depend on the institution's abilities and services may suffer in the interim.
Enduring institutions that provide goods, services, peace of mind, and that all important environment to those claiming to be self-made men take time, thought, resources, and much trial and error to create, organize, refine, and maintain.
Keep that in mind. Preserve and protect our institutions, and be suspicious of those who would compromise or destroy them.
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