Crack the Whip and the Common Good - Our Lives Are More Connected Than We Think

We like to think that our personal decisions have little or no impact on others, but our lives are far more intertwined than we imagine. This is especially the case today, when social media can allow sinful and foolish ideas to catch fire and “go viral” in a flash. And although this happens with edifying information and helpful ideas as well, the bad stuff seems to spread more quickly. Why? Well, this is a fallen world, with a fallen angel for its prince, and we have fallen natures.

Therefore, do not so easily dismiss the influence that bad ideas and poor decisions can have on others. Also consider that what may not harm those who are blessed to have other good influences and/or economic options may damage those who are not so fortunate. This warning should especially apply to cultural leaders, who have substantial influence on the lives of others. Those in the public eye have a special obligation to consider how the way they live their lives and the ideas they propose may affect others.

To illustrate, consider the game “Crack the Whip,” which some of us may remember from our days on the school playground. The “game” involved 10 to 20 children forming a straight line. Each child reached back with one arm and took the hand of the one behind him to create a long chain. The child at the front of the line then took off running and everyone else behind followed, still holding hands. Suddenly, the lead child would take a sharp turn. The children immediately behind him were able to successfully negotiate the turn, but the further back one was, the harder it was to hold on. The children toward the end of the line didn’t stand a chance. They were flung off by the centrifugal force and usually ended up on the ground.

This is an analogy for our times. There are some, those at the “front of the line,” who are well-positioned to take their thrill rides, engage in social experimentation, and indulge greed and excess with minimal damage. Among them are some of the Hollywood elite, pop music stars, political leaders, wealthy financiers, Madison Avenue marketers, Wall Street investors, and many other cultural, social, business, and government leaders. But at the “back of the line,” the damage is awful.

Let’s consider two basic areas of life in which “Crack the Whip” is much in evidence: social/moral ills and economic ills.

Social/moral ills – At the very front of the line are those who have sharply turned towards excesses of every sort: drugs, alcohol, sex, revolving-door marriages, glamorization of all sorts of dangerous and deleterious behaviors. These often come with terrible personal consequences.

At the front of the line they can afford (financially and socially, though not morally) the consequences of what they do. They can pay for the stays in rehabilitation centers, the treatments for STDs, and the therapy for their children (who are traumatized by divorce and other issues caused by their parents’ indulgences).

But at the back of the line the drug use, sexual promiscuity and confusion, and the divorce culture have had far more devastating effects. Lacking access to treatment programs, the addicted poor go to jail. Diseases like AIDS and other STDs are less treated and spread more easily. Poor families are more rapidly devastated by sexual promiscuity and divorce. Children are raised without fathers. The socials ills multiply quickly. And surely we cannot neglect the poorest of the poor, the most vulnerable of all, the child in the womb. They have paid supremely, with their very lives, for the moral excesses of a culture like ours. The death toll is unimaginable and it almost never gets mentioned.

It’s a sad game of “Crack the Whip.” At the front of the line, all the misbehavior looks “fun,” even “glamorous.” But at the back of the line, folks go flying off in all directions, staggering and reeling.

I do not write to absolve the poor from all responsibility and merely blame the rich and powerful. Being mesmerized by the glamor of evil is a human problem; it affects all of us. But in the end we ought to consider how our cooperation (whether by active promotion or by sinful silence) in the glamorization of sin and excess affects others—especially those at the “end of the line.”

Economic ills – Those at the front of the line can also afford the lifestyles that greed demands. They can generally afford to pay the higher prices of an overheated economy and a lifestyle that expects more and more.

The poor are fined for not having insurance. Many cannot afford to drive. They often face tremendous economic hurdles in trying to open small businesses or even keep their homes. College educations and even advanced degrees are (unreasonably) required for many jobs, but the cost is exorbitant. Obtaining a college education leaves many young people in debt for decades. And the poor are largely locked out of many options.

A few years back it became trendy to leave the stock market and enter the real estate market, buying and “flipping” properties. The market overheated, the cost of housing skyrocketed, and even the upper-middle class found it hard to afford basic housing. The “bubble” burst in 2008 and left the economy reeling. Investors took a few hits and got government bailouts, but mainly they just went back to investing in the stock market. They left in their wake devastated homeowners facing “underwater” properties and foreclosures.

“Gentrification” also accelerated, bringing with it all the difficulties of social dislocation. The poor are economically and literally being moved to the margins as the disturbances to the housing market are still working themselves out. Here in Washington, D.C. the poor are moved to the margins of what many call “Ward 9.” There are actually only 8 Wards in D.C.—being in “Ward 9” is a euphemism for being moved to the margins, outside the city that is increasingly losing its economic diversity. What used to be poor, working-class neighborhoods are now filled with houses sporting prices approaching one million dollars.

It’s a classic case of “Crack the Whip.” Those at the front of the line can adjust to sudden shifts in the economy and “play the market,” but at the back of the line the less privileged are sent flying, staggering as they fall and go off to the “Ward 9s” of our cities.

I am a priest, not an economist, and I realize that economic realities are very complex. I am not calling for all sorts of government intervention, but I do know what I see as a priest working among all social classes. I cannot and should not devise policy solutions; I leave that to the experts among the laity. But what I can and should do is to remind the folks at the front of the line to remember those at the back. “Crack the Whip” is fun and exciting when you’re at the front of the line, but devastating if you’re at the back.

We need to rediscover concern for the common good. We should look at our own behavior regardless of where we are in the line. I am my brother’s keeper; his welfare ought to be important to me. It’s not just about money; it’s about taking care to build a culture that thinks more about those at the back of the line and those yet to be born. What of them? How does my life and lifestyle affect them?

The “front of the line” here represents people who conflate government with society:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . . - Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)
By conflating the two, socialists (who, recognizing their abuse of “social” when they mean “government” would better be called governmentists) undertake to subvert the role of members of society as patrons of other members of society. In the process of eliminating patrons other than the government, socialists undertake to make “those in the back of the line” utterly dependent on government, thus utterly isolated and utterly unfree.
I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. It points out, correctly, that although the label on the pencil says “Eberhard Faber™,” Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Faber did not simply speak the pencil into existence. They had to have a factory built by others, and machinery and equipment, and workers to operate them - as well as the wood, graphite, rubber, enamel, and brass or plastic for the ferrule holding the eraser. And not only does Eberhart-Faber require equipment, workers and supplies, the same is true of all the suppliers of all of those inputs. And the workers themselves cannot exist in a vacuum; they require food, shelter, clothing, etc, etc. In sum, society as a whole contributes - is greater or lesser degree - to the making of a pencil. “You didn’t build that?” Yes - that is absolutely the truth. Society as a whole made the pencil - which is entirely different from saying that the government did it.
The government can indeed, if it sets itself to it, make pencils. But it cannot take responsibility for making them efficiently, or in numbers which correspond to the marginal cost and marginal utility of pencils. Government cannot take responsibility for the simple reason that if it takes on the task of making pencils, its bureaucratic imperatives will lead it to either devote excessive resources to the project, or to make too few pencils of too poor quality. And most likely both - without ever accepting blame and correcting its blunders.
The example of the mine pumps in the Soviet Union is instructive. The government over specified its requirements, down to specifying the death penalty for delivering pumps not painted the correct color - and then did the same sort of thing to the paint maker. The ultimate result was that the paint maker could not deliver the paint to the pump maker, and the pump maker could not deliver pumps to the mine . . . and, far down the line of interconnections, the failure to deliver the paint to the pump maker ultimately made it impossible for the paint maker to ever deliver the paint to the pump maker.
The government is simply too blunt an instrument to do the work of society efficiently; when it comes to maximizing the good to the population, socialism is a paper tiger.

“At the front of the line they can afford (financially and socially, though not morally) the consequences of what they do. They can pay for the stays in rehabilitation centers, the treatments for STDs, and the therapy for their children (who are traumatized by divorce and other issues caused by their parents’ indulgences).

“But at the back of the line the drug use, sexual promiscuity and confusion, and the divorce culture have had far more devastating effects.”

I’ve noticed this, too, but the metaphor in my mind has been about water, and letting it rise. The people in the higher parts of society want the water to play in, and they can often choose to escape it and protect themselves from it when they’re done playing. But the people in the lower parts live with flooding or are even drowned. I saw this in my own life, too, after my father, the family breadwinner, passed away, and have seen it in the lives of the many low-income people I’ve known throughout the years. The people in the higher parts do live with a false sense of security, though, that if they can more easily escape the consequences of sin and moral confusion, then there will never be any. Yet it’s important to remember, too, that these are all generalizations. It says something general about people’s circumstances, but not about them individually.

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