Who am I, Megalothymia, and Personal Responsibility
Asking “Who am I?”
How long have individuals asked the “Who am I, really?”[1] question? According to Frances Fukuyama, this question came about as Europe modernized, moving away from an agrarian way of life, where “one’s entire life (was) lived in the same small village with a limited circle of friends and neighbors; one’s religion and beliefs (were) shared by all; and social mobility…was virtually impossible.”[2] With gradual socio-economic shifts, social hierarchies overturned, and reformers like Luther promoting a personal faith and “religious choice in ways that had not been possible under the medieval Church,”[3] questions like WHO AM I and who am I in relationship to the external world around me became normal.
We ask these questions today, all the time.
I would guess that many (most?) successful organizations go through an identity-clarifying exercise that helps them achieve greater clarity regarding who they are (purpose, mission, values) and who they serve (target, client, community, etc.). Faith communities, agencies, non-profits, companies, free-lancers, and more do this all the time. Organizational clarity is a big deal.
In addition to defining who they are, think about how many organizations – including churches – have defined themselves by who they are NOT. “We value authenticity…Here, you can be yourself!” Did the other organization NOT foster a sense of authenticity? Was the other place a context that promoted facades? Were original ideas discouraged? How many times have you told your team, your division, or your congregation…. Let’s be known for what we are for rather than what we are against. The tension of spelling out “who I am” and “who I am not” is real.
People want to be known. Sometimes they want to be known for good causes, helpful services, and meaningful endeavors that promote flourishing. Other times, they want to be known as not being like those evil people, over there. In both situations, they want to be known. And that is what Fukuyama writes about. People want to be validated. They want to be treated with dignity, respected for who they are. Being treated with dignity is a good thing. But that desire can also devolve into angry, bitter pursuits that use themes of victimization and resentment to achieve an outcome. This plays out very publicly in politics, particularly in today’s world of social media. “Because human beings naturally crave recognition, the modern senses of identity evolves quickly into identity politics, in which individuals demand public recognition of their worth.”[4]
How NOT to be a Megalothymiac
No one wakes up in the morning saying, “I’d love to be canceled today.” Well, at least most don’t. Some people probably don’t care (and that number is probably growing!). Nonetheless, who really wants to be thought of as exhibiting signs of megalothymia, “the desire to be recognized as superior.”[5]
I thought about Simon Walker’s description of the kind of leader who lays down his or her power in a way that allows a different kind of power to flow – “power that enables others to flourish, not power to aggrandize us.”[6] This self-emptying allows the leader to have a great deal of freedom, including “freedom from the need to be great.”[7]
A leader who can humbly serve his or her organization, company, or church in a healthy, “well-differentiated”[8] way is the leader who accompanies the “who am I?” question with “To whom am I connected?” or better yet, “To whom do I belong?” Every leader wants to be recognized. Actually, according to Fukuyama, this is just part of being human. It’s a ubiquitous need, and “unless those needs are met in the context of a relationship with an Other who accepts us unconditionally, we will seek to meet them from human relationships around us. When a leader does this, she starts to exploit her followers as a surrogate source of affection, power, control, belonging or whatever it may be she needs.”[9]
That is how identity politics play out, poorly. The people served by the megalothymiac leader are just pawns to be played, “commodities”[10] to be used for the insecure leader’s own selfish pursuits.
What about personal responsibility?
When it comes to offering solutions, Fukuyama asks a good question: “How do we translate these abstract ideas into concrete policies at the current moment?”[11] This is the right question for him to ask, given the socio-political nature of the book.
However, is there a chapter to be written on translating these ideas into concrete personal, or neighborly, action? I wonder what the implications of Fukuyama’s ideas might be for Christians who are called to love God and love their neighbors [12] inside and outside of politics. That would be an interesting chapter addition.
As I read Fukuyama’s solutions, I thought about James Davison Hunter’s book To Change the World, a book I reviewed for PRISM Magazine in 2011. Hunter described how “politics can.…be a way of saying, in effect, that the problems should be solved by others besides myself and by institutions other than the church.”[13] He continues, “True responsibility invariably costs. Political participation, then, can and often does amount to an avoidance of responsibility.”[14]
I think a way forward is a both – and, not an either – or.
“Who am I?” and “What is my relationship with the world around me?” “To whom do I belong….“Where does the source of my identity come from?” “In light of that identity, how can I lovingly serve my neighbor, both personally/privately AND in/through the public sphere?” These are a few questions with which to wrestle as I ponder “the populist politics of the present.”[15]
[1] Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), 35.
[2] Fukuyama, 35.
[3] Fukuyama, 36.
[4] Fukuyama, 10.
[5] Fukuyama, xiii.
[6] Simon P. Walker, Leading with Nothing to Lose: Training in the Exercise of Power (Carlisle, CA: Piquant Editions Ltd, 2007), Kindle Version, location 2455 of 2753.
[7] Walker, location 2465 of 2753.
[8] Edward H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Revised edition. New York: Church Publishing, 2017, 15-16.
[9] Walker, location 2379 of 2753.
[10] Walker, location 2379 of 2753.
[11] Fukuyama, Identity, 166.
[12] See Mark 12:30-31.
[13] James Davison Hunter, To Change the World (New York: Oxford, 2010), 172.
[14] Hunter, 173.
[15] Fukuyama, Identity, 183.
About the Author
Travis Vaughn
8 responses to “Who am I, Megalothymia, and Personal Responsibility”
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Travis,
Such a well-written post. Your reoccuring theme brings home the point that the validation of human dignity that is central to the human heart begs for clarity and affirmation. You asked some pivotal questions for futher thought: “A leader who can humbly serve his or her organization, company, or church in a healthy, “well-differentiated”[8] way is the leader who accompanies the “who am I?” question with “To whom am I connected?” or better yet, “To whom do I belong?””
So many self help books still leave the identity piece up to one’s own acquisition. Adding those two quesions adds the crucial thought that we don’t live in a vacuum of self-imposed identity.
Thanks, Esther. You are right — too many self-help books absolutely leave the identity piece up to the leader. In fact, I think that is probably what sells best in airports (What did Martyn Percy say? He had a great term for leadership books found too often on the shelf in airports…I just can’t remember it!). So many issues seem to stem from a leader’s perception of what he/she believes others think about him/her and/or his or her performance as a leader.
Travis,
As I read your post, I thought about your research question with leaders/pastors and your work as a consultant when you wrote the following paragraph:
In addition to defining who they are, think about how many organizations – including churches – have defined themselves by who they are NOT. “We value authenticity…Here, you can be yourself!” Did the other organization NOT foster a sense of authenticity? Was the other place a context that promoted facades? Were original ideas discouraged? How many times have you told your team, your division, or your congregation…. Let’s be known for what we are for rather than what we are against. The tension of spelling out “who I am” and “who I am not” is real.
I realize you were asking the question collectively for an organization but my question has to do with your work with individual leaders.
1. Do you find leaders feel pressure or desire to define themselves by who they are not?
2. How might modernity offer too many choices for who a leader “is or isn’t” drain leaders of energy?
3. How would you describe your identity as a leader? (Sorry! I had to toss that in for fun!)
Pam, these are great (and hard!) questions.
1. Yes, but I’ll answer it a bit differently. I think there’s a constant narrative running in the back of a leader’s mind telling him or her that he/she needs to do things just like ___________ and NOT like how he or she would lead. I do think a leader tends to identify someone who has failed or who has a poor reputation and determines, “I’m not going to do things that way.” But yes, I think leaders feel a pressure to define themselves by who they are not, or who they don’t want to be/become.
2. This is the challenge with so many books on “leadership.” There are so many examples, models, strategies, etc. Unless the leader remains grounded and rooted in Christ, happy to serve in the way God has shaped them in and for the circumstance in which God places them (much more to learn from Walker in this sense), the strategies and the “is/isn’t” can be dizzy-ing.
3. I know that my current season of life as a leader is mult-layered. I have a positional influence as an E.D., I’m an “officer” within my denomination so there’s that (ecclesial leadership), and I often play the role as a leader in different environments, and some of that just comes with age and experience, I suppose. I also know that I am often inclined to find my identity in something other than who I am in Christ, and so confession and repentance has to be routine, as I re-position my hope in what Scripture says about who I am, regardless of my position, role, or office.
Travis,
Your opening paragraph rather stopped my in my tracks when you quoted Fukuyama regarding the way of life before modernization in Europe, “…one’s entire life (was) lived in the same small village with a limited circle of friends and neighbors; one’s religion and beliefs (were) shared by all; and social mobility…was virtually impossible.” For some reason that image struck me as a place of true identity, which was not Fukuyama’s point. Being known by everyone in your small village, seen, heard, and engaged with everyday feels very grounding. I wonder how much of our identity we lose living in big cities in which we can easily be overlooked, unseen, and unknown. I have to wonder how the lack of connection to the normal everyday tasks of life in community with other people hasn’t created an identity crisis of sorts in which we look for more and more ways to identify ourselves and get lost along the way. Do our busy lifestyles and lack of deep personal connections create at least part of the problem and distort our truest identity in Christ? I wonder how simpler lives and closer friendships might impact identity positively? Thoughts?
Also, let’s layer on our learnings from last week about the focus of Evangelicalism on an INDIVIDUAL conversion. Is the centrality of a personal relationship with Christ as opposed to more of a community interaction also informing our shifting worldviews?
Hi Travis,
When all is said and done I enjoyed your thought, “In light of that identity, how can I lovingly serve my neighbor, both personally/privately AND in/through the public sphere?”
In spite of the potential hierarchy of identities (see Jennifer Vernam’s post), I enjoyed your identity that drives you to serve your neighbor. Ahhh…you servant leader!
Shalom…
I found myself nodding along to your post today. When we teach about Mission Vision and Values in change management, we talk about it being the foundation for everything else. if part of that structure is not plumb then the whole building is going to be compromised.
Proverbs 29:18 says: “without vision, the people will perish.” What you are highlighting here is the disfunction we have introduced my making ourselves the focus of our vision. A good spin on a topic that everyone talks about, but at which we might need to take another look