The Useless Tree

The Uses of Failure

    Richard Cohen has a piece in today’s Washington Post in which he rues the fact the John Roberts, nominee for Chief Justice, seems not to have had to face any sort of serious personal failing in his life.  He writes:

Failure has its uses. Among other things, it can teach us about the human condition.

     Cohen goes on to argue that struggling and overcoming personal failure can engender more sympathy for the poor and the marginal in society, a sort of "there but for the grace of God go I" sensitivity.  He ties this in with the terrible incompetence of the government response to Hurricane Katrina: the poor were an afterthought because the rich and powerful who control public policy are socially disconnected from them. 

     All of this has a distinctly Mencian quality to it.  Take this passage:

Mencius said: "Integrity, wisdom, skill, intelligence – such things are forged in adversity.  Like the son of a common mistress, a forsaken minister is ever cautious, ever watchful.  That’s how he avoids danger and succeeds. (241)

    And, of course, Mencius believes that the purpose of government is to provide the people – and by this he means the common person, not the rich and powerful – their basic human needs of food, shelter and security. 

    The Mencius quote might be taken by some to mean that, since political leaders failed in the face of Katrina, we should expect them to be more cautious and successful in the future.  Defenders of FEMA Director Michael Brown might even say: "let him stay.  Now that he has failed, he’ll certainly be a better administrator."  Mencius would not buy this move.  Brown’s failure should bear a personal cost: he should step down from his position to give himself more opportunity to reflect upon why he did such a terrible job.  What failure requires, for Mencius, is introspection.  You don’t blame others, you look into yourself:

When you attempt something and fail, always turn back to yourself for the reason.  Rectify yourself and all beneath Heaven will return home to you. (125).

    And that sounds like a useful thing to do.

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Sam Crane
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3 responses to “The Uses of Failure”

  1. mark safranski Avatar
    mark safranski

    Actually, failure can engender bitterness and self-absorption as easily as empathy.
    The fantastic incompetence of FEMA-DHS seem to have obscured the fact that the Mayor of N.O., presumably better connected to poor New Orleans residents than Mike Brown, had a disaster plan that consisted of giving the poor a free ” Every man for himself” DVD.

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  2. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Yes, others besides Brown should also look into themselves and ask how they personally failed in this situation. It’s too bad there is not a tradition of principled resignation in American politics generally.

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  3. Lisa Avatar
    Lisa

    I remember someone explaining on a TV program that the only reason there IS ‘a tradition of principled resignation’ in other countries – I believe England was the example given – is that resignees have somewhere to go.
    Unfortunately I remember no other details, except that the term ‘backbenching’ was used.
    The problem I have with the argument here is not that I think there WASN’T massive incompetence surrounding Katrina – it’s more because I think there WAS. Particularly if you look at the Gulf Coast debacle not as a local hurricane problem but as a national civil-defense problem.
    Tempting as it may be, you can hardly fire the entire Dept. of Homeland Security and everyone else who has anything to do with such matters.
    If entire organizations are off on the wrong track, you can look to the top – and in the case of government that’s what elections are for.
    Also, the roots here are pretty tangled. As one example, maybe everybody will decide that the Dept. of Homeland Security was a massive overreaction to some of the governmental shortcomings revealed by 9/11 – in trying to solve coordination problems between separate agencies, what we got was coordination problems within one huge, lumbering, unwieldy (and still-new) agency.
    But who can we pin THAT on? The 9/11 Commission, who can hardly be fired? National consensus, which certainly seemed to coalesce behind the idea?
    Yes, Mike Brown was badly misplaced in his job, and yes, FEMA was pretty useless for Katrina. But Mike Brown didn’t appoint himself, and I really do believe he became a lightning rod for the nation’s justifiable outrage, beyond the scope of his personal failings. The roots of FEMA’s impotence go deeper and wider than Mike Brown or any other single individual. Reassigning him was an appropriate response, in my opinion. Firing him outright would probably have been disproportionate.
    More to the point, there are bigger issues to worry about. They’re not going to be solved by a handful of sacrificial firings that are done mostly to give the impression that ‘we’ve found the culprits and taken them out, by golly.’ That kind of ‘band-aiding’ serves us badly, if at all.

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