402 becoming more human by becoming more godlikeWe cannot will our self- transformation; we can nevertheless will a
change in our relation to the setting that we inhabit, refusing to give it
the last word. In this way, we rob the particularity of its sting. We cease
to allow it to be the prison- house of the spirit. We resist the temptation
to describe the prison- house as a home.
Th e idea of the transformative vocation has been largely the privi-
lege of an elite of geniuses, heroes, and saints. An aspiration of democ-
racy, embraced and generalized by the religion of the future, is to turn
this idea into a common possession of humanity. Its generalization,
however, depends on more than the authority of a moral belief. It re-
quires as well the reformation of society. In par tic u lar, it presupposes
the development of po liti cal and economic arrangements that break
down the contrast between the ordinary reproduction and the ex-
traordinary revision of a context. A demo cratized market economy,
liberated from a single, exclusive version of itself, and a high- energy
democracy that does not require crisis to make change possible are the
twin major institutional projects serving this goal. Th ey are the indis-
pensable allies of a practice of education equipping the mind to analyze,
to decompose, and to reconstruct, informed and inspired by experience
and ideas remote from the present circumstance.
A second antidote to the belittling eff ect of mutilation is engagement
in activities that elicit single- mindedness and wholeheartedness. Th eir
objects and occasions may be disproportionate to their devotions. Th e
gap between intensity and its objects was from the beginning the chief
sign of our susceptibility to belittlement. Intensity squandered and misdi-
rected, however, is better than no intensity at all: it affi rms and enhances
the good of life, in the face of death, and off ers us a temporary release from
our groundlessness and insatiability. We can enlist, in the ser vice of an
eff ort to fashion worthier objects, the force that it engenders.
Here too, however, the or ga ni za tion of society facilitates or inhibits
our self- transformation, placing greater or lesser weight on virtue as a
surrogate for politics. Th e or ga ni za tion of work assists us in our re sis-
tance to belittlement to the extent that it conforms to three principles.
Th e fi rst principle is that it render relative the distinction between
supervisory and implementing activities, between making plans and
implementing them, as well as among specialized work roles in general.