MLK, and the State of Our Moral Universe

What a time to remember the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we celebrate a man who fought for a future in which every person blessed with life had the chance to build meaning, value and joy unfettered by the dictates of prejudice or poverty. Yet the celebration is marred by the tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti -- a nation that faces an unfathomable destruction that, if caused by an earthquake, was enabled by three centuries of exploitation.

One of Dr. King's most oft-repeated quotes is "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." The question we have to ask ourselves today is what is the state of our moral universe, and perhaps more importantly, "Where do we go from here?"

The speech from which the "moral universe" quote is drawn is MLK's last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Delivered in August 1967, the speech shows King at a moment far more revealing than in some of his better-known, earlier speeches.

By 1967, the triumph of the 1964 Civil Rights Act had had time to sink in, and the challenge of addressing poverty and injustice during a rapidly escalating war was leading to increasingly radical activism. The 1967 SCLC address was King's chance to boldly affirm his positions on economic justice, nonviolence and power.

A few parts of the speech, in particular, stand out as wisdom we need today:

1. A Fundamental Reimagining of the Economic Structure: King was unique in his ability to see and communicate the intellectual failings of both capitalism and communism. Capitalism, for King, was called into question by its tyrannical focus on the individual and its capacity to lead to the path of exploitation. But for him, just as "capitalism denied that life is social," "Communism denied that life is individual." He believed that the economic apparatus had to be born again in a way that did not have the capacity to "thingify" or commoditize people.

This language is not so far from the belief at the root of social entrepreneurship that the gospel of capitalism that only seeks maximum profits is, in fact, the accident of history, and true capitalism must incorporate economic and social justice.

2. Power and Love: One of the most powerful parts of this speech -- miles from the grade school version of King we're taught -- was his conversation about the historical notion of power. King claimed that "one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have been contrasted as opposites." Instead, he said that "What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love."

This is at the root of the agency a new generation of activists and entrepreneurs have in trying to remake the world. We've seen the abusive nature of power wielded without love in the form of the failed financial institutions that have sold out and made bets against the future in the name of gain today. And likewise, we've seen sentimental, anemic and powerless love in activism more concerned with nostalgia and principle than actual change. We're not interested in either.

3. Self-Believe At The Root Of "Audacious Faith In The Future:" King begins his speech with an affirmation that true freedom can only begin on the inside, and that as long as people -- in the case of this speech, the African-American population -- remain slaves to the limits of their own self-conception, they can never be truly free. He wrote:

No Lincolnian Emancipation Proclamation or Johnsonian Civil Rights Bill can totally bring this kind of freedom....the Negro must boldly throw off the manacles of self-abnegation and say to himself and to the world, "I am somebody. I am a person. I am a man with dignity and honor. I have a rich and noble history. How painful and exploited that history has been. Yes, I was a slave through my foreparents and I am not ashamed of that. I'm ashamed of the people who were so sinful to make me a slave."

This is the part of the speech that I believe brings up the most important questions we must ask ourselves as we ask about the state of our moral universe and where we go from here.

What does a child believe he or she can be?

What about a in Iraq? In Haiti? On the south side of Chicago?

They are owed, at the very minimum, the plausibility of their own triumph.

My great fear today is that we are beginning to lose faith in the future. This economic crisis has destroyed ten years of economic progress in America, we're told. A generation of Americans is expected to have a shorter lifespan than its predecessor, largely because of our addiction to cheap food and our broken health care system. And in most parts of the world, the story is worse.

If we let this be the story of our time, we will cede the optimism that even in our darkest hours has aimed our compass towards progress. This is why I spend so much time telling a different story -- of an entrepreneurial spirit that believes and acts as though all people have agency; of a global generation that is coming into its own as a force for good in the world; of the people who are quietly building the infrastructure for a more just tomorrow.

Because what King knew was that, in the long run, the contradictions of this nation and indeed -- of human nature -- could not stand in the way of the boldness of our experiment in liberty, equality and creativity. He believed that when you give people the foundations to be successful, they usually are, and that when you give people the chance to be good -- to themselves and to others -- they usually will be. This is what he meant when he said that "the arc of the moral universe..bends towards justice." The quote is not about destiny, but about agency.

The state of our moral universe is, like every single other moment in the history of human existence, to be determined. It is, like every other moment, up to us to bend the arc.

Photo Credit: pictoscribe