The Concept of Risk
by Daniel Brandt
Abstract: This article treats political and religious transcendence as two moments of the same psycho-social dynamic. It is primarily an attempt to understand why the collapse of student activism in the sixties necessarily led to various forms of youthful cultism in the seventies. Concepts and categories are borrowed and synthesized from humanistic philosophy and psychology, Marxism, empirical theology, and the physical and natural sciences. The methodology is partly existential and partly empirical, and the structure is designed to encourage the self-reflection and understanding that can lead from indiscriminate cultism back toward self-conscious activism.
For many psychologists, the notion of risk is foreign to their orientation; they prefer instead to use the terms "socialization" or "participant behavior" to describe the interaction of an organism with its environment. Risk seems too unpredictable, too subjective; such a concept would seemingly undermine accepted instinctual and mechanistic interpretations of behavior which view responses of the organism primarily as a means of adaptation and survival.
Yet if we assume that social progress is possible, it follows that the dynamics of such progress must be rooted in the capacity of individuals to contribute to social evolution. I define progress in this context as an evolution in humankind's perception of what it means to be human, and I make no apologies for assuming that the evolution of such ideas as freedom and equality are truly progressive. Even if this assumption is not empirically based, though, it is nevertheless useful; for the assumption of progress necessarily precedes the reality of progress -- i.e., progress is necessarily self-conscious. So my assumption is defensible on these grounds alone: unless we assume progress, we are likely to sell humankind short. To ask whether progress is "real" begs the question. If nothing else, the assumption of progress alters perceptions and behavior so fundamentally that the assumption is reified in its consequences.
Risk is the capacity of the individual to alter old perceptions and behavior and make new assumptions of a fundamental type. Many times it happens quickly, other times more slowly, but the process of risk always transcends the old self by identifying with specific persons, collectivities, or ideas (or a combination thereof) which are perceived as more important than comfort or security. This capacity within the psychology of the individual parallels the function of mutation in biological evolution: risk furnishes society with a constant supply of new possibilities which are then filtered through the process of historical selection. This paper will examine the phenomenon of risk at both a psycho-social and cosmological level and attempt to show that risk is properly placed at the very foundation of personal, social, and religious fulfillment.
Freedom and Necessity
I use the word "risk" because it allows for the possibility of freedom better than such similar concepts as "homonomy,"[1] "ego-extension,"[2] or "surrender."[3] Such concepts do represent an improvement over mechanistic models of psycho-social development in that the dynamic, Gestalt-oriented approach tends to posit the self as an agent of decision; but the intricacies of the freedom-necessity problem cannot be dealt with through purely speculative systems. In a certain sense, those who assume that they are free are always one step ahead of those who try to analyze the determinants of behavior. The assumption of freedom is more than an illusion, for the assumption itself leads to consequences that defy predictability. The assumption of freedom is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it limits the validity of all attempts to describe its parameters.
Therefore one must respect the existentialist position, which forgoes the self-limiting tendency of objective interpretations if favor of subjectivism and its concomitant freedom. All objective schemes of psycho-social development, insofar as they are inadequate or false, limit or preclude the fulfillment of self and society, by way of an exclusive commitment to an ill-defined, deterministic and static conceptual scheme. Such static conceptions of reality limit freedom, for reality appears to be a dynamic, relational process. Existentialists concentrate on internal reality, claiming that it can be better known than external reality, thereby allowing for more freedom. Personal subjectivity, they argue, is more dynamic than social-empirical objectivity and is therefore more meaningful and real.
Many empiricists, on the other hand, claim that objective necessity controls all levels of reality, so that freedom is a meaningless concept. To these empiricists, what others currently call "freedom" or "indeterminism" is better understood as probabilistic variation -- essentially random deviations from a norm. Albert Einstein represented the majority of empiricists in his belief that probability is an artificial device that quantifies -- and therefore falsely reifies -- an incomplete understanding of causation.
Marxists usually take the middle way between existentialism and empiricism. They can use Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle to substantiate their belief that both subjective existentialism and detached empiricism are equally untenable extremes.[4] Since partisanship is unavoidable -- since observers cannot separate themselves from that which is observed -- all that remains is to establish what sort of partisanship is most valid. Like existentialists, Marxists must participate, but unlike existentialists they must be a certain type of participant: it is an identification with the oppressed that makes Marxist objectivity possible. Marx argued that social structures shape our self-consciousness and that freedom is realized through the necessity that emerges out of actions on behalf of the oppressed. The relative objectivity of proletarian sensitivities leads to a reliable critique of the social structures which alienate and oppress them. A dialectic between theory (critique based on the natural laws of history) and action (changing the social structures) leads into a push-pull of ever-increasing consciousness and freedom throughout history, according to most revisionists.
Marx's method of deliberate solidarity with the oppressed insures that historical progress will reflect human progress. This is very significant, for the options within the freedom-necessity spectrum are so varied that a risk toward a particular position demands careful consideration of the consequences of that risk. If there is freedom, then there is also responsibility. The idea of risk in this paper is similar to the Marxist model, in that (1) it attempts an existential avoidance of passive objectivity in favor of active humanism and freedom, and (2) it claims a measure of empiricism by accounting for certain modes of behavior better than similar concepts.
Risk has its roots in Kant, Kiekegaard and Nietzsche and is dependent on the postulate of a dynamic, real self that exists prior to the experiences that define it. An appropriate analogy for the interrelationship of self and experience might be based on the holographic principle. A hologram is a three-dimensional image recorded on film as the interference pattern of two laser beams, one reflected from the object to be recorded. In addition to the fact that a hologram stores incredible amounts of information, it is also interesting to note that each piece of the hologram contains all of the information on the entire film -- though with less detail or sharpness than the whole. By cutting a hologram in pieces the image is weakened, but each piece will reproduce the entire image. Recent experiments with salamanders suggest that their brains work on a holographic principle.[5] It is also known that each reproducing cell of an organism contains all of the genetic information of the entire organism, in addition to the information which differentiates the specific function of the cell. The holographic structure may be a general law of higher evolution.
The self is dependent on its experiences in much the way that an image is dependent on a hologram for its reproduction. A larger hologram (stronger experiences) leads to a better-defined image of the object (self). But the dependency only goes so far, for the image (self) cannot be destroyed by breaking up the hologram (set of experiences). Each piece of the hologram contains all of the original image, just as the whole self is risked in each experience. To complete the analogy, we would need a series of feedback systems that could alter the content of the image itself, thereby giving the process an ongoing dynamism. Such a model could accommodate a variety of positions on the freedom-necessity spectrum in addition to the concept of risk. But models like this often provide more questions than answers, and it would be a mistake to carry the analogy too far.
The concept of risk, in emphasizing its attraction to freedom over necessity via the active self, must make an important distinction that could escape the casual observer. All instances of risk involve a transcendence of self, but not all transcendence is properly labeled "risk." A distinction between transcendence from a position of ego-strength and transcendence from weakness is necessary so that the latter may be excluded from the discussion. The combination of strength and transcendence broadens one's perspectives through a dialectic of self-affirmation and selflessness. The individual risks the security of ego-strength and identifies with specific persons, collectivities or ideas. This is risk in its ideal type, and it is the source of human creativity and sensitivity.
Strength and Weakness
Erich Fromm hints at the possibility of transcendence from strength in his discussion of faith and conscience and in his claim that self-love is a precondition for productive love of others.[6] But he fails to follow through with the implications of self-affirmative transcendence and seems preoccupied with the dangers of self-negation. Those with a weak self-image often survive psychologically through the mechanism of escape and divergence, which tends to narrow rather than broaden one's perspectives. In attempting to move beyond the insecure self, a position of greater security is discovered in dogmatism, fanaticism, authoritarianism, destructiveness or automaton conformity.[7] Fromm had National Socialism in mind, and his suspicion of all transcendence is understandable.
If a test could be constructed that would reflect the distinction between ego-strength and weakness, we would expect to find both types of people in an emerging political or counter-cultural movement.[8] Such a movement is initially powerless and can be thought of as transcendental; as the emerging movement becomes more established, the psychology of transcendence is superseded by the psychology of power. Charles Hampden-Turner approximates the strength-weakness dichotomy by utilizing Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Scale in conjunction with his own model of psycho-social development. He cites studies that applied Kohlberg's six-stage developmental sequence to early New Left activists, and found that almost 80 percent were in Stages 5-6, 20 percent in Stage 2 (Stage 1 is characteristic of small children), and very few in Stages 3-4, which contain the bulk of the non-activist population. Conversely, in a study of Bay Area students it was found that 80 percent of the Stage 6 students had sat in at Sproul Hall in 1964, 50 percent of the Stage 5 students, 10 percent of the Stages 3-4 students, and 60 percent of the Stage 2 students.[9] "Strength" and "weakness" as represented by Stages 5-6 and Stage 2 are poorly defined,[10] but it is clear that the polar opposites are found working together within emerging transcendental movements. Risk is descriptive of those who transcend from a position of self-sufficiency.
Whereas transcendence from weakness searches for greater security and cannot properly be understood as risk, transcendence from strength surrenders its invulnerability in favor of specific persons, collectivities or ideas that are perceived as more important than the comfortable self. In terms of the holographic model, the risk inheres in the possibility that with the total hologram shattered a large enough piece may not be found with which a distinct self-image can be reconstructed. Declining transcendental movements are indicative of this phenomenon. Paul Tillich described the utopian socialism of certain circles in Germany immediately following World War I. While acknowledging that utopianism contributes substantially to social progress, Tillich also worried about the devastating effects of frustrated utopianism. As history became more disappointing, the threat of disillusionment was so profound that the utopian activists had to resort to terror to maintain themselves, and those who suffered such disillusionment often became fanatics against their own past.[11]
Tillich's observations are confirmed by the frustrations of American activists during the late sixties. In addition to an increase in violence within the New Left, however, there was also a proliferation of assorted religious cults among young people. The Marxist would hasten to add that Tillich's proposal for a partial transcendence of utopia is an expression of his own alienation, and that any such transcendence would subtract from utopia's power. The attempt to avoid the risk of utopianism and the recourse to terrorism may both be motivated by a need for security. The crux of the issue for the Marxist is whether social evolution can function without utopian risk.[12]
Materialism and Idealism
In The Courage to Be Tillich's notion of risk ignores the historicism of Marxism and utopianism by opting for a trans-historical, ontological view of alienation. On of the key issues in the continuing Marxist-Christian dialogue revolves around this problem of whether alienation is ontological or historical. Marxism dismisses all purely metaphysical systems as projections motivated by social alienation. Christians reply that individuals are more than the products of social relations. Tillich echoes the latter view; his is an ongoing existential risk related to ontological anxiety -- i.e., a risk toward an idea. Tillich's idea assigns men and women a place in the cosmos; it helps them accept their limitations and warns them against idolatry. This is not the historical risk that occurs in space and time, moving from self-sufficiency toward identification with specific persons or collectivities.[13]
Erich Fromm acknowledges both types of anxiety, the historical and the ontological (he calls it "existential"). For Fromm knowledge of death is the major source of ontological anxiety, which in turn leads to a sense of aloneness and the limitation of potential.[14] The problem of death also occupies a prominent place in the Marxist-Christian and Marxist-Existentialist dialogues. Tillich admits that the affirmation of one's death is an important part of courage, but Rollo May takes Tillich one step closer to historical risk by first recognizing and then ignoring humankind's finitude. His use of the word "risk" in this context blends together the two types of anxiety:
We can never know absolutely whether a decision we now make is really the right decision; nevertheless, we must make the decision anyway. This risk inheres in self-consciousness. I think it involves the giving up of childhood omnipotence; we are no longer God, to put it symbolically. But we must act as though we were; we must act as though our decisions were right. This is the reaching out into the future that makes all of life a risk and makes all experience precarious.[15]
Tillich's faith and doubt are closely linked with risk and courage. In Dynamics of Faith he sheds some light on the ontological-historical polarity by distinguishing between the ontological and the moral types of faith. Both types of faith are expressions of the holy; i.e., they transcend the non-holy. Ontological faith is the experience of being grasped by the holy in the here and now; its religious expression tends to be mystical and sacramental and its humanistic expression romantic-conservative. The eros love of ontological faith drives to union with the beloved through self-negation. The moral type of faith, on the other hand, uses its transcendence in judgment of the non-holy. Its religious expression tends to be juristic and conventional; its humanistic expression is progressive-utopian. The agape love of moral faith drives to transformation of the beloved though self-affirmation. The two types of faith are essentially united in the experience of the holy.[16]
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin independently arrived at a polarity quite similar to Tillich's. Teilhard saw all matter as more or less incomplete expressions of consciousness, existing teleologically and evolving in space and time toward increased consciousness and increased complexity (and toward the eschaton, "Point Omega"). The two isotopes of spirit (Tillich's "faith") are discernible as unity through the base by dissolution and unity through the apex by ultra-differentiation. The former involves relaxation, expansion, and pantheism; the latter involves tension, centration, and personalism. Teilhard claims that this latter method, a relatively recent discovery in human history, is preferable to the former. Given the curvature of the universe, though, divergence and convergence ultimately meet in a novel emergence.[17]
By turning this yin-yang polarity into a hologram in which each part contains the information of the whole, it would seem that the personal strength-weakness polarity developed earlier is ancillary to a similar polarity on the cosmological level. In the conception of humanism offered by this paper, the individual psyche is the "part" and humankind's evolving perception of the cosmos is the "whole." The extremes of the two polarities offer four types of transcendence, two of which are important for the concept of risk. The transcendence from strength toward an idea risks itself ontologically, placing itself at the mercy of the quality of the idea. The transcendence from strength toward specific persons or collectivities risks itself historically, placing itself at the mercy of the future. The former seeks freedom from space and time, while the latter freedom over the historical circumstances that cause alienation. Mysticism and utopianism are the most obvious examples of these two extremes. For the functioning of risk in social evolution, the latter method appears the stronger; twentieth-century men and women cannot afford the assumption that history is unimportant. Moreover, history is less stable than ideas that transcend history, so the risk involved is greater. And finally, even the purest idealism cannot escape the influence of history. In terms of the actual phenomenon, however, elements from all four types of transcendence are inextricably interwoven.
Rollo May notes that risk involves a move away from centeredness toward participation in others. Persons going too far lose their identity -- "a phenomenon that can easily be seen in the biological world."[18] May's reference to biological evolution is appropriate, for risk is analogous to the function of mutation in natural selection. But little is known about the dynamics of either mutation or risk, and many psychologists can see nothing beyond the goal of personal centeredness. Consequently they confuse the strength of risk with Fromm's transcendence from weakness and ignore the critical function of risk in social evolution.
Charles Hampden-Turner describes risk as a temporary suspension of a person's cognitive structure so that new meanings can enter the open mind and the totality can be reintegrated. He sees this suspension as an attempt to bridge the distance to others on both a personal and political level. Kurt Wolff's "surrender" is a more general phenomenon that can also be channeled into artistic and spiritual mediums. The surrenderer experiences a suspension of old orientations and assumptions; the experience is total, unpredictable, mystical and creative; and it challenges the historical context by discovering meaning apart from that context. Helpful as these thinkers are, their perspectives may benefit from some of the distinctions made earlier in this paper. The "suspension of received notion" in Wolff is overemphasized to the point where both the freedom and strength of risk are put into question, and Hampden-Turner's risk toward others obscures the ontological risk toward ideas.
But the emphasis on others is well-placed, for it is important to recognize the ethical and political implications of risk. Among other things, they provide a sympathetic yet critical understanding of phenomena such as the "Rennie Davis syndrome." Davis, formerly a Chicago Seven defendant and currently a disciple of a teen-aged guru, is an example of the cultism that has plagued yesterday's activists. The dissolution of the counter-culture left many of us without an identity, whereupon the search for an alternate identity became more desperate and less discriminating. Mysticism is especially attractive because it is isolated from the vicissitudes of history.
Risk involves a transcendence from self-sufficiency, and we have examined the possibility of a cosmic polarity that may integrate weakness into the matrix. (A perfect integration, however, would leave us with a theodicy problem.) In addition, we know that by risking one's strength toward specific persons, collectivities, or ideas, this strength can turn into weakness if the medium of transcendence is inadequate to the demands placed on it. A medium was shown to contain both the strong and the weak, and one might speculate that the constant tension between the two offers an interesting model for the study of transcendental political or counter-cultural movements.
Risk is the suspension of the old for the sake of the new; it challenges our traditions and perceptions by compelling us to leap from old wineskins. Oftentimes it backfires, and many times we look for it before we are strong enough to tame it. The phenomenon of risk is larger than any attempt to understand it, but one can choose to believe in the progress of such attempts. Progress, like freedom, may be a self-fulfilling prophecy; similarly, a better understanding of risk may make us better equipped to contribute to social evolution.
1. Andras Angyal, Foundations for a Science of Personality (New York: Commonwealth Fund, 1941).
2. Gordon Allport, Becoming (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955).
3. Kurt Wolff, "Surrender and Religion," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2 (Fall, 1962), pp. 36-50.
4. Bettina Aptheker, The Academic Rebellion in the United States (Secaucus NJ: Citadel Press, 1972), pp. 149-155. For a non-Marxist view that is similar, see C.F.v. Weizacker, The World View of Physics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952).
5. Paul Pietsch, "Shuffle Brain," Harper's Magazine, 244 (May, 1972), pp. 41-48.
6. Erich Fromm, Man for Himself (Greenwich CT: Fawcett Publications, 1947).
7. Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (New York: Rinehart and Co., 1941).
8. For a partial analysis of the New Left in terms of this model, see Daniel Brandt, "Notes from the Late Student Movement," Christianity and Crisis, 32 (August 7, 1972), pp. 190-193.
9. Charles Hampden-Turner, Radical Man (Garden City NY: Anchor Books, 1971).
10. Operational definitions can be found in Lawrence Kohlberg, "Stage and Sequence: The Cognitive- Developmental Approach to Socialization." In Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, ed. David A. Goslin (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969).
11. Paul Tillich, "Critique and Justification of Utopia." In Politische Bedeutung der Utopie im Leben der Volker (1951). Translated in Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. Frank E. Manuel (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966).
12. "Utopianism" is used throughout this paper in its most positive sense, as distinct from the limited Marxist usage.
13. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952).
14. Fromm, Man for Himself, pp. 48-54.
15. Rollo May, Psychology and the Human Dilemma (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1967), p. 104.
16. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).
17. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Activation of Energy (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 217-227.
18. Rollo May, ed., Existential Psychology (New York: Random House, 1961), p. 76.
Daniel Brandt was active in The Resistance and Students for a Democratic Society, and spent two years as a teaching assistant in Social Ethics at the University of Southern California. He will be a doctoral student at the Graduate Theological Union this fall [1975].
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