The culture’s the problem, and the culture’s all about “me”
If Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right that culture drives politics but politics can sometimes nudge culture, the question is raised: How to make the culture more uplifting and kind? And can politics do anything to help ennoble the culture, and thus heal itself?
I think the core question has to do with “me” and “we.”
A democratic vision of “we”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt dealt not only with what we now call an “existential threat” — enemies who would destroy democracy and our country — but with the need to move forward and progress, to articulate a democratic vision of “we,” both for our nation and for the world.
He did this in his “Four Freedoms” speech. The four freedoms were: Freedom of speech and expression; Freedom of religion; Freedom from want; and freedom from fear. He specified regarding the last “that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor..”
This was 1941, as the nation and the president turned from battling economic dysfunction to fighting foreign aggression. The speech was mostly about rallying and arming the nation.
But Roosevelt could not have been a war president if he had not first been a hope president. Before the war he gave us the New Deal — a vision of a more fair and compassionate society. And he made clear that this vision must not be lost to war.
Elsewhere in that speech, he said: “For there is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic systems are simple. They are: Equality of opportunity for youth and for others. Jobs for those who can work. Security for those who need it. The ending of special privilege for the few. The preservation of civil liberties for all.”
Simple, perhaps. Not easy. We have lurched sometimes forward and sometimes backward. We have a long way to go.
But one thing in this speech is clear. It is all about “we.” Our country prospered, had internal peace, and enjoyed a fundamental sense of unity when we had a better, clearer sense of “we.”
A culture of “me-ism”
Back to culture: From the 1960s and 1970s on, our culture has been focused on the individual. This occurred simultaneously with the breakdown of the family, which was thought to no longer be economically necessary in the information and service economies.
In fact, the opposite is true. The diminution of the family caused mass poverty. And the government often forsook the cause of freedom from want.
Now “me-ism,” is so deeply embedded in our culture and in personal ambitions that we hardly see it is there.
I go to yoga classes and have done so for years. Often a teacher will say something like: Thank yourself for coming today and giving yourself this gift of yoga. Congratulate you on giving to you.
I wonder if this is actually in keeping with yogic tradition. Or with Hinduism or with Buddhism.
Or is this an Americanization? What if yoga is, properly, about spirituality, and “us”?
I wonder, too, if men and women of the Greatest Generation, the Korea generation, our parents and grandparents, would be comfortable with so much “Do it for you. You deserve it.” You have worked hard. You deserve the ice cream treat, the best bourbon, the cruise, the sports car, the boat.
Our parents and grandparents had another idea: We have worked hard and will save for a rainy day. Live below our capacities. Rather than above them and for our appetites. The government should do likewise.
I like to imagine an American yoga teacher saying: Hopefully these moving meditations will make you better family members and citizens.
A culture of more “we,” might help us to think more about the country and not just our side. It might help us to see the other.
Four men
I have been reading lately about two very different cultural heroes: The British poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who just died
And the conductor Herbert Blomstedt, the world’s oldest active conductor, at 96, until he took a fall recently.
Zephaniah was a social justice poet who thought the culture had to be altered by politics. Blomstedt was not political. But he felt that great music could lift all who are open, and help us to realize our basic human commonality and equality.
I wrote a book on the great American conductor Robert Shaw, who practiced this same faith. He felt that the arts could do what politics and religion could no longer do.
I am starting a book on the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who believed that freedom from want was achievable with radically progressive economic policies. But he also embraced a profoundly conservative civic ethic. We need a Bill of Duties, he said.
What unites these four men is devotion — devotion to something other than, higher than, “me.”