It is January, the time of year when people resolve to do – and become – something different in the months ahead. Usually those pledges are commitments to personal improvement. We pledge to lose ten pounds, exercise devotedly, read worthy books, cultivate musical and artistic skills, and accomplish tasks we’ve set aside. Those projects, or so we imagine, will make us healthy, wealthy, and wise. They will also impress our friends and, of course, the people we most wish to impress, ourselves.
Those desires to speed up and do more are accompanied, all too frequently, by ambitions that surely are their opposites. At the same time that we engage in frenetic self-development, we vow to slow down and appreciate life’s better moments. “Quality time” will be spent with family and friends. There will be trips to a lake, mountain, or beach – anyplace where people smile at one another in a familiar and contented way, bask in sunlight, and appreciate scenery. We will stop and smell roses. Blood pressure will lower. Perhaps we will even discover some deep and abiding philosophy – religiously inspired or not - that provides stability and peace of mind. As a television character demanded, we will have “Serenity Now!”
An earlier blog discussed the views of historian Daniel Boorstin, who argued that twentieth-century Americans suffered from a case of exalted expectations. In his book The Image, Boorstin declares that the members of his society want for themselves an astonishing array of character traits, skills, possessions, and experiences – indeed, everything currently idealized. It does not matter that many of these qualities are nearly impossible to obtain, take years to develop, or are commonly contradictory in their implications.
Such persons want cars that are spacious but cheap to maintain. They wish to travel widely and be cosmopolitan in their outlook. Simultaneously, they desire the comforts and stability of a guiding home community. They are urged to be constantly on the go, finding new experiences at every turn. But they should also be thoughtful and well-versed in literature, art, and other “serious” cultural domains. They should feel the comforts that only sustained religious faith provides and yet be free to rely solely on their own judgments. Presumably time spent in one endeavor does not compete with time spent in another. The tensions between security and stimulation, novelty and familiarity, speed and stability go unrecognized.
Surely, these encouragements to do and be everything continue today. Most of us wish to look - and be thought – young, or at least to be thought younger than we are. We should possess the curiosity, vivacity, and hopefulness pertinent to early life. At the same time, we want others to respect us for the wisdom that comes from years of diligent living. As younger people should acknowledge our rank and accomplishments so older ones should acknowledge our promise.
Abstractly, we dream of wealth, power, knowledge, and prestige. These visions are concretized as a great job, fancy house, technologically rigged car and boat, oodles of discretionary time, promising pension plan, and a thoroughly presentable spouse and children. Certificates, photos, and similar testimonials should adorn “walls,” both physical and electronic. Career and family success are to be managed skillfully, and simultaneously. We should be devoted equally to significant others and to ourselves.
Whatever accolades we receive for our accomplishments, we also want to be thought a regular person – who understands well the circumstances of other regular people, communicates effectively with them, and thus mixes easily at a ball game, party, or fair. Ideally, we should be someone others want to have a beer with.
We are told - and this is Boorstin’s concern - that this wonderful mix of possibilities is within our reach. That message comes especially from our popular media – movies, television, and advertising culture. Click on the TV to see beautiful people smiling, drinking, and cavorting in manicured surroundings. If trouble arises, one of their number steps forward to end it decisively, perhaps with a clever remark or well-aimed blow. Greater challenges may require a gun and a car chase. There will be a joke or two afterwards to show that our protagonist was not affected unduly by the proceedings. A kiss may be in the offing. Then drinks are ordered and a new round of camaraderie begins.
Surely, it is our right to dream in vivid colors - of winning athletic competitions, writing books, performing before adoring thousands, inventing things that end human suffering, and offering judicious solutions to the perplexities of life. We should not be expected to put in years of unpleasant, unacknowledged toil to accomplish these ends. In other words, the ideal life is the sort of thing one sees on television, a cavalcade of excitements followed by an awards ceremony. Boorstin’s concern was that such fascinations might be seen not only as aspirations but also, and much more importantly, as expectations for what the world realistically holds out to us. Have we – as the talented, enterprising individuals we tell ourselves we are – slipped the social and cultural moorings that historically have connected people and guided their ventures into the world?
Although Boorstin focused on the United States, he drew inspiration from French thinkers like Rousseau and Tocqueville who believed that individuals must recognize – and indeed profit from recognizing – their involvement in wider human communities. Public life is more than a cascade of social “contracts” formalizing the interests of bargaining individuals. Utilitarianism is not enough to sustain the good society. People must also acknowledge their common circumstances, accept worthy values, and support the frameworks that make individual bargaining possible. Collective wisdom is greater, and more enduring, than private insight. Personal freedom depends on systems of social support.
One of the great proponents of the above viewpoint was French sociologist In his writing Durkheim emphasized the dangers of what he understood to be the excessive individuation of the modern world. One expression of this he called “egoism,” the belief that one should be able to live by his or her own visions of what life should be. Persons so emboldened inflate themselves at the expense of their societies. The private self – and that self’s possessions – is of paramount importance. Beyond that circle of concern lies an outer, social world, marked by confusion, disagreement, and entrapment.
This commitment to self is abetted by a second condition that he called “anomie,” or normlessness. As he saw it, humans require public support and guidance – to give them realistic boundaries for their actions, goals for living, and standards for self-evaluation. We need these touchstones for experience. When a person drifts too far from this social surround – perhaps into the cultural fantasy worlds celebrated in our own times – too much seems possible. This condition – essentially, “I can do anything I wish” – is exacerbated during periods of social instability, change, and conflict. At such times, people find themselves living dangerously - getting high, engaging in risky sex, investing wildly, fighting, thieving, and otherwise experiencing the prospects of being out-and-about in unchartered territory.
“Living riotously” is celebrated in popular media. It may be an appropriate element of the teenage years. However, it is usually unproductive, both for individuals and for societies. Individuals need the discipline to accept that much of life is unglamorous routine. Many of those “rituals” direct us, restore us, and prepare us for specific acts of creativity. In much the same way societies need rules that assist orderly interaction. People need to know that they can trust strangers to honor their commitments. Individual exploits almost always depend on the willing support of other people. Those people must be seen not as fearsome “others” but as persons like ourselves.
In a classic book Suicide, Durkheim studied one highly negative implication of his thesis. Although there are different reasons why people kill themselves, in modern societies a common cause is that people feel themselves separated from their social commitments. People with too much “freedom” – if freedom is seen simply as the prerogative to do whatever one wishes – are more likely to die in this way. Single people, urban dwellers, men, and Protestants kill themselves more frequently than opposite categories. They may be urged on by belief systems that praise individual judgment unduly. They may find themselves isolated from society’s ordinary connections and obligations. In either case, the claims of other people have little meaning. What matters is the individual’s own fascinations. When these dreams die, the result is despondency.
Like most people – and the writer of this blog - Durkheim supported the concepts of freedom, achievement, and progress. Modern society’s emphasis on self-development and private judgment is to be praised. Individualism is a worthy personal and social philosophy. What is dangerous is individuation, the extreme version of this that acknowledges no social value beyond personal interest.
Pointedly, Durkheim does not praise the kinds of collectivism that forestall personal expression. His discussions of “altruistic” and “fatalistic” suicide, common in traditional societies, make this plain. The suicide bomber is no model for modern times. Personal wishes must not disappear into a fog of ideological or collectivist glory. People, as individuals, matter.
Instead, the goal of successful living is to honor both community and individual. Communities – as the name implies, those who acknowledge their common circumstances and commitments – are the foundation for a coherent life trajectory. They make fulfillment of personal ambitions possible. They restrain some of our harmful impulses. For their part, individuals adjudge, refine and revitalize those group directives. So understood, society and individual are complementarities rather than opposites. The success of one is related, intimately, to the success of the other.
References
Boorstin, D. (1962). The image: A guide to pseudo-events in America. New York: Harper Colophon.
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A study in sociology. New York: Free Press.
