Not sure if either of you caught Sarah posting a link to this on Facebook. It’s a long article but its well worth the read, absolutely along the lines of your philosophies around youth, and undoubtedly a great subject for a new blog piece!

Emma’s words gave the article a positive spin, and I had the article in my queue to read when my 30-something friend Emily emailed my yesterday to say…

I’m curious to know what you think about this article and the case for “emerging adulthood.” Let me know.

I can’t remember when I got a heads up from two unrelated sources to look at a piece in the media.

I finally read it and I’m a bit overwhelmed by its length (~7700 words), the different areas it touches on, and all the cultural assumptions (some called out and others not) that form the piece’s context. Since Emma and Emily had suggested I blog about it, I felt like I needed to wrestle it to the ground and parse it. During the course of my initial read I seemed to have various buttons pushed having to do with adultism and the generational tussle perhaps between Baby-boomers and Millenials, since the author and most of the key sources seemed to be Boomers themselves.

Parsing it down, it basically represents Henig’s documenting the work of Jeffrey Arnet, a psychology professor at Clark University in Worchester Massachusetts who is proposing a new human developmental phase (from adolescence to about age 25) that he calls “emerging adulthood”, a new developmental phase not unlike the creation of the idea of adolescence…

What is happening now is analogous to what happened a century ago, when social and economic changes helped create adolescence — a stage we take for granted but one that had to be recognized by psychologists, accepted by society and accommodated by institutions that served the young. Similar changes at the turn of the 21st century have laid the groundwork for another new stage, Arnett says, between the age of 18 and the late 20s.

Maybe I’m overreacting, but I think the defining of adolescence and the institutions and conventional wisdom that have emerged from that definition represent a mixed bag for human beings ages 13 through 19. Yes it was a plus to appreciate the developmental changes and issues, including hormones, that people that age go through. But it seems we as a culture have come to mostly disrespect and ridicule adolescents for the “raging” of those hormones and a general incapacity to think about anything meaningful beyond the direction of their endocrine system.

Supposedly the acceptance of the concept of “adolescence” led to the creation of junior high school (now middle school), a halfway house of sorts between elementary and high school. I for one hated junior high, though I had been okay in elementary school and made my way through high school fairly well. With some notable exceptions, most youth I know have had a similar negative experience with this institution created specially to cater to youth in this unique developmental period.

So given that, I approach Arnet’s idea of “emerging adulthood” with some trepidation, hoping this is not headed towards some diminution of the full adult status of people over 18 through their twenties. It seems sometimes that only the people that are not defined as a developmental stage that get to make the rules about everyone else’s disabilities. Enough said… just confessing my biases.

According to article author Henig…

During the period he calls emerging adulthood, Arnett says that young men and women are more self-focused than at any other time of life, less certain about the future and yet also more optimistic, no matter what their economic background. This is where the “sense of possibilities” comes in, he says; they have not yet tempered their idealistic visions of what awaits.

Conventionally, full “adulthood” has been measured by finishing schooling (including college), getting a career job, getting married, buying a house and having children. Arnett is proposing his new developmental phase to try and explain why that appears to be happening later in people’s lives than it used to.

Henig refers to conclusions drawn from neuroscience research in the 1990s by the National Institute of Mental Health…

This new understanding comes largely from a longitudinal study of brain development sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, which started following nearly 5,000 children at ages 3 to 16 (the average age at enrollment was about 10). The scientists found the children’s brains were not fully mature until at least 25.

I have to confess that I am concerned that this may be an instance of “scientism” (the inappropriate application of scientific principles), a scientific explanation for something that may be more of a cultural than a physiological phenomenon. Remember that in the 19th Century the medical establishment discovered/invented a disease called “hysteria” that debilitated well-to-do women but somehow did not afflict their working-class counterparts. Maybe this is just a younger generation coming up with a solution to new facts on the ground, including the Great Recession and a jobless recovery.

But I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of my own kids and their young adult comrades who are reacting positively to this “emerging adulthood” concept. I think they feel acknowledged in the difficult times they are going through. I’m sure many of them are feeling pressure (external or even internal) to move along in their lives toward those conventional milestones. Acknowledgement that they are in a unique developmental period may be giving them some needed room to breathe.

Looking back on this period in my own life (from age 18 into my late 20’s) I was certainly unsure though optimistic about my future, while not being focused on getting married, buying a house or raising kids. I can’t really say I was particularly self-focused during those years, since I spent much of my late 20s as a paid community organizer working at essentially minimum wage. (See my piece, “Once More in the Company of Women”.) It wasn’t until I was 28 that I got married and until I was 30 that my partner Sally and I had our first child.

But whether this approach to my life during this period was based on a physiological imperative of brain development or just what seemed like a pragmatic adaptation to circumstances I can’t really ascertain. I would certainly be comfortable with the latter as an explanation.

Again, I think our culture may be obsessed with scientific explanations for things that might be better explained as a person adapting to facts on the ground versus cultural assumptions reflected in conventional wisdom. I think about the rising trend in medicating kids for ADD and ADHD, particularly to help them function better in classroom settings. My partner Sally and I did that for a year with our son Eric, diagnosed by his doctor’s with ADD. (See my piece, “Prescription for Education”.) We came to see that the classroom was not an appropriate learning venue for our son, and had him homeschool instead, which ended the ADD issues.

Still maybe suffering from the assembly-line one-size-fits-all mentality of the Industrial Revolution, we may not be fully acknowledging that their may now be many life paths that young adults can choose to take in a very complex and sophisticated contemporary society. And that the amazingly adaptable human animal is endlessly able to adjust to new sets of circumstances in the ever evolving adventure of human life on Earth.

We have every opportunity and every encouragement before us, to form the noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth. We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

So per Ron’s thinking…

American nationalism has, ever since, had an aggressive, missionary tone. According to the American worldview, no other nation offers humanity a better example to follow. The negative meaning of nationalism, however, is a nagging insecurity… Americans… have surrendered their ancestral ties to come to the new world. They need to prove their loyalty to a set of abstract ideals. Seen in this light, assertive nationalism is a defensive gesture to reassure Americans that they do, indeed, belong to the national community.

Is there a strong thread of projection in Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and the constituency they tap into? Are all of us who get caught up in this missionary nationalism projecting a fear that we are not part of some sort of “tribe” that will protect us and give our lives a collective meaning? Is it particularly difficult because ours is a virtual “clan” built on abstract ideas rather than the good ole clan unity of race, ethnicity, common ancestry, etc?

Ron puts on the hat of America’s national therapist diagnosing its obsessive/compulsive disorder…

Especially in the early years, the ideals themselves needed to be proven; not since antiquity had citizens forged a successful republic. The American experiment was not an assured success. As a result of this insecurity, American culture has generally mistrusted foreign cultures and periodically resorted to xenophobic crusades against immigrants and dissidents. This has taken the form of federal laws, political parties, outright violence, and the notorious Congressional “unAmerican activities” investigations. And, of course, education has been a major weapon in these crusades.

Further, according to Ron…

This self-righteous nationalism has had positive as well as negative connotations. Since European societies were considered to be corrupted by tyranny of church and state, by poverty, ignorance, and superstition, emerging American nationalism was a secular restatement of the Protestant urge to create a holy commonwealth, a model society to inspire the rest of the world. Early Americans, religious and rationalist both, were exhilarated by the sense of being on the verge of a monumental human experiment.

We seem to be a nation, a virtual clan, obsessed with the idea of “crusading” and “reforming”. If we accept the Calvinist innate depravity view of human nature then we must constantly create and improve institutions to counter and reshape that nature. Embracing “scientism” (that is seeing science as a panacea beyond its legitimate scope) we count on its latest and greatest insights to socially re-engineer our society toward some version (secular, or not in Beck and Palin’s case) of the Puritan’s “Holy Commonwealth”, the “shining city on the hill” that Reagan invoked. We know our Founding Fathers loved democracy, but fully practicing it and letting the chips fall where they may gets dicey when the wisdom of the majority goes against perhaps the crusading ethic that has made America America. And finally, despite all these abstract intangible ideals, we measure ourselves in such materialistic terms that compel us to work and/or shop until we “drop”.

I get completely stressed out just thinking about it! We have to go against our nature and kill ourselves in order to try to be successful. But of course, it is an impossible utopian vision we are obsessed with, and so the need to continually reinvigorate the crusade. Obama did his part with his whole “change” theme, and now Palin does hers by calling for a return to “honoring” America.

Perhaps more than any other theme, it is capitalism that defines the identity of American culture. It is the almost unanimous acceptance of capitalist ideology — by the worker as well as the entrepreneur, by the followers of Jefferson and Jackson no less than those of Alexander Hamilton — which distinguishes the United States from most other nations.

That rings true to me. So though some Republicans accuse Obama of being a socialist and some Democrats accused Bush (and particularly Cheney) of being some sort of fascist, both camps support capitalism and free enterprise, just with differing ideas on how much government regulation there should be.

But more broadly among the American public, most of us look at issues, including education through this sort of materialist cost/benefit lens of running a successful business.

The vast majority of Americans eagerly defend capitalism both for its effectiveness (it has, after all, produced unprecedented material prosperity for the nation) as well as for its moral virtues (to a large extent capitalism does reward ingenuity, initiative, and effort, and the economic freedom it engenders is historically related to the political freedom offered by democratic government).

If it were just limited to being our economic system, that would be one thing. But Ron’s thesis here is that woven together with Puritan theology (Calvinism), capitalism has become an American “state” religion of sorts (that separation of Church and State does not apply to), with a set of moral standards beyond just facilitating commerce. This becomes problematic because those moral standards are typically measured based on external material success and moralistic behavior rather than internal human development.

The standards for measuring success are overwhelmingly materialistic; whole realms of human experience, notably the aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual, do not count as qualifications for the job market or as emblems of achievement. Capitalism promotes individualism and self-assertion in social and economic terms, but places far less value on self-understanding, on critical intelligence, or spiritual discovery. Practicality and productivity are more important than contemplation or inner questing; meditative practices are disdained as “contemplating one’s navel.”

So any effort or enterprise that turns a profit and is not obviously evil or exploitive is by convention not only economically, but ethically sound. Our education system and the development of our youth in general unfortunately get viewed in this lens. The key object of education and the early years of life leading to adulthood become maximizing ones economic potential, and achieving a lofty position in the economic hierarchy. This certainly smacks of patriarchal thinking, where ranking is critical to define our superiors and inferiors.

What can easily get lost in this sort of focus, is the maturation and development of the individual human consciousness, and as a result, the continuing development of our collective consciousness as a species. Youth becomes a long involved preparation for an economic slot in the work world, and “finding yourself” is an exercise that seems less and less justifiable in these materialist terms. As a result we can end up “living to work” rather than “working to live”. As Ron says…

Ruled by an unrelenting competitiveness, American culture is suspicious of contemplation that does not demonstrate its immediate practicality. Just as the religious tone of the culture encourages practical moral discipline rather than mysticism, capitalism demands tangible results, not inward seeking or self-realization… This materialism is a major source of personal spiritual alienation and the disintegration of family and community life.

Could this spiritual alienation, family and larger community disintegration be a lot of what we are seeing with our youth in our schools? Their lives are becoming too much of a materialist economic treadmill without any real elements of “questing” that many traditional cultures associate with this pre-adult period of life. Are we “schooling” our kids at the expense of their real development?

Free enterprise, separated from religious aspects, can be an egalitarian economic model that helps foster calculated risk-taking, self-direction, thinking outside the box, learning from failure, and other highly developmental experiences. But when you mix in the Puritan theology making externally measured economic success the yardstick for the human soul then real development of that soul can get lost in the shuffle, in favor of “keeping up with the Joneses” or achieving “economic security” at all costs.

And as Ron indicates, capitalism can warp our sense of balance, along with the world’s ecological balance…

As a worldview (not simply as an economic system), capitalism involves the belief that nature exists to serve human needs and wants; consequently inventiveness and audacity in taming nature are highly valued, and quality of life is measured in terms of how quickly raw nature is converted to human use—the gross national product. Furthermore, capitalism involves the belief that there are no inherent limits to human progress and comfort; therefore, the most ambitious and wealth-producing entrepreneurs are widely honored, and technological innovations are almost always welcomed.

It is interesting the conventional wisdom that as a big time entrepreneur capitalist (like Bill Gates or T. Boone Pickens) you can make millions and be seen as worthy, but if you are a CEO making millions working for one of these capitalists then you are judged much less so. What’s that all about? Aren’t they all getting astronomically more than a living wage?

Ron says that the conservatives champion capitalism to build a hierarchy of meritocracy (as a substitute for the traditional hereditary aristocracy) assuming…

that only a select few can actually attain the pinnacle of success because human nature is lazy and untrustworthy; those few who discipline themselves to achieve should be amply rewarded, and the mass of people should simply be content to share in the general prosperity by respecting private property and the rule of law.

This is an obvious mix of Puritan theology and patriarchy. That whole dissing of human nature of course weaves in the Calvinist idea that only a few of us are chosen to rise above our sordid human nature. Is this why “helicopter” parents berate their kids to get those stellar grades in high school and then go on to the best colleges and get the high powered careers? Since I was somehow “chosen”, shouldn’t my kids be as well?

Certainly “free enterprise” can be tied to a much more egalitarian view of human nature would be a very different animal. Says Ron…

The liberal version of capitalism has been more generous, asserting that there is room for everyone to succeed—if not a particular individual, then surely one’s children.

But according to Ron, both liberals and conservatives share the belief that…

Social problems and cultural discontent are best solved by stimulating personal ambition and increasing individual opportunity, rather than by radically questioning the cultural values that may be their root cause. Consequently, the use of education as a panacea for social and cultural problems is a consistent pattern in American history.

So this is where say, Obama and Palin, find their common ground, its all about the social discipline of education. Of course, just like with capitalism, the blue/red argument is over the particulars. Education becomes a battleground for major political and social forces, each coming up with their one-size-fits-all educational programs.

In my thinking, this is at the expense of the individual development of the human consciousness. And as a result parenting, and the whole concept of what youth and human development are all about, gets caught in the crossfire. Somehow we have developed capitalist schools and capitalist parenting that prevailing conventional wisdom justifies.

I feel Ron sums things up so succinctly, I aspire to write at the level of his prose…

American culture had always harbored a tension between radical Jeffersonian ideals and far more conservative principles… Clearly, there has been an ongoing conflict between conservative elements — represented by the Federalist, Whig, and Republican parties, which are oriented to commercial expansion, traditional morality, and obedient citizenship — and liberal elements—inspired by Jefferson, Jackson, and various populist movements, which tend to emphasize personal freedom and opportunity.

And I like Ron’s one paragraph summary of the conservative position (given that Ron himself is on the liberal side of things)…

These are different ideals of social order, based on different images of human nature. In conservative/republican thought, human excellence is limited to a select few, who naturally tend to rise to economic and social prominence and who should be entrusted with guiding the affairs of state and society. The masses, especially immigrant masses not schooled in national traditions, are often feared as subversive elements. Excessive liberty granted to individuals is seen as a dangerous threat to the social order. Therefore, freedom must go hand-in-hand with discipline. The welfare of the community — the common good — supersedes the personal freedom of the individual.

In Ron’s encapsulation of conservative thought he highlights the elements of hierarchical patriarchal thinking that Riane Eisler has called out in her work. The more negative Calvinistic view of human nature leads to a working assumption that the limited human excellence needs to rise to the top and assume strong authority over the rest of us if the species is going to have any chance. Freedom is mitigated by discipline, even coercive discipline as necessary.

So what of the other side…

Liberal democratic ideology, on the other hand, argues that most (if not all) people have the potential to conduct their own lives and do not need to be controlled from above. If people were free from economic, social, and religious injustice, they would, willingly, be hard-working and moral citizens.

Ron is speaking to the more egalitarian (Eisler’s partnership) position of Jefferson or Jackson, though in today’s world things get a little more complicated as the more libertarian types (generally positioning themselves with the conservative camp) often accuse liberals of being for “big government” and that the libertarians are the ones pushing to let people “conduct their own lives”.

That said, there are plenty of liberal politicians who are certainly very comfortable working within the context of male privilege. I remember in the 1970s my mom pointing that out to me repeatedly (with great frustration) as she and other women struggled to convince their male colleagues to actively support equal rights for women in the guise of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Certainly mainstream liberals today seem just as willing as conservatives to dictate how our kids should conduct their lives and what exactly they need to learn. (But then our youth have not generally been seen to rise to the level of deserving full human rights until adulthood, but that’s different axe to grind.)

So now Ron gets to his basic point here about restrained (rather than I suppose unleashed) democracy. Referring to the liberal ideology…

While this ideology is arguably the majority, mainstream view of American culture (it is certainly the core of the American myth), there is no question but that it is held in check, and in certain periods seriously compromised, by the more conservative tradition.

Putting aside that he may be more optimistic about this being the majority view than other progressive folks, his big point here is that the uneasy compromise between these two positions is a tamer view of democracy that still acknowledges the need for power-over directive (patriarchal) rather than more facilitative (partnership) leadership by whichever side gets the most recent majority vote.

My take is that the continuing prevalence of a more hierarchical patriarchal view of democracy manifests in our elections becoming a horse race or often a grudge match between two competing teams, one which will be victorious and the other vanquished. The “winners”, while doing lip-service to representing all their constituents, are expected by many of their supporters to wield power in a directive power-over fashion that adds perhaps insult and injury to the losing side. Karl Rove somehow jumps to mind here (given perhaps my liberal bias), but I’m sure their plenty of people on “our side” who play this game in a similar manner.

Certainly framing politics and governance as a series of contests between two incompatible sides sells cars and erectile dysfunction medicine on television, and put Fox News followed by MSNBC at the top of the cable news ratings heap. Some would argue that this gets more people interested in politics and that’s a good thing. But making democratic process so adversarial and take-no-prisoners, serves in my mind to restrain rather than enhance a process which should really be about building intelligent compromise and consensus.

As a holistic educator (and a former Waldorf teacher), Ron’s final thought is on the impact of all this on the American education system…

The ongoing tension between conservative and liberal interpretations of democracy is reflected, and has played a major part, in the development of American education.

He goes on in his book to flesh out a historical narrative of how this tension has played out in an around the forming and seemingly endless reforming of the American education system. This of course ties in with Ron’s assertion that unlike Europe, America really isn’t comfortable with politics, but instead frames issues in moralistic/religious terms with scientific socially engineered solutions that ever seems to focus on education as the answer to all America’s continuing challenges.

The scientific revolution was not so much a repudiation of Protestantism as the other side of the Fall/Redemption coin. Scientism retained the religious dichotomy between matter and spirit. The material world is ruled by impersonal, amoral laws, not by any transcendent, self-creative purpose; the spiritual realm is wholly supernatural, and thus not the concern of science. The scientific emphasis on reason over subjective, mystical experience was an exaggeration, but not a rejection, of mainstream Puritan epistemology.

It is fascinating to me (and initially counterintuitive) how this growing belief in science, along with America’s constitutional separation of Church and State, actually enhanced rather than diminished the spread of the Puritan Calvinist theology in American conventional wisdom. While European countries with their state-sponsored religions became more and more secular, America with its explicitly secular government became more and more religious.

As a side note, radical educator and educational historian John Taylor Gatto’s take on this dichotomy is interesting as well. The initial American political elite were secular/political in their orientation and the common folk rebelled against that elite by coalescing around religious beliefs. While in Europe, the elite were generally sectarian religious, and the common folk rebelled against them coalescing around secular/political ideologies like socialism and communism. (It is intriguing to think that maybe if those on the right ever got their wish of turning America into a truly “Christian country” it would do more harm to their cause than good!)

Though not incompatible with Puritan Calvinism, the emerging scientific worldview was moving beyond it as powerful tool transforming American society…

Knowledge of natural laws would give humankind power to control physical events — the highest aim of science. Applied to human affairs by Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, and others, the scientific worldview was a major underpinning of the republican vision which moved the American revolutionaries and founding fathers. In an important book, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology, Yehoshua Arieli (1964, 110-111) says the Enlightenment taught that “man was capable of reshaping himself and his social life according to the dictates of reason and could reflect in his society the harmony of the laws which maintained the universe.”

In terms of The Chalice and the Blade, partnership versus patriarchy, egalitarianism versus hierarchical authority, there is a lot to consider here. The “man” being “capable of reshaping himself” can easily become “The Man” reshaping others to meet some abstract utopian goal that those others may or may not subscribe to.

If science is in fact a two-edged sword, Ron addresses the more egalitarian “edge” when he says…

The scientific worldview offered a more progressive social philosophy and a more optimistic image of human nature than did Calvinist Protestantism… Those who were most enthusiastic about the scientific worldview, such as Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine, argued that “unalienable” natural rights applied to all men, and thus called for a broadly democratic society with limited concentrations of political, social, or religious authority. The view that a rational scientific approach is the most authentic means for achieving a humane, democratic society was echoed over a century later in the thought of John Dewey and secular humanists and progressives.

So here are roots of the expressions of the more radical progressive thinking today that still “question authority” and challenges “The Man”. Thomas Jefferson was the most successful of the early American left-wing radicals who challenged authority and the concentration of power, but more on him in my next installment looking at Ron Miller’s take on “Restrained Democratic Ideology”.

But then there is the other “edge” of creating more powerful tools for patriarchal power-over control…

But after the middle of the nineteenth century, the scientific worldview became more aggressive and pervasive. Religion began to share its central cultural role with a consuming scientific positivism; it was believed, with ever greater fervor, that the scientific method could solve all the riddles of the universe and all the problems of society. This echoed the hope of the Jeffersonian republicans — except that nineteenth century science, freeing itself from all religious concern, veered toward materialism, the belief that all reality is essentially physical matter (which is measurable and manipulable) without any spiritual, transcending force. It became more mechanistic, presuming that natural events are produced by lawful cause-and-effect relationships rather than any overarching purpose. And it became more reductionistic, seeking to explain phenomena by breaking everything into component parts and measuring the pieces. By the early twentieth century, even the human sciences had adopted these biases, and still today behavioral and quantitative approaches remain the preferred methods for studying human and social problems.

As the Industrial Revolution emerged in the 19th Century, facilitated by this scientific reductionism and mechanism, the ideas of “mass production” moved beyond creating large quantities of inanimate products to actually looking at making the mass of human beings potential objects of scientific “social” engineering through the application of the social sciences, including sociology, psychology and others.

Paralleling the building of large factories and mills, the 19th Century saw the creation of penitentiaries, asylums and schools to apply scientific techniques to the improvement of humanity toward utopian ends. Some of those ends were egalitarian in nature, like creating a universally educated public (one of American public education founder Horace Mann’s goals) or attempting to rehabilitate criminals and the mentally ill.

Other ends were more elitist and hierarchical, like using public schools to teach the kids of the increasing waves of Catholic immigrants more Protestant values (another goal of Horace Mann). Another was the creation of a new scientific meritocracy, certainly more attuned to enlightened thinking than the old corrupt European aristocratic hierarchies. Still it was a patriarchal hierarchy going against the more egalitarian democratic ideas of Jefferson and later Andrew Jackson.

As Ron frames it…

Professional expertise assumed the new prestige – we might even say mystique – that was beginning to surround science during the latter half of the nineteenth century. The new professions sought, and received, legitimacy by applying “scientific” (i.e. quantitative, analytical, reductionistic) techniques to their work. The social sciences, which promised to explain human nature and control social problems, emerged as important professional applications of scientific technique.

Jefferson’s pastoral agrarian society of “citizen farmers” had given way to a new aristocracy, one of expertise…

The aspiring middle class made a “culture” of professionalism by defining social success more and more in terms of professional status. In a society becoming increasingly technological and impersonal, professional credentials became a visible badge of personal attainment, a rational and standardized way of defining elite status in contrast to the common herd. By the 1870s… the medical, legal, engineering, and education professions had evolved their own associations, terminology, codes of ethics, and more standardized training, which set them apart from, and above, the nonprofessional.

There were certainly more egalitarian aspects of this new aristocracy, including the promise that its upper echelons were open to anyone with the will to learn…

Professionalism had profound implications for education. Since admittance into one of the specialized fields required extensive schooling, education assumed greater and greater importance as the primary avenue to professional and social success. The middle class use of education for economic advancement was greatly expanded by the need to attend high school, college, and graduate school in order to secure professional status. Non-professionals were increasingly disdained as unqualified to conduct the affairs of society, including education. Consequently, the role of educator itself became highly professionalized, with all the trappings of specialized training, “scientific” techniques, and an aura of superior expertise.

In a brand new emulsion of sorts, patriarchal and partnership ingredients are combined to build a new power-over hierarchy of expert authority, but at least one that promised everyone (through the public education system) an equal opportunity to rise in. It was maybe Calvinist religion and Baconian science in an incestuous and uniquely American embrace.

Stay tuned for more about Thomas Jefferson in our next installment of Ron Miller’s American themes, “Restrained Democratic Ideology”.

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Grant Wood's icon painting American Gothic

Are defining characteristics of the common, middle-class American worldview, the “consensus consciousness” through which most Americans interpret their experience of the world. If there is a common thread which ties these themes together, it is the need for social discipline. Despite the emphasis on “liberty”, “freedom”, independence”, and “individualism” in the American myth, the dominant worldview actually does not trust the spontaneity and self-expressive creativity of the individual. The proper beliefs and proper ways of acting which lead to social and economic success are predominantly moral, rational, entrepreneurial, and “professional”; in short, they impose rational discipline on the deeper, more impulsive, intuitive, mystical, and emotional aspects of human nature.

When I read these words and the rest of Ron’s work I am immediately drawn to its resonance with Riane Eisler’s thinking in her book, The Chalice and the Blade, positing that our contemporary Western culture is an unstable emulsion of sorts, combining seemingly incompatible partnership (egalitarian) and patriarchal (hierarchical) worldviews. Unleashed human passion and creativity kept in check by an imposed rational discipline. A belief in the worth, dignity and equal opportunity for all with an expectation that “the cream will rise to the top” and the best and brightest will instruct the rest of us on “best practices”. A strong principle of separation of Church and State and freedom of (and from?) religion, yet a pervasive moralism coming out of one religious (Protestant) tradition.

Ron sums up his presentation of the five themes as follows…

The issue here is American culture’s pervasive mistrust of the deeper subjective facets of human experience.

We somehow simultaneously celebrate and fear the power and potential of the individual human being and constantly wrestle with what to do about this quandary. When I manage to load that contradiction into my mind I can listen to a commentator like Rupert Murdoch’s guard dog Sean Hannity and at least begin to understand where he’s coming from.

We barrage ourselves, including our youth, with advertising messages to buy this or that clothing, car or even hamburger to express our individuality in those venues while expecting our youth to follow a strict social discipline of standardized education and adults to passively take orders from corporate bosses in the work world.

What the hell is going on? I’m still trying to sort it all out. Miller says that at the root of all this seeming meshugas is the first of his five themes…

1. Puritan (Calvinist Protestant) Theology

So how could a theological doctrine featuring innate human depravity and the profane insignificance of the material world become the foundation of a secular society that features materialism, commercialism, “one person one vote”, and the celebration of the individual’s liberty and pursuit of happiness? (For more an overview of Calvinism, you might want to check out my piece, “American Calvin”.)

Miller sees the Calvinist Protestant worldview as essential to the transition to the Modern from the world of Medieval Christianity which…

Represented an organic form of society, in which individuals’ lives were regulated by ritual, myth, and participation in communal enterprises such as guilds. Each person had a destined position in society, and humanity had a secure position in the Great Chain of Being.

Calvinist Protestantism facilitated the transition from this worldview to the Modern one…

The new capitalist, scientific worldview required liberation from such regularity. There were new worlds to explore, new resources and markets to exploit, new nations to build. Calvinist Protestantism accommodated these urges, but provided a rigorous moralism to keep humans’ unsavory impulses in check. The Puritan worldview was a particularly narrow and pessimistic view of nature and human nature; it allowed for personal ambition and enterprises so long as these were tempered by guilt, repentance, and pious recognition that worldly pursuits are ultimately worthless compared to the divine reality.

So the Medieval Christian religious hierarchy of Pope on down to priests complementing the secular hierarchy of kings and nobles, with the flock/peasants at the bottom was dismantled by these new ideas of the autonomous individual and maybe the bubbling up of a kindled (or perhaps rekindled) partnership ethos. Whether you see it in a context of economic or technological determinism or frame it otherwise as a step in the evolution of our species, most would agree it was a profound change in being human.

But in the continuing cultural dialectic between patriarchy and partnership, between external and internal authority, Calvinism offered a new flatter org chart of sorts with individuals given more autonomy in exchange for practicing much more self-control and answering directly to God (rather than through a priestly hierarchy). Mitigating this egalitarianism was another Calvinist idea that only a few were God’s “elect”, a reality that would be demonstrated by their combination of material success and moralistic piety.

This new theology also put forward a utopian vision (tapping into biblical millennialism) of God’s Commonwealth on Earth, (which conservatives love to riff on, Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill”) that was not seen as antithetical to the subjugation and exploitation of Mother Nature (the world and its indigenous people) and human nature (greed leveraged and harnessed by free enterprise and capitalism).

America, the crown jewel of the “New World”, became the perfect focal point for weaving together these threads and realizing the utopian vision of Calvinist ideology. As Miller says, the mainly Protestant European settlers…

Did not experience the frontier with innocent awe but through the filter of their Protestant worldview. In this view, the pioneers had to be even more vigilant than the settled kinsmen they left behind. Nature was a howling, Godless wilderness; and the community must be bound by a strict moral code or degenerate into lawlessness. Thus, while the frontier may have dissolved some of the pioneers’ previous class distinctions in an economic or social sense, it did not erase the moralistic Puritanism of their ancestors.

And critical to the impact of this ideology on today’s institutions and conventional wisdom…

American culture… has not encouraged true self-reliance in a moral or spiritual sense, because it disdains nature and so mistrusts an unconverted, uncontrolled, undisciplined human nature…

As America built its factories and “shining” cities, and the railways that connected them, the ideology of “taming” the frontier persisted in the popular stories of the West (starting with books and continuing with the new media of radio, film and television), and the moralistic view that justifies the means (even genocide) to achieve that taming.

And following a path of least resistance, as it began so it continues…

Believing that human beings are cut off from the divine, and are instead moved by innate evil impulses, American culture has become highly moralistic; it is commonly believed that a rigorous moral code, and vigilant enforcement of social mores, standards of behavior, and civil laws are all that stand in the way of social upheaval and anarchy.

Since the founding of America, European countries have gone through numerous political, economic and social cataclysms, starting with the French revolution and continuing with subsequent socialist, communist and fascist upheavals. A now more united Europe has worked through much of this and achieved a modicum of peace and integration as perhaps never before.

But according to Miller, in sharp contrast to Europe…

American politics and reform movements have traditionally defined social problems as problems of personal morality and discipline, and therefore have often failed to address the ideological or economic sources of the conflict. This moralistic approach has chronically prescribed religious authority and education rather than consider fundamental institutional change to remedy serious social problems.

To the extent that this conventional wisdom still holds sway; that is a heavy burden for our contemporary institutions, particularly our public school system to bear. Might not that system be paralyzed into a certain ever “reforming” inertia by that heavy weight?

So stick with this thread through my subsequent posts and see how the religious dogma of Colonial America’s Puritan immigrants played out in American scientific, political, economic and nationalistic thinking.

Instead of a discussion between gentlemen to find a workable solution, diplomacy became an effort to show the opposition how strong one was in order to deter him from taking advantage of one’s obvious weaknesses.

This sounds like macho posturing to me, and the major powers of Europe (and eventually the United States) backed it up by building huge mass armies and large navies of massive armored battleships, called “dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts” in the parlance of the day. According to Barzun…

Both sides had plenty of reasons for arming to the teeth. England built dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts as Germany watched the seesaw between armor and firepower and widened the Kiel Canal for access to the North Sea. France lengthened military service to three years. Everywhere “The Next War” filled news articles and common talk.

The competition between the powerful nations and the colonization of the third-world was egged on by the “us and them” ideas of “natural selection” between nations touted by the Social Darwinists and eugenicists, which included the belief in the superiority of the “Nordic” over the “Mediterranean” race and the even more inferior people of color in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

When I bring up the subject of WWI with friends, it seems the conventional wisdom (learned mostly in school history classes I imagine) is that the major players had all these interlocking treaties that forced them to go to war. When the Austrian Archduke was assassinated and Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, based on mutual defense treaties Russia, Germany, England and France had to join the conflict on various sides. Even if there were no compelling reasons for the war, and compelling reasons to try to avoid it, there was no real choice in the matter.

But from my reading of history, the whole damn thing was a war of choice. Every one of the major players entered the conflict willingly hoping to gain territory, avenge prior defeats, otherwise benefit, and also show its national machismo in the process. The intervention one way or the other in reaction to the assignation and the Austria-Hungarian response could just have as easily been a diplomatic effort based on the treaty responsibilities. But instead the players unleashed a military apocalypse they had spent decades building and planning for.

In July of 1914, just before the major powers of Europe issued their declarations of war, John Burns, working class member of Britain’s Liberal government said, “Why four great powers should fight over Serbia no fellow can understand.”

And most disturbing to me was the unanimity of pro-war among virtually all of the progressive thinkers, writers, artists, religious leaders, and other social critics and commentators, at least some of which could normally be counted on to put forward a counter argument. According to Barzun…

What is truly astonishing is the unanimity, unheard of on any other subject but the war and the enemy. Looking over the roster of great names in literature, painting, music, philosophy, science, and social science, one cannot think of more than half a dozen or so who did not spout all the catchphrases of abuse and vainglory… But not before 1914 was the flush of blood lust seen on the whole intellectual class… And everywhere the clergy were the most rabid glorifiers of the struggle and inciters to hatred. The “Brotherhood of Man” and the “Thou Shalt Not Kill” were no longer preachable.

And the macho blood-sport of it all is captured in this quote from the French General Marshal Foch, from September 1914, one month into the fighting: “My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.”

I have read that the French military leadership persisted in a belief that their soldiers could charge enemy machine guns and not suffer horrendous losses if only their morale was high enough. This belief persisted even after many thousands of French soldiers were slaughtered in huge battles where nothing of consequence was achieved. What more can this be than delusional machismo?

I could go on but I think I’ll stop! I’m still not sure why this nearly century-old event pushes my buttons so. I guess it is just so painful to contemplate, as Barzun says, “The blow that hurled the modern world on its course of self-destruction was the Great War of 1914-18.”

It’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but the Western World seemed to me willing to sacrifice millennia of cultural and ethical development (admittedly three steps forward and two back) in an effort to see who was the “top dog” with the biggest “huevos”. It feels like a historical low-point for my male gender, when with all our modernity we should have somehow known better.

Ironically, upon seeing the final draft of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, now Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Foch commented, “This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.”

Million of soldiers and civilians were dead. Much of Europe was in ruins. The major Western countries were all demoralized, bankrupt and missing a generation of their male older youth and young adults. Vengeance and festering anger ruled the day. Most progressive people, having bought into the war and failed to champion a peaceful resolution of issues, were likewise demoralized and offered little inspiration or guidance on a different path forward for Western society.

It was exactly 20 years later that Nazi Germany invaded Poland to start World War II. (So prophetic words from a man of power who understood all too well what the game was and how it was going to continue.)

One can easily make an argument that the Bolsheviks would never have taken power in Russia (leading to Stalin after Lenin and the whole Cold War Communist Menace thing), the Great Depression might have been averted, and Hitler probably never would have been voted into power in Germany if “The Great War” had not been indulged in by the angry father-figures of the world, with the greater public along for the thrill ride. How different a world it would be today if the conventional wisdom and path of least resistance of patriarchy had not been indulged in by the powerful fathers of the world in 1914 with all the grown-up “toys” of death and killing machines that an industrialized world had been able to produce?

Hope we learned something!

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.

Actually, I bet in many cases it only seems like crap because we are not ready to appreciate the context and value of that knowledge.

And to the third, what hubris for people who have never met you to attempt to script thirteen years of your childhood and youth. When I was going through that schooling experience myself I never thought of it that way, it was simply what you and every other kid did. But later as a parent watching how difficult it was for our own kids, particularly our son Eric, and feeling we were caught in a vicious circle of mandatory participation in an institution that was debilitating him.

What a blessing the end of school each year and ten weeks of summer vacation was. I can remember as a kid anticipating the end of school each year as a day of liberation, a lifting of a tremendous weight, which then I would sadly heft again in September. Again we are all different, and I know plenty of other kids who are now (or were then) excited about returning to that educational institution with all its opportunities to learn, interact and explore.

As an aside… our son Eric transitioned from childhood to youth, we tried not to script his summer too much with camps, lessons and programmed activities. His development, his self-esteem depended so much on his having the freedom to chart his own course, for better of worse. The two activities we did suggest he participate in were two week-long summer camps, a drama camp called Bravo and the Unitarian-Universalist high school youth camp (see my post, “Camps, Cons & Compasses”).

But back to the hubris thing… would you let anybody script thirteen years of your adult life not taking into account your unique situation, your thoughts on the matter and not seeking your assent? That’s what we are talking about here. The train leaves the station in kindergarten and you are expected to put your kids on it and keep them on it for those thirteen straight years until they all reach the same destination of graduation, which better be age 17 or 18, or something is really wrong.

And now so much of what you are taught during those 13 years is content mandated by educational bureaucrats again who have never met you or have any understanding of your own developmental path. A burgeoning set of required curriculum just seems to encourage the increased scripting of each year of mandatory education, which leads to increased scripting of a kid’s entire young life.

If you are going to have the conventional high school degree, wouldn’t it at least make more sense not to script each of those thirteen years and instead identify a body of knowledge and skills that needed to be acquired to graduate and then let every kid and their family take as much time as they deemed best to reach that goal?

And can’t we somehow move away from that dulling sameness of knowing that more so every year most every kid in the country is learning the same damn things at the same damn age. It’s like a country where the only restaurant anywhere is say Denny’s. Yeah you can probably find something to eat for every diet, but would this really promote a world of culinary interest?

Instead, couldn’t it all be set up completely differently? Couldn’t it be set up on the Buddhist principle that we are all seekers and should have an educational infrastructure that facilitates that, where we can find as much of what we seek as possible?

As my mom shared with me about her parenting philosophy… kids will tell you what they need.