AFTERMATH, I

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

In the narrative this blog is sharing – that of how federalist values and beliefs have played out in the American experience – it was in the post World War II years when federalism lost its dominance in American political culture.  That dominance was replaced by the natural rights view.  This blog has made extensive comment on the significance of that “turn.”  It has also alluded to the judgement that that turn’s effects have only increased in the ensuing years, although the strength of the natural rights view has ebbed and flowed as cultural elements tend to do.

          Central to the natural rights view is an intense sense of individualism.  This blogger has noticed that of late, various TV pundits have referred to this excessive individualism as just a matter of fact eliciting no controversy – it is just an accepted factual claim.  But that state has its developmental history in the years since the late 1940s.  If one investigates those developments, one finds numerous trends assisting this overall makeover.

          To this view of individualism, an invention would greatly cement and further the influences that were moving the popular culture away from the concerns of community with its levels of cooperation and collaboration.  Along with the influences this blog outlined in recent postings about a national economy and political/social individualism, the nation was profoundly affected by television.

          The late Neil Postman[1] provides a timely account of the effects of television in his 1986 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death.  He addresses the way in which TV by the1980s was able to take hold of the popular mindset by having various influences on the American political scene.  From his book, he offers:

 

Our conversation about nature and about ourselves [is] conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible and convenient to employ.  We do not see nature as “it” is but only as our languages are.  And our languages are our media.  Our media are our metaphors.  Our metaphors create the control of our culture.[2]

 

In short, the metaphor – in this case TV – dictates how a people view reality and define their expectations of not only that reality but also of that culture.

          Postman writes about the effects of television:  “I believe the epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist.”[3]  Written exposition, which was the major method of communication coming into the mid-20^th century, demands analysis and inferential thinking skills.  In addition, the written media demands a culture which promotes a reflective and useful presentation of information in its discourse of reality.

          In that vein, he relates how America was different in the nineteenth century, despite the transcendental and then pragmatic biases.  In point of fact, America was, prior to TV, a book and pamphlet reading nation.  Postman describes,

 

Public business was channeled into and expressed through print, which became the model, the metaphor and the measure of all discourse.  The resonance [defined as the power of influencing thought and action] of the lineal, analytical structure of print, and in particular, of expository prose, could be felt everywhere.[4]

 

The television culture, on the other hand, is bombarded by a constant stream of useless, disconnected information.

          This “peek-a-boo” form of discourse is ubiquitous with “only one pervasive voice – the voice of entertainment.”[5]  Image media of television demands passivity as the viewer is presented a discontinuous, trivial reality.  While Postman gives many examples of the pervasiveness of this entertainment outlook, the example most relevant here is in his chapter entitled, “Teaching as an Amusing Activity.”

          As elsewhere, the character of the media determines the character of the activity.  In terms of schooling, the activity is formulating the curriculum.  What is most frightening about Postman’s argument is that the cited dangers seem to be accepted as innovative education.  He argues that educational television follows TV’s commandment:  no prerequisites, no perplexity, and avoidance of exposition.  This renders it impossible for any affected curriculum to look at any issue responsibly.

          To the argument that holds that TV allows educators the ability to present studied materials dramatically, he cites research that questions the notion that learning takes place when material is presented in dramatic style.  He sums up the effects of curriculum based on TV as follows:

 

And in the end, what will the students have learned?  They will … have learned something about [the subject matter].  Mainly, they will have learned that learning is a form of entertainment or, more precisely, that anything worth learning can take the form of an entertainment, and ought to.[6]

         

In conclusion, on the effects of TV, not only does the nation suffer from a self-indulgent population, but one that lacks the ability to reflect effectively.  Television has helped inflict the nation with a perceptional perspective that tends to thwart the ability to assess the short sightedness of the current, prevailing individualism.  Instead, TV caters to the consumerism and the self-indulgence by presenting a standard by which too many Americans judge reality.

          And that basis of judgement leads one to consider the role social media plays today and is the topic of the next posting.  Of course, since Postman’s book was published, changes have beset TV.  There has been the explosion of cable TV and now there is streaming.  While some of these changes tweak the claims one finds above – e.g., cable has provided more thought-provoking programming – the main points Postman makes are judged by this blogger to be still valid.

          In sum, that effect that TV has rendered and the other developments this blog’s narrative has described, has been a history of a steady drift away from the federalist, communitarian origins of the nation.  In its stead has been a growing centralization of political and economic power.  In addition, a dysfunctional individualism has grown in the local vacuum created by the centralization of power (more on this to come).  And with that, the nation is primed for the effects of those handheld devices – the cell phones with their links to online social media.

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[1] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death:  Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1986).

[2] Ibid., 15.

[3] Ibid., 27.

[4] Ibid., 41. 

[5] Ibid., 80.

[6] Ibid., 154 (emphasis added).

THE TURN

 

[This blog is amid a series of postings that aims to share with the reader a history of the nation – albeit highly summary in nature – from the perspective of a dialectic struggle.  That is the struggle between a cultural perspective that emphasizes more communal and cooperative ideals of federalism and the individualistic perspective of the natural rights construct.

The general argument this blog has made is that federalism enjoyed the dominant cultural position in the US until World War II, and after a short transition, the natural rights view has been dominant.  Whether one perspective is dominant or the other; whichever it is, that fact has a profound impact on the teaching of civics in American classrooms.]

 

Can one attribute American political culture’s adoption of the natural rights view to pragmatism?  Of course not.  What that philosophy did do was to provide a line of thought and reasoning that undermined a more directed sense that Americans should be a federated population.  Instead, it casts, as ideal, a populous being able to put aside the binding obligations such a federation demands – that one cannot be simply justified in catering to one’s sense of what works with one’s beliefs, emotions, interests, and station in life.

          Instead, it upgrades one’s proclivities, biases, and tastes – what makes one feel good – to justify most chosen options or desired options one might pick or harbor.  Through the work of the pragmatists, such as William James, their ideas were first introduced to US culture in the late 1800s and took significant hold on many Americans.  And as the twentieth century began and progressed, those more individualistic notions helped make acceptable more laissez faire views in the economy. 

Under a capitalist regime, one can let go, without any guilt, of any responsibilities toward the fate of workers, consumers, or small level producers.  This indifference mirrors the main tenets of the natural rights view and, at the same time, served the interests of large corporations so they could conduct their businesses to maximize their profits.

          Now to apply these notions to the new economic world that the global corporations introduced, one can see how communal arrangements lost or had diminished their reliance on people fulfilling their federated duties and responsibilities.  And also, their dominance led to a path:  economic activity experienced fast economic growth, followed by a skewed mal distribution of income, and eventual collapse as the resulting imbalances resulted in global depression. 

Such a progression seemed, in hindsight, as simply an inevitable result given that actors just pragmatically furthered their individual interests.  It led to highly irresponsible activities that were unsustainable given economic realities.  These activities included exploiting workers, abusing consumers, and crushing competition wherever possible.  Included in such activities were reckless investment strategies that created unsustainable “bubbles” such as in the stock market, and most of that was repeated in the early years of the current century.

When that stock market bubble eventually burst in 1929 (and in 2008) and investors lost billions of dollars, the world faced catastrophic consequences as businesses went bankrupt and millions of jobs were lost.  Spurred by the crisis of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was confronted with a decision.

Was he going to first steer federal policy to create industrial associations, communities of interests within each industry, as called for under the National Recovery Act?  Or was he going to empower governmental, central planners to set national economic policy?  This was not a policy position based on personal pragmaticism, a la James, but on a national mandated program that would rely on a hefty level of pragmaticism but at a national level. 

That decision was never made, for it was World War II that ended the depression before a comprehensive economic policy was established.  But, despite this injection of huge federal spending, creation of millions of jobs, and healthy levels of consumption – all to fight the enemy – the nation was left with a change of heart. 

And a good part of that newer perspective was an orientation to look to Washington, D.C. for solutions and more of an amoral view of governmental policies.  That newer view shed concerns for the partnering nature of citizenship and instead, in pragmatic style, sought for what “worked” in the immediate challenge the polity faced at any given time.  And that took shape, economically, with the default policy of liberal, Keynesian economics. 

This approach called for governmental actions which first manipulated fiscal policy and later monetary policy to promote economic growth (a compromise acceptable to all competing parties).  Such an approach relieved the government from making judgments about the aims of any competing interests.  Like a professional unattached mechanic – catering to some degree to pragmatic notions – the central government could raise and lower government spending, taxes, and money supply to get desired results. 

While how much raising and lowering was not immediately evident, experience could provide better answers as these tools were utilized and evaluated as time went by.  But that ability would place enormous power in the hands of the bureaucrats of the central government.[1] 

In that, local institutions became less powerful because they were not able to meet the demands of citizenry; they were less able to make authoritative decisions concerning the interests of average citizens.[2]  As a consequence, in this vacuum, there arose the anonymity of the individual and the general legitimacy of radical individualism.

 

Individual versus State is as false an antithesis today as it ever was.  The State grows on what it gives to the individual as it does so on what it takes from competing social relationships – family, labor union, profession, local community, and church.

          And the individual cannot but find a kink of vicarious strength in what is granted to the State.  For is he not himself a part of the State?  Is he not a fraction of the sovereign?  And is he not adding to his political status as a citizen what he subtracts from his economic, religious, and cultural statuses in society?

          He is; and in this fractional political majesty the individual finds not only compensation for the frustrations and insecurities to which he is heir in mass society but also the intoxicating sense of collective freedom.[3]

 

As Nisbet goes on to explain, the State becomes more in charge of the larger concerns at the expense of the influence of associations and local governments, and there remains no one involved in addressing smaller, day-to-day concerns.

          These latter concerns are numerous and in total are significant to Americans’ everyday lives.  They include the issues involved with civility or such matters as whether children are benefitting from well financed communal programs.

 

We have tended to miss the subtler but infinitely more potent threats bound up with diminution of authorities and allegiances in the smaller areas of association and with the centralization and standardization of power that takes place in the name of, and on behalf of, the people.[4]

 

The people, as a result, lose control of the major issues while feeling little to no restraints over their individual prerogatives in conducting their personal – person-to-person – lives.

This includes how they interact within their families and among their acquaintances.  With this newfound anonymity, the communal restraints of the past are dismissed and then forgotten.  Or, stated in other words, the drift toward obsessive individualism becomes pervasive and legitimates a sense of “do your thing” without any sense of obligation or duty to the federated union.

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[1] Michael J. Sandel, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

[2] Ibid. AND Robert Nisbet, The Quest for Community:  A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom (San Francisco, CA:  Institute of Contemporary Studies, 1990).

[3] Nisbet, The Quest for Community, 228.

[4] Ibid., 229.