REPRESENTATIONS OF REALITY

 

The last posting, “Early On,”[1] initiated a series of upcoming postings that addresses American history and how levels of deviance Americans have experienced, either as perpetrators or as victims, developed.  That posting reviewed the early clash of ideas – and feelings – they struggled through, that being between Calvinism (fire and brimstone) and transcendentalism (the genteel tradition). 

That review depended on the work of George Santayana[2] who wrote during the early years of 1900s of this clash.  The posting ended with a reference to the contribution of William James.  James is considered an early advocate of pragmatism.  Santayana shared his thoughts on this construct, a philosophy that sinks its creeds and theories over various estimates that were characterized as being a “local and temporary grammar of action.”[3] 

That is, while maintaining the spotlight on the individual, as in transcendentalism, pragmatism judges the individual not as a maker of meaning, but an extraordinary observer (known as “radical empiricism”) and a possessor of great affect (known as “radical romanticism”):  People, according to pragmatist ideals should be about compassionately interacting with things, not with books and idealized generalities.  Realities, for pragmatists, will change over time, leaving a person relying on “book knowledge” with dysfunctional intellectualized principles.

Santayana adequately shares a basis for this American philosophy.  He describes a development that enshrines the individual through transcendentalism, and now, in the 1800s, pragmatism.  Along the way, Americans institutionalized processes based on the assumptions that hold action, temporal concerns, and self-initiative as implicit ideals.  But Santayana could still write of an American people light of heart and comporting themselves, for the most part, in civil modes of behavior.

This cultural foundation, though, would encounter a fundamental institutional change some years later that would have profound sociological and psychological consequences.  Without the sobering influence of Calvinism, to a meaningful degree, the demystified philosophic core of American culture only needed a newer standard of temporal goodness to set off a chain of institutional changes. 

That occurred, resulting in creating within America a pervasive incivility – the higher level of deviance for which Americans are known as suffering through today.  And that turn brings this account into the twentieth century.  That is, to this view of the temporal and action orientation came an invention that would greatly cement and further the biases of pragmatist thought. 

And to explain the effect of that invention – television – this blogger is well advised to borrow from the very psychology that he sees as a product of its influence.  To explain:  Neil Postman argues that a society’s basic mode of communication governs its epistemology (its origins and natures of knowledge).  He observes:

 

Our conversations about nature and about ourselves are 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.[4]

 

Surely, the effects of TV might have well been eclipsed to some degree since Postman wrote these words – there has been the rise of social media – but the main point is still valid.

Media defines the languages a people employ in the current advanced world. That is, a people’s metaphors dictate how they see reality and define their expectations of reality.  This blogger hesitates using Postman’s views because those views seem to support what is argued to be part of the problem.  Postman, as the description in the next posting will attest, bases his argument on mental processes as opposed to reality, and the position here is that Americans need to find ways to deal with the real.

          To be clear, it is not claimed here that how a people view that reality has no effect on how they interact with it, but what American culture, at least, has done is to glorify image over reality and that is what the blogger sees as Postman helping his readers understand.  This blog will next compare the epistemology created by television and that of the printed word.  It is in this analysis that Postman makes his most meaningful contribution from his cited book, and this blogger believes it sheds powerful insights into what ails the current condition in American culture.

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[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Early On,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 13, 2024, accessed February 15, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.

[2] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in America” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), 277-288.

[3] Ibid., 285.

[4] Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York, NY:  Penguin Books, 1985), 15.

EARLY ON

 

One recurring concern among observers of American society is the level of deviance that society experiences.  At times deviance can be simple actions that counter norms affecting few if anyone other than the perpetrators of such behaviors.  On the other hand, there are examples that cross legal bounds or central norms and are deemed serious and antisocial.  Here is a general comment of current thought over this subject:

 

Deviance in American society is more prevalent unlike in other countries of the world. … The American dream had a main theme of freedom for the Americans, something that has been wrongly perceived as being free from the laws and regulations of the society. This perception has made most people in America disobey the societal norms in the name of achieving [their] dream[s]. The dream talks of people being committed to the success of material goals under circumstances that are open with individual competition …

To begin with is the fact that most Americans want to be richer than they are despite their current income level, what is referred to as maximization in the dream. …

Another issue of concern is greed among most Americans which is also justified in the dream leading to a type of deviance known as elite deviance committed by the powerful and wealthy people of the society because of greed. From the above discussion, it is seen that the concept of the American dream contributes so much to deviance and criminality in American society.[1]

 

This quote is not offered as the last word on deviance or even an authoritative one, but a reflection of how people in general view deviance.  And given that Americans are judged as being on the high end on this mode of behavior, one can ask why.

          More specifically:  How did Americans get to be judged to be highly deviant?  Unfortunately, the trends toward excessive deviance are not of recent origin.  They are instead the product of a slow development that can be traced to the nation’s beginnings.  What follows, and in upcoming postings, is the product of research this blogger conducted a few decades ago.  Upon reviewing earlier work, he feels it would be helpful to share this work in understanding the main aim of this blog, i.e., to promote federation theory.

          Given that context, this review begins with the contribution of George Santayana.[2]  He wrote, in the earlier part of the last century, an insightful view of the philosophical development of Americans up to his time.  He characterized the early philosophical development as a two-sided Christian view:  one was a harsh fire and brimstone Calvinism that emphasized the dangers of sin and the impression of an “agonized conscience,” and, on the other side, a gentler view, social transcendentalism (more formally developed during the 18^th century).

          This latter view was a European based philosophy.  It was quite sophisticated for an early American society given that society’s inexperience as a new nation.  Santayana points out that Calvinism, while providing the necessary discipline to prosper in the frontier environment, succumbed to the very prosperity it helped produce. 

This left a “genteel tradition” as the prominent view, that being transcendentalism.  Transcendentalists, especially as their beliefs were defined in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, became the prominent perspective among the population and began Americans on their ever-increasing movement toward an individualism second to none.  Emerson captured this reason-based tradition – what Santayana describes as Kantian – of systematic subjectivism. 

Here, one can start seeing extreme individualism taking hold.  Under a call for honestly expressed self-initiative, romanticized in old Yankee lore, the transcendentalists emphasized present needs and the function of will over intellect.  This train of thought harbored a certain blindness to the evil this entailed individualism could encourage Americans to adopt.  It also promoted an “upbeat-ness” in what Emerson’s called a “self-trust” which this newer philosophy supported. 

Stated succinctly, it called for a sense of reality, as a base, which had individuals transcending to what they, themselves, defined as worthy to pursue and relied on what was intuitive in those same people:  “the perspective of knowledge as [it] radiate[s] from the self.”[3]  One can see the origins of a “ME society” developing.

But with diminishing the contextual foundation of Calvinism, this form of individualism had its influence without any internal check and balance.  Instead, individualism, through the years, became stronger as Calvinism became weaker.  It became more legitimate to be deviant as expressions of the self and that self-centeredness took the status of being an ideal.

          And that transition has its own story.  Each century that follows – 19^th and 20^th – add to the story in particular ways.  The 1800s sees the advent and growth of an industrial society and the 1900s as the growth of a consumer-based economy.  Santayana adds his thoughts to the changes the first of these periods had on American thought and dispositions. 

That is, up against this abstract, outer worldly intellectualizing, i.e., Calvinism vs. transcendentalism, Santayana describes the increasing hum of growing industry having its effect on Americans during the first of these centuries.  In doing so, the demand for objectivity and empiricism hacks away at the genteel tradition.  This leads, finally, to William James’ articulation of a rebellious message against intellectualism and its pedantic rule making.  The next posting will address James’ contribution and how it encouraged the nation to consider pragmatism.

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[1] “Deviance Issue in the American Society/The ‘American Dream’ Contribution to the Frequency of Deviance,’” Study Corgi (n.d.), accessed February 10, 2024, URL:  https://studycorgi.com/deviance-issue-in-the-american-society/.

[2] George Santayana, “The Genteel Tradition in America” in The Annals of America, Vol. 13 (Chicago, IL:  Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1968), 277-288.

[3] Ibid., 281.