AVOID THE EITHER/OR

 

On February 13^th, with the posting, “Early On,”[1] this blog began a series of offerings that argue American society has higher levels of deviant behavior than one finds in many other societies – particularly advanced countries.  This claim is hard to define and measure.  Here is what Statista reports:

 

In the United States, violent crimes are defined as incidents involving force or the threat of force. … Comparing the number of committed crimes in U.S. by category, property crime far outnumbers violent crime, while aggravated assault accounts for some two-thirds of all violent crime. Over the last two decades, the number of violent crimes in the United States has fallen dramatically; there were 1.93 million violent crimes in 1992 in comparison to 1.2 million violent crimes in 2022. A similar story is told by looking at the violent crime rate per 100,000 residents, which factors in the role population growth plays in increasing the overall number of crimes.[2]

 

Or as Data Pandas reports:

 

Despite being one of the world's most developed countries, the United States ranks 52^nd, with a Crime Index of 47.81. The relatively high index in an advanced nation like the U.S. underscores the fact that crime is not merely a problem of underdeveloped or developing countries but a universal challenge.[3]

 

While there are other nations with higher rates of crime and other forms of deviance, the above amply reports levels that should capture the nation’s attention. 

Of course, there are many factors involved in this state of dysfunction.  Using a historical approach, recent postings described the effects of various constructs, e.g., transcendentalism and perceptual psychology, in the development of this deviance.  The postings have attempted to explain how the claims of these constructs dispose their advocates to champion meaningful degrees of individualism and self-centeredness, mental dispositions one can see as disposing people to engage in deviant behavior.

          Consequently, such socialization has even led to problematic levels of other anti-social mindsets, even nihilism.  Of course, all of this can’t help affecting how civics education will be conducted in American schools.  A good deal of those effects are underlying factors and not conscious to the educators who man those classrooms.  But before describing what these forces mean to curriculum, it is important to keep in mind that this is a societal problem.  In no way can schools be given the task, single-handedly, of definitively solving the problem.

          While this disclaimer might seem obvious, it has been the practice of societal decision makers to dump many components of the above situation in the “laps” of educators.  Of course, this is counterproductive and only serves to stretch the limited resources schools have at their disposal to try to meet the educational responsibilities cited in these earlier postings.

          What this blog will describe is limited to how the curriculum can, from its perspective, consider the forces causing the dysfunctional elements of this state of being, i.e., a society full of deviant related strife.  This blogger hopes that interested parties understand the central source of these problems has had a long history and goes to the core of American attitudes. 

Again, it’s a cultural problem.  Only societal wide changes can shift these attitudes.  That aim is surely beyond the ability of schools to accomplish.  So, given all of this, what are the implications for social studies – that portion of curriculum most relevant to societal concerns emanating from its culture.

And here, a bit of context is in order:  The general custom among people, this blogger notes, is to think dichotomously.  In this case, either a person is authoritarian or democratic; either loves children or is indifferent to their needs.  These are lazy reactions.  The problems these postings address and the problems they have caused, place educators on guard against the easy, sentimentalist answers to those problems. 

In that vein, this blogger is not against many of the sentiments expressed by those expounding the virtues of individualism – often mistakenly treated as being synonymous with liberty.  The concern here lies in the fact that reality does not exist only in the domain of one’s own house and family, but also in the communal parameters individuals and families find themselves.

          The overall described conditions this blog has reviewed have implications for the social studies curriculum but also curriculum in general.  With a more contained ambition than is usually expressed by curriculum writers, what follows are adjustments that can allow a more useful posture given the challenges.  That is, a functional curriculum should adjust in certain dimensions:

 

1.     There should be a heavy emphasis on the concerns of communities – that in which a school’s students live and, in the nation, generally.

2.     Knowledge, as an element of a curriculum, should be treated beyond sets of facts to memorize, but as functional, useful elements in solving societal problems or addressing societal concerns.

3.     Curriculum proposals should be in the form of options that a teacher can manipulate, tweak, or otherwise accommodate the students and/or social conditions teachers face.  And …

4.     Discipline, beyond the prescriptions from perceptual psychology or any other strategy, should be treated by teachers in a realistic manner – avoiding simplistic generalized approaches (either too lenient, ala perceptual psychology, or too demanding, ala “I take no guff” approach).

 

These dimensions are suggested by the pioneer work on deviance by Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton.[4]

          While a formal development of an argument suggested by Durkheim and Merton is beyond the purposes of this presentation, these sociologists’ collective work presents a social model for explaining deviance.  And this marks a good place to end this posting and invite readers to click onto this blog’s next posting for a description of these giants’ contribution to addressing deviance. 

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[1] See Robert Gutierrez, “Early On,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, February 13, 2024, “Representations of Reality,” February 16, 2024, “The TV Effect,” February 20, 2024, “The Perceptual Angle,” February 23, and The Ongoing Factors Affecting Nihilism, February 27, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.  Use archives feature to access individual postings,

[2] “Violent Crime in the U.S. – Statistics & Facts,” Statista, December 18, 2023, accessed February 28, 2024, URL:  https://www.statista.com/topics/1750/violent-crime-in-the-us/#topicOverview.

[3] “Crime Rate by Country,” Data Pandas (n.d.), accessed February 29, 2024, URL:  https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/crime-rate-by-country.  Out of 136 countries, the US is ranked the 56^th most crime ridden.

[4] Marshall B. Clinard, “The Theoretical Implications of Anomie and Deviant Behavior,” in Anomie and Deviant Behavior, edited by Marshall B. Clinard (New York, NY:  The Free Press, 1964), 1-56.

THE ONGOING FACTORS AFFECTING NIHILISM

To date, this blog has been presenting the argument, through a historical lens, that American culture has evolved to promote a highly individualistic view with little concern for communal interests and demands.  This has led, as compared to other societies, for Americans to engage in deviant behaviors.  That is, they are more likely to behave in ways that go contrary to more communal norms and laws.

Upon reviewing that history, one can detect adherence to a set of constructs which encouraged this progression toward deviance.  The constructs are transcendentalism, pragmatism, and perceptual psychology, with an assistance from the effects of TV.  The reader is encouraged to review the last four postings of this blog which describe this development.[1]

The claim here is that what has resulted from this development among many is a general sense of illegitimacy, mostly revolving around political issues, and even encouraging a strong dose of nihilism.  Individualism has gone a long way to render asunder meaningful community living from contemporary American life.  Instead, a growing sense of societal conflict seems to have perforated the nation’s social landscape.[2]

The concept of individualism, used freely in this series of postings, needs more substance than what has been given it up to this point.  Individualism does not make itself known similarly in all situations.  Robert Bellah, et al., looked at individualism in the American social make-up.  They wrote, in Habits of the Heart, “[i]ndividualism is more moderate and orderly than egoism”[3] and go on to quote Alexi Tocqueville:

 

Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into the circle of family and friends; with the little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look after itself.[4]

 

They describe individualism as a habit of thought well ingrained in America’s historical psyche.

          While the mass phenomena to find true self, ala perceptual psychology, and the extravagance attached to that quest is recent, Americans are basically a people who look to themselves as individuals, as opposed to members of society or community, and they rely on their personal resources for social and personal goals and the source of meaning for those goals.  These resources include those derived from personal characteristics as well as material assets.

          Those writers, Bellah, et al., cite Ralph Waldo Emerson (who wrote an essay entitled “Self-Reliance”), the Puritans, John Winthrop, and Thomas Jefferson as repeating the same theme.  Among the middle class, individualism is highly tied to work ethic, something still strongly felt in America.

“The problem is not so much the presence or absence of a ‘work ethic’ as the meaning of work and ways it links, or fails to link, individuals to one another.”[5]  And this invites one to question how work affects Americans.  Work, which forces the individual to have a public life, has become, due to a large-scale industrial/service society, segmental and a self-interested activity.[6]  With that, individualism can express itself in two modes:  utilitarian individualism and expressive individualism.

Utilitarian individualism tends to be single-minded, and goal driven toward advancing careers.  Expressive individualism values relationships, forms of art, and even social improvement goals.  In either form, Bellah, et al. are concerned that goodness is defined by one feeling good.  “Acts, then, are not right or wrong in themselves, but only because of the results they produce, the good feelings they engender or express.”[7]

They continue that this forms a basis of morality and ethics which is highly subjective; therefore, the distinguishing character of individualism remains ineffable.

 

The touchstone of individualistic self-knowledge turns out to be shaky in the end, and its guide to action proves elusive … [T]o what or whom do our ethical and moral standards commit us if they are “quite independent of other people’s standards and agenda”?[8]

 

From the American experience, one can surmise that without external standards of morality, either of a secular or religious nature, a sense of nihilism pervades among many.  Is there proof of this nihilism?

          When this blogger first worked on these ideas, by doing research for a paper, the Waco tragedy unfolded.  Since then, other tragedies have hit the American society to varying degrees of human suffering – school shootings, shootings in theaters, town centers, places of worship, etc.  Why were these people in the Waco case so willing to be led to their deaths by a religious fanatic?  Why are others willing to engage in disastrous events that often end in violent death often to themselves?

          Is meaning for life so hard to find in this nation’s common lot?  Or perhaps the report by various writers on the detrimental and accumulative effects of trends, e.g., the divorce rate, on the children of this country can provide further insight.[9]  A bit of literature among the press and published articles and books have documented how popular it has become to encourage adults to take on more self-centered goals which then manifests in irresponsible behaviors on the part of adults who are often parents.

          American society, over the last number of decades, has experienced several disruptive events and trends.  Along with the divorce rate, there have been riots, increasing crime rates (currently going down), suicide rates, drug use, etc.  And with that disruptive setting, this posting will end and promise that the next one in this series will address the implications of the above challenges to those charged with developing curriculum for American schools.  Surely, these societal challenges should influence what schools plan for their students.

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[1] The series of postings begins with “Early On,” and can be accessed on the URL, https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/.  Readers can use the archive feature to see this posting and the three that follow.

[2] Aidan Connaughton, “Americans See Stronger Societal Conflicts Than People in Other Advanced Economies,” Pew Research Center, October 13, 2021, accessed February 23, 2024, URL:  https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/10/13/americans-see-stronger-societal-conflicts-than-people-in-other-advanced-economies/.

[3] Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, A. Swindler, and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart:  Individualism in American Life (New York, NY:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1985).

[4] Ibid., 37.

[5] Ibid., 55-56.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., 78.

[8] Ibid., 78-79.

[9] For example, see Daniel Siegel, “Generation Doomer:  How Nihilism on Social Media Is Creating a New Generation of Extremists,” Global Network on Extremism and Technology, December 16, 2022, accessed February 24, 2024, URL:  https://gnet-research.org/2022/12/16/generation-doomer-how-nihilism-on-social-media-is-creating-a-new-generation-of-extremists/#:~:text=Because%20of%20digital%20echo%20chambers,and%20humanity%20is%20inevitably%20doomed.  To illustrate how long this concern has been addressed, see Barbara Dafoe, “Dan Quayle Was Right,” The Atlantic Monthly, 274, 4 (1993), 47-84.