Five Lies Our Culture Tells The cultural
roots of our political problems.
Four
years ago, in the midst of the Obama presidency, I published a book
called “The Road to Character.” American culture seemed to be in decent
shape and my focus was on how individuals can deepen their inner lives. This
week, in the midst of the Trump presidency, I’ve got another book, “The Second Mountain.” It’s become clear in the interim that
things are not in good shape, that our problems are societal.
The whole country is going through some sort of spiritual and emotional crisis.
College mental
health facilities are swamped, suicide rates are spiking, the president’s
repulsive behavior is tolerated or even celebrated by tens of millions of
Americans. At the root of it all is the following problem: We’ve created a
culture based on lies.
Here are some
of them:
Career success is fulfilling. This is the lie we foist on the young.
In their tender years we put the most privileged of them inside a college
admissions process that puts achievement and status anxiety at the center of
their lives. That begins advertising’s lifelong mantra — if you
make it, life will be good.
Everybody who
has actually tasted success can tell you that’s not true. I remember when the
editor of my first book called to tell me it had made the best-seller list. It
felt like … nothing. It was external to me.
The truth is,
success spares you from the shame you might experience if you feel yourself a
failure, but career success alone does not provide positive peace or
fulfillment. If you build your life around it, your ambitions will always race
out in front of what you’ve achieved, leaving you anxious and dissatisfied.
I can make myself happy. This is the lie of self-sufficiency.
This is the lie that happiness is an individual accomplishment. If I can have
just one more victory, lose 15 pounds or get better at meditation, then I will
be happy.
But people
looking back on their lives from their deathbeds tell us that happiness is
found amid thick and loving relationships. It is found by defeating
self-sufficiency for a state of mutual dependence. It is found in the giving
and receiving of care.
It’s easy to
say you live for relationships, but it’s very hard to do. It’s hard to see
other people in all their complexity. It’s hard to communicate from your
depths, not your shallows. It’s hard to stop performing! No one teaches us
these skills.
Life is an individual journey. This is the lie books like Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” tell. In adulthood, each person goes on
a personal trip and racks up a bunch of experiences, and whoever has the most
experiences wins. This lie encourages people to believe freedom is the absence
of restraint. Be unattached. Stay on the move. Keep your options open.
In reality, the
people who live best tie themselves down. They don’t ask: What cool thing can I
do next? They ask: What is my responsibility here? They respond to some problem
or get called out of themselves by a deep love.
By planting
themselves in one neighborhood, one organization or one mission, they earn
trust. They have the freedom to make a lasting difference. It’s the chains we
choose that set us free.
You have to find your own
truth. This is the
privatization of meaning. It’s not up to the schools to teach a coherent set of
moral values, or a society. Everybody chooses his or her own values. Come up
with your own answers to life’s ultimate questions! You do you!
The problem is
that unless your name is Aristotle, you probably can’t do it. Most of us wind
up with a few vague moral feelings but no moral clarity or sense of purpose.
The reality is
that values are created and passed down by strong, self-confident communities
and institutions. People absorb their values by submitting to communities and
institutions and taking part in the conversations that take place within them.
It’s a group process.
Rich and successful people are
worth more than poorer and less successful people. We pretend we don’t tell this lie, but our
whole meritocracy points to it. In fact, the meritocracy contains a skein of
lies.
The
message of the meritocracy is that you are what you accomplish. The false
promise of the meritocracy is that you can earn dignity by attaching yourself
to prestigious brands. The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love — that if
you perform well, people will love you.
The sociology
of the meritocracy is that society is organized around a set of inner rings
with the high achievers inside and everyone else further out. The anthropology
of the meritocracy is that you are not a soul to be saved but a set of skills
to be maximized.
No wonder it’s
so hard to be a young adult today. No wonder our society is fragmenting. We’ve
taken the lies of hyper-individualism and we’ve made them the unspoken
assumptions that govern how we live.
We talk a lot
about the political revolution we need. The cultural revolution is more
important.
From
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/15/opinion/cultural-revolution-meritocracy.html>
