'1he Pursuit of Happiness

Brian Palmer
I iving well is a chgllenge. Brian Palmer, a successful businessman, lives III ~ comfortable SanJose suburb and works as a top-level manager in a I.af Te corporation. He isjustifiably proud ofhis rapid rise in the corporauun, but he is even prouder ofthe profound change he has made recently III his idea ofsuccess. "My value system," he says, "has changed a little bll as the result of a divorce and reexamining life values. Two years ago, Ionfronted with the work load I have right now, I would stay in the I.fftce and work until midnight, come home, go to bed, get up at six, and 110 back in and work unt il midnight, until such time as it got do ne. Now I just kind offlip the bird and walk out. M y family life is more important 1\) rne than that, and the work will wait, I have learned." A new marriage mi a houseful of children have become the center of Brian's life. But \1 h new values were won only after painful difficulties. Now forty-one, his tall, lean body burstng with restless energy, llrian recalls a youth that included a fair amount ofhell-raising, a lot of x, and considerable devotion to making money. At twenty-four, he mnrried. Shouldering the adult responsibilities of marriage and children IIt" ame the guiding p~rpose o~hi.s life for tpe n~xt few years. Whether or not Brian felt his life was satisfying, he was deeply committed to succeeding at his career and family responsibilities. He held Iwo full-time jobs to support his family, accepting apparently without romplaint the loss of a youth in which, he himself reports, "the vast majority of my time from, say, the age of fifteen to twenty-two or Iwcnty-three was devoted toward giving myself pleasure of one sort or uuother." Brian describes his reasons for working so hard after he marri d quite simply. "It seemed like the thing to do at the time,' he says. "1 I ouldn't stand not having enough money to get by on, and with my wife unable to contribute to the family income, it seemed like the thing to do. 3

Habits of the Heart

1111' 1 VI',

The Pursuit ofHappiness

1guess self-reliance is one of the characteristics 1have pretty high up in ~y value system. It was second nature. 1 didn't even question the thing. 1 JUs~went ~ut and did it." Brian and his wife carne to share very little in their marnage, except, as he thought, good sex, children, and devotion to his career. With his wife's support, he decided to"test" himself"in the Big .Lea~ue::' and he made it, although at great cost to his marriage and farnily hfe. What was my concept of what constituted a reasonable relati~nship? 1gues~ 1felt an obligarion to care for materially, provide for, a' wife and my children, in a sty le to which I' d like to see them becorne accustomed. Providing for my family materially was important. Sharing wasn't important. Sharing of my time wasn't important. 1 put in ex-' tremely long hours, probably averaging sixty to sixty-five hours a week. I'd work almost every Saturday. Always in the office by 7:30. Rarelyout ofthe office before 6:30 at night. Sornetimes I' d work until 10:30 or 1I. ~hat was n.um.ero uno. But 1compensated for that by saying, 1have this mce car, this ~ICehouse,joined the Country Club. Now you have a place you can go, SIton your butt, drink, go into the pooI. 1'11 pay the bills and 1'11 do my thing at work." For Brian's wife, the compensations apparently weren't enough. After almost fifteen years of marriage, "One day 1carne home. In fact, our house was for sale, and we had an offer on the house. My wife said 'Before you accept an offer, you should probably know that once we sell t~is house, we willlive in different houses.' That was my official notificanon that she was planning to divorce me." .The divorce, "one of the two or three biggest surprises of my life," led Bnan to reassess his life in fundamental ways and to explore the limits of the kind of success he had been pursuing. "1 live by establishing plans. 1 had ~o plan for being single, and it gave me a lot of opportunity to think, and In the course of thinking, 1 read for the first time in many, many years. Got back into classical music for the first time since my colIege years. 1 went out and bought my first Bach album and a stereo to play it on. Mostly the.thin~ing process ofbeing alone and relating to my children.' When his children chose to live with him, Brian found himselfforced to shift his sense of himself and his priorities in life. "1 found that being a smgle ~arent is ~ot alI that it is cracked up to be. 1found it an extremely humblmg expenence. Whereas 1go into the office in the morning and 1 have a personal secretary and a staff of managers and a cast of hundreds :vorking for me, 1camehome and justlike every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world, I'd clean up garbage after these three big boys ofmine. I'd spe~d two hours prep~ring and cleaning up after dinner, doing laundry, foldmg clothes, sweepmg the floor, and generalIy doing manuallabor of

west form. But the fact that my boys chose to live with me was a y important thing to me. It made me feel that maybe 1had been doing 11111 'thing right in the parenting departrnent." Although his wife had left him, and he later found out that she had III''Il having an affair, Brian's period of reflection led him torerhink his Iili ' in the relationship. "Being a compulsive problem solver, 1 analyzed 1 li, failure., 1 don't like failure. I'rn very competitive. 1 like to win. So 1 w 'nt back and reexamined where the thing broke down and found that 1 IlIld ontributed at least 50 percent and, depending on the vantage point, IIllIybe99 percent ofthe ultimate demise ofthe institution. Mostly it was ,1 king myselfthe question ofwhy amI behaving in such and such a way. Why am 1 doing this at work? Why was 1 doing this at home? The anw 'r was that 1 was operating as if a certain value was of the utmost 11111' rtance to me. Perhaps it was success. Perhaps it was fear offailure, hllt I was extremely success-oriented, to the point where everything would be sacrificed for the job, the career, the company. 1 said bulIshit. 'I'hnt ain't the way it shouldbe." The revolution in Brian's thinking carne from a reexamination of the n uc sources of joy and satisfaction in his life. And it is particularly in a IIIilrriage to a woman very different [rom his first wife that Brian has dis vered a new sense of himself and a different understanding ofwhat . III'wants out of life. He has a new sense of what love can be. "To be able 10 " ceive affection freely and give affection and to give of myself and II( w it is a totalIy reciproc al type ofthing. There'sjust almost a psychoIOJ.;ially ~yant feeling ofbeing able to be.so much r.n0re invol~ed and hnring. Sharing experiences of goals, shanng of feehngs, workmg toKI' her to solve problems, etc, My viewpoint of a true love, husbandund-wife type of relationship is one that is founded on mutual respect, Ildll1iration, affection, the ability ro give and receive freely,' His new w i' , a divorcee his own age, brings four children to their marriage, Ild led to Brian's own three, They have five children stillliving at home, Ind a senseof energy, mutual devotion, and commitrnent sufficient to mnkc their family life ajoy. . In many ways, Brian's is an individual success story. He has succeeded mntcrially, and he has also taken .hold of the opportunity to reach out hl'Y nd material success to a fuller sense of what he wants from life. Yet ti ispite the personal triumph Brian's life represents, despite the fulfilIuicnt he seems to experience, there is still something uncertain, something poignantly unresolved about his story. '1 'he difficulty becomes most evident when Brian tries to explain why li i.~ that his current life is, in fact, better than his earlier life built around

Habits oJthe Heart

IIWIl.

The Pursuit of Happiness

single-minded devotion to his career. His description ofhis reasons for changing his life and of his current happiness seems ta come down mainly ta a shift in his notions of what would make him happy. His new goal-devotion to marriage and children-seems as arbitrary and unexamined as his earlier pursuit of material success. Both are justified as idiosyncratic preference rather than as representing a Iarger sense of the purpose of life. Brian sees himself as consistently pursuing a utilitarian calculus-devotion to his own self-interest-except that there has been an almost inexplicable change in his personal preferences. In describing the reasons forthis change, he begins, "Well, I think Ijust reestablished my priorities." He sometimes seems ta reject his past life as wrong; but at other times, he seems to say he simply got bored with it. "That exclusive pursuit of success now seems ta me not a good way ta live. That's not the most important thing ta me. I have demonstrated ta myself, to my own satisfaction, that I can achieve about what I want to achieve. So .the challenge of goal realization does not contain that mystique that it held for me at one time. I just have found that I get a lot of personal reward from being involved in the lives of my children." American cultural traditions define personality, achievernent, and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation. These are limitations of aur culture, ofthe categories and ways ofthinking we have inherited, not limitations of individuals such as Brian who inhabit this culture. People frequently live out a fuller sense of purpose in life than they can justify in rational terms, as we see in Brian's case and many others. Brian's restless energy, love of challenges; and appreciation of the good life are.characteristic ofmuch that is most vital in American eulture. They are all qualities particularly welI-suited ta the hard-driving corporate world in which he works. When Bran describes how he has chosen to live, however, he keeps referring ta "values" and "priorities" notjustified by any wider framework of purpose or belief What is good is what one finds rewarding. If one's preferences change, so does the nature ofthe good. Even the deepest ethical virtues arejustified as matters ?f ~ersonal preference. Indeed~l~_etru~a~ is simply that individuals should be able ta pursue wnatever t ey find rewarding, constrained only by the requirement that they not interfere with the \ "value systems" of others. "1 guess I feellike everybody an this planet is entitled ta havea little bit of space, and things that detract from other people's space are kind of bad,' Brian observes. "One ofthe things that I use ta characterize life in California, one of the things that makes California such a pleasant place ta live, is people by and large aren't bothered by other people's value systems as long as they don't infringe upon your

111011

By and large, the rule of thumb out here is that ifyou've gat the y, honey, you can do your thing aslong as your thing doesn't deII oy someone else's property, or interrupt their sleep, or bother their I I cy, then that's fine, If you want to go in your house and smoke mari11111113 and shoot dope and get alI screwed up, that's your business, but d\)l\'t bring that out an the street, don't expose ~y children ta It, Just do uur thing. -That works out kind of neat." /?'~ In a world of otentiall c~flictin _Jelf-interests~ p.o one can really IIY t at one value system is better than another. Given such a world, Hrinn sets great stare by one basic principle-the importance ofhonesty nud communication. It is through communication that people have a I hnnce to resolve their differences, since there is no Iarger moral ideal in I ms of which conflicts canbe resolved. "Communication is critic al not III dy ta a man-and-woman relationship, it is the essence of our bei~g on I his planet in my opinion. Given open communication and the ability to Ihink problems out, most problems can be solved." Solving conflicts beI omes a matter oftechnical problem solving, not moral decision. Lying, whi h would interfere in a critical way with the ability ta communicate III' .urately and resolve interpersonal conflicts, is thus wrong, but, even lrcr , wrongness is largely a matter of practicaliry -e-it doesn't pay. "The hottorn line of my personal value system applies to the way I conduct husiness. My predecessor was characterized as a notorious, habitual, nud compulsive liar, and that's a difficult act to folIow. That's probably .111 of the' reasons that led to his demise-that his lies were catching up . with him and he left before the walIs carne tumbling down." Not lying is one ofthe major things }3rian wants ta teach his children. II Why is integrity important and lying bad? I don't know. It just is. It's JUSt sa basic. I dant want ta be bothered with challenging that. It's part 1) me, I don't know where it carne from, but it's very important." Brian IIYS "values" are important, and he stresses the importance of teaching Ih m to his children. But apart from the injunction not to lie, he is vague ubout what those values are. "1 guess a lot of them are Judeo-Christian ,'thics of modernsociety, that certain things are bad." Even the things Ih:tt may be "absolutely wrong," such as kilIing, stealing, and lying, may [usc be matters of personal preference-or at least i~j?.E0.2!1s against Iil ern exist detached from any social or cultural base that could give them I r ader meaning. Are there some things that are just absolutely wrong? "1 don't think I w uld pontificate and say that I'm in a position to establish values f~r l.urnanity iri general, although I'm sufficiently SQ2<:;~~~ to say that if I Il' rest of the world would live by my value system it would be a better pin e," Brian says. The justification he offers is simply, "I'm quite com<

I~

Habits oJthe Heart

The Pursuit of Happiness

,1

'1

li, II
, W

forta bie with my values:" Yet values, in turn, continually slip back for Brian into a matter of personal preferences, and the only ethical problem is to make the decision that accords with one's preferences. His increased cornmitment to family and children -rather than to material success seems strangely lacking in substantivejustification. "Ijust find that I get more personal satisfaction from choosing course B over course A. It makes me feel better about myself To participa te in this union of chaos to try and mold something, this family situation-and maybe it's because ofthis bringing two families together-is a challenge. Believe me, this is a challenge. Maybe that's why it fascinates me. Maybe that's why it's important to me." Despite the combination of tenderness and admiration he expresses for his wife, the genuine devotion he seems to feel for his children, and his own resilient self-confidence, Brian's justification ofhis life thus rests on a fragile foundation. Morally, his life appears much more coherent than when he was dominated by careerism, but, to hear him talk, even his deepest impulses of attachment to others are without any more solid foundation than his momentary desires. He lacks a language to explain what seem to be the real commitments that define his life, and to that extent the commitrnents themselves are precarious.

Joe Gorman Joe Gorman would probably caII Brian Palmer's ideas about success childish. Joe lives three thousand miles from SanJose and has never met Brian. But talking about people in his own town whose lives seem totally focussed on individual success, as Brian's once was, he says they are "trying to be kids again." For Joe, being like a kid means lacking an appreciation of one's responsibilities to one's family and one's community. It means thinking primarily about what you can get out of your familyand community rather than what you should give them. For Joe, success means achieving the goals set by your family and community, not using your family and community to achieve your own individual goals. Joe Gorman is about the same age as Brian Palmer, but unlike Brian, who has moved to many different communities in his search for per-sonal success,Joe has always lived in the small town where his father and mot~er have spent most of their lives: Suffolk, f"1assachusetts, a commumty of fewer than 20,000 people, aboiit li half-hour's drive from Boston. Suffolk was founded in r6 2, and about six months before one of us interviewed Joe Gorman, the town celebrated its 250th anniversary. Joe

"tii tnken charge of organizing the celebrations, although he had not 1IIIKinallybeen asked to do so. During the early phases of planning the uuiiv .rsary festivities, the town manager appointed a committee of lo1IIIIyprominent townspeople that did not indudeJoe. But the problem IlS tiut practicalIy none of its members had much experience in planIIlng such a complicated event. To make matters worse, according toJoe, il ut half of them were more interested in getting their names in the 11011' 'r than in doing much work. As a result, the first event in the long ,'ri 'S of planned anniversary celebrations had been a fiasco-a large I OII 1 rnunity dinner with only enough food for about half of the people wh showed up. Joe Gorman knew that he had the ability to organize the 1\,1 .brations successfully, and he felt a kind of duty to do whatever he I nuld to help. So he got himself on the committee and became, in fact if noe in narne, its head. Under Joe's direction, the anniversary celebration turned out to be a Innd success. The festivities stretched out for nine months. There were p.l ades, concerts, 'a carnival, athletic contests, dinners, dances, and ecuIIImical religious services, all well attended and smoothly organized. 'I'h 'fundamental ineaning ofthe celebration was expressed forJoe in the 1) an: "We are doing it together." As he put it, "That's 50 importantI\) work to get as many people as possible active." Another key theme W!lS the importance ofthe family. The inspiration for many ofthe events I .une from the fact that that year had been prodaimed by the United Nations to be "the year ofthe family." ForJoe, the highlight ofthe festivIII 'S was a softball tournament in which each team was made up of mernIl .rs of a different extended family. "We.had eight dans-eight big famIii 'S from Suffolk-in the tournament. In one of them some people I urne dear from Connecticut just to play softball on the side of their I.llllily. You know, for me the best time of the whole celebration was t. nding there back behind the bleachers after the softball games with III .mbers of the families that had played and talking with them about Ih .ir families and drinking champagne. That to me was the ultimate. I)uring the games between the dans; on many occasions, lots of people howed up besides the players to watch the game and see how people in IIl ' families were doing." Anotherof the most inspiring events of the anniversary celebration wns a day given over to the town's senior citizens. "We told people that this w. s their chance now to come together and see the people who had conIributed to this town. They had an aftemoon on the Common where they old baked goods and made an awfullot of money." The whole series of .inniversary celebrations was "so successful that the first thing that people nid after it was over was, 'Why can't we have one every year?" Accord-

! : 10

Habits oJthe Heart

The Pursuit of Happiness

II

ingly, the town fathers decided to have an annual celebration and madeJoe Gorman the head ofthe committee for the next year's celebration. InJoe's vocabulary, success is a very important word. But throughout our conversation with him, it was consistently applied not to any status he had gained for himself or even to any accomplishrrient he had realized /by himse.lf: Success rather ap~lied to the experience of togetherness the " community had created partially through his efforts. "We had a lot of hassles [in organizing the anniversary celebration] and a lot of complaints that we had to deal with before we got it .e!l~. But when it was over, the town was totally in favor of it. And even most of those people who had been opposed to various things carne up to me and said that they were totally for having it again this year. So it was agreat event, agreat success, and it really brought the town together. If it's successful again this year, we're going to have it year after year. It was agreat success. It was great for the community. But I didn't do it. The Suffolk family did it. Yes,it's the Suffolk family, and I love being a part of it." This is not to say that Joe does not care about receiving personal rewards for his work within thecomrnuniry, What he considers to be one of the greatest events of his life happened to him several months after Suffolk's anniversary celebrations were finished. He was named Good Guy ofthe Yearin Suffolk and a huge celebration was held for him by the business and civic leaders of the town. "It was a complete surprise for me. They gotme to cooperate in it by telling me that they were putting on a benefit for someone else, one of my co-workers at the factory. It was really embarrassing because I was getting after some people thinking that .they weren't doing enough in preparation for this celebration for this co-worker, and then 1 showed up and it was for me." Joe was irnmensely gratified at this expression of community affection. But it was important for him that it carne as a surprise-that he experienced it as a reward he had not consciously worked for. Besides enjoying the prestige the community has "spontaneously" given him, Joe also receives an income from rus efforts on behalf of the comniunity. It is, in fact, part ofhis profession to be a community "good guy." He is director of public relations for one of the large rnanufacturing companies located in Suffolk. Like most such companies, the firm that employs Joe wants to maintain good relations with the townspeople, and to do this it contributes money to community recreation programs and other charities. It is part ofJoe Gorman'sjob to help his company decide how best to help the town. Even though much of it happens to be part of his job, however, Joe's community service work clearly remains a labor oflove. He has been offered promotions to positions in his company's head office in Houston, but he has refused them. For him,

II position in the community is more important than his status within h I mpany. As he sees it, he works so hard for the town because he is a "natural citiz.ep"ofSuffolk. "1 was born here. My father set up the athIIli program at Suffolk High. Friendship alone with the people would t'p me here. We will always stay here. It is my home." . Unlike Brian Palmer, therefore, Joe Gorman does not decide the 1" iper goals that would constitute a'successful life on the basis of curIIllt "priorities." The goals are given to him by the traditions ofhis famIy. nd community. YetJoe's solution to the problem of discovering ade'luate goals in life is a solution that raises problems of its own. 'I'he SuffolkJoe loves so much-the community of civic-minded, inI( ,1 king families rooted in two hundred fifty years of tradition-does 1101really exist. Three-fourths of Suffolk's present population have 11I\)Vd in within the past twenty-five years. Most ofthem are not deeply uvolved in the life of the town. If five hundred out of the town's nine Ihousand registered voters show up for a town meeting, that is considI 'I'd a very good turnout. The work life ofmost Suffolk residents sepa,.11 'S them from the town. Their jobs are in Boston or in one of the mlustrial parks surrounding that city. Even when they happen to work III Suffolk, they work in one ofthe factories located in the town's indus111.11 parks-factories that are frequently parts of multinational conlumerates. They live in Suffolk because it happens to be conveniently 1. It II t d for them and the housing prices there happen to fit their budgets. M IIlY of them readily admit that they really would prefer to live in one of rh more affiuent towns in the area, but stay in Suffolk because they I 1111 le! not afford a house in a wealthier community, Such people do not Ihlnk ofSuffolk as their "family,' but only as a convenient suburb. They I'"lh, bly looked on the town's anniversary celebration as a set of quaint 1. li ities-pleasant diversions for a weekend afternoon, not rituals exI" " ing something important about the meaning oftheir lives. T affirm the importance of Suffolk's traditions, Joe conjures up a I r tltious golden age of the town that has been corrupted by modern III v 1 pments. The spirit of this age can be recovered, he believes, and Ilu' u sk of recovering it can validate one's present life. "Behind what I'm Ilt I "15 is one of my hidden motives. I would like to see Suffolk get back 1111 hat type of atmosphere where fifteen people could get together, fo'rm lill .ball team, go down to the park, don't need a uniform or anything IIkc'lhat, play some baII andjust have a good time. Nowadays to do that 1111 of thing, people demand uniforms and leagues and regulations and II IOflh. They don't trust each other. But this other, older kind of spirit whnr you need." '1'", spirit of spontaneous, trustful conviviality Joe remembers hav-

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11.111

The Pursuit ofHappiness

13

ing experienced as a boy has been lost, he thinks, partly because the town's newcomers have been corrupted by the atmosphere of Boston, the big city. There is dissension in local politics bec au se "people coming from Boston are so interested in payoffs and so convinced that the politiclans are corrupt." They are also concerned only about their own private investments in the town rather than the public good. "One oftheir concerns is that their houses were new and they wanted them to have all the proper facilities and they wanted to make sure that their investment in them was protected." But besides the corruption that comes directly from the experience oflife in the city, there is also a more subtle kind of decay, spread by the modern educational system. "It's like people are trying to be kids again. It used to be that parents would discipline their kids and tell them what to do, But now in school you have all these specialists, these psychologists, who analyze the kids and say the kids need this and need that and the parents don't give the kids discipline and .become like kids themselves. Kids need discipline, but instead they get these psychic jobs do ne on thern." The past was almost certainly never as relaxed and innocent as Joe nostalgically remembers it, however, and even if it had been, it would be totally unrealistic to try to return to the past by isolating the town from the city and eliminating the infiuence of modern psychology from the school curriculum. Joe's vision of the good life, seemingly rooted so firmly in the objective traditions ofhis community, is in the end highly subjective. Perhaps he has to hide his hopes of returning to the good old days because even he realizes that most ofhis fellow townspeople would find them faintly ridiculous. Moreover, even if Joe Gorman's vision of a good society could be realized, it is not at all clear that Joe would want to live in it. "We need more family ties, more closeness as a family group," Joe says. "1 grew up in a family in a neighborhood of nine houses, and all the people in those houses were relatives, cousins. The big thing for us was Labor Day weekend. At that time, all the family would get together for a huge picnic. It was wonderful." ButJoe no sooner paints thisnostalgic picture of family unity than he backs away from it, affirming the need to separa te himselffrom his family. "As kids grow up, they have to go their separate ways. So now I've become more separa te from my family. 1 think that's needed. The way I've done it, 1pick my time to get together with them. But it's important that we be by ourselves, too." And, finally, a dangerously narrow conception of social justice can result from committing oneself to smaU town values. For instance, just two months after the culmination of Suffolk's 250th anniversary cele-

The town ing Authority had been trying to provide low-cost housing for elti Ily citizens. To build this housing, it needed funds from the federal I \IV -rnment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development IIII.dly offered Suffolk a grant of$5,000,000 to build such housing-but II lipulated that to qualify for the grant, the town also had to build a urall number oflow-cost housing units for poor families. Many townsl' OI le feared that such units would be occupied by blacks and Cubans II, )OII Boston. In an intensely emotional town meeting, they rejected the 1I D grant and voted to establish recall proceedings to remove the 'IIWII officials who had applied for it. Townspeople appealed to the unity UII integrity of their tradition-rooted community to justify segrega1'1111 ist policies. German did not approve of the rejection of the HUD grant. I 'here is a fundamental generosity to his character that makes him unI y, bout the fear of minority groups that many townspeople feel. Yet " n stalgic desire to return to a mythical past provides little help in II!lti rstanding how Suffolk might workout its contemporary problems uul nlmost no framework for thinking about Suffolk in the context of tii 1,rger society. .
110l!

i ins, the town erupted in an angry fit oflocal chauvinism.

Margaret Oldham
.1 rgaret O ldham is a therapist, not unlike those Joe Gorman accuses of huvlng undermined discipline in the farnily and the schools. Raised in a l.tI 1 , solidly middle-class home, Margaret wouldnonetheless say that II It 'N oncept of the well-lived life is unrealistic and fails to take aCCQuntof.:. f 11(, r alities of human nature and modern social life. People vary tremendously in their values and experiences, she would say, and aU you do II YOLl stick rigidly to your own standards is cut yourself offfrom others. lulcrance for others and a wiUingness to learn from new experience are Itllp rtant to Margaret, and their relative absence in the tightly knit, horn geneous community Joe longs to recreate would make it both I luustrophobic and ultimately too undemanding for her. It would be too tllIl( h like trying to stay forever in the comfort 'of the womb rather tha r uming out into the bright light of day. She places individual fulfillment ItlVo"r than attachment to family and community. ----Margaret, a composed woman in her early thirties, has a strong sense III discipline and has achieved an outstanding academic record and pro-

Habits of the Heart

The Pursuit ofHappiness

15

fessional success. Indeed, she feels that one ofthe most important things she learned from her parents was the value of hard work-"not just work, but taking pride in your work and being responsible for YOUF work and doing it as well as you possibly can and doing a lot of it." She also attributes much of her strong sense of responsibility to her parents, who raised her "with a lot of respect for other people and their property and their rights." But she has parted company with them in one crucial sense. "1 don't think it's important to be quite that moralistic, quite that rigid," she says. "1 think that 1accept people the way they are more than either one of my parents has ever been able to do." Her tolerance for other people makes it easier for her to get along with a variety of people than it was for her father. Her interest in other people and her capacity to accept them is critical to what makes life interesting for Margaret, particularly 'in her work as a therapist in a large Southern city. "1 got into psychology mostly because 1 was just really curious about people and w~!. made them t!fk. And I was interested in why people did the things they Jid and why they didn't have the same ideas I did. I had a lot of friends who were intelligent people who were flunking out of school and getting into a lot of trouble and I always wondered, why? What was the motivation? What was causing them to make the kinds of decisions that they made in their lives?" Being challenged by a variety of people different from herself is a continuing source of stimulation. As a therapist she has an "eclectic background-interactionist, Gestalt, Rogersian," she explains. It is the diversity of ideas and psychological experiences that makes life in her chosen field interesting. "If you're any kind oftherapist at all, you're out there on the line all the time and you learn things from all your clients and you grow a lot yourself Doing therapy is almost as good for me as it is for my client, so I do get a lot ofthat sort of reward. I thinkjust being exposed to different people's thoughts and ideas and problems and finding out, you know, what their lives are like just sort of opens up new kinds of ideas. Every time I got a c'lient for a while, I would totally rethink my view of the world because a client would come with all these different ideas and sort of innocently challenge things that I consider to be very basic in'life and I have to go home and think about it for a while." In Margaret's view, the most important thing in life is doing whatever you choose to do as well as you can. Summing up her sense of the meaning oflife, she says: "Ijust sort of accept the way the world isand then don't think about it a whole lot. I tend to operate on the assumption that what I want to do and what I feellike is what 1 should do. What I think the universe wants from me is to take my values, whatever they might happen ro be, and live up to them as much as I can. If I'rn the best

1" , n I know how to be according to my lights, then something good III happen. I think in a lot of ways living that kind of life is its own II W, rd in and of itself." Like Brian Palmer, Margaret takes "values" as WlI, "whatever they might happen to be." Margaret wants towork hard at her profession, to help people, and to f ve and receive love in her personal relationships, including her marI hl~, to a bright, successful engineer. But she does not think the happiIII fa fulfilling life can be won without a realistic willingness to make III 'ffort and pay the costs required. For example, you have to be willing iii ~ive to make a relationship work. What many of her clients want II I nd, she thinks, is an ideal relationship in which they will be loved ""Ilpletely without having to do anything in return. "This is the person ilo is going to be there to talk to, to go somewhere with them, or, you II0W" a person who's just going to be there and is going to understand IllI'm\:Most people don't want to have to tell you how they fee!.They Ilit you to divine that. That would be perfection. Someone who would uudcrstand them so thoroughly that they would never have to say a word 11111 ju t always be there for them and who would just make them feel " tlly secure and really, oh, not alone." What people need to accept is 11111 i is their responsibility to communicate what they need and what IIII y f el, and to realize that they cannot expect someone else magically III mnkethem happy. "People want to be made happy, instead of making 1111 msclveshappy." Margaret's counsel of a sober maturity fits her role. As a therapist, she I uiu t solve people's problems but can only help them achieve greater I Il understanding so that they may deal more realistically, and perhaps lIulte fruitfully, with life and better realize their personal preferences. Iii understands that human relationships require give-and-take, that 1111 must work hard for the satisfactions you expect in life, and that you II ultirnately responsible for your own life. But this clear-sighted vi11111 f each individual's ultimate self-reliance turns out to leave very Iiliir place for interdependenceand to correspond to a fairly grim view III Ihc individual's place in the social world. Self-reliance is a virtue that Itllpll's being alone. "1 do think it's important for you to take responsi"II I Y fj r yourself, 1 mean, nobody else is going to really do it. I mean 1" lipi' do take care of each other, people help each other, you know, lu II S mebody's sick, and that's wonderful. In the end, you're really 1.111(' nnd you really have to answer to yourself, and in the end, ifyou .111I,'l gt thejob you wantor, you know, meet the person you want, it's at il , I III part your responsibility. I mean your knight in shining armor is 11111 (ling to meet you on the street and leave messages all over the world '1 Y II t find you. It's not going to happen."

16

,Habits ofthe Heart

The Pursuit of Happiness

17

Accepting personal responsibility is, then, acting like an adult, not childishly expecting other people to solve one's problems for one. But it is also simply a necessity for getting along in a world in which other people either cannot or will not help you, in which no one can make you feel "not alo ne," because in the end you really are alo ne. 'Margaret's irnage of the world sharply limits the demands she feels people can make upon one another, even in the dosest, most committed relationships. Even bonds of marriage and parenthood don't overcome the isolation that is ultimately the~of each individual: ''1' m responsible for my acts and what Ido." Asked whether she was responsible for others, she replied, "No." Asked whether she was responsible for her husband, she replied, ''I'm not. He makes his own decisions." What about children? "1 ... I would say I have a legal responsibility for them, but in a sense 1 think they in turn are responsible for their acts." In relationships, as in the wider social world, "everybody likes to get their own way." So the only way to run a relationship is to strive for "fairness" -that is, "not one person making all the sacrifices or one always giving-having a relative balance between what's the giving end and getting your own way." Since, however, there is no wider framework within which to justify common values, all one can ask from others is that they do the work of communicating their needs dearly, and one must in turn try to be dear about one's own needs and desires. If other people don't meet your needs, you have to be willing to walk out, since in the end that may well be the only way to protect your interests. The inability to make legitirnate demands on others becomes an even more severe problem when one steps out of the face-ro-face personal world where one may be able to negotiate differences and assure fairness through direct communication. In the world of politics, for example, the hope of cooperative effort toward common ends is necessarily disappointed: the person who thinks interms ofthe common good is a "sucker" in a situation where each individual is trying to pursue his or her own interests. "Everybody wants to be on top and get their own way. It's like in a relationship, When I think about government policies, I guess I don't want them to cut off all aid to research in psychology unless they do some other things too that should be done. I mean, I don't want to be the only one who suffers. 1 don't want to be the only sucker. I don't want to be the fall guy for people who are not doing their part." -. So while Margaret Oldham has a vision of individual fulfillment that involves deep self-knowledge, wide tolerance of differences among pe 0ple, and a mature willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life, she, too, is caught in some of the contradictions her beliefs imply. She is responsible for herself, but she has no reliable way to connect her own

11111111111 -nt to that of other people, whether they be her own husband 11II1I11IIr n or the larger social and political community of which she is 11111I.lblya part.

tlYlle

Bauer

I II' Bauer would probably agree with Margaret Oldham's insistence 1111 III 'n ed of the individual to make a psychic break with family con1IIIH)I1Sand the limitations oftradition. Wayne is a community orgaIII II who works in California for the Campaign for Economic Democ1 II II is in his middle thirties now and considers his present outlook 11111 f ro be a product ofthe 1960s. "During the sixties we saw a dream, '1 hud :'vision. And we had a beliefthat things could be much better, on IIIIIIY I .vels,' he says. "1 mean, it was a time of personal growth as well as l"IIIIIe.1 change. And what was exciting about that is that the personal ," IIII{C was what would be leading into a very significant political 1 11>11\' . in the country." Personal change involved a break with one's famIy "A lot ofus were raised either in working-class or middle-dass back11111 11 ds and believed that there were certain things that you did with \1111'life. The status quo, You know, what your father did. How he lived III li c, You go to high school, you go to college, get married, settle oIIIWll, have a family, get a respectable position in society. And 1 think 111.\1 what we had seen in the sixties was an emptiness that we saw in our III1I1I i S, that this was not what we wanted for ourselves, that we wanted 11I11~,thing better." W. yne's break with his family and quest for "something better" carne III II) 5, when he was seventeen. He had joined the Marine Corps. "1 had '1111\' from a background ofJohn Wayne, you know, American patriotI III, This whole kind offacade ofwhat we were ali about as the Ameri1.111 P ople." Afterboot carnp he was stationed at Camp Lejeune and uuld come up to New York City on leave. "Nineteen sixty-five was II 'II NYU marched and burned the draft cards and all of a sudden 1111 I . was a political awareness and these people were letting their hair IIIW a !ittle longerand putting earrings in their ear. And this was a real hllck to me. I mean, I didn't understand this. I was in the Marine, I III'PS," During this time, some friends ofhis who had gone to college in Nl'w York began to argue with him about the Vietnam War. "And after ,Iii wcnt on, to make a long story short, for about three or four months, III ulized that my best argument hel~_~o~gh. And what happened 1111, ali of a sudden, myview of who I was and my environment was

18

Habits of the Heart

The Pursuit oJHappiness

19

shattered. It was like looking in the mirror and having the whole thing shattere~ on you gnd seeing alI your values, alI your beliefs, everything you thought was real just kind of crumble. And it left me without any values and it also left me in a position where 1 had this terrible feeling of loneliness that there was no one 1 could go to for help. AlI the people that 1 had trusted, 1 feel, essentialIy, they had lied to me." Upon receiving orders to go to Vietnam, Wayhe went AWOL, assumed an alias, spent eight years leading an underground life travelIing around the country, eventualIy surrendered to the military in 1972, spent four months in a military stockade, but was spared a court-martial and, finalIy, released by the Marine Corps with a general discharge. He returned to his parents, found them totalIy uncomprehending of his understanding oflife, and moved from New Jersey to Venice, California. But Wayne's break with the conventions offamily and communitythe conventions that remain so important for people like Joe Gormandid not end, as it did for Margaret Oldham, with a retreat intoa preoccupation with profession and private life. If he knew her, Wayne would criticize Margaret O ldham for her lack of appreciation for issues of socialjustice. It was through radical politics that Wayne glued the shattered mirror of his life back together again. After he made his break with his past, "rnorality became a question to me. It's sort oflike 1 wanted to put everything back together again with more durable material, one that would stand the strain." Political activism became that durable material. "Watching politics is watching civilization struggle and evolve, and it's veryexciting, but it's also much more personal because it's your struggle to evolve into this picture, into this historic picture somehow." In the mid-seventies, Wayne was living in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood of Santa Monica and got involved with some of his neighbors in a dispute with their landlord. "1 feIt very much that they were being oppressed; they were being taken advantage of These goddam landlords used immigration like a gun at their head and these people live in this constant state of fear. I had a very good feeling. 1 realIy liked these people, they were great people." -His tenant-organizing work led him into involvement with the Campaign for Economic Democracy. "1 feel good about what 1do. 1feel that the work I'rn involved in is directly affecting other people in beneficial ways. It's again this value question. You can spend alI your time in seeing how many material goods you can get together and how much money you can make or you can spend it helping one another and working pgether. You know, we can adopt any type of system that we want, let's say it was socialism, cornmunism, or what have you, but the system that w adopt isn't going to mean anything unless we can educate the people to

tii II differently and to be different. And 1 see what 1 do as sort of an

1.\111

.u.i nal thing in the community, that what 1 do when 1 organize II5 is to take care of an immediate crisis that they have. But realIy 111I1 J do is give them a sense of power about their own lives." Whcn they have power over their lives, each individual will have a ,. III-r sense of efficacy, the marvelIous feeling of personal growth Wayne Itllli If has felt. "They've never made their ideas public, never shared 1111 , ideas, always felt impotent, that they couldn't affect anything. 1 see tllI III ming out feeling like, welI, hell! we affected something. Then the II.~Istcp is to show them that there are alI kinds ofthings that they can do III \) .icty, things they can create. And alI they have to do is work as a I1111" tiveto do it, to agree, to be able to agree to disagree, and then come "I with some kind of consensus. Oh, it's a tremendous thing. 1 mean, it's , 'y bcautiful to see and very exciting to be a part of because what you're l' Ilfis kind of an evolution of consciousness." Hut w~ ecific kinds ofthin .tshould these newly liberated people II ,II. in society? Here Wayne becomes strang(;IYlnarticurate-:-They will III kc society "better," he says. But what does he-;e;moy "better"? "I'rn I'll!h~bly not the best person to ask," he says. Even in his area of speII Ity, tenants' rights, he has only vague notions of what kinds of social 11.111ments for providing housing tenants would work out if they had t III nme amount of power as theirlandlords. "1 have a right to live in this 1It1I101unity as long as I'rn not breaking the law ar damaging things1111 ,t'Sa very touchy question because it deals with private property and "III1'rpeople's rights, investment rights-but 1 think you can affect that, V"1l rnn control that situation, that he can make a reasonable amount of 1I11I1Il'Y and you can live a reasonably good life-I guess. God! I'rn not Iu IIg very clear." . . Wnynethus has a much better idea of what he is against than of what he 1 lor. As a result, the idea ofjustice that provides such a powerful focus for III II "'S commitments s weak in substantive content. When he speaks ofr ' JU II " he talks about individual rights and legal and politica! systerns that} ould give everyone a fair chance of asserting them. The language he uses [ rnvidcs little conception of the ways in which scarce goods should be II trlbuted in a complex society when different individuals fairly offer UIllPting claims to those goods.* Yet he describes his own involvement IIIpolitical activism as having broadened his sense of responsibility.
1. '''li

I II IlIt .rviews with Wayne Bauer on which our discussion ofhim in this chapter is based '" arried out in 198q ..Since then his ideas about distributivejustice and public policy 1. II rified considerably. Injune 1983 he was elected to the Santa Monica Rent Control

11',,"11.

26

Habits ofthe Heart

ests: Thus, there co~ld b.e gr~at disparities in the income given to people in different ~c~upatIons m a.Ju~t society so long as everyone had an equal chance of gettmg a well-paid job, But if, as is now becoming painfully ap~are?t, th~re are more qualified applicants than openings for the interestmg jobs, IS equal opportunity enough to assure justice? What of the socially disadvantaged for whom a fair race is to no avail since they are ~ well short of the srarting line? aur society has tried to establish a floor below which no one will be allowed to fali, but we have not thought effectively about how to include the deprived more actively in occupational and civic life. Nor have we thought whether it is healthy for our society to give inordinate rewards to r~lat.ively few. We need to reach common understandings about distributrve jusnce-e-an appropriate sharing of economic resources-which must in turn be based on conceptions of a substantively just society. Unfortunate1y, our av~ilable 'moral traditions do not give us nearly as many res?urces for thinking about distributive justice as about procedural justice, and even fewer for thinking about substantive justice. Even a self-styled radical such as Wayne Bauer has a difficult time going beyond notions of procedural justice. He is outraged because in ~anta Monica the politic al cards have been stacked against poor tenants m favor of wealthy landlords. He wants to libera te tenants from this unfai~ system, to give them the same opportunities as rich people ro exercise their wills individually. But he becomes confused when asked what kind of society, with what kind of distribution of wealth, the tenants should try to create once they have achieved a fair chance. There is, after ali, not enough land ne ar the coast in Southern California to accornmodate everyone who would want to live there. If the mechanisms of the free ~arket are not to determine who should live in places like Santa Monica, how should that determination be made? How, in short, should scarce resources be distributed in the new social order created by liberated tenants? What would ajost society really look like? To answer such questions, Wayne would have to do more than think about the fair procedures that should be created to give individuals the ability to exercise power over their own lives. He would need some sense of substantive goals, some way to think about distributive justice. But here his cultural resources fail him, as they do most of us. . We now turn tQ the traditions that have shaped our language and our hves ~r what they may tell us about our present predicament. .

.ulture and Character: The Historical Conversation

11

the individualism that pervades the four lives first glance.seem not to have anything to simply to express the way things are. Yet II '11 we look more close1y, we see that there are subtle differences 1I10l1gour four characters. There are different modes even within the IIt. bularies of each individual. Brian Palmer, for example, was at one 11111' in his life,..single-mindedl devoted to~~~~cc~~s, sacrificing I rrything to attainment ofthat goal. Later, he carne tovalue quite difI!, nt things-classical music, books, re1ationships, the 1mm~d'iate enI"yment oflife-and left behind his total devotion to career. Both these uiodes are individualistic, but .~hey arc:..~ot~d i~_Qiffer~!lt.tr:<lditions and " v different implications. VIe prppose to call the former mode "utiliI .1 n individualism" and the latter "expressive individualism." Joe GorIIIJn and Wayne Bauer combine their individualism with somewhat difIt, I1t languages of civic responsibility. Margaret Oldham ~oWS_q..UloIe~I~rp!y for~~stversion of Brians individualism. These differences derive from a historical past of which none of our I haracters is entire1y aware. In our forward-facing society, however, we , more apt to talk about the future than the past and to imagine that the llil rences between us derive largely from a conflict of current interests. t ven in the debate about our future, our cultural tradition, in its sev,~I strands, is still very much present, and our conversation would uobably be more to the point ifwe were aware ofthat fact. S long as it is vital, the cultural tradition of a people-its symbols, ils, and ways offeeling-is always an argument about the meaning of tllI destiny its members share.! Cultures are dramatic conversations dlDllt things that matter to their participants, and American culture is 111\ rxceprion. From its early days, some Americans have seen tne put':

III . n

American

reader,

II. ribed in chapter 1 may at ,1,1 with cultural tradition, but

1"..

27

Habits ofthe Heart

pose and goal of the nation as the effort to realize the ancient biblical hope of ajust and compassionate society. Others have struggled to shap the spirit oftheir lives and the laws ofthe nation in accord with the ideal of republican citizenship and participation. Yet others have promotcd dreams 'of manifest destiny and national glory. And alwayj; ere hav been the proponents, of ten passionate, of the notion that bert mean the.... n~iE~ and the right to amass wea1tb aud power for on s~fC'fhe themes of success, freedoIl}, and justice that we detected in cllapter 1 are found in QL~ ~~al strands of <lliJ culture biblic al, republican, and modern indivjlt1l;;fu;;:;::but they take on dlffer"'ent meanings in each context. American culture remains alive so long a the conversation continues and the argument is intense.
t

Culture and Character

I
III

29

.'

"

,uJ.b.ree

The Biblical and Republican Strands (\v.i4o.

"'I'~

Most historians have recognized the importance of biblical religio? in American culture from the earliest colonization to the present. Few hav put greater emphasis on the religious "point of departure" of the Ameri can experiment than Alexis de Tocqueville, who went so far as tosay, "1 think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores." Just as we have used several individual to introduce aspects of contemporary American culture, we willlook at several representative individuals to introduce earlier strands. -John Winthrop (1588-1649) was one ofthose "first Puritans" to land on our shores and has been taken as exemplary of our beginnings by cornmenta tors on American culture from Cotton Mather to Tocqueville to Perry Miller.? Winthrop was elected first governor of the Massachusett. Bay Colony even before the colonists left England. Just over forty years O age, he was a well-educated man of good family and earnest religious convictions, determined to start life anew in the wilderness in company with those oflike religious commitment. In the serrnon "A Model ofChristian Charity," which he delivered on board ship in Salem harbor just befor landing in 1630, he described the "city set upon a hill" that he and fellow Puritans intended to found. His words have remained archetypal for one understanding of what life in America was to be: "We must delight in each other make others conditions our own, rejoyce together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as rnembers of the same body." The Puritans were .not uninterested in material prosperity and were prone when it carne, unfortu-

it as a sign of God's approval. Yet their fundamental critess was not material wealth but the creation of a cornmunity in hlt II ,1 K -nuinely ethical and spiritual life could be lived. During his .1 , II' III as governor, Winthrop, a relatively rich man for those days, I II, ti his life to the welfare of the colony, frequently using his own 111+1 1111 P iblic purposes. Near the end ofhis life, he had to step down I ,"1 1111 Il; vernorship because his neglected estate was threatened with II IlIl't 'y. The Puritan settlements in the seventeenth century can be II 1 III' 1 rst of many efforts to create utopian communities in America. I h V ,IV' the American experiment as a whole a utopian touch that it has 1 ,1 iti L. in spite ofalI our failings.P 1,11 Willthrop, success was much more explicitly tied to the creation of , , 11,1111 kind of ethical community than itis for most Americans today. III Itll.1 offreedom differs from ours in a similar way. He decried what he II, il "n: turalliberty," which is the freedom ro do whatever one wants, II I wcll as good. True freedom-what he called "moral" freedom, "in " II 'I( to the covenant between God and man" -is a liberty "to that 1111 ' whi h is good, just and honest." "This liberty," he said, "you are to I 11.1 lor with the~hazard of your lives."4 Any authority that violates this IIIII Y ls not true authority and must be resisted. Here again, Winthrop l' I IVl'S an ethical content to the central idea of freedom that some other unul of the American tradition have not recognized. III lik manner, Winthrop saw justice as a matter more of substance It 111'1 procedure. Cotton Mather describes Wjnthrop's manner of gov111111 as follows: "He was, indeed, a governor who had most exactly 1111111 d that book which, pretending to teach politics, did only contain 111111 I aves, and but one word in each ofthose leaves, which word was .ulcration." When it was reported to him during an especially long 11.1 lurd winter that a poor man in his neighborhood was stealing from III wo dpile, Winthrop called the man into his presence and told him. II II he ause ofthe severity ofthe winter and his need, he had permission iti IIpply himselffrom Winthrop's woodpile for the rest ofthe cold seauu, 'I'hus, he said to his friends, did he effectively cure the man from
1.lk t '" ,"
III

It ,11111 .5

ni

freemen of Massachusetts did not always appreciate Winthrop's y, for it made it seem that there was no law but the governor's III. I le was voted out of office and quietlyserved in minor posts for , '1 Ini years before being recalled to leadership. Petty leaders in farItiiii lonial outposts have not always taken .demotion with such equa1111111 y. Winthrop accepted the procedural principles ofself-government IIlIlIKh to temper his own preference for magnanimous, if personal, Itii tantivejustice." If our "whole destiny" is not quite contai,ned in WinIlII

'lt

30

Habits of the Heart

I . te in life, he saw that manufactures

Culture and Character

31

throp, as Tocqueville thought, something very important about our tradition nonetheless derives from him and from his fellow Puritans. '\ The founding generation ofthe American republic produced so many individuals exemplary of the republican tradition that it is hard to Ch009 among them. George Washington seemed to his contemporaries lik some figure out of the e7t~iyRoman republic. Though he would hav preferred to live quietly on his country estate, Washington responded ro his country's call to be commander-in-chief of the revolutionary army and, later, first president of the United States. After graduating from Harvard College, 10~ Adams of Massachusetts, a descendant of the Puritans, devoted Ills talentsas a young lawyer to the constitutional defens ofthe rights ofhis fellow colonists, and subsequently to the revolutionary cause. Thomasjeffersorrfr-zaj-erzo), however, as authorofthe Declaration ofIndependence and leader of the popular cause, stands out as a particularly appropriate example of republican thinking. Jefferson carne from the planter class of western Virginia." After graduating from William and Mary College, he early took an active part in the politics of the Virginia colony. At the age of thirty-three, h drafted the Declaration ofIndependence, and with the words "A11men are created equal" gave enduring expression to his lifelong comrnitment to equality. Jefferson did not believe that human beings are equal in ali respects. By equality, he meant fundarnentally political equality. N man, he believed, is born with a saddle on his bacfror another man to ride. Therefore, however much he temporized on the practical issue O emancipation, ]efferson vigorously opposed slavery in principle.P Though he held that equality is a universal principle, true at a11timc and places, Jefferson was a genuine adherent of the republican tradition in believing that it is only effective politically at certain times and plac where relatively rare conditions a110wit to be operative. Political equality can only be effective in a republic where the citizens actually participa te. "The further the departure from direct and constant controlby the citizens," he said, "the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism." Indeed, the ideal of a self-goyerning so~iety of.relative eqttals in .._.-' which a11participate is what guided Jefferson a11his life. In comparison to Europe, he thought this ideal was realizable in the United States in large part because Americans, at least whiie Americans, were not dividedinto a few very rich aristocrats and a poverty-stricken mass. jeffersons ideal was the independent farmer who could at the same time mak his living and participa te in the common life. Cities and manufacturing he feared precisely because they would bring great inequalities of clas and corrupt the morals of a freepeople.?

-~

--

were necessary if the nation I was not to Iose its liberty, but at the same time he more insistently 111>111 rver stressed the princip'le of citizen participation. He proposed to III! livide counties into of approximately 100 citizens that ould be "sp1alL~~p.I'is" in which every citizen co~ld ~ecome "an ling mem er of the Common government, transactmg m person a II It portion of its rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, IId mtirely within his own cornpetence.T'" Such sma11republics would II IP ro guarantee the health of the large one. In such a society, Jefferson's It, unction "Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than Vllllrself' could have an immediate meaning to the citizens. ButJeffer1111 feared that "our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless." If 1"ople forgot themselves "in the sole faculty of making money," he said, 1 II uture of the re public was bleak and tyranny would not be far away.l! 1 k Winthrop, Jefferson left oftice much poorer than he entered it and I t -d bankruptcy in his later years. Preedom wa not so tightly tied to substantive morality for Jefferson t had been for Winthr~p. Indeed, Jeffer~on's,fi~st freedom, fr:edom of llgion, aimed at ensunng that people like Wmthrop would not have# 1, ~!l1 power to force their views on others. In general, Jefferson favored ' III dom of the person from arbitrary state action and freedom of the I" ss from any form of censorship. Yet he also believed that the best ,1 mse offreedom was an educated people actively participating in gov, urment. The notion of a formal freedom that would simply a110wpeoplt-to do wht they pleased-for example, solely to make money-was unpalatable to Jefferson as it had been to Winthrop. However impor- '''1 n[ formal freedom was to either ofthem, freedom only took on its real ') II It' ning in a certain 'kind of society with a certain form of life. Without I III.\t,Jefferson saw freedom as quickly destroying it self and eventuating II tyranny.12 . Listing the. essential principl:s of government .in ~is first inaugural iL-, ildress, Jefferson began with: Equal and exact jusnce to a11men, of<') whatever state or persuasion, religious or political." While he certainly 1lt'li ved in the proceduraljustice of our legal system, he could not forget 1 there, is a fll:gher justice that sits in judgment over human justice: ", hc laws of n~tu'i=6.rld~f nature's God.''' In considering the continued K i, tence of slavery, J;fferson wrote, "Indeed I tremble for my country wh n I reflect that God isjust; that his justice cannot sleep forever." The Jl' found contradiction of a people fighting for its freedom while subIt ting another to slavery was not lost onJefferson and gave rise to anxi, 'y for our future if this contradiction were not solved.P
1
I

>~~

>>

""t

Habits of the Heart Utilitarian and Expressive Individualism "", Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was long regarded at home and abro as the quintessential American. Though uncomfortable with the Puri tanism ofhis native Boston, Franklin learned much of practic al use frot Cotton Mather, whose life his own overlapped by twenty-two year One of the founders of the American republic, Franklin often gave evi dence of his republican convictions. And yet it is finally neither for hi Christian beliefs, which he embraced rather tepidly and perhaps mor for their social utility than for their ultimate truth, nor for his republi canism, which he more genuinely espoused, that he is best known Rather he is the archetypal poor boy who made good. It is the Autobio raphy that recounts Franklin's worldly success and the maxims from Poo Richard's Almanack advising others how to attain the same that are mo indelibly associated with him. Born the son of a soap and candle maker, Franklin was largely sel educated, for he could not afford the college education that Adams an Jefferson took as their due. Seeking a respectable craft, he apprentice himself to his older brother, a printer. So began the vicissitudes of career too familiar to readers of the Autobiography to need summary here. Suffice it to say that by the age of forty-two Franklin was esta lished iTI Philadelphiaas a printer andpublisher and had made a sufficien fortune to be able to retire from the active direction of his business t devote himself to his political, philanthropic, and scientific interests fo the rest ofhis life. The Autobiography, a secular version ofJohn Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which had much impressed Franklin in his youth, is the archetypal story of a young man who, though poor, attains successJw...diDJ. of hard work and careful calculation. Both famous and revealmg"is ranklin' account of how he attempted to lead a virtuous life by making a "littl book" in which he allotted a page to each of the virtues and marked hi progress as in a ledger, The twelve virtues themselves, derived from ela sical and Christian tradition, undergo a subtle revision in the direction of utilitarianism. "Chastity," for instance, is given a somewhat novel rneaning: "Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring, Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another's Peace or Reputation."14 Even more influenti al than the Autobiography are the aphorisms in Poor Richard's Almanack which have passed into the comrnon sense of Americans about the way to attain wealth: "Early to bed and early tu rise, makes arnan healthy, wealthy, and wise." "God helps those that help themselves." "Lost time is never found again." "Plough deep, whil Sluggards sleep, and you shall have Corn to sell and to keep, says Pa

Culture and Character

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ItI 11111\, 'ranklin gave elassic expression to what many felt in the IIti I"'lIll1ry-and many have felt ever since-to be the most imIII 11111Ip. "b ut America: the chance for the individual to get ahead tu " "III ici, tive. Franklin expressed it very elearly in his advice to t 'I'! tii rousidcring immigration to America: "Ifthey are poor, they "III IlS .rvants or Journeymen; and if they are sober, industrious, 1IIIII ,1,Ih 'y 500n become Masters, establish themselves in Business, " I I . fl. milies, and become respectable Citizens.":" li II 11.lnklin thought about freedom and justice followed pretty III 1 11111 II his understanding of success. Defending popular governIIIIIIIii' P nnsvlvania Colony in 1756, he wrote: "The people of this "Il I Ilr: gcnerally of the middling sort, and at present pretty much .1111, v1.They are chiefly industrious Farmers, Artificers, or Men in 1, llit'y njoy and are fond of Freedom, and the meanest among them h, 1,,' h: a Right to Civility from the greatest."16 Franklin underIII, Ilh Jefferson, that it was only a certain kind of society that was h IIIp.jv~ such scape to ordinary citizens, to protect their rights, and to \ ' 1111 11i"j r e ~~!.W1nent b.;fore ~ law. B~t for ma~y o~ those in- \ \ tii 1al I y Franklin, the focus was so exclusively on individual self- ),) '1'1'1"lllcnt that the larger social context hardly carne into view. By the/" II"Iii, 'ighteenth century, there would be those who would argue that '111 ty where each vigorously pursued his own interest, he social ,,,1 ould automatically emerge. That would be@tarian mdlvidual-' iii p"r form. Though Pranklin never himselfbelieved that, his image 1111 IIIIIC 'd much to this new model of human life!i?'Along with biblical " la IIInnd republicanism, ~ilitarian individualisnJ!as been one of the 11I01 if the American tradition since Franklin's time. lIy Ihc middle ofthe nineteenth century, utilitarian individualism had 11 IIt dominant in America that it set off a number of reactions. A II oi,votcd to the calculating pursuit of one's own material interest 1111 \0 scem problematic for many Americans, some ofthem women, "'11 1)' them elergymen, and some of them poets and writers. The "illl'd self-control of Franklin's "virtues" seemed to leave too little 111111 or love, human feeling, and a deeper expression ofthe self. The ,II w riters of what F. O. Matthiessen has called the "American ReU \ ,IIIc" all reacted in one way or another against this older form of Itllhvldualism.18 In 1855 Herman Melville published Israel Potter, a novel ,II II ubjected Franklin himself to bitter satire. Emerson, Thoreau, and II, vihorne put aside the search for wealth in favor of a deeper cultiva"'11' 1) the self. But it is perhaps Walt Whitmap who represents what we 1l' 1 nll "expressive individualism" in ciearest form. W.dt Whitman (1819-92), Fke Franklin, was the son of an artisan (in

34

Habits ofthe Heart

Culture and Character

35

h~s case, a carpenter), was too poor to go to college, largely edu himself and became a printer and joumalist. But there the resembl ends. At the age of thirty-six, Whitman brought out a slim volum poems entitled Leaves of Grass, and he spent the rest of his life nurtu it thro~g.h one edition after another, with little financial security. first edition of Leaves of Grass begins with it poem he would later a call "Song of Myself," whose first line is "1 celebrate myself" Fran was not above cele~rating himself, but he would nothave put i bluntly. The fourth lme, however, is hardly one to which Franklin have given assent: "1 loaf and invite my soul."19 . F~r Whit~an, success had little to do with material acquisition. A. nch m expen~nce, open to all kinds of people, luxuriating in the sen as we~las the mteUectual, above aU a life of strong feeling, was wha perceived as a successful life. Whitman identified the self with O people, with places, with nature, ultimately with the universe. The pansive and deeply feeling self becomes the very source of life a "Passage to India": .' Passageindeed o soul to prima! thought, Not lands and seas alone, thy own clear freshness, The young maturity ofbrood and bloom, To realms ofbudding bibles.

I tii III, II mosexuality, vaguely but unmistakably expressed in " II ,WIIS another way in which he rejected the narrow defmition I tlltli I P; ) dominant in his day. "dlld'llill nventionality, there was a strong element ofthe repubI II III I j 111 in Whitman, particularly evident in Democratic Vistas Il 11I0111 .where in his prose writings.P" The self-sufficient farmer III III t upnble of participation in the common life was Whitman's 1I III nsjefferson's and Franklin's. He would thus have shared their III III I (' '. But for Whitman, the ultima te use of the American's inIIti , Iit(' was to cultivate and express the self and explore its vast so11I11 n mic identities.

, ,IIly luierpretations of American Culture

It, 1" 'Il . first to speak of the specificaUy American character was J. ,1111 ,'I.J ~~e g~~coeur, a F~ench settler who published his ~etters 11/ ,1/1 I 1/1 tncan Farmer m 1782. e.set the tone for many future dlSCUSIt .,,11 'n he observed that Americans tended to act with far greater . '"1.tI initiative and self-reliance than Europeans and that they tended to v 1II1111pressed by_spcial rank or long usage. He describes the transfer1"111 Il the European immigrant into an American: "From nothing to " hlln being; from a servant to the rank of a master; from being the I In ome despotic prince, to become a free man, invested with lands, It I Il .very municipal blessing is annexed! What a change indeed! It is Illti cquence of that change that he becomes an American."23 I III) led by the philosophes of the eighteenth-century French EnI 1lillIll1ent, Crevecoeur had no difficulty appraising the typical Ame'r-{' It II . kind of "new man," an emancipated, enlightened individual lIi/hl'ntly directing his energies toward the environment, both natural 1111 II(i31,aiming to wring from ita comfortable happiness. The type of I uunliry Crevecoeur sketched approximated the rational individual 1111 I rucd about his own welfare that had been the model character of ttlljolhtenment thought and that was at that time receiving renewed ernIt in the writings of politic al economists such as Adam Smith. IVI" eur wrote ofthe American that, "Here the rewards ofhis indusI y lullow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is Itltllld.d on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger alluretllItll?"24 The rational, self-interested individual had emerged as Eco'"1111 ( Man and, as such, was conceived as living most naturally in the 1111111 tions of a competitive market in which trade and exchange would ti pilit: . traditional ranks and loyalties as the coordinating mechanism of

o soul, repressless, 1with thee and thou with me Thy circumnavigation of the world begin, ' Of man, the voyageofhis mind's return, To reason'searly paradise, Back, back to wisdom's birth, to innocent intuitions, Again with fair creation, 20

~reedom to W?itman was above all the freedom to express one

against all constramts and conventions:

Afoot and light-hearted 1take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, . The long brown path before rne, leading wherever 1choosc.21

!he franknes~ ofWh~tman's celebration ofbodily life, including sexu I Americans and led to more th~1I a few difficulties, though he never compromised the integiity ofhis ('H
iry, was.shock~ng to mneteenth-century

Habits of the Heart sociallife. As Crevecoeur said, "We are alI animated with the spirit of industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each per works for himself."2S Clearly, among our four exemplary Americans, it is Benjamin Fran lin, at least the Franklin of legend, who comes closest to Crevecoeur ideal of American character. Indeed, Franklin was taken as both an id American and an ideal philosophe by many French intellectuals of t day, a number of whom created a virtual cult ofFranklin during his yea in Paris. But Crevecoeur's exclusive emphasis on this aspect of Americ culture and character blinded him to other facets. He saw American rcl gion as gradually fading away into bland tolerance or indifference-a accord ing to Enlightenment views, it should. Crevecoeur did not UI derstand the strand of American tradition represented by John Win throp, and one would not know from his writings thata great series religious revivals was about to begin around 1800. He ignored almost completely the specifically republican political culture that was so mu a part ofthe revolutionary generation. He did not see what many Amer' cans ofhis generation did, that a purely economic man would be as un suited to a self-governing society as would the rank-bound subject traditional regimes. Fortunately, another Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqu ville, who visited the United States in the 1830s, gave a much more ad quate view. Nonetheless, Crevecoeur's view as to the essential nature American character and society has long been influential, appearing i recent times in the much-quoted books ofLouis Hartz and Daniel Boor stin.26 For Tocqueville, the optimism ofthe Enlightenmenr had been tempered by the experience of the French Revolution and its aftermath and the prophecies of the early political economists were fmding an'alarrningly negative fulfillmenr in the industrial infernos of English mill towns. Tocqueville carne to the United States as a sympathetic observer, eager to determine what lessons the first fifty years of the first truly modern nation might have to teach prudent and uncertain Europeans, He added to Crevecoeur's earlier sketch a more penetrating and comple understanding ofthe new societv, informed by republican conviction and a deep sensitivity to the place ~f religion in human life. In Democracy in America (published in two parts, in 1835 and 1840), .Tocqueville was concerned to understand the nature of the democrati society he saw everywhere coming into existence but most fully exernplified in the United States. In particular, he was attempting to assest whether such democratic societies would be able to maintain free political institutions or whether they might slip into some new kind of despotism. He appreciated the commercial and entrepreneurial spirit that

Culture and Character

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"III IlIld cmphasized but saw it as having ambiguous and prob11111'11.1(1 )I1S for the future of American freedom. 1'11'1111'.irgu s that while tl:~ physical circumstances o~ the I I III hnvc ontributed to the maintenance of a democratic reI II luve ntributed more than those circumstances and mores 11/) 111111 (' th:J1Ithe laws."? Indeed, he stresses throughout the book ti" 1 IIIIU'S have been the key to the Americans' success in estabIII 11101 ui.rinraining a free republic and that undermining American It I IIll' 111st certain road to undermining the free institutions of 1I1III1 II 't, t s. He speaks of mores somewhat loosely, defming them tII," Iy 0/1 "habits of the heart"; notions, opinions and ideas that 1111'1 1IIt'I1tni habits"; and "the sum ofmoral and intellectual disposiII 10/111('11 in society."28 Mores seem to involve not only ideas and 1111111 but habitual practices with respect to such things as religion, 1111, il p.irticiparion, and economic life. III III" i, Tocqueville, un1ike Crevecoeur, saw the great importance, in 1. Ilwri an mores ofhis day, ofthe continuing biblical and republican ,11111 III,-the traditions of Winthrop and Jefferson. He also saw very 1 ""y tii, 'y in which Americans operated in the tradition of Benj amin II~III. and to describe this, he helped to give currency to a new word. huhvrdualism' is a word recently coined to express a new idea," he 1111'." ur fathers only knew about egoism." Individualism is more '11I1"I,lt ' and orderly than egoism, but in the end its results are much the 1111 /' Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which disposes each 11111 II -isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and withdraw into IIII II''le offamily and friends; with this little society formed to his taste, III I In lIy leaves the greater society to look after itselC'29 As democratic 11I.llvidualismgrows, he wrote, "there are more and more people who, 1111111 il neither rich nor powerful enough to have much hold over others, II, '1 gained or kept enough wealth and enough understanding to look III' heir own needs. Such folk owe no.man anything and hardly expect lIything from anybody. They form the habit ofthinking ofthemselvesin I 1 dlltlOnand imagine that their whole destiny is in their hands," Finally, IIIil people come to "forget their ancestors," but also their decendants, as / ,II. isolatingthem~elves from their contemporaries. "Each man is forI ' r thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut III' in the solitude of his own heart."30 Tocqueville main1y observed the IIIlitarian individualism we have associated with Franklin. He only in a " w instances discerns something of the expressive individualism that Whitman would come to represent. Tocqueville saw the isolation to which Americans are prone as omi1I0US for the future of our freedom. It is just such isolation that is always

Habits ofthe Heart encouraged by despotism. And so Tocqueville is particularly interes! in alI those countervailing tendencies that pull people back from th isolation into social communion. Immersion in private economic pu suits undermines the person as citizen. On the other hand, involvem in public affairs is the best antidot~ to the pernicious effects of individ alistic isolation: "Citizens who are bound to take part in public affal must turn from the private interests and occasionalIy take a look something other than themselves."31It is precisely in these respects tll mores become important. The habits and practices of religion and dCI ocratic participation educate the citizen to a larger view than his pur I private world would allow. These habits and practices rely to some tent on self-interest in their educational work, but it is only when sel interest has to some degree been transcended that they succeed. In ~~ that)eff~~ w~ul~ have understoodJ.. Tocqueville argu that- varietyo active civic organizaions are_th~Key to American d m0'2acy. T!lrOugli active invo vement in~o~mon~r s, rhe citiz can overcome the sense of relative isolation and powerlessness th I results from the insecurity of lire in an increasingly commercial society \ Associations, along with decentralized, local administration, media : between the individual and the centralized state, providing forums i I which opinion can be publicly and intelligently shaped and the subt! habits of public initiative and responsibility learned and passed on. A /sociationallife, in Tocqueville's thinking, is the best bulwark against th \ condition he feared most: the mass society of mutually antagonistic in dividuals, easy prey to despotism. These ~terme~e_M:r~ures check, pressure, and restrain the tendencies of centralized government to a sume more and more administrative control. In Tocqueville's still-agrarian America, as indeed throughout th nineteenth century, the basic unit of association, and the practical foun dation of both individual dignity and participation, was the local com munity. There a civic culture of individual initiative was nurtur through custom and personal ties inculcated by a widely shared Protc tant Christianity. The mores Tocqueville emphasized were still strong, Concern for economic betterment was widespread, but it operat within the context of a still-functional covenant concern for the welfar of one's neighbor. In the towns, the competitive individualism stirred by commerce was balanced and humanized by the restraining influences O a fundamentally egalitarian ethic of community responsibility. These autonomous small-scale communities in the mid-nineteenth century were dominated by the classic citizens of a free republic, men of middling condition who shared similar economic and social positioru and whose ranks less affluent members of the population aspired to en,'10 II III (

Cu/ture and Character

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'ssflllly. Most men were self-employed, and many who Hhcr were saving capital to launch themselves on their ,. ,1 W,I LI cxpansion, as Tocqueville noted, reproduced this patII ,,1 I II intralized, egalitarian democracy across the continent. " I 1 III Iii i:t, mship was anchored in the ethos and institutions of the 1, I I II 'I11munity of the town.V I
111I ,III

, ",

tII

dep indent Citizen

II. 'I quevillean image of the American town that Joe Gorman , ,01 his wn vision when we met him in chapter 1. For American 1,"1111 III~ f the nineteenth century, the town at its best was a moral
, ,1 il IIII hanneled the energies of its enterprising citizens and their 1I1111t IIt collective well-being. The morallife of the community, it 1"II'v .d, would simultaneously increase material welfare and nourIt I'lIhle spirit. The life of the towns was tightly bounded, however, .11111 I ould yoke individual initiative for the common good, it could I "1 I lud the different and suffocate the unconforming. The stricIII III l wn morality were in part generated by the citizens' unease at IIIK to reate community while navigating the flood of geographical, 11111 'I:\phic, and economic expansion. For, as Tocqueville saw, the 1111 I 1.111, that new kind of person, was a tentative character type It 1" ti by inherited values on the one hand and the challenges of the l' IJding frontier on the other. .. /1. u-pr sentative character is a kind of sy~bol. 33 It lS a way by which ~ , I \Il I ring together in one concentrated image the way people ma) I II ial environment organize and give meaning and direction to III il liv S. In fact, a representative character is more than a collection of l '\III! dual traits or personalities. I~ is rather ~ public image .that h.el~s I IIIH', ' r a given group ofpeople, Just what kinds ofpersonahty traits It , ,")(1. nd legitimate to develop. A representative character provides an iti, 1, . point of reference and focus, that gives living expression to a , It III f life, as in our society today sports figures legitimate the striv'ti ti youth and the scientist represents objective competence. '1 I 'queville'sAmerica can be viewed as an interlocking network of speIltli o ia!roles: those ofhusband, wife, child, farmer, craftsman, clergyIII~II,lawyer, merchant, township officer, and so on. But the distinctive 1111111 ty of that society, its particular identity as a "world" diffe~ent fro.m III It s cieties, was summed up in the spirit, themores, that ammated its 1111 I Il b rs, and that spirit was symbolized.in th~ representative character of

fi

IltluilS oJlile Heart

Culture and Character I ti \ 111I1()1l1 i role, within which men's and women's positions, III' '11"tIIIIP wer and prestige, were largely complementary. In IIHWII nnd cities, however, and particularly among the profesI \1111'11 Il 'ss lasses, women were more and more deprived of an II tii IIII nud were expected to specialize in the expressive and nur1,.11 III III thcr and beau ti fier of the horne, it self viewed more as a 11111111111 'v ryday world than as a part of it.P As women reacted IItiV III lh 'se new pressures, the first consciousness of, and oppo1'1 III 1,1 .quality of women came.to be expressed in America. By 1 1111 Iit ' nineteenth century, the fact that women were not "inde1,IIII 111\',l'lI ." was experienced as a major social strain. 1111 I h-v.m 'ofCrevecoeur and Tocqueville for orienting our under\111111 \II th present is suggested by the echoes of their respective I I IIIthe haracters of our study. Brian Palmer's relatively private I "111111 dsti orientation rehearses Crevecoeur, while Joe Gorrnan's III 1\111 Margaret Oldham's sense of isolation seem to confirm some 1III q\l('ville's fears of privatism, an anticipation at least somewhat 11111 1h.ilan ed by the contemporary public passion of Wayne Bauer. 1111111'1, tand the representative characters of present-day America, we ,1111 III ve beyond Tocqueville's era, but in Tocqueville's spirit, noting IIIII1I i n of new characters emerging in response to the transforma111111 ill' United States into an industrial world power.

what we can call the independent citizen, the new national type Tocq viile described.t+ In many ways, the independent citizen continued traditions ofWinthrop and Jefferson. He held strongly to biblical religi and he knew the duties as well as the rights of citizenship. But the mod I Benjamin Franklin, the self-made man, loomed ever larger in his defini traits, Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the noblest example of the mi nineteenth-century American independent citizen. In his languagc, surpassed the biblical eloquence of John Winthrop and his understandi of democratic republicanism was even more profound than that of t man he always recognized as his teacher, ThomasJefferson. And yet it Lincoln the railsplitter who went from log cabin to White House rath than Lincoln the public theologian or Lincoln the democratic philosopl who captured the popular imagination. In any case, representative characters are not abstract ideals or facel social roles, but are realized in the lives of those individuals who succ moreor less well in fusing their individual personalities with the publ requirements of those roles. It is this living reenactment that gives cu tural ideals their power to organize life. Representative characters th dernarcate specific societies and historical eras. The new American r public of the nineteenth century was the era of the independent citizen surely as it was defmed by the town and national expansion. Because representative characters are the focal point at which a so ety encounters its problems as interpreted through a specific set of c tural understandings, they have frequently been mainstays of myth an popular feeling. Certainly, powerful American myths have been buil around the self-reliant, but righteous, i~dividuarwhose social base is ti life ofthe small farmer or independent craftsman and whose spirit is th idealized ethos of the township. These myths are i!!1p_ortantsources meaning in the lives of a number of the characters we describe in thi book, and they have lately come to play a large, if somewhat disingenu ous, role in national political rhetorie. Myths of ten tell important truth about the tensions people experience and their hopes for resolving tho tensions or somehow turning them to constructive use. _ Tocqueville depicted the conflicts between the democratic citizen concern for individual advancement and security on the one hand an religion and local political participation on the other. He traced privatizing tendencies to the new spirit of individualism attendant on nascen commercial capitalism and concern for community to the republican and biblical traditions. The focus of the new democratic culture was on male roles. But th ethIc of achievement articulated by men was sustained by a moral ee I ogy shaped by women. Among artisans and farmers, the hous;hold unit

1'111' D'ltrepreneur 1" 1itizcn perceived by Tocqueville was indeed closer to being an indiItIt"tI"shut up in the solitude ofhis own hea t" than earlier Americans III ligi us and republican stripe had been.P" Yet he was a considerably I lated and self-regarding figure than -the entrepreneurs of the 1.I"dAge of thelate nineteenth century or the bureaucratic managers ".1lh srapists ofthe twentieth. I\).queville voiced great misgivings about two phenomena that he Itllllf.lhtthreatened the moral balance of Jacksonian democracy. One ,1 the slave society of the South, which not only treated blacks inhu11\.111 'Iy but, as Tocqueville, like Jefferson, noted, degraded whites as I liP The second danger lay in the industrial system, which first made II uppearance in the Northeast. Factories had concentrated great numInI of poor and dependent workers, of ten women and immigrants, into I qlidly growing mill towns, and Tocqueville feared the rise of a new fiIII Il of aristocracy that would make owners and managers into petty

42

Habits of the Heart

I

Culture and Character

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despots and reduce workers to mechanically organized, dependent atives, a condition incompatible with full democratic citizenship.H as the plantation system subordinated the yeoman farmer in the S so the spread of industrial organization both concentrated econ control in the hands of relatively few owners and threatened to displ the independent artisans so central to nineteenth-century demo life. lronically, the trauma tic Civil War that destroyed the slave civil tion enormously furthered the growth of the industrial structures would fatally unbalance the original American pattern of decent raii self-governing communities. Between the period of rapid westward expansion and indu growth that followed the Civil War and the entry of the United St onto the world scene in World War 1, American society passed thr the rriost rapid and profound transformation in its history, not exclu our own time. Nothing less than a new national society came into b in those years, a society withinwno5e-structurewe' still live, and markedly unlike that of most of the nineteenth century. By the en that century, new technologies, particularly in transport, commun tions, and manufacturing, pulledthe many serni-autonomous local s eties into a vast national market. Though fostered in many ways by federal government, the new expansion was largely carried out by vate individuals and financial groups, who generated private wealth control on a previously unheard-of scale.P? The new economically integrated society emerging at the turn of century developed its own forms of social organization, political cont and culture, including new representative characters. The _..--new ~ s form, capable of extending the control of a group of investors over resources, huge numbers of employees and, often, great distances, wa business corporation. The Pennsylvania Railroad, with its tentacu reach, its supervised, graded, and uniformed army of workers, its chanical precision of operation and monopolistic ambitions, becam model of a new institution destined eventually to affect the lives of alm all Americans. The steel, oiI, banking and finance, and insurance ind tries rapidly adopted the new bureaucratic form of the corporation.w The old local governments and orga~izations lacked the capacity deal with problems that were increasingly national in scope. Under th conditions, the traditional forms of social and economic life of the to lost their dominant position, in fact, if not in symbol, and the traditio idea of American citizenship was called into question. The new indu trial order was focussed on large cities that seemed the antithesis of t orderand decency ofthe town. Factories, slums, immigrants, and war.1 bosses seemed "foreign" and frightening. In those years, a new politii I

ti, lop .d, with the powerful national economic interests of

IIlflil ,

bnnks, and their investors, and, eventually, the labor with the old regional, ethnic, and religious inter1.. , ,II vel prnents changed the workings of the political parties II I '"I ti KOV rmment. By the early decades ofthe twentieth cen1 1'111 I 'S rivc movement was calling for a sinoother partnership II III I '. 1 economic organizations and government at all levels Iii," ti ~( "th tumultuous process of social and political change. If III I II luu () Americans have had to confront "future shock,' surely III I It - ntury generation faced the most severe challenge. I , 1p' the old economic and social patterns brought stormy il ',1111111 es and complex cultural changes in its wake. One was the I I II II III 1 ti possibiIity always avaiIable to some in American society, 1111111 I ,It i n ofthe successful entrepreneur from the confining ties of . 11,1 IOIW,I 111 rality. The GiIded Age was the era of the spectacular , IIlltll" .' nomic success: captains of industry who could ignore the 1111 I d publi opinion and rise to truly national power and prestige by 1""11t III .nns alone." In the predatory capitalists the age dubbed robII 1'111 , ,,'itne ofthe worst fears of earlier republican moralists seemed 111111I d: ehat by releasing the untrammeled pursuit of wealth without .III' tit' demands of socialjustice, industrial capitalism was destroyIt. I ti II i fa democratic society, threatening social chaos by pitting du t c1ass. Where, many wondered, could new limits and direc1111 individual initiative be found beyond the broken bounds ofthe I foi verning community? The inabiIity ofthe old moral order efI ,Iy 10 encompass the new social developments set the terms of a 1111I l' d zbate in which we as a nation are still engaged.P II" III st distinctive aspect oftwentieth-century American society is tllv I Il of life into a number of separate functional sectors: home I III kplace, work and leisure, white collar and blue collar, public and I 1\ 'I'his division suited the needs ofthe bureaucratic industrial corI 11111" that provided the model for our preferred means of organizing It I hy the balancing and linking of sectors as "departrnents" in a 1 I 1111. I whole, as in agreat business enterprise. Particularly powerful I"'llding our contemporary sense ofthings has been the division beIII t h various "tracks" to achievement laid out in schools, corporaIII, ov rnment, and the professions, on the one hand, and the balancI 1111- ctors of home, personal ties, and "leisure," on the other. AlI iti I IIstrong contrast to the widespread nineteenth-century pattern in Itlt li, IS on the often-sentimentalized family farm, these functions had ,,1 II listinct boundaries. Domesticity, love, and intimacy increasingly 1" 11I1' "havens" against the competitive culture of work.
I III"

1"1

11111Il .ting

1"

1"

44

Habits of the Heart

_~''''''"

Culture and Character

45

With the industrialization of the economy, working life became 111 specialized and its organization tighter. Simultaneously, industriali tion made functional sectors ofthe economy-various industries, wh geographical regions-more interdependent than before. Yet the toral form of organization and the competitive pressures of the natie market made this interdependence difficult to perceive. While the pr sures to compete and the network of private life were immediately p ceptible, the interrelationships of society as a whole were largely abser tions. The sectoral pattern of modern American society has thus O been able to contain potential conflicts by separating those who ar ferent without impairing the economic linkages ofsectors within larger economy.t? Under such conditions, it is not surprising that the major problem life appear to be essentially iQ?i;:-~dual matters, a question of negotiatin reliable and harmonious balance among the various sec tors of lift which an individual has access. As its points of reference contracted f an economically and occupationally diverse local community to the g graphically spread, but functionalIy homogeneous, sector within whi person competes, success carne to be defined in professional terms. concept of one's "peers" concomitantly underwent a subtle, but imp tant, shift of meaning. It carne to signify those who share the same spc mix of activities, beginning with occupation and economic position, increasingly implying the same attitudes, tastes, and style of lifc+' The responses to all this that were articulated around the turn of century have continued to shape our ways of conceiving and relating American society. Those responses have all along been closely inter ven with new character types that, like the earlier ones, have corn seem representative approaches to the common conditions of life, KI ing moralmeaning and direction to the lives of individuals.

The Manager
,f 'entrepreneur, competitive, tough, and freed by weal ~ external constraints, was' one new American character. Certain] ~ much of the moral appeal of the self-rnade man is his apparent freedon not only from traditional restraints, but from the tight organization, ti drudgery and banality, of so much of modern industriallife. The irony, course, is that the entrepreneur's m~or historical role has been to creat the modern industrial context .. Celebrating the economic struggle, t III self-made man ofmeans became the legitimizing symbol for some oftlu

(T':e self-sufficient

I!Ilddll ()I\Ss. Yet in practice the recurrent American dream of 11/11'11 rontinued to approximate the old image ofthe business1111111 provider and citizen. The turn-of-the-century nabobs 1, III lill ntly sought legitimation through public philanthropy fi, III il 1', vi ,drawing on models more deferential-their critics 11I1 ti" Ih:'111 American republican tradition countenanced. But II 1 I li ullvldual entrepreneur, though a continuing feature of AmerI IIlllm Il 3 powerful symbol, has not represcnred the dominant "II I tii 1 uu mic and social development. " l.uu-uurratic organization ofthe business corporation has been I !III IIIIII (or e in this century. Within the corporation, the crucial 1, I 1111be n t~e professional manager+" The competitive indus1101. I W Iil its sectoral organization and its push toward profitability , II Iill' lndisputable reality of modern life for the manager, rather Iiti ,oI:lt' 'c of a passionate faith in "progress," as for the entrepre1IIIIIIIKhthe manager in effect builds upon the work ofthe entreIII IIlti shares with him the drive to achieve andproblem-solving III 111,1 ( . re 014 American traits, the social positions and outlooks of " I YI ~'s differ importantly. 1". ('II . ofthe manager's task is to organize the human and non- ; t "1. (lIlrces available to the organization that employs him so as to ~ , II f~it~9P in t.he .m~rketplace. His role is to persuade, inspire, 'I"d Il,~'tle~ and intimidate those he manages so that his organiII 1111.1 ufus up to criteria of effectiveness shaped ultimately by the 11 IIIL specifically by the expectations of those in control of his III '1Iion-finalIy, its owners. The manager's view of things is akin It I .11t il technician of industrial society par excellence, the engineer, 1" IIl11tthe manager must admit interpersonal responses and per11111 ,including his own, into the calculation of effectiveness.w I , ,'', entrepreneur, the manager also has another life, divided ti p~ use, children, friends, community, and religious and other 11I'llpncional involvements. Here, in contrast to the manipulative, , I III .nt-oriented practices of the workplace, another kind of perIIIy actualized, of ten within a social pattern that shows recognizI 1111 (In uity with earlier American forms of family and community. I "1 .\11outstanding feature of industriallife that these sectors have tll/l. rudically discontinuous in the kinds.oftraits emphasized and the I l undcrstandings that guide individuals within them. "Public" and " ur" r les of ten contrast sharply, as symbolized by the daily corn1111 II1)1 n green suburban settings reminiscent of rurallife to the indusI III hnological ambience.ofthe workplace. IIII split between public and private life correlates with a split between

"1

Rabits ofthe Heart

Culture and Character

47

utilitarian individualism, appropriate in the economic and occupati spheres, and expressive individualism, appropriate in private life. long time such a split was incipient in American life. Early in the ni teenth century, indeed already in the eighteenth century, an appeal to culating utility was complemented by an appeal to sentiment or em ti Jefferson, following the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher , lieved in an innate "moral sentiment" that impelled men toward ben lence. The Puritan theologianJonathan Edwards (1703-58) had seen gion, too, as located in the "affections." When science seemed ro dominated the explanatory schemas of the external world, morality religion took refuge in human subjectivity, in feeling and sentiment. rality and religion were related to aesthetics, the realm offeeling par x lence, as we saw in the case ofWhitman. When morality carne to be { ciated with the role of women and the family, and religion to be Iar 1 "'7 matter of revivalistic emotion, the split between the utilitarian and "? expressive spheres in nineteenth-century America widened. Noneth 1 theologians and moralists believed feeling had some cognitive cont some access to the external world, and Whitman certainly believed poetry was expressing the truth not only ofhimselfbut ofthe world. with the emergence of psychology as an academic field-and, even m important, as a form of popular discourse-in the late nineteenth early twentieth centuries, the purely subjective grounding of expre individualism became complete. The town had provided a metaphor of a moral ecology in which polarities of public and priva te, masculine and feminine, were integr by means of generally shared codes ofbehavior. Preindustrial Amerl character surely oscillated between the instrumental orientation O "masculine" world of work achievement and the values of the "fi nine" spheres of nurturing domesticity. But the cultural framew made that oscillation, including its conflicts, intelligible. IW1tiithe coming of the managerial society, the organization of w pb~e of residence, and social status carne to be decided by criteri economic effectiveness. Those same economic criteria further facilit t e rowt o nationa mass marketing and, with it, expanded consui choice. The older social and moral standards became in many way I relevant to the lives of those Americans most directly caught up in new system. The manager could reorganize resources for greater e tiveness in economic life. Similarly, the relatively affluent twentiethr tury American could reorganize habits and styles of life experiment to achieve a more gratifying private life. In this process, 'Ameri learned to become more efficient in adapting to new sets of expectatlon and styles of consumption.

II" "'/
111111 li

fi

Kt'r, he therapis is :ts,Eecialist in mobiIiziug tesour~c.s,for t III ,only ere the resources are largelY..i!.ll.etnaLto~the.indivjdt "" Ilie. sure of effectiveness is the elusive criterion of personal . ~~ 11,," ' Also like the manager, the therapist takes the functional I 11t" III industrial society for granted, as the unproblematical conI I " ','I!. goal ofliving is to achieve some combination of occupa 1 III Iylc" that is economically possible and psychically tolerable, tll~ ," The therapist, like the manager, takes the ends as they are I .1" I\H'\I is upon the effectiveness ofthe means. . Iti II Ih .m, the manager and the therapist largely def~e the outII. nti th-century American culture. The social basis of that I III world o ureaucratic consumer capitalis which domi' ,,~, penetrate , most o er, ocal economC' orms. While the ,,1 li I ,mager and therapist does not speak in the language oftradil unu rlieies, it nonetheless proffers a normative order oflife, with Iti' I I " ls, images of the good life, and methods of attaining it. Yet II IlIlli'rsta?ding of life generally hostile to older ideas of moral} t It l' .nter IS the autonomous individual, pres umed able to choose .It hc will play and the commitments he will make, not on the III hll{h r truths but according to the criterion oflife-effectiveness I IlIltvidualjudges it. II uroral languageand images of this culture of utilitarian and exI ud ividualism have infl.uenced the lives of most of the characters IllIok. and one of our chief tasks in i:he chapters that follow will bsi h!llut . and understand its forrnsr As we shall see, th:e effects of this I .tIand therapeutic understanding are not always benign; it does I ~y succeed, even by its own standards, Indeed, the very term Il "II iuggests a life focussed on the need for cure. But cure of what? I Iillal anal~sis, it is ure ofthe lack ~f fit petweenthe present b~gahlll of the self and ~~eav!il.:l>leorganization of work, intimacy, and 1I1I1t;. And this cure is to take the form ~f enhancing a;;:dempow~r:: , Ifto be able to relate successfully to others in society, achieving .Inr atisfaction without being overwhelmed by their demands. In II understanding, the expressive aspect of our culture exists for the I un and fulfillment of the individual. Its genius is that it enables IlId vidual to think of commitments-from marriage and work to 11111 I and religious involvement-as enhancements of the sense of II 1.11101 well-being rather than as moral imperatives. 1111 ulture of the manager and the therapist is thus both recognizII t untinuous with earlier American cultural forms and yet different I

48

Habits ofthe Heart

-t
\

Culture and Character

It 111111 1.1 'y lay in the balance.r" '

49

from them. The obvious point of similarity is the emphasis on eh ' t pendence of the individual. As we have seen, self-reliance is I American value, but only one strand of the complex cultural have inherited. The expressive culture, now deeply allied with 1 tarian, reveals its difference from earlier patterns by its readiness t 1 normative commitments as so many alternative strategies of self-lui ment. What has dropped out are the old normative expectations O makes life worth living. With the freedom to defme oneself ane plethora of identities has also come an attenuation of those c iti understandings that enable us to recognize the virtues ofthe oth ir, In fact, tlie n~; cuiture is deeply ambiguou . It represents bot] easing of coiiStrmts and aogmatic prejudices about what others . h be and an idealization of the coolIy manipulative style' of manager In our society, with its sharply divided spheres, it provides a way I beleaguered individual to develop techniques for coping with thc contradictory pressures of public and private life. Yet it does so by tending the calculating managerial style into intimacy, home, and munity, areas oflife formerly governed by the norms of a moral ee 1

1'.1this change with foreboding, feeling that the future of public interpreted !2.a~~~ widely read /"""/ (II) ) j 1 the same way.49 The old independent "inner1111 111.111 was being replaced by new, "other-directed" corpoItI, 1.1 Il) ntable results. Read carefully, Riesmans argument is 1,,, 111111' omplex, and his evaluations are rather different from 1 II I 1I1.!Il actually four character t es not two. """) Tra- ~\ , proposes -<...,. II., 'II il I har: ter IS what most premodern societies produce. It is II ti II AII1'rica largely by immigrants from peasant societies. ti 1111 I dirccted type characterizes old American culture and 1" IIIililialgam of our biblical, republican, and utilitarian individ1" l' .rhaps the inner-directed person is the old independent '""" ,lltun d to his own intern al morality than to the cues ofhis '1 II II!lt Riesman is far from endorsing the inner-directed type, "1" 1I'f-\0 f the inner-direcred person is itself an introject from ,"111"1Y cxpcrienced in childhood. Like the other-directed person 1.11111' tII, conformist pressures ofthe immediate social environIii, II.,,'-directed person lacks genuine autonomy. The autonoItII IIH'I' is Riesman's fourth type and the only one he genuinely IIIt IIIans concept ofthe autonomous character is elearly related II III II, ' idcas of Erich Fromrn and seems to be elose to what we II," 1II,' 'xpressive individualist type, especially in its relatively pure 1111, III 111. lndeed, whatever its immediate reception, Riesman's . '"I 10h .rald an increasing importance ofthe expressive individI I, IIIIl stwar America, relative to which the other-directed, or 11111 " t'lu racter seems to have been a relatively transient type. I It 111,111 grew alarmed at some of the implications ofhis work, or " tllI implications some readers drew from it, is documented in , III hc upplied in successive reprintings. But Riesman's later 111111 do Il tin the least.detract from the value of The Lonely Crowd I """1011 k study ofthe transforrnation of American character. III 11111 b ok that we would place together with those ofthe Lynds " 1111'11, a major interpretive contribution to the und~rstanding III" 111- ntury American character and society is Herve \Tarennc's,,,,1/1, 'liI.l!cther (19'7J.) . ~_.varenne's classic study of a smal town in 111111 Wis onsin is the subtlest depiction to date of how American III, IIId character interacted in recent times. Varenne elearly sees the 111111111' of utilitarian and expressive individualism as modes of char 11I.1 I ultural interaction, and especially the delicate balance beII 1111 III arid their mutual dependence. The drive toward indepen11I.1 mastery only makes sense where the individual can also fmd a ",It

~Ii-

'.1

Some Recent Interpretations

Robert and Helen Lynd in Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Tra (1937) offered the most extensive sociological study hitherto undcrt of a single American community (Muncie, Indiana). The Lynds soug ,/show what was happening to America under the impact of industri . ~ion and the social changes accompanying i~. They took th~ year 189 baseline with which to compare the Amenca of the twenties and thi that they studied firsthand. They saw the typical nineteenth-century t that Muncie had been in 1890 transformed into the rapidly changin dustrial city ofthirty or forty years later. In particular, they noted th into a business elass and a working c1ass, with the former dominant the latter in many ways exeluded from full participation in commu Iife. What becomes elear from the two Middletown books and Knowledge for What? (1939), Robert Lynd's more general book a American culture, is that the Lynds brought a rich harvest of sociolo detail to document what was by then an old theme among social criti namely, the deeline of the s:u~!.ureof the independent citizen, with 1 strong b16IiCaland"7epublican elernents, in the face ofthe rise of'thc Im,' ness (managerial) c1assand its dom~na~t ethos of utilitarian individual] III

50

Habits of the Heart

Culture

and Character.

SI

context to express the love and happiness that are his deepest feell and desires. Fragile communities are put together to meet the utilit and expressive needs of individuals, with only a peripheral surviv I older biblic al and republican themes. For Varenne, this balance r p sents a successful cultural code containing and equilibrating its in contradictions. While our reading of modern American history m us more doubtful about the success of this equilibrium, we remain debted to the brilliance of his insights, which, besides those of the t ering figure ofhis fellow Frenchman, Tocqueville, have most influen our study.52

American Culture Today

Perhaps the crucial change in i\meri_aplife has been that we have m from the locallife of the nineteenth century-in which economi social relationships were visible and, however imperfectly, morally terpreted as parts of a larger common life-to a society vastly mor terrelated and integrated economically, technically, and functionally. this is a society in which the individual can only rarely and with ficulty understand himself and his activities as interrelated in mor meaningful ways with those of other, different Americans. Instea directing cultural and individual energies toward relating the self t larger context, the culture of manager and therapist urges a strenu effort ta make of our particular segment of life a small world of its O However, the cultural hegemony of the managerial and therap ethos is far from complete. It is rooted in the technological affluen postwar society, a prosperity that has been neither equitably shared universally accepted. Challenges to that ethos have arisen from a varl of quarters, from those left out of that prosperity, as well as from th who, while its beneficiaries, criticize it for moral defects. Sometim criticism seems to be motivated by a desire to hold on to the last ve ti of the autonomous community and its ideal of the independent citi Sometimes it is motivated by a desire to transform the whole so I and particularly its economy, so that a more effectively functioning mocracy may emerge. In either case, there is a powerful rejection f managerial-therapeutic ethos, in which we can see not only the di tents of the present economic and social order, but also reminders 01 ti continuing importance of the biblic al and republican cultural traditlon , in American politics.

1111111111 I IIf'SlIrviving forms ofthe old ideal ofthe indepenI III IIItI ('n today, In some cases, what we call the concerned I 1111 ti III il,' .nding the moral beliefs and practices ofhis or 11\tit' c c of a permissive therapeutic culture and the I 1111111,1 , nt rs and managers that do not understand, and "iti, 10, 10 al community feeling. We find what we call ,"I '1 Iti 'Il professionals, committed to helping their cornI \1 , III IIl'W hallenges in a way that does not ru pture tradiI 1111 tll'llI) ratie participation. And we also find movement III '111111\ Ih' task offorming a new public, organized for dis"oi IIIitIII, is ~ major commitrnent. The activist works within I 11111 ti, " hut also hopes to influence understandings of society III " 1111 III ignifican; change. None of these present-day repreIII !III thl of the independent citizen can avoid being inIlo 1111111111'1, Il and expressive individualism, the pervasive world II II '1'" 1111<1 the therapist. But they give evidence that the old 1 1I 1111'1 !It is nor over, and that alI strands of our tradition are still ,,1 IIII pcnk to our present need. Perhaps it is now clear that luu 1.~IIlt. nager; Margaret Oldham, a therapist;Joe Gorman, a '1 ti , II~"II; and Wayne Bauer, a movement activist, though all 111,11 ' t1l1ldist in their language, draw on a more complex tradition 1.1!l1I'Il'quite realizes.

","11"