Toxic Ideas: how both the right and left have undermined our national culture and what we can do about it

There is an aspect of the American schism between the "right" and the "left" that has, believe it or not, not received enough attention.  As we know, each side not only can not admit that there might be merit in the other side's arguments, but goes on to hold the other responsable for damaging the very fabric of American life, while seeing itself as more or less blameless.

This is partly understandable. When the right accuses the left of undermining discipline, manners, and the institutions of society, it does so with a great deal of justification.  The weakness of our social fabric has much to do with social forces unleashed by the left wing of American thought. Eating habits, respect for the law, academic standards, personal behavior, family commitments - the standards for maintaining all of these have been weakened or lowered since 1960, and the left is mainly responsible.

This, however, can not excuse the very real damage that ideas from the right have also done to the American conscience.  The left never tires of pointing out the harm caused by certain conservative ideas, mainly those having to do with wealth acquisition - but it would be right to do so. The perversion of capitalism that has done much to harm not only our civic but our personal lives stems from neo-liberal (alternatively known as "conservative") economic ideas.

It may be the right moment, however, to explore further how so-called "right" and "left" ideas have combined to cause much more harm to our society than perhaps we even realize, and certainly than they ever could do separately.

We can begin with the fetishization of free markets by conservative economic thinkers. One can argue over whether deregulation, lower tax rates, and so on have been good policy.  What no one can defend is the social consequences of conservative economic ideas filtering down into the popular consciousness, with the influence on personal behavior that has resulted.  In teaching Americans that the profit motive is always virtuous and that personal economic enrichment is an end in itself, conservatives have damaged our ethical and civic core.  It used to be most important for us to be citizens; now we are consumers foremost.

We are not the first materialistic society obviously.  What we are is the first successful bourgeois society to have removed social constraints from so many facets of life.  We are besotted by material, and now electronic comforts (I am aware there is a class of people in our country that fancies itself untouched by American materialism; they have much more in common than their less glamorous compatriots than they realize.)  There is nothing the matter with this inherently.  However, with no "social inhibitors" to govern our use of our multitude of consumer goods, I am afraid sometimes we are swirling down a kind of cultural drain.  (If you take a moment to read some of my earlier essays, you will see I define culture in a somewhat different way from what you might be thinking). If ever fewer families are eating together around a table, discussing topics at length and taking the trouble to enjoy one another's company, it is because we have given ourselves permission to be excused from dinner, as it were, to pursue interests that are, in large part, narcissistic (I could list what these are, but I trust that you will be able to guess).  If there are ever fewer intact families to begin with, it is because, apart from the things that make living together inherently stressful, there are so few social inhibitors to hold the family structure together, combined with a generalized material longing that robs us of the forbearance that is occasionally necessary in marriage.  In this case, the left is responsible for the former condition, and the right, as I have suggested, is more responsible for the latter one.

It pains me to say that to visit most public places in America is to subject oneself to a visual assault.  At no time in our history has the American people been so uncaring about its physical condition and appearance.  I am even convinced that, in many cases, we take a perverse pride not only in being slovenly, but in offending the strangers in our presence.

I bring this up only because the decline in our public deportment is an excellent example of where pernicious ideas from the whole spectrum of American popular thought have converged and have become magnified in force. From the left has come the notion that our right to personal expression outweighs all other considerations, with the potential revulsion on the part of one´s interlocutor held in particularly low regard. Hence our feeling that we are entitled to wear any clothing, however ill-considered, regardless of the occasion.  We have also given ourself permission to eat any type of foodstuff, again with little regard to the appropriateness of the time or place.   The wretched condition of our bodies, which should be a spur to personal renewal, is instead a perverse badge of honor for a disturbing number of our countrymen.  The right has contributed to the problem also, just as powerfully if more subtly; it is far from blameless here.  Our exaggerated self-confidence, our disinclination to question our own attitudes and conduct, our feeling that whatever we are doing in the moment is perfectly justified are aspects of the American character that have received undue encouragement from the right wing of the national discourse.

I'm sorry to say I don't think I can keep the promise I effectively made in the title to offer a solution. I am realizing that other commentators with more credentials, authority, and potential for reaching an audience have, so far, failed to affect our conduct significantly, whether in the personal domain or elsewhere.  On an individual level, one could attribute this to the natural resistance we all have to suggestion. Or we could ascribe it to our disinclination as a people to engage in introspection, an aspect of our national character which historically has been to our advantage, but now poses a threat, if not to our survival then at the very least to our prosperity.

America and Food

Culture suppresses our instinctive urges, instead favoring rituals and codes; it devalues our subjective, inner lives so as to maintain the primacy of the rules of behavior that are imposed from the outside.  Where there is a strong external culture in a society there is naturally a strong sense of conformity.  Most members of society adhere to its norms, and the more elaborate the codes, forms, rituals, etc. of a society, the more dramatic the effort required to break away from them.  (Western literature until 1945 was inspired by -- as much as by any other circumstance, I am convinced -- the dramatic possibilities offered to the imagination by individuals struggling against the traditions, hierarchies, and religious tenets of the societies in which they happened to live.)
 
In this country we are embarking on an experiment in which we are leading our lives with only the minimum of cultural norms needed to hold a technically advanced society together.  The results so far have been disastrous generally, but here we will focus on the impact of dismantling our national culture on the consumption of food.

There are no longer any restraints about what may be eaten and when.  It is socially acceptable to eat the most dreadful food one can imagine at all points during the day, while engaged in practically any activity.  These relatively new norms have spread through every part of society, with little regard to wealth or even education.

The public health consequences of living without, in essence, any rules having to do with eating have been well documented.  I am unfortunately not optimistic about addressing the food-related health issues that beset us, because the cultural structures that would discipline and refine our eating are largely absent.  The notion that eating is a highly civilized act is one that our society has roundly rejected.

Proof that how we satisfy our hunger is of no importance can be seen everywhere.  Convenience and availability the greatest virtue food can possess.  Again, it would be wrong to think that the most favored groups of society do not also hold this view to some extent.

I applaud the efforts of those who are reintroducing good food and eating practices back into American life.  That they have not made significant inroads beyond the upper-middle class does not in any way invalidate these efforts.  I will strive to remain hopeful that an authentic American food culture will one day rise out of the ashes.

Food in New York City

"We owe a debt to our immigrants" is not just an empty phrase from some mayoral campaign speech.  For without them, New York City would have exactly two culinary strata: on the top, restaurants to match, or at least compete with any in the world; on the bottom, fast-food and chain restaurants, which, in the last 15 years, have increasingly crowded out the more authentic traditional staples of New York dining, such as the diner and the European ethnic (Jewish, German, Italian, etc.) restaurant.  Some examples of the Chino/Latino, Polish/Ukrainian, "Red Sauce" Italian restaurants and so forth that thrived between 1945-85 still exist, but are endangered.

New York dining, excepting the famous old steakhouses and a few other establishments, has in fact almost always been synonymous with ethnic dining. As the cuisine brought over by the immigration of 1880-1930 became part of mainstream city life, the changes brought to it by the passing of generations and exposure to other influences imparted a unique flavor (if you will) to the food that made certain ethnic cuisines inseparable from New York's identity.

Now, however, if one were put at random into one of the thousands of eating establishments of present-day New York, and then were served an order, also at random, one would be likely receive a plate occupied half by French fries, with the other half containing either a hamburger or some variation on the chicken breast.  The cost of the meal would not be exorbitant, but still would seem a bit too much given the quality of what was served. 

In recent years some restaurants have opened which, while still being too expensive for most people to go to often, are within the budget of a middle-class couple, and have superb offerings conceived and prepared by some of the finest young chefs in the country.  Some grocery stores and food purveyors catering to the patrons of such restaurants have also appeared on the scene.  However, the best affordable food is coming from recent immigrants.  Brooklyn's Chinatown, the Pakistani enclave on Brooklyn's Coney Island Avenue -- for that matter, any neighborhood where there has been a recent influx of immigration -- are the places to go if one wants a very good dinner for $30 or less.

Still, much of the food of New York is, in my opinion, not worthy of the "world-class" city we are always claiming to be.  It is too easy here to spend $70 on a meal  that afterward just makes one regret not having cooked at home.  Ten percent of the food available in the city is brilliant (from the Salvadoran food trucks, to the farmers markets, to Vinegar Hill House Restaurant), 30 percent is dreadful, and the rest merely edible.

The Prestige of Teachers

(This was in response to an Atlantic Monthly article on the Finnish education system).  Here is the link:
What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's Educational System

The Conversation We Aren't Having About Education

If American visitors to Finnish schools are returning without having learned the real reasons for Finland's educational success , this is because reforming our education system is not just a matter of electing new policies.  It has to do rather with making fundamental changes to our national culture.

The author connects the inequality of our society to our uneven educational outcomes - fair enough.  This is the main thrust of her argument.  But she also mentions, somewhat in passing, that in Finland, prestige is conferred on teachers.  This is decidedly not the case in the United States.

A study that was just published  concluded that teacher quality was the main factor not just in educational achievement, but in students' success over the course of their lifetimes.

Yet teaching does not attract the best college graduates, as measured by G.P.A. Yes, there is Teach For America, the program that draws graduates of elite colleges and universities into public-school teaching.  But, tellingly, the great majority of teachers from that program leave the classroom within two to five years.  As a 22-year educator, I feel I can state with confidence that no one, not even a Harvard graduate, becomes a properly-seasoned educator in that length of time.  And even on the assumption that Teach For America participants master the craft of teaching during their first year, once departed, their new-found expertise is obviously no longer of any use.

Though Teach For America teachers have been accused of dilettantism, I am sure the majority of them are not blameworthy.  They simply get tired of the low pay, lack of resources, and most of all the lack of public regard for their work.  Though we like to think we celebrate our nation's teachers, we really do so only in theory.  In practice, we think teaching is "not a fit profession for a gentleman (or woman)."  It is for the person who is seen as not being able to succeed in a more prestigious profession.  In the popular culture, the teacher is a risible figure, exercising authority futilely or incompetently.  The sexual peccadilloes of teachers are covered with lurid enthusiasm by mainstream news outlets. And so on.

Until the profession of teaching below the college level becomes more prestigious, we simply won't attract the sort of person who could spark young minds over the span of a career, which is the real remedy for our educational deficit.

The Permanent Reform of the American School

In New York City during the 1930's, my father's elementary school classrooms contained 35 to 40 students, sitting in rows, facing a teacher who gave her instruction standing in front of a chalkboard.  The students' shirts and blouses were of one color: white; the suits were usually some shade of grey.  Learning was highly regimented, and students were generally afraid of incurring the displeasure of the teacher.

On the one hand, my father's school experience sounds stifling, judging from his description.  On the other, the "outcomes", to use contemporary jargon, of the educational methods and classroom structure of my father's childhood were in many ways superior to what we achieve nowadays.  He was amused when I pointed out that in many of today's public schools, any teacher whose student desks were arranged in rows, and who failed to "circulate" throughout the classroom might receive unfavorable marks on a lesson evaluation.

The temptation to think back on American education of the period 1920-1960 with nostalgia is almost irresistible.  Teachers and administrators were not enthralled by faddish theories; they taught only what we would nowadays call "content", often through rote memorization, drill, and lecture.  Class discipline could be severe, but it was unequivocal and usually effective.  Students and teachers wore decent clothes in the schoolhouse, and it was assumed that students would treat one another with civility and adults with respect.

It is true that schools in that period sometimes brutally reflected inequalities in the larger society.  Students who were black and brown, or lived in disadvantaged areas of the country usually languished in appalling facilities.  The notion of education as an instrument of social justice barely existed.

However, my purpose is not to defend nor to question traditional education methods.  I am more interested in why our system of education has been in a constant state of revision over the last four decades.

In the period just mentioned (1920-1960), there was consensus about what constituted proper relations between adults and children, about what children were to learn at school, about child behavior, about the role of the school and the role of the family.  It was thought that families raised children, while schools only had to educate them.

That simple formula no longer applies.  The roles of schools and families are now blurred.  Even if one wanted to recreate the school of our parents and grandparents, it could not be done.  We no longer view authority as absolute; home discipline varies too greatly from household to household; society gamely offers too many distractions; there is disagreement about what should be taught.  The naive notion that students should enter a school completely ready to learn is at odds with contemporary attitudes -- namely, that schools should nurture children -- and moreover goes against reality.

We have decided that the American school must fulfill more than just the educational needs of our children.  To be fair, this is a very well-intentioned idea.  And just because it would have seemed absurd a couple of generations ago does not mean that we should stop trying to address both what educators call the "affective" domain (emotions, self-esteem, etc.) and the "cognitive" (intellectual) domain.  This dual mission is expected of all contemporary educators, and one has to be effective in both of these "domains" to be successful.  However, it is uncertain how successful schools have been in taking on some of the responsibilities that were once squarely in the domain of family life (instilling confidence, building character and work habits, teaching good self-presentation, bolstering self-esteem, etc.).

This is why, I believe, the search for new ways to structure schools will be ongoing (or, less charitably, unending).  We may find some ideas that are partly successful (charter schools, in some cases), but a sure formula will always remain just out of reach, because the educational system can not, on its own, bring about the changes in our society that would ensure long-term educational and career success for the majority of our students.  It is the culture, not the school, that is most in need of reform.

The New Communications Devices

Questioning the role of computers, smartphones, touch-pads, etc., and their ever-expanding applications may seem not only prudish but futile. They have already changed society as few would have predicted even just a few years ago. We are probably seeing just the beginning of an utter transformation not only of  the way we socialize, but of the nature of being itself.

That is, the definition of "humanity" will itself be altered fundamentally, as some are predicting that technology may someday be actually physically integrated into our bodies.  It would be sentimental, then, to note that some social activities and forms of expression we have taken for granted will have completely vanished -- many are already all but gone -- as we ever more make convenience and immediacy the main standard for communication.

One might ask again the question that others have also posed, namely whether this unprecedented access to information, or at least a certain kind of information, isn't making everyone somehow less well informed.  And whether the ability to communicate more or less ceaselessly, yet with remove, does not distort and even devalue that which connects people to one another.

But to my purpose in writing.  The communications revolution will have completely done away with what is left of American bourgeois culture.  There could well be no more forms, traditions, and ever fewer communal rituals in the mainstream of society .  We will no longer be the embodiment of a heritage that is in the public domain, but will have as our main object the fulfillment of our private needs and the cultivation of our close personal sphere.  Public space is expanding, in theory, while the private sphere grows ever smaller.

Immigration

Immigration vexes the developed world; it is an issue that has shown itself impossible to address in all its dimensions.

One simple reason that immigration defies solution is that the conditions that spur it and the problems of assimilation are on different sides of national borders. Nations that traditionally receive immigrants and the nations that send them have opposing interests; they have no incentive towards a common solution. 

The racial component of immigration is unsettling; at the same time it stifles honesty.  In the United States and Europe, the immigration of today is mainly of non-white peoples. Traditional cultural identity is being eroded, in the view of many Europeans and a good deal of Americans as well. That many of the new immigrants are non-Christian is also an issue.  In spite of a consensus that immigration needs to be addressed, ethnic and religious fears make rational discussion of the issue impossible. 

In Europe, the relaxing of border controls within the continent has brought tension, rather than the intended economic openness and flexibility, as eastern Europeans and others have migrated north and west.   The non-European, often Moslem immigrants who began arriving during the period of colonial independence have played a fraught role in societies at best ambivalent about their presence; they have often found themselves ghettoized, the symbols of their religious practice sometimes subject to legal restriction.

In this country, it is Hispanic immigration has obviously intensified in recent years, and it has also provoked racial and cultural anxiety.  To many native-born Americans, the nation is under assault.  And, as in Europe, there is anti-Muslim sentiment.

Immigration is redefining our national identity in ways that we are not able to control or predict.  While it would be immoral to stop immigration entirely, the haphazardness of immigration in the U.S. over the last 30 years has also had repercussions. There needs to be greater acknowledgement that while the pressures spurring immigration have never been greater, the problems related to assimilating large numbers of immigrants have in no way diminished. 

That said, the United States is a country with a firm tradition of accepting immigrants; it also still has the space as well as the economic opportunity for them.  Additionally, we need immigrants to replenish our national culture; immigrants bring cultural authenticity where there might otherwise be none.  They often have virtues that would otherwise be unacceptably scarce in the general population: self-discipline, a willingness to take on tasks that are unpleasant or unpromising in short-term rewards, family loyalty, reverence for education, and a sense of gratitude.

Yet, lacking a rational, enforceable official immigration policy (and, for some reason, being unable to see even a generous quota as an honorable compromise between the free-for-all that immigration is now, and the drastic reduction or elimination of immigration that some are advocating), we manage to dissatisfy all sides.  It also seems reasonable, as well as intellectually honest, to demand more of the countries for which emigration to the United States is a social pressure release; at the same time we should welcome a certain number (I advocate a generous number) of immigrants from those same countries, acknowledging that they, in the very great majority of cases, contribute enormously to society.

In Europe, things are somewhat different, however.  In my mind, there is no question that a certain number of people from the former colonies (or present foreign possessions) should be permitted to settle in the seats of the former empires that ruled over them (obviously, this has already taken place).  This would not be to assuage guilt, but to recognize that formerly colonized peoples do, to a degree, form part of the national identity.  Europe must also square its anti-immigrant feeling with the declining birthrate of the native population.

However, what is (to me) most disturbing development related to European immigration is that (note that this the exact reverse of what has occurred in the United States) immigrant areas have become cultural no-man’s-lands.  They have neither the cultural richness of the immigrants’ native lands, nor that of the host country (this is leaving aside the social dysfunction that is often endemic in these zones).  While this may seem a secondary concern in the eyes of some, this can only be considered unimportant if one believes that the quest for material necessities, regardless of social and cultural cost, should be unregulated.  During the last 50 years, authentic regional cultures have withered as Western consumer ‘values’ have penetrated even to the most isolated corners of the planet.  Material necessities are a fundamental right; however, the acquisition of these necessities in the setting of a complete cultural vacuum is a phenomenon of which we all should be very wary, if not actually fearful*.

As it is in America, the (often) desperate are trying to gain entry into Europe in great (and ultimately, unsustainable) numbers.  And, as it is here, the racial and religious component of the phenomenon has prevented meaningful debate.  The result satisfies hardly anyone: not the immigrants themselves, many of whom lead marginal existences and experience rejection by society; not the host populations, who see their national culture and traditions under threat. 

In my eyes, there is little contradiction between accepting and assimilating the immigrants and their descendants already living on the European continent, and seeking henceforth to regulate their entry strongly.  That said, this tight regulation of entrants to a country, though a necessity, is an unpleasant one, and places heavy moral and financial burdens on host countries.  Worse, it unfairly casts these countries as brutish and ‘xenophobic.’

However, one of the completely wrongheaded assumptions about both American and European immigration is that all the parties to it are behaving responsibly.  The governments of the nations that have historically sent migrants abroad, when they do not openly act as if emigration is their fundamental right, have not been held to account for failing completely to provide livelihoods for their people.** It is also astonishing how few people publicly make the connection between unchecked population growth and desperate, large-scale human migrations.  The absence of rational debate on population control is just one aspect of the intellectual void surrounding the immigration problem; the lack of reasoned voices on most of the issues with a bearing on immigration is what, as much as anything, keeps the problem from coming to a solution.

In order to settle the problem of immigration once and for all, both developed countries and the poorer ones that send migrants to them must accept some contradictory ideas. That is, immigration is desirable, even highly so, but it must be more closely controlled.  Culture, though not required for physical survival, must absolutely be protected, or the result will be social and eventually even physical degradation.  Immigration can benefit the national culture, but can also damage it in some instances.

*Phenomena as seemingly disparate as increased obesity and diabetes among the Inuits and crime and other social ills in the Paris suburbs can result from stripping away the culture (Inuits) or from placing people into a cultural void (northern and eastern Paris suburbs).

** Obviously, the developed nations have frequently colluded with despotic rulers of poorer countries at the expense of ordinary citizens, and so they too have played their part in creating their own immigration problem.