The Scales Have Tilted Too Far!

It’s hard to join with others when we can’t use our words.

Photo by Getty Images for Unsplash+

Forgive me for being slightly off-topic this week, but this has been occupying considerable real estate in my brain.

In January, outgoing U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued his “Parting Prescription for America.” It was a call to shore up the eroding impulse toward community. “The fracturing of community in America is driving a deeper spiritual crisis that threatens our fundamental well-being,” he wrote. “It is fueling not only illness and despair on an individual level, but also pessimism and distrust across society which have all made it painfully difficult to rise together in response to common challenges.”

Dr Murthy’s statement struck a chord with me. It called to my mind a book I read many years ago that had a profound impact on my thinking about America’s past and future.

That book was Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, by Robert N. Bellah and four other scholars. Published in 1985, it is a sociological study of the balance between the competing pulls of individualism and community in American society.

The American Character

The thrust of the book (and I am relying on memory, as I loaned out my copy one too many times) is that four basic philosophical threads made up the early American ethos: The Puritan emphasis on community and the common good, a republican commitment to civic engagement, expressive individualism (freedom to be oneself), and utilitarian individualism (freedom to create wealth).

The book’s title came from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America (published 1835 and 1840), which sought to identify those habits that would help sustain free institutions. De Tocqueville cited family life, religion, and participation in local governance as positive tendencies. But he also warned that individualism could threaten free institutions by making collective action harder to achieve. Habits of the Heart followed de Tocqueville a century and a half later and found him to be incredible prescient.

If you imagine a scale – the kind that Blind Justice holds in one hand – with community and civic engagement in one tray of the scale and individualism in the other, the balance today has tipped overwhelmingly to the individualism side, like a see-saw with a toddler up in the air and a grownup on the ground.

As Robert Putnam showed in Bowling Alone, all forms of civic engagement, even voluntary clubs and associations, are declining in participation and membership. Most mainline religious denominations are losing members. Labor unions are weaker than a century ago. The main reason seems to be our unwillingness to commit to any group that might impinge upon our individuality.

Everyone Wants to be Free

Individual freedom is seductive. American culture salutes the individual who stands alone, who speaks his own truth, who resists all efforts to tie him down. In our Westerns and action films, the lone hero wins the day and then rides off into the sunset – alone. How many American movies glorify heroes who build a community together or work towards a common good? The last one I can recall was Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It was made in 1946 – before most of us were alive.

In Joseph Campbell’s retelling of the universal hero’s journey, a narrative arc that shapes human myths and stories across cultures, the hero gets a call to leave his world, passes through a threshold into adventure, faces various challenges, and then returns home. Our American stories follow this framework with one major exception – the hero doesn’t come home. He has no intention of returning home, only to be tied down by obligations to family, friends, and community – he insists on being a free individual.

So far has the pendulum swung that we no longer even have words to talk constructively about community or citizenship. Political leaders who speak about ethics, morals, community, or common purpose risk being mocked for invoking tired rhetorical phrases devoid of meaning. How can people build something together when the words themselves ring false, and the only acceptable discussions must be framed in terms of individual rights and individual outcomes?

I think about community often, because I believe in its value in my life and its critical importance in a healthy democracy. In my jobs and in my personal life, I have tried to build community, form teams, foster collaboration and achieve success for all. Then again, I might be compensating for my own guilt: I fled my native state as soon as I could – the only one of my siblings to do so – to have the freedom to live life on my own terms.

Still, I agree with Dr. Murthy. Our exclusive focus on individualism has blinded us to the equally American values of working together and talking together to make decisions.

It is nearly impossible for individuals acting alone to change the status quo. That is a reality people in power understand. But this is not about current or even past politics. Our cultural mythmaking is much older and much deeper than that. That said, if we do not want to remain a sharply divided nation of individuals perpetually at each other’s throats, we need to raise up some different American stories. We need to find ways to talk and ways to act that open possibilities of working together in our mutual interests.