I moved back
to the Tulsa region, out on the fringe of the metro area, for a new job. The metro is doing well with numerous
construction projects ongoing. This is quite different from depressed California
and Washington, my last two locals. Broken
Arrow is magically expanding. When I
lived here 8 years ago, they were in the midst of a housing boom. It busted, but not too bad. Most local banks are doing well. This suburb is hopping.
As usual, I
read the local rags to get a sense of the food and entertainment. The Urban Tulsa Weekly is a
great local paper that is independent of the many other weeklies found around
the country. Its Oct 3rd issue had a cover story
about small family restaurants in Tulsa called “Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Individuality
and Intimacy Tie Tulsa Cooking Together”, here. The essay pointed out that the several places
reviewed
did not share cooking styles or spices, but
each combines the virtues of humility, individuality, and intimacy… each owner
or manager poured his or her own personality -- often including spirituality --
into the restaurant. Instead of using
marketing jargon to describe a restaurant, each owner or manager is able walk
into the kitchen and say, "This is me."
I comment on this because it highlights a
very basic aspect of our new Romanticism—expressive individuality. Our culture is full of individuals doing their
own thing. (Let’s not dwell on the
obvious conformity displayed when “everyone” is “doing their own thing”). The Dionysian values the real, nature in its
rawest form. Our contemporary
Romanticism is about people being raw and real (and accepts illusion as raw and
real). The Apollonian likes the abstract
and cultivated, refined. Modernism was
all about refinement and betterment. Both
ethos’ dislike fakes, or the faux, and both have plenty of fakeness. We all know that the fake is acting in some
way, hiding the authentic. The
difference is in the raw entity versus the refined one. Levi-Straus called this the “Raw and Cooked.”
During the Modernist years, it was authentic
to better one’s self. Get educated and
enter a profession or become skilled in something and become a journeyman. The important value was equality of
opportunity for this self-improvement.
Here is Herbert Hoover, 1928:
Equality of opportunity is the right of
every American, rich or poor, foreign or native born, without respect to race
or faith or color, to attain that position in life to which his ability and
character entitle him. We must carry this ideal further than to economic and
political fields alone. The first steps to equality of opportunity are that
there should be no child in America that has not been born and does not live
under sound conditions of health, that does not have full opportunity for
education from the beginning to the end of our institutions, that is not free
from injurious labor, that does not have stimulation to accomplish to the
fullest of its capacities. Here
It was
Hoover who popularized the phrase “rugged individualism,” and the quote above
was taken from a speech with that title.
He also published a pamphlet on American Individualism wherein he states:
No
doubt, individualism run riot, with no tempering principle would provide a long
category of inequalities, of tyrannies, dominations, and injustices. America,
however, has tempered the whole conception of individualism by the injection of
a definite principle, and from this principle it follows that attempts at
domination, whether in government of in the processes of industry and commerce,
are under an insistent curb. If we would have the values of individualism,
their stimulation to initiative, to the development of hand and intellect, to
the high development of thought and spirituality, they must be tempered with
that firm and fixed ideal of American individualism-and equality of
opportunity. If we would have these values we must soften its hardness and
stimulate progress though that sense of service that lies in our people. Here
For Hoover, Individualism had to be tempered
and softened through that sense of service to community. A rugged individualist works to better
society. Government should help people
in having equality of opportunity; otherwise, it should get out of people’s
way. This sense of service to society
was very much akin to the Enlightenment idea of republican virtue and civility.
For much of the Modernist era this idea held
sway. Recently the Heritage Foundation published
an essay about the waning of rugged individualism in America, here. They started by describing how the movies of
John Wayne and John Ford depicted characters who manifested the ideals of
Rugged Individualism and personal responsibility. They write:
“Out here a man settles his own problems,”
said Wayne’s character in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), summing up the idea of personal responsibility. This so-called
rugged individualism, unique to America, was not detrimental to community;
indeed, it was the key to building strong communities. It was this attitude
that settled new territory, built cities, established industry, and fostered
greater prosperity. Wayne’s and Ford’s movies and countless other examples from
popular culture of the post–World War II era helped maintain an American spirit
of individualism and enterprise, as Americans began navigating new frontiers
including space, communications technology, and the darkened borders of the
“captive nations” long occupied by Soviet forces.
Most people
under age 45 could care less about John Wayne or the role model he
represented. Today, Individualism is
raw, not rugged/refined. There appears
to be little interest in working for the public good or the betterment of
society. Go back and read Hoover’s 1928 speech;
it was full of progress and cooperation. Rugged Individualism required a sense of
personal responsibility. It was virtuous and noble.
Today’s Individualism is about raw expressions
of individuality—this is me, take me as I am.
Mostly, this raw individualism is helpful or at least harmless. People open restaurants and the ambiance is
idiosyncratic to the owner. People get tattoos
to express some emotional or social connection; it doesn’t always mean they are
gang members, outlaws, or societal misfits.
It’s just people using their bodies as canvases. Likewise, we do most things to the extreme: extreme sports, extreme tricked out trucks,
extreme ghost hunting, etc.
Much of this individuality is purposefully faked
because the Dionysian likes to blend truths; the illusion is just as raw and
likeable as the trickery behind it. (The Apollonian would separate them). Individual expression and conformity are mixed
because, hey, this is what we do in a Romantic era. We blur everything.
Thus, the insidious side of individualism prospers. And, it is also true that rugged
individualism is fading in America, mostly because conservatives abandoned the
idea long ago in favor of the Ayn Randian version (selfishness is a virtue). Take
the most selfish behaviors and call them something respectable, like Rugged
Individualism, or worse, take selfishness and call it a virtue, and we see the
worst of Individualism.
And this is what we have in our national
politics and our financial centers. Raw,
unrestrained, running riot, Individualism without a sense of personal
responsibility or public service. The
illusion is that this is supposedly all okay and we put up with political candidates
that express these twisted values (here).
The irony of all this is that if we were to try
to teach personal responsibility and public service in our schools the
conservative folks would scream “socialism” and knock it down. Today’s conservatives really don’t believe in
either which makes the Heritage Foundation's essay a farce.
Selfishness is not a virtue no matter how you
color it.
