Preserving American Values

The year is 2010 and we are rootless, we are loosed from the moorings of a sense of place, of morality and propriety.  Many would call this freedom, but this is not freedom; this is anarchy.  Just a few examples: Children and young adults … both in cities and in rural areas … engage in sex with abandon, hookups with no emotional engagement and no restrictions.  In venues from Internet chat rooms to the halls of Congress, there remains little evidence of the courtesy, manners, or decorum that used to be an integral part of human interaction. Any respect for authority is almost taken as a joke.  

Excepting times of disaster, Americans have no sense of a shared community, a responsibility for their fellow citizens who are less fortunate, and a respect for all; the American social contract is in tatters. The family is falling apart because of a failure of communication, a lack of emotional connectedness, the centrality of “me,” and of lives speeding off in different directions.

How far we have fallen from our roots.  We began as a primarily agrarian society.  Our lives were defined within a geographically small area, set by the limits of the horse and buggy.  Our social contacts were defined within that same area, and as a small community, everyone knew everyone.  Our local governance was participatory through town hall meetings.  Neighbors helped neighbors.  Those who experienced hard times were helped by the community.  Life was lived at a slow pace.  Everyone knew their place – in a good way – and expectations were narrow.  In this context, the prevalent social mores were observed by all; to do otherwise was to risk scandal and being ostracized.  

This is not nostalgia.  This is the way life was.  Of course, people were people even then … there were disagreements, people had dreams, many families were not truly harmonious … but matters were dealt with and an atmosphere of peace generally prevailed.  Yes, I’m sure there were those who felt constricted, but peace always has as a price living beyond one’s ego, of seeing yourself as part of a larger whole.

Then with the advent of the industrial revolution, the focus of life turned evermore to the urban centers, which during the 20^th century grew exponentially as the agrarian lifestyle all but disappeared.  Life in the city was very different.  People were no longer connected with what had given their lives meaning – the land.  Work became more a means to an end.  There was anonymity.  Life was more fast-paced.  Yet people moving to the city from the country, or new immigrants arriving from Europe and other lands, brought with them their social mores which remained largely intact initially and only in succeeding generations evolved into a looser structure. 

Then WWI, the Great Depression, and WWII brought about changes in the way people saw themselves in relation to each other and the larger society; they became more unmoored and yet their perspective in important respects did not change.

It was the combination of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the Reagan “me” generation that brought about profound changes in how Americans viewed each other and their government.  The patterns of generations were turned upside down, authority was questioned as never before, feelings of community were obliterated.   The reason why sitcoms like “Father Knows Best” and “Ozzie and Harriet” went off the air in 1963 and 1966, respectively, was that they no longer reflected American life, even in an idealized state.

It remained, however, for several aspects of the Internet to deal the final blow to what remained of American social mores and the social contract.  As it became not just a tool to use but a major part of people’s lives, the anonymity of the Internet removed the old strictures of social convention, not just in the chat rooms but in all areas of social interaction. 

The speed of the Internet together with its visual nature has impacted the way in which we process information.  Speed seems to be the essence of everything – Americans have developed a massive attention deficit disorder that applies to most aspects of their lives

And the ability of extreme voices to be heard by millions over the Internet’s greatly expanded number of media outlets has resulted in the voice of reason being overtaken by the voice of emotion and irrationality.  The “marketplace of ideas” has become a quaint anachronism that no longer describes American democracy.  There is no more marketplace of “ideas;” there is now a marketplace of emotions.

If we continue down the path we are headed, America will be enfeebled, weakened from within rather than by some outside force.  We have more to fear from ourselves than from terrorists.  Somehow, we must regain what was of value in our past while living in a future in which technology is inescapably ever-present.