While the human mind is capable of
rational thought, humans are, by and large, not rationalistic;
rather, we're totemic and associative. We love to think we're
reasonable and will go deep into rationalizing why we're right, but
to question the foundations of our preconceived notions is going too
far for most people most of the time.
Messing with our preconceived ideas
messes with our sense of identity, and while ideas can be constructed
and reconstructed essentially at will, identities take years,
lifetimes, and sometimes many lifetimes, to develop.
The problem this causes Americans in
particular is that our political system was developed by
self-declared rationalists under the assumption that with the proper
training and education, everyone would think just like them.
That is why they put confidence in such
concepts as “the marketplace of ideas,” which was supposed to
allow reasoned debate that would lead to the best solutions being
supported; they trusted in deliberative bodies and in the notion that
people would, in the end, elect representatives who were better than
they were, more able to govern.
But at the same time, the new nation
stripped off a lot of those cultural ghosts that form the traditions,
rites, customs, and mores that help define the individual, that help
create identity.
On the one hand, this was a great boon:
many of those European ways of being were fraught with inequality and
oppression, and good riddance to them. But this also created a
perpetual crisis in American life: without an ancient culture to tell
us who we are, Americans were forced to create new identities with
the bits and pieces left behind and the new ways of existence
discovered along the way. There is, then, a sort of urgency in the
American psyche, a desperation for identity. We can hear it most
plaintively in those who call themselves conservatives. Uncomfortable
with the need to constantly create anew, they cling to an imagined
past wherein these questions were settled. The tone of voice of a
Michele Bachmann or a Glenn Beck betrays this desperation: they keen
out a world in constant crisis. This crisis is in direct proportion
to their discomfort with the American project, which is bricolage,
building an identity with what you have, inspired by what you want.
This is also why those who whine most
loudly about “freedom” are the very ones who practice it the
worst, gravitating toward hierarchical corporate structures, police
state practices, walled compounds, and strict religions. This is why
“blue” states tend to fare better on measures of quality of life,
stable marriages, and productivity. Those who are more familiar with
personal ambiguity are less likely to let others fail, less comforted
by others' struggles, more likely to support the sort of costs of
“finding yourself” through education, small-scale
entrepreneurship, personal failure. They've been there themselves, or
they've been close enough for it to have scared them into compassion
instead of contempt. They've seen how struggle is part of
success, not a punishment for some inherent inadequacy.
And this is America at its best,
forcing us through our personal crises to think compassionately, to
act out of fellow-feeling instead of fear.
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