2. AMERICAN ADOLESCENCE: EDGY EXPERIMENTS

Feb 16, 2020 | Uncategorized

RECOGNIZING CULTURAL DECLINE:

THE LOCALIZATION OF DANGER 

Edgy Experiments

Favored behaviors in a culture commonly mutate in response to the increasingly “edgy”, pleasurable, experiments of individuals and groups in the culture. This creates substantial risks for the culture. Minor cultural rule changes, repeated over years, can cumulate to significant cultural change, beneficial or detrimental.

Edgy cultural excitement: Ignore it, and it grows. Stop it, and it fights back. Yet, it remains “invisible” because it is not understood.

THOUGHTS BEFORE THE MOVIE

“Minor”, or more significant, cultural expectations and rules are often broken by individuals and groups. These are most often violations at the edge of what can be anticipated to be noticed and potentially condemned, and they carry the “edgy” excitement of such activities. Results can be beneficial for both the individuals and the culture, or detrimental to both, or they can differ for each. The outcome shapes the subsequent motivations for extending rule-breaking activities. Over the years the cumulative effects can become substantial. Adolescents are particularly prone to these “edgy”, exciting experiments. 

The passions and conflicts within a culture can disrupt its functions and cause great confusion if not understood. This parallels the passions and conflicts of adolescents, and the need for guidance from their parents. Adolescents gradually learn to recognize these tensions within themselves, and not focus exclusively on tensions with others — permitting increasingly rational and cooperative behavior. 

When this shift does not occur, the self-serving behavior can become increasingly brazen and risky for the adolescent, or for a culture. When a culture neglects divisive influences, it unwittingly nourishes them, as favored behaviors in a culture commonly mutate in response to the increasingly “edgy”, pleasurable, experiments of individuals and groups in the culture. This creates substantial risks for the culture.

It is characteristic of adolescent development that the adolescent experiences passions, conflicts, and contradictions within herself. These same passions and conflicts are the source of much confusion in human lives at any age. The wish for both independence and dependence, for both self-restraint and self-indulgence, for both dominance of a group and easy submission to a group, for both working toward a personal goal and neglecting the work toward a personal goal, are examples of these inherent tensions within each individual. Adolescents learn, over many years, to refrain from automatic, incessant protests against parents and adults, accusing them of causing these conflicts, and to recognize that the tensions also lie within themselves. 

These conflicts and contradictions exist in cultures as well, and there is a similar need for the knowledge and wisdom of a “parent” to respond effectively and judiciously to the communications and actions of various subgroups and individuals within the culture – as they protest that other groups and individuals are causing conflicts, rather than understanding them also to be inherent to the life of the culture itself.

Just as an individual adolescent develops novel skills that nurture the capacities to restrain self-serving behavior and, instead, to employ the flexible use of the newly developed skill of abstract thinking in order to attain goals, so the culture as a whole can make the transition to the skills characteristic of the best adult thinking, while putting aside selfish impulsive actions and a reliance on aggression. 

When these cultural tensions are ignored, and this shift does not occur, the “adolescent” behaviors of a culture can change in form and gain an increasingly brazen, unashamed, risky quality over time. Individuals in the culture begin to have increasingly edgy desires for their experiences and their appetite for excitement is stimulated. When a culture neglects divisive influences, it unwittingly nourishes them, as behaviors shift toward increasing provocation in response to increasingly “edgy”, pleasurable expectations.

This, too, is documented in films depicting adolescent behavior, individual and cultural. Rebellious adolescent behavior in an old film appears tame (it’s no longer “edgy”), when compared to rebellious adolescent behavior in a film decades later. Alternatively, the change is not recognized by other observers. Instead, two film clips from different eras appear to depict teenagers arguing with parents, nothing more.

In fact, the later film clip presents adolescent responses that indicate little or no culturally derived respect for parental authority. Instead, the adolescents, with no anxiety or concern, engage in defiant provocations that would have been forbidden, outrageous behaviors in the era of the earlier film clip. Unless there is a significant change in cultural or family influences, the adolescents are presenting the behaviors destined to characterize their adult expectations and behaviors. The localization of danger to a culture requires individuals and cultural subgroups to possess the capacities to identify behaviors that are a dangerous risk to cultural survival.

The American culture is in its adolescence, and it will continue to experience the unceasing tensions of all cultures, ranging from enjoying rebellious self-indulgence to learning the demanding self-restraint and self-monitoring flexibility necessary for cultural cooperation. Recognition of the confusion generated by these contending forces, when coupled with identifying the elements underlying a thriving culture and their functional organization, provide the map to guide successful responses to sources of cultural decline. Our map, to be presented later, will describe the understanding and consistent application of five conceptual categories of adaptive behavior, enabling the successful transition to cultural adulthood. 

In sum, minor violations of cultural rules are exciting experiments at the edge. Repeated over many years, the cultural outcomes can be surprisingly significant, whether advantageous or detrimental to the culture.

VOICES

         Film Clip:

         Paper Clip: 

The causes of hostility among nations are innumerable. There are some which have a general and almost constant operation upon the collective bodies of society. Of this description are the love of power or the desire of pre-eminence and dominion – the jealousy of power, or the desire of equality and safety. There are others which have a more circumscribed though an equally operative influence within their spheres. Such are the rivalships and competitions of commerce between commercial nations. And there are others, not less numerous than either of the former, which take their origin entirely in private passions; in the attachments, enmities, interests, hopes, and fears of leading individuals in the communities of which they are members. Men of this class, whether the favorites of a king or of a people, have in too many instances abused the confidence they possessed; and assuming the pretext of public motive, have not scrupled to sacrifice the national tranquility to personal advantage or personal gratification.   .   .   . 

From this summary of what has taken place in other countries, whose situations have borne the nearest resemblance to our own, what reason can we have to confide in those reveries which would seduce us into an expectation of peace and cordiality between the members of the present confederacy, in a state of separation? Have we not already seen enough of the fallacy and extravagance of those idle theories which have amused us with promises of an exemption from the imperfections, weaknesses, and evils incident to society in every shape? Is it not time to awake from the deceitful dream of a golden age, and to adopt as a practical maxim for the direction of our political conduct that we, as well as the other inhabitants of the globe, are yet remote from the happy empire of perfect wisdom and perfect virtue?   .   .   .   

So far is the general sense of mankind from corresponding with the tenets of those who endeavor to lull asleep our apprehensions of discord and hostility between the States, in the event of disunion, that it has from long observation of the progress of society become a sort of axiom in politics, that vicinity, or nearness of situation, constitutes nations natural enemies. An intelligent writer expresses himself on this subject to this effect: “NEIGHBORING NATIONS [says he] are naturally enemies of each other, unless their common weakness forces them to league in a CONFEDERATIVE REPUBLIC, and their constitution prevents the differences that neighborhood occasions, extinguishing that secret jealousy which disposes all states to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their neighbors.” This passage, at the same time, points out the EVIL and suggests the REMEDY.

                                                                        PUBLIUS

Alexander Hamilton (1787-1788; 1945/1973). The Federalist or The New Constitution. Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, & John Jay. Avon, CT: The Heritage Press, pp. 28 – 33.

1. AMERICAN ADOLESCENCE: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL TENSIONS

Feb 16, 2020 | Uncategorized

RECOGNIZING CULTURAL DECLINE:

THE LOCALIZATION OF DANGER 

Internal and External Tensions

It is not enough for a culture to respond only to external tensions with other cultures. Like an adolescent, a culture also must learn to recognize and navigate internal cultural tensions. Conflicts between cultural subgroups reflect the abiding tension between self-indulgence and cooperation within individuals and groups. If the distinction between internal and external tensions is neglected, a fertile soil for cultural collapse develops, due to a failure to identify emerging causes of cultural decline. The localization of danger is a basic cultural survival mechanism. 

THOUGHTS BEFORE THE MOVIE

“When people become too unhappy, sometimes a country just needs to shake up its government, and to get moving on a better path. It might be messy, but everything will be fine.” 

Maybe, but maybe not. If a teenager said this about his family it would seem to be a risky, immature, selfish approach to life – and evidence for the need of the stabilizing guidance of wise parents.

Cultures change. They encounter new problems and possibilities, and they plan and experiment with new activities. Cultures develop and cultures deteriorate. Changes occur over a timeframe of decades, causing the sources of change to be lost in the mists of time. Similarly, the progress and problems of highly developed cultures become more subtle, and sources of change are lost in the dense fog of complexity. 

Cultures are massive groups that undertake cooperative efforts that require basic agreements, followed by adherence to the agreements. Agreements are difficult to achieve, and adherence is especially uncertain, creating a fragile foundation for a culture and the risk of unrecognized sources of cultural deterioration. . If a culture is to survive, it needs to identify these sources of cultural decline, using a basic brain function, the localization of danger.     

This uncertainty about the sources of cultural decline provides an ample field of play for those disposed to take advantage, and there is always an abundance of willing players. The continuous presence of these temptations is not to be ignored, and they present a challenge to a culture that is analogous to the problems confronting parents of an adolescent. Desires never disappear, and desires can devour us – as individuals and as a culture. Our only refuge is, when young, to learn to recognize them and contain them. Like an adolescent, a culture is vulnerable to unceasing desires in endless forms, and to blindness about the conflicts and confusion of internal changes. Plentiful hints about the complex sources of cultural decline are visible in films depicting adolescent behavior. 

For example, an adolescent caught up in competitive and romantic entanglements can make mistakes in his life outside the family, yet retain a basic, culturally-based, respect for his parents that is evident in how he speaks to them, even when they are themselves confused and contributing to his risk-taking decisions. He contends with the need to develop an awareness that, while part of his tensions lay between the external world (e.g., parents, peers) and himself, it is also true that another part of his tensions are located within his own internal world (e.g., will he act upon an aggressive but risky response to peer provocation, as opposed to adhering to cultural expectations to avoid specific types of behavior judged to be unacceptable). Cultures experience the same type of requirement to differentiate between tensions that arise from external sources (e.g., a neighboring nation), and those that arise from internal sources (e.g., conflicts among groups within the culture), and this task is even more difficult than it is for the individual. 

The difficulty of the decision-making necessary for cultural agreements is illuminated through two examples, side-by-side opinion pieces in The New York Times, that bring the bright lights of reality to the process. These are only two articles in the newspaper for the day, yet show how immense the problems of agreement, and adherence to agreements, can become. A first example examines a specific sector of possible solutions to the perils of climate change: cleaning up the American electricity grid by 2030, in a rapid program of renewable energy construction of 120,000 new wind turbines and 44,000 large solar power plants. A second example is an assertion of the primacy of “the rule of law [as] the bedrock of American democracy, the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics.  .  .  .  Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order.” 

These two “Op-Ed” articles, so different in the challenges and solutions that each describes, present specific solutions to the unquestioned risks of two sources of cultural decline, one technical and one political. Yet, it is obvious that each would evoke both adherence and opposition among readers, with equal fervor.  In fact, the struggle to achieve and adhere to basic agreements has become so frail that even the basis for each of these two articles is not agreed upon: neither the reality of the threat of climate change, or the meaning of fundamental American laws. 

In sum, cultures are formed through basic agreements, and adherence to these agreements. This fragile foundation is consistently vulnerable to inevitable cultural changes. The extended timeframe of these changes, together with their increasing subtlety in developed cultures, make them relatively “invisible” to the culture, so that emerging sources of cultural decline often are not recognized during decision-making processes. These contending forces are similar in form to the “invisible” forces within an adolescent, causing uncertainty, and most often, misunderstanding and a neglect of risks when not provided with wise counseling.

VOICES

         Film Clip:

         Paper Clips: 

The privilege of being the only American in our history to serve as the director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. gives me a unique perspective and a responsibility to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them, 

The rule of law is the bedrock of American democracy, the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  This is not about politics. This is about the rule of law. Republicans and Democrats alike should defend it above all else. 

In my nearly 96 years, I have seen our country rise above extraordinary challenges – the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, segregation, assassinations, the resignation of a president and the Sept. 11 attacks, to name just a few. 

I continue to believe in and pray for the ability of all Americans to overcome our differences and pursue the common good. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. 

William Webster, “The Rule of Law Still Matters”, The New York Times, December 17, 2019, p. A27.