Nonconformity Is Skin Deep
By DAVID BROOKS
We now have to work under the assumption that every American has a tattoo. Whether we are at a formal dinner, at a professional luncheon, at a sales conference or arguing before the Supreme Court, we have to assume that everyone in the room is fully tatted up — that under each suit, dress or blouse, there is at least a set of angel wings, a barbed wire armband, a Chinese character or maybe even a fully inked body suit. We have to assume that any casual antitattoo remark will cause offense, even to those we least suspect of self-marking.
Everybody who has been to the beach this summer has observed that tattoos are now everywhere. There are so many spider webs, dolphins, Celtic motifs and yin-yang images spread across the sands, it looks like a New Age symbology conference with love handles.
A study in The Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology showed that about 24 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 50 have at least one tattoo, up from about 15 percent in 2003. Thirty-six percent of those between 18 and 29 have a tattoo. Pretty soon you’ll go to the beach and find that only the most hardened nonconformists will be unmarked. Everybody else will be decorated with gothic-lettered AARP logos and Katie Couric 4-EVER tributes, and Democrats will have their Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers scratched across their backs so even their morticians will know which way they voted.
The only person without one of those Pacific Northwest Indian tribal graphics scrawled across his shoulder will be a lone 13-year-old skater scoffing at all the bourgeois tattoo fogies.
Traditional religions have generally prohibited tattoos on the grounds they encourage superficial thinking (what’s on the surface is not what matters). But it turns out that tattoos are the perfect consumer items. They make people feel better about themselves. Just as Hummers make some people feel powerful, tattoo-wearers will talk (and talk and talk and talk) about how their tattoos make them feel strong, free, wild and unique.
In a forthcoming essay in The American Interest, David Kirby observes that there are essentially two types of tattoo narratives, the Record Book and the Canvas. Record Book tattoos commemorate the rites of passage in a life. Canvas tattoos are means of artistic expression.
So some people will have their kids’ faces tattooed across their backs, or the motorcycle that belonged to a now-dead friend, or a fraternity, brigade or company logo. In a world of pixelated flux, these tattoos are expressions of commitment — a way to say that as long as I live, this thing will matter to me. They don’t always work out — on the reality show “Miami Ink” a woman tried to have her “I will succeed thru Him” tattoo altered after she grew sick of religion — but the longing for permanence is admirable.
Other people are trying to unveil their wild side. They’re taking advantage of the fact that tattoos are associated with felons, bikers and gangstas. They’re trying to show that far from being the dull communications majors they appear to be, they are actually free spirits — sensual, independent, a little dangerous.
The problem is that middle-class types have been appropriating the symbols of marginalized outcasts since at least the 1830’s. This is no longer a way to express individuality; it’s a way to be part of the mob. Today, fashion trends may originate on Death Row, but it takes about a week and a half for baggy jeans, slut styles and tattoos to migrate from Death Row to Wal-Mart.
What you get is a culture of trompe l’oeil degeneracy. People adopt socially acceptable transgressions — like tattoos — to show they are edgy, but inside they are still middle class. You run into these candy-cane grunge types: people with piercings and inkings all over their bodies who look like Sid Vicious but talk like Barry Manilow. They’ve got the alienated look — just not the anger.
And that’s the most delightful thing about the whole tattoo fad. A cadre of fashion-forward types thought they were doing something to separate themselves from the vanilla middle classes but are now discovering that the signs etched into their skins are absolutely mainstream. They are at the beach looking across the acres of similar markings and learning there is nothing more conformist than displays of individuality, nothing more risk-free than rebellion, nothing more conservative than youth culture.
Another generation of hipsters, laid low by the ironies of consumerism.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
G.O.P. Corruption? Bring In the Conservatives.
By THOMAS FRANK
In the lexicon of American business, “cynicism” means doubt about the benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of special destructiveness. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the health of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is “government,” whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided whenever the opportunity presents.
Remember how President Reagan claimed to find terror in the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? Or how the humorist P. J. O’Rourke won fame by declaring that even the proceedings of a New England town meeting were a form of thievery?
The true scoffer demands sterner stuff, though, and in the cold light of economic science he can see that government is not merely susceptible to corruption; government is corruption, a vile profaning of the market-most-holy in which some groups contrive to swipe the property of other groups via taxation and regulation. Politicians use the threat of legislation to extort bribes from industry, and even federal quality standards — pure food and so on — are tantamount to theft, since by certifying that any product in a given field won’t kill you, they nullify the reputations for quality and goodness that individual companies in the field have built up at great expense over the years.
The ideas I am describing are basic building blocks of the conservative faith. You can find their traces throughout the movement’s literature. You can hear their echoes in chambers of commerce across the land. But what happens when you elevate to high public office people who actually believe these things — who think that “the public interest” is a joke, that “reform” is a canard, and that every regulatory push is either a quest for monopoly by some company or a quest for bribes by some politician? What happens when the machinery of the state falls into the hands of people who laugh at the function for which it was designed?
The obvious answer is an auctioning-off of public policy in a manner we have not seen since the last full-blown antigovernment regime held office, in the 1920’s. Agencies and commissions are brazenly turned over to campaign contributors; high-ranking officers of Congress throw grander and gaudier fund-raisers even after being arraigned; well-connected middlemen sell access for unprecedented amounts.
What really worries me, though, is that our response to all this may be to burrow deeper into our own cynicism, ultimately reinforcing the gang that owns the patent on cynicism and thus setting us up for another helping of the same. This may not be apparent now, with the identity of the culprits still vivid and the G.O.P. apparently heading for a midterm spanking. Recall, though, that while the short-term effects of the Watergate scandal were jail sentences for several Republicans and the election of many Democrats to Congress in 1974, its long-term effect was the destruction of public faith in government itself and the wave that swept in Ronald Reagan six years later.
In the absence of a theory of corruption that pins the tail squarely on the elephant, this is certainly what will happen again. Conservatives are infinitely better positioned to capitalize on public disillusionment with the political system, regardless of who does the disillusioning. Indeed, the chorus has already started chanting that the real culprit in the current Beltway scandals is the corrupting influence of government, not conservative operatives or their noble doctrine. The problem with G.O.P. miscreants is simply that they’ve been in D.C. so long they’ve "gone native," to use a favorite phrase of the right; they are “becoming cozy with Beltway mores,” in The Wall Street Journal’s telling. If you don’t like the corruption, you must do away with government.
Were he not the main figure in all this, Jack Abramoff would undoubtedly be nodding in agreement with those editorials. A self-described “free-marketeer” who spent his days fighting “government intervention in the economy” and leading the catcalls at Tip O’Neill, he would undoubtedly have seen the political gold beneath the scandals. If, in our revulsion at Abramoff’s crimes, we are induced to accept Abramoff’s politics, it will be K Street’s greatest triumph yet.
Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.’’ He is a guest columnist during August.
By THOMAS FRANK
In the lexicon of American business, “cynicism” means doubt about the benevolence of market forces, and it is a vice of special destructiveness. Those who live or work in Washington, however, know another variant of cynicism, a fruitful one, a munificent one, a cynicism that is, in fact, the health of the conservative state. The object of this form of cynicism is “government,” whose helpful or liberating possibilities are to be derided whenever the opportunity presents.
Remember how President Reagan claimed to find terror in the phrase, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”? Or how the humorist P. J. O’Rourke won fame by declaring that even the proceedings of a New England town meeting were a form of thievery?
The true scoffer demands sterner stuff, though, and in the cold light of economic science he can see that government is not merely susceptible to corruption; government is corruption, a vile profaning of the market-most-holy in which some groups contrive to swipe the property of other groups via taxation and regulation. Politicians use the threat of legislation to extort bribes from industry, and even federal quality standards — pure food and so on — are tantamount to theft, since by certifying that any product in a given field won’t kill you, they nullify the reputations for quality and goodness that individual companies in the field have built up at great expense over the years.
The ideas I am describing are basic building blocks of the conservative faith. You can find their traces throughout the movement’s literature. You can hear their echoes in chambers of commerce across the land. But what happens when you elevate to high public office people who actually believe these things — who think that “the public interest” is a joke, that “reform” is a canard, and that every regulatory push is either a quest for monopoly by some company or a quest for bribes by some politician? What happens when the machinery of the state falls into the hands of people who laugh at the function for which it was designed?
The obvious answer is an auctioning-off of public policy in a manner we have not seen since the last full-blown antigovernment regime held office, in the 1920’s. Agencies and commissions are brazenly turned over to campaign contributors; high-ranking officers of Congress throw grander and gaudier fund-raisers even after being arraigned; well-connected middlemen sell access for unprecedented amounts.
What really worries me, though, is that our response to all this may be to burrow deeper into our own cynicism, ultimately reinforcing the gang that owns the patent on cynicism and thus setting us up for another helping of the same. This may not be apparent now, with the identity of the culprits still vivid and the G.O.P. apparently heading for a midterm spanking. Recall, though, that while the short-term effects of the Watergate scandal were jail sentences for several Republicans and the election of many Democrats to Congress in 1974, its long-term effect was the destruction of public faith in government itself and the wave that swept in Ronald Reagan six years later.
In the absence of a theory of corruption that pins the tail squarely on the elephant, this is certainly what will happen again. Conservatives are infinitely better positioned to capitalize on public disillusionment with the political system, regardless of who does the disillusioning. Indeed, the chorus has already started chanting that the real culprit in the current Beltway scandals is the corrupting influence of government, not conservative operatives or their noble doctrine. The problem with G.O.P. miscreants is simply that they’ve been in D.C. so long they’ve "gone native," to use a favorite phrase of the right; they are “becoming cozy with Beltway mores,” in The Wall Street Journal’s telling. If you don’t like the corruption, you must do away with government.
Were he not the main figure in all this, Jack Abramoff would undoubtedly be nodding in agreement with those editorials. A self-described “free-marketeer” who spent his days fighting “government intervention in the economy” and leading the catcalls at Tip O’Neill, he would undoubtedly have seen the political gold beneath the scandals. If, in our revulsion at Abramoff’s crimes, we are induced to accept Abramoff’s politics, it will be K Street’s greatest triumph yet.
Thomas Frank is the author, most recently, of “What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America.’’ He is a guest columnist during August.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Cracking the Shells
By DAVID BROOKS
Fifty years ago, Grace Metalious touched a cultural nerve. She published “Peyton Place,” about the scandals, betrayals and lusts that lurk beneath the placid surface of a New England small town. “Peyton Place” became the best-selling novel in American history up to that time. It inspired a movie, a TV show and, as Leonard Cassuto notes in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the modern soap opera as we know it.
When critics write about “Peyton Place” today, they tend to see it as a premonition of the glorious achievements of the 1960’s. Some describe it as an early revolt against the repressive bourgeois order of 1950’s suburbia. But “Peyton Place” was set in a rural town without radio, TV or much consumerism — with farms and outhouses instead of split-levels. This was the sort of supposedly quaint rural community people in the 1950’s were trying to get out of in order to flee to the suburbs.
Others see “Peyton Place” as a precursor to feminism and the baby boomers’ invention of the female orgasm, which apparently took place at Woodstock. It’s true that much of the action in the novel is initiated by strong women. But Metalious treats their strength and sexuality as obvious features of human society, and clearly rejects the notion that to be a woman is to be a member of a cause or the sisterhood collective.
In truth, the first striking fact about the book is that in its pages the personal is not political. After the class consciousness of the 1930’s, and the national solidarity of the 1940’s, Americans in the 1950’s were inclined to define problems in moral and psychological terms, not as the products of economic or political forces.
And a big anxiety of the age was the fear of conformity. This was expressed in books about other-directed personalities, lonely crowds and Organization Men, not to mention all those movies in which James Dean, Gary Cooper or Gregory Peck bravely stood apart from the mob.
Tasting affluence, worried about the power of advertising, troubled by pervasive racism, Americans fixated on the power of social pressure, and the way individual autonomy could be inhibited by the judgments of the crowd.
This is what “Peyton Place” is about. It’s about the fear of being talked about in a small town, and how people act and lie to themselves in order to avoid being the subject of gossip.
One woman leads a life of frigid respectability because she’s afraid that if she loosens up people will discover she is not a widow; the father of her daughter was in fact a married man with whom she was having an affair. Another character fakes war medals to hide his battle fatigue.
“Peyton Place” is what George Orwell called a good bad book because it doesn’t just instruct readers to discover their authentic selves so they can be free to be you and me. That bit of naïveté wouldn’t become popular until the 1970’s, a more innocent decade than the 1950’s. Metalious reminds readers that some people’s authentic selves are truly rotten. The most authentic character in the book rapes his stepdaughter.
Metalious’s core message is not that everybody can be good, but that everybody should engage in the high-risk search for unpleasant truths. She has her favorite character define two kinds of people: “Those who manufactured and maintained tedious, expensive shells, and those who did not. Those who did, lived in constant terror lest the shells of their own making crack open to display the weakness that was underneath, and those who did not were either crushed or toughened.”
This message obviously hit home in the 1950’s. The biggest change between then and now is that the whole tradition of moral and cultural commentary, so prevalent then, has been swallowed up by politics. Today, it’s hard to find writers who define social problems as matters of intellectual rigor — at least since Christopher Lasch and Allan Bloom died. Now we have our moral arguments by proxy, by debating who is more hateful, Bush or Clinton, or whether Terri Schiavo should live or die.
In today’s debates the battle lines are more clearly drawn, and since people are organized into factions, there’s actually more conformity and complacency than even in the 1950’s.
That’s why there remains something bracing and clear-eyed about Grace Metalious, who only wrote soap operas — and lived them. The success of “Peyton Place” busted up her ambitious life and she drank herself to death at age 39.
By DAVID BROOKS
Fifty years ago, Grace Metalious touched a cultural nerve. She published “Peyton Place,” about the scandals, betrayals and lusts that lurk beneath the placid surface of a New England small town. “Peyton Place” became the best-selling novel in American history up to that time. It inspired a movie, a TV show and, as Leonard Cassuto notes in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the modern soap opera as we know it.
When critics write about “Peyton Place” today, they tend to see it as a premonition of the glorious achievements of the 1960’s. Some describe it as an early revolt against the repressive bourgeois order of 1950’s suburbia. But “Peyton Place” was set in a rural town without radio, TV or much consumerism — with farms and outhouses instead of split-levels. This was the sort of supposedly quaint rural community people in the 1950’s were trying to get out of in order to flee to the suburbs.
Others see “Peyton Place” as a precursor to feminism and the baby boomers’ invention of the female orgasm, which apparently took place at Woodstock. It’s true that much of the action in the novel is initiated by strong women. But Metalious treats their strength and sexuality as obvious features of human society, and clearly rejects the notion that to be a woman is to be a member of a cause or the sisterhood collective.
In truth, the first striking fact about the book is that in its pages the personal is not political. After the class consciousness of the 1930’s, and the national solidarity of the 1940’s, Americans in the 1950’s were inclined to define problems in moral and psychological terms, not as the products of economic or political forces.
And a big anxiety of the age was the fear of conformity. This was expressed in books about other-directed personalities, lonely crowds and Organization Men, not to mention all those movies in which James Dean, Gary Cooper or Gregory Peck bravely stood apart from the mob.
Tasting affluence, worried about the power of advertising, troubled by pervasive racism, Americans fixated on the power of social pressure, and the way individual autonomy could be inhibited by the judgments of the crowd.
This is what “Peyton Place” is about. It’s about the fear of being talked about in a small town, and how people act and lie to themselves in order to avoid being the subject of gossip.
One woman leads a life of frigid respectability because she’s afraid that if she loosens up people will discover she is not a widow; the father of her daughter was in fact a married man with whom she was having an affair. Another character fakes war medals to hide his battle fatigue.
“Peyton Place” is what George Orwell called a good bad book because it doesn’t just instruct readers to discover their authentic selves so they can be free to be you and me. That bit of naïveté wouldn’t become popular until the 1970’s, a more innocent decade than the 1950’s. Metalious reminds readers that some people’s authentic selves are truly rotten. The most authentic character in the book rapes his stepdaughter.
Metalious’s core message is not that everybody can be good, but that everybody should engage in the high-risk search for unpleasant truths. She has her favorite character define two kinds of people: “Those who manufactured and maintained tedious, expensive shells, and those who did not. Those who did, lived in constant terror lest the shells of their own making crack open to display the weakness that was underneath, and those who did not were either crushed or toughened.”
This message obviously hit home in the 1950’s. The biggest change between then and now is that the whole tradition of moral and cultural commentary, so prevalent then, has been swallowed up by politics. Today, it’s hard to find writers who define social problems as matters of intellectual rigor — at least since Christopher Lasch and Allan Bloom died. Now we have our moral arguments by proxy, by debating who is more hateful, Bush or Clinton, or whether Terri Schiavo should live or die.
In today’s debates the battle lines are more clearly drawn, and since people are organized into factions, there’s actually more conformity and complacency than even in the 1950’s.
That’s why there remains something bracing and clear-eyed about Grace Metalious, who only wrote soap operas — and lived them. The success of “Peyton Place” busted up her ambitious life and she drank herself to death at age 39.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Wages, Wealth and Politics
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Recently, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, acknowledged that economic inequality is rising in America. In a break with previous administration pronouncements, he also conceded that this might be cause for concern.
But he quickly reverted to form, falsely implying that rising inequality is mainly a story about rising wages for the highly educated. And he argued that nothing can be done about this trend, that “it is simply an economic reality, and it is neither fair nor useful to blame any political party.”
History suggests otherwise.
I’ve been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.
Since the 1920’s there have been four eras of American inequality:
• The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.
• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.
• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.
• The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.
What’s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen.
Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, “I welcome their hatred.” Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground.
What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.” Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth.
Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what’s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.
By the way: Yes, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. But for six of those years Congress was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Moreover, in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.
Now, this chronology doesn’t prove that politics drives changes in inequality. There were certainly other factors at work, including technological change, globalization and immigration, an issue that cuts across party lines.
But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization — not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.
And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power — and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors.
That may be changing. Inequality seems to be an issue whose time has finally come, and if the growing movement to pressure Wal-Mart to treat its workers better is any indication, economic populism is making a comeback. It’s still unclear when the Democrats might regain power, or what economic policies they’ll pursue when they do. But if and when we get a government that tries to do something about rising inequality, rather than responding with a mixture of denial and fatalism, we may find that Mr. Paulson’s “economic reality” is a lot easier to change than he supposes.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Recently, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, acknowledged that economic inequality is rising in America. In a break with previous administration pronouncements, he also conceded that this might be cause for concern.
But he quickly reverted to form, falsely implying that rising inequality is mainly a story about rising wages for the highly educated. And he argued that nothing can be done about this trend, that “it is simply an economic reality, and it is neither fair nor useful to blame any political party.”
History suggests otherwise.
I’ve been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.
Since the 1920’s there have been four eras of American inequality:
• The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.
• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.
• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.
• The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.
What’s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen.
Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, “I welcome their hatred.” Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground.
What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.” Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth.
Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what’s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.
By the way: Yes, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. But for six of those years Congress was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Moreover, in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.
Now, this chronology doesn’t prove that politics drives changes in inequality. There were certainly other factors at work, including technological change, globalization and immigration, an issue that cuts across party lines.
But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization — not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.
And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power — and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors.
That may be changing. Inequality seems to be an issue whose time has finally come, and if the growing movement to pressure Wal-Mart to treat its workers better is any indication, economic populism is making a comeback. It’s still unclear when the Democrats might regain power, or what economic policies they’ll pursue when they do. But if and when we get a government that tries to do something about rising inequality, rather than responding with a mixture of denial and fatalism, we may find that Mr. Paulson’s “economic reality” is a lot easier to change than he supposes.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
What Year Is It Really?
Categories: Iraq, National Security
On The Wall Street Journal op-ed page, Ross Douthat adds some rigor to the long-running Opinionator project of tracking what year the foreign-policy crowd thinks it is. Hop in your DeLorean, fire up the flux capacitor, and start generating 1.21 gigawatts of power:
“We suffer from a surfeit of baffling labels – ‘progressive realism,’ ‘realistic Wilsonianism,’ ‘progressive internationalism,’ ‘democratic globalism’ – that require a scorecard to keep straight,” Douthat writes. “But perhaps there’s a simpler way. For the moment at least, where you line up on any foreign-policy question has less to do with whether you’re Republican or Democrat, isolationist or internationalist – and more to do with what year you think it is.”
Douthat sees “five major schools of thought on this question”: 1942ism, 1938ism, 1948ism, 1972ism and 1919ism. The “1942ists” “believe that we stand in Iraq today where the U.S. stood shortly after Pearl Harbor: bogged down against a fascist enemy and duty-bound to carry on the fight to victory,” Douthat writes, adding, “The most prominent exponent of 1942ism is Mr. Bush himself.”
The “1938ists,” on the other hand, believe that “Iran’s march toward nuclear power is the equivalent of Hitler’s 1930’s brinkmanship. … and worry that we’re engaged in Munich-esque appeasement.”
What about the 1948ists? They “share the ‘42ist and ‘38ist view of the war on terror as a major generational challenge, but insist that we should think about it in terms of Cold War-style containment and multilateralism, not Iraq-style pre-emption.”
As for the 1972ists, they subscribe to the idea “that George Bush is Nixon, Iraq is Vietnam, and that any attack on Iran or Syria would be equivalent to bombing Cambodia.”
The 1919sts are the conservative version of 1972ists, Douthat says: “The old-guard faction that damns its own party’s leaders as sellouts to the other side. For ‘19ists, Mr. Bush is Woodrow Wilson, a feckless idealist bent on sacrificing U.S. interests and global stability on the altar of messianic liberalism.”
Douthat acknowledges, however, that his taxonomy is not exhaustive: “[A]s our crisis deepens, it’s worth considering 1914ism, and with it the possibility that all of us, whatever year we think it is, are poised on the edge of an abyss that nobody saw coming.”
Categories: Iraq, National Security
On The Wall Street Journal op-ed page, Ross Douthat adds some rigor to the long-running Opinionator project of tracking what year the foreign-policy crowd thinks it is. Hop in your DeLorean, fire up the flux capacitor, and start generating 1.21 gigawatts of power:
“We suffer from a surfeit of baffling labels – ‘progressive realism,’ ‘realistic Wilsonianism,’ ‘progressive internationalism,’ ‘democratic globalism’ – that require a scorecard to keep straight,” Douthat writes. “But perhaps there’s a simpler way. For the moment at least, where you line up on any foreign-policy question has less to do with whether you’re Republican or Democrat, isolationist or internationalist – and more to do with what year you think it is.”
Douthat sees “five major schools of thought on this question”: 1942ism, 1938ism, 1948ism, 1972ism and 1919ism. The “1942ists” “believe that we stand in Iraq today where the U.S. stood shortly after Pearl Harbor: bogged down against a fascist enemy and duty-bound to carry on the fight to victory,” Douthat writes, adding, “The most prominent exponent of 1942ism is Mr. Bush himself.”
The “1938ists,” on the other hand, believe that “Iran’s march toward nuclear power is the equivalent of Hitler’s 1930’s brinkmanship. … and worry that we’re engaged in Munich-esque appeasement.”
What about the 1948ists? They “share the ‘42ist and ‘38ist view of the war on terror as a major generational challenge, but insist that we should think about it in terms of Cold War-style containment and multilateralism, not Iraq-style pre-emption.”
As for the 1972ists, they subscribe to the idea “that George Bush is Nixon, Iraq is Vietnam, and that any attack on Iran or Syria would be equivalent to bombing Cambodia.”
The 1919sts are the conservative version of 1972ists, Douthat says: “The old-guard faction that damns its own party’s leaders as sellouts to the other side. For ‘19ists, Mr. Bush is Woodrow Wilson, a feckless idealist bent on sacrificing U.S. interests and global stability on the altar of messianic liberalism.”
Douthat acknowledges, however, that his taxonomy is not exhaustive: “[A]s our crisis deepens, it’s worth considering 1914ism, and with it the possibility that all of us, whatever year we think it is, are poised on the edge of an abyss that nobody saw coming.”
Sunday, August 13, 2006
The Culture of Nations
By DAVID BROOKS
Diplomats in New York rack up a lot of unpaid parking tickets, but not all rack them up at the same rates. According to the economists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, diplomats from countries that rank high on the Transparency International corruption index pile up huge numbers of unpaid tickets, whereas diplomats from countries that rank low on the index barely get any at all.
Between 1997 and 2002, the U.N. Mission of Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat. Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Syria also committed huge numbers of violations. Meanwhile, not a single parking violation by a Swedish diplomat was recorded. Nor were there any by diplomats from Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway or Canada.
The reason there are such wide variations in ticket rates is that human beings are not merely products of economics. The diplomats paid no cost for parking illegally, thanks to diplomatic immunity. But human beings are also shaped by cultural and moral norms. If you’re Swedish and you have a chance to pull up in front of a fire hydrant, you still don’t do it. You’re Swedish. That’s who you are.
Walter Lippmann got to the crux of the matter in a speech 65 years ago. People don’t become happy by satisfying their desires, he said. They become happy by living within a belief system that restrains and gives coherence to their desires:
“Above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame — even life itself — what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence.”
People need the coherence their culture provides and value it even more than easy parking.
For several decades a veteran foreign aid worker, Lawrence E. Harrison, has contemplated the power of culture in shaping behavior. He’s concluded that cultural differences mostly explain why some nations develop quickly while others do not.
All cultures have value because they provide coherence, but some cultures foster development while others retard it. Some cultures check corruption, while others permit it. Some cultures focus on the future, while others focus on the past. Some cultures encourage the belief that individuals can control their own destinies, while others encourage fatalism.
In a new book, “The Central Liberal Truth,” Harrison takes up the question that is at the center of politics today: Can we self-consciously change cultures so they encourage development and modernization? Harrison is writing about poverty, but this is incidentally a book about the war on terror, and whether it is possible to change culture in the Middle East and the ghettos of Muslim Europe.
On the one hand, Harrison is an optimist. He has taken his title from one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s greatest observations: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
But when Harrison turns to how politics can change culture, you find he is a man who has been made aware of the limitations on what we can know and achieve. Harrison and a team of global academics studied cultural transformations in Ireland, China, Latin America and elsewhere. They concluded that cultural change can’t be imposed from the outside, except in rare circumstances. It has to be led by people who recognize and accept responsibility for their own culture’s problems and selectively reinterpret their own traditions to encourage modernization.
Harrison observes that gigantic investments in education, and especially in improving female literacy, usually precede transformations. Chile was highly literate in the 19th century, and in 1905, 90 percent of Japanese children were in school. These investments laid the groundwork for takeoffs that were decades away.
Harrison points to many other factors — leaders who encourage economic liberalization, movements that restrict the power of the clerics — but the main impressions he leaves are that cultural change is measured in centuries, not decades, and that cultures are separated from one another by veils of complexity and difference.
If Harrison is right, it is no wonder that young Muslim men in Britain might decide to renounce freedom and prosperity for midair martyrdom. They are driven by a deep cultural need for meaning. But it is also foolish to think we can address the root causes of their toxic desires. We’ll just have to fight the symptoms of a disease we can neither cure nor understand.
By DAVID BROOKS
Diplomats in New York rack up a lot of unpaid parking tickets, but not all rack them up at the same rates. According to the economists Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel, diplomats from countries that rank high on the Transparency International corruption index pile up huge numbers of unpaid tickets, whereas diplomats from countries that rank low on the index barely get any at all.
Between 1997 and 2002, the U.N. Mission of Kuwait picked up 246 parking violations per diplomat. Diplomats from Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Mozambique, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Syria also committed huge numbers of violations. Meanwhile, not a single parking violation by a Swedish diplomat was recorded. Nor were there any by diplomats from Denmark, Japan, Israel, Norway or Canada.
The reason there are such wide variations in ticket rates is that human beings are not merely products of economics. The diplomats paid no cost for parking illegally, thanks to diplomatic immunity. But human beings are also shaped by cultural and moral norms. If you’re Swedish and you have a chance to pull up in front of a fire hydrant, you still don’t do it. You’re Swedish. That’s who you are.
Walter Lippmann got to the crux of the matter in a speech 65 years ago. People don’t become happy by satisfying their desires, he said. They become happy by living within a belief system that restrains and gives coherence to their desires:
“Above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame — even life itself — what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence.”
People need the coherence their culture provides and value it even more than easy parking.
For several decades a veteran foreign aid worker, Lawrence E. Harrison, has contemplated the power of culture in shaping behavior. He’s concluded that cultural differences mostly explain why some nations develop quickly while others do not.
All cultures have value because they provide coherence, but some cultures foster development while others retard it. Some cultures check corruption, while others permit it. Some cultures focus on the future, while others focus on the past. Some cultures encourage the belief that individuals can control their own destinies, while others encourage fatalism.
In a new book, “The Central Liberal Truth,” Harrison takes up the question that is at the center of politics today: Can we self-consciously change cultures so they encourage development and modernization? Harrison is writing about poverty, but this is incidentally a book about the war on terror, and whether it is possible to change culture in the Middle East and the ghettos of Muslim Europe.
On the one hand, Harrison is an optimist. He has taken his title from one of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s greatest observations: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
But when Harrison turns to how politics can change culture, you find he is a man who has been made aware of the limitations on what we can know and achieve. Harrison and a team of global academics studied cultural transformations in Ireland, China, Latin America and elsewhere. They concluded that cultural change can’t be imposed from the outside, except in rare circumstances. It has to be led by people who recognize and accept responsibility for their own culture’s problems and selectively reinterpret their own traditions to encourage modernization.
Harrison observes that gigantic investments in education, and especially in improving female literacy, usually precede transformations. Chile was highly literate in the 19th century, and in 1905, 90 percent of Japanese children were in school. These investments laid the groundwork for takeoffs that were decades away.
Harrison points to many other factors — leaders who encourage economic liberalization, movements that restrict the power of the clerics — but the main impressions he leaves are that cultural change is measured in centuries, not decades, and that cultures are separated from one another by veils of complexity and difference.
If Harrison is right, it is no wonder that young Muslim men in Britain might decide to renounce freedom and prosperity for midair martyrdom. They are driven by a deep cultural need for meaning. But it is also foolish to think we can address the root causes of their toxic desires. We’ll just have to fight the symptoms of a disease we can neither cure nor understand.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Scarcity, Mother of Invention
By STEPHEN L. SASS
IN the wake of the closure of a BP oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, oil prices shot up to $77 a barrel on Wednesday, and the chorus of doomsayers concerned about the dire consequences of our fossil fuel dependency has reached a crescendo. If oil hits $100 a barrel, the impact on our economy and lifestyle could be catastrophic, the handwringers warn. But while such a specter seems novel and terrifying, it is in fact familiar and useful.
Throughout history, shortages of vital resources have driven innovation, and energy has often starred in these technological dramas. The desperate search for new sources of energy and new materials has frequently produced remarkable advances that no one could have imagined when the shortage first became evident.
Consider the transition from the use of bronze to iron in making tools and weapons, which occurred around the 12th century B.C. Early in the second millennium B.C., iron was known as the stuff of meteorites. It was rare and highly prized: if you wanted to give a gift to a pharaoh or a king you didn’t give a gold dagger but an iron one. But when the eastern Mediterranean fell short of tin from which to make bronze, a technological revolution occurred. Artisans learned to extract metallic iron from iron-rich materials by heating with charcoal (a process called smelting), which caused the price of iron to fall by a factor of 80,000 over 1200 years. The Iron Age had begun.
Later, in Britain in the 1600’s, another shortfall would drive still more invention. As the British empire expanded, demands increased on the island nation’s natural resources, particularly its forests. The British used so much wood for heating homes, building the ships of its mighty fleet and making charcoal to smelt iron and to fuel other industrial processes that there was eventually a shortage that has been called a “timber famine” in England.
Wood shortages drove the use of coal. But coal had never been the choice fuel for smelting iron because it contains sulfur, which renders iron brittle. Indeed, King James II of Scotland was killed in 1460 by an exploding cannon fashioned from brittle iron. Abraham Darby, the owner of an iron foundry at Coalbrookdale along the Severn River in the west of England, solved this problem when he developed a process to drive the unwanted impurities from coal, producing coke in 1709. Coke was so cheap that Darby could sell cast-iron pots and kettles at prices accessible to common folk.
The story goes on. In order to dig for coal, deep mine shafts were sunk, and these tended to flood. The steam engine was first developed to pump out the mines. The steam engine in turn became the primary new source of power for the Industrial Revolution. All of which came about because of a shortage of wood. Eventually, this cycle of shortage and invention would lead to the canal system in England, railroads and thermodynamics.
The bottom line is that the very process of developing alternative sources of energy to replace fossil fuels may yield benefits beyond our imagining. But if instead we fail to innovate, the consequences could be devastating.
On a recent drive across the country, my wife and I visited a 1000-year-old Indian village that is being unearthed slowly in Mitchell, S.D. The village existed for less than 100 years, because its inhabitants ran out of the wood they used for fuel and to construct their homes. Forced to migrate to the Missouri River, these Indians became the Mandan. Many years later, Lewis and Clark wintered with the Mandan at the start of their long expedition west.
If there is anything to be learned from history, it’s that we need to face the harsh reality of fossil fuel scarcity and begin something like a Manhattan project to develop clean, economical, and preferably sustainable new sources of energy. Just as importantly, we need to innovate on the side of conservation and efficiency. The Indians of Mitchell were able to move to the Missouri, but if we use up, or more realistically, greatly deplete, the resources of this earth, we have no place to go.
Stephen L. Sass, a professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell, is the author of “The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History From the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon.”
By STEPHEN L. SASS
IN the wake of the closure of a BP oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, oil prices shot up to $77 a barrel on Wednesday, and the chorus of doomsayers concerned about the dire consequences of our fossil fuel dependency has reached a crescendo. If oil hits $100 a barrel, the impact on our economy and lifestyle could be catastrophic, the handwringers warn. But while such a specter seems novel and terrifying, it is in fact familiar and useful.
Throughout history, shortages of vital resources have driven innovation, and energy has often starred in these technological dramas. The desperate search for new sources of energy and new materials has frequently produced remarkable advances that no one could have imagined when the shortage first became evident.
Consider the transition from the use of bronze to iron in making tools and weapons, which occurred around the 12th century B.C. Early in the second millennium B.C., iron was known as the stuff of meteorites. It was rare and highly prized: if you wanted to give a gift to a pharaoh or a king you didn’t give a gold dagger but an iron one. But when the eastern Mediterranean fell short of tin from which to make bronze, a technological revolution occurred. Artisans learned to extract metallic iron from iron-rich materials by heating with charcoal (a process called smelting), which caused the price of iron to fall by a factor of 80,000 over 1200 years. The Iron Age had begun.
Later, in Britain in the 1600’s, another shortfall would drive still more invention. As the British empire expanded, demands increased on the island nation’s natural resources, particularly its forests. The British used so much wood for heating homes, building the ships of its mighty fleet and making charcoal to smelt iron and to fuel other industrial processes that there was eventually a shortage that has been called a “timber famine” in England.
Wood shortages drove the use of coal. But coal had never been the choice fuel for smelting iron because it contains sulfur, which renders iron brittle. Indeed, King James II of Scotland was killed in 1460 by an exploding cannon fashioned from brittle iron. Abraham Darby, the owner of an iron foundry at Coalbrookdale along the Severn River in the west of England, solved this problem when he developed a process to drive the unwanted impurities from coal, producing coke in 1709. Coke was so cheap that Darby could sell cast-iron pots and kettles at prices accessible to common folk.
The story goes on. In order to dig for coal, deep mine shafts were sunk, and these tended to flood. The steam engine was first developed to pump out the mines. The steam engine in turn became the primary new source of power for the Industrial Revolution. All of which came about because of a shortage of wood. Eventually, this cycle of shortage and invention would lead to the canal system in England, railroads and thermodynamics.
The bottom line is that the very process of developing alternative sources of energy to replace fossil fuels may yield benefits beyond our imagining. But if instead we fail to innovate, the consequences could be devastating.
On a recent drive across the country, my wife and I visited a 1000-year-old Indian village that is being unearthed slowly in Mitchell, S.D. The village existed for less than 100 years, because its inhabitants ran out of the wood they used for fuel and to construct their homes. Forced to migrate to the Missouri River, these Indians became the Mandan. Many years later, Lewis and Clark wintered with the Mandan at the start of their long expedition west.
If there is anything to be learned from history, it’s that we need to face the harsh reality of fossil fuel scarcity and begin something like a Manhattan project to develop clean, economical, and preferably sustainable new sources of energy. Just as importantly, we need to innovate on the side of conservation and efficiency. The Indians of Mitchell were able to move to the Missouri, but if we use up, or more realistically, greatly deplete, the resources of this earth, we have no place to go.
Stephen L. Sass, a professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell, is the author of “The Substance of Civilization: Materials and Human History From the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon.”
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Isolated Americans trying to connect
By David Crary, AP National Writer August 5, 2006
NEW YORK --In bleak nursing homes and vibrant college dorms, in crowded cities and spread-out suburbs, Americans confront an ailment with no single cause or cure.
Some call it social isolation or disconnectedness. Often, it's just plain loneliness.
An age-old ailment, to be sure, and yet by various measures -- census figures on one-person households, a new study documenting Americans' shrinking circle of intimate friends -- it is worsening.
It seems ironic, even to those who are affected. The nation has never been more populous, soon to reach the 300 million mark. And it has never been more connected -- by phone, e-mail, instant message, text message, and on and on.
Yet so many are alone in the crowd.
"People are increasingly busy," said Margaret Gibbs, a psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "We've become a society where we expect things instantly, and don't spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person."
Some Americans are making a new commitment, getting reconnected in groups or one-on-one and combatting a phenomenon that can take a heavy toll on communities and individuals.
In its most pronounced forms, loneliness is considered a serious, even life-threatening condition, heightening the risks of heart disease and depression. A sense of isolation can strike at almost any age, in any demographic sector -- parents struggling to adjust to empty-nest status, divorcees unable to rebuild a social life, even seemingly self-confident college students.
John Powell, a psychologist at the University of Illinois counseling center, says it's common for incoming freshmen to stay in their rooms, chatting by computer with high school friends rather than venturing out to get-acquainted activities on campus.
"The frequency of contact and volume of contact does not necessarily translate into the quality of contact," Powell said.
The trend toward isolation surfaced in the last U.S. census figures, which show that one-fourth of the nation's households -- 27.2 million of them -- consisted of just one person, compared to 10 percent in 1950.
In June, an authoritative study in the American Sociological Review found that the average American had only two close friends in whom they would confide on important matters, down from an average of three in 1985. The number of people who said they had no such confidant soared from 10 percent in 1985 to nearly 25 percent in 2004; an additional 19 percent said they had only one confidant -- often their spouse.
"That may be the most worrisome thing," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who co-authored the study. "If you lose that one person, because the relationship declines or the person dies, you have no one to support you. If we're all becoming more dependent on our spouse or partner for that kind of complete knowing of each other, we're all vulnerable to losing that."
The study suggested an array of possible causes -- including an increase in working/commuting hours and expanding use of the Internet to stay in touch with other people, lessening the need for face-to-face contacts.
"We e-mail each other rather than calling or meeting, so there can be a sense of connection but also a loss of actual time spent with friends and families," Gibbs said.
Some Americans shrug off the trend, content with their ever-evolving social circles. Others, though, are unsettled at what they see and feel, and search for remedies.
------
MID-LIFE SINGLES:
Karina Penaranda was at Mass in 2002 when it dawned on her that her peers at her Roman Catholic church in Phoenix -- single adults 35 to 60 -- had no fixed place in the diocese's social orbit.
"There were groups for elderly people, marriage encounters for couples -- and youth groups are everywhere," said Penaranda, who is in her 40s. "Once single people reach this age they don't have a community. They don't really have a place to go where they can share their hopes and dreams."
With a few other parishioners, Penaranda founded a group called Catholic Singles Ministry. It now draws scores of people from across the Phoenix area and beyond to twice-yearly retreats and to events ranging from prayer breakfasts to bowling nights to food-bank volunteer work.
"We have people who've been divorced, been widowed, never been married," she said. "At our retreats we talk about loneliness, relationships. ... You know that you're not alone in going through this journey."
Penaranda, a project manager for a bank, has never been married. She savors socializing, but it takes conscious effort.
"The busyness in people's lives is one of things that prevents it," she said. "That happens to me -- I get immersed in work, and have to step back and say, 'Time out.'"
One of Penaranda's colleagues in the ministry, Monica Smith, said community service is a key element.
"We're reaching out to others in our singleness, our aloneness," she said. "It gives us, without family, without children, a greater sense of belonging."
Singles ministries have proliferated nationwide, notably at megachurches. At Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach, Calif., about 150 of the 2,500-member congregation participate in a group for singles aged 35 to 65.
"They're looking to connect with other people in a society that's geared to married people, to people with families," said the Rev. Jim Vlahos, Parkcrest's singles minister.
Many of the group's members are divorced, said Vlahos, himself a never-married 41-year-old.
"Once someone gets divorced, they tend to lose their married friends," he observed. "It's not a stigma thing, it's an awkward thing -- 'Oh, you're single now, and we do married things.'"
------
EMPTY NESTERS:
Having a spouse and children doesn't insulate adults from bouts of loneliness; one particularly vulnerable subset are parents confronting the empty-nest syndrome as their children reach young adulthood and leave home.
"Some take it really really hard," said Jeanine Herrin of Inglis, Fla., who launched an Internet chat room called Empty Nest Moms. "That's all they did -- they lived and breathed kids, and all of the sudden the kids are gone."
She noted that many such parents had a network of adults they knew through their children's activities -- a network that can shrink or vanish when the children leave.
"Some moms are almost basket cases when they come into our group," Herrin said. "But with most of them, you can feel that sense of relief, that they're not really going crazy, that there are so many others feeling the same way."
Some husbands share the emotional rollercoaster, while others "just don't understand at all," Herrin said. "Some are thrilled to death the kids are gone."
Many of the hundreds of women who have posted messages on the Web site candidly acknowledge their bouts of crying and self-pity. One mother described in detail her devastation over the departure of her youngest child, and then the elation of filling the emptiness by becoming a foster parent.
Ellen Ritter, who has a doctorate in psychology, works as a "family transitions coach" in Hudson, Ohio, and often counsels empty-nest mothers. "It's really hard to make new friends," she said, "and that's why so many women are reaching out to the Internet."
------
COLLEGE STUDENTS:
If some empty-nest parents feel a void in their lives, so do some of their absent children
"A lot of students go through periods of loneliness," said Zanny Altschuler, 20, of Menlo Park, Calif., who is completing her freshman year this summer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
"The social life on campus can be crazy," she said. "Rather than sticking with close friendships that can be hard to maintain, people forge a broader circle of acquaintances."
Altschuler cited the phenomenon of Facebook.com, the social-networking Web site on which students can enumerate their "friends."
"You go on some profiles and they say they have 1,000 friends, and they probably don't even know half of them," she said.
John Powell, from his vantage point at the Illinois counseling center, says students increasingly have difficulty "making really satisfying connections" even though the university offers many activities to bring students together.
"All the students I work with have incredibly many pseudo-intimate relationships online -- but without the kind of risk and vulnerability that goes with sitting across a cafe booth from another person," Powell said.
Sean Seepersad, who now teaches at California State University, Fresno, earned his doctorate at Illinois last year by designing an intervention program for lonely students.
Seepersad said some of the students were predictably shy and withdrawn, others on the surface seemed extroverted and socially skilled. He encouraged them to share their feelings, analyze why they felt lonely and work on their social skills.
"Lonely people may not be aware of things they're doing that perpetuate the problem," he said. "It's something that can be helped."
------
OLD AND ALONE:
She laughs gently at her blunt self-analysis, but Helen Granath doesn't mince words.
"It's a very lonely existence -- most of the time the loneliness can be excruciating and painful," says the 84-year-old widow from San Francisco. "I have very few friends. They're either ill or they've passed away or moved somewhere else."
Her husband died 30 years ago; she says her son "is very busy in the computer business. I don't see him very often."
No data set enumerates how many elderly Americans feel such pangs of loneliness, but undoubtedly there are millions who could empathize with Granath. She ventures out of her apartment for errands and movies, but is slowed by leukemia and arthritis and -- after the latest in a series of hip replacements -- sought help and companionship from a volunteer group called Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly.
For the past several years, the group has sent volunteers to visit her -- bringing flowers on holidays and gifts on her birthday.
Jim Doyle, 48, who does promotional work in San Francisco for a movie theater chain, started volunteering for Little Brothers this year, and has become the sole loyal friend of a 67-year-old developmentally disabled man named Frank.
"He lives by himself, and does custodial work, but other than that he didn't have a whole lot to do," said Doyle. "He'd stay home and watch a lot of TV. Now we got out to the movies, for walks -- he calls me all the time. He appreciates it, and it's been great for me."
Bob Moody, a retired Chicago businessman, has been volunteering for Little Brothers since 1981 -- he had been visiting his cancer-stricken mother in a nursing home and noticed that many patients didn't have visitors.
Since then, he's devoted each Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to visits with isolated seniors, as well as making visits periodically throughout the year.
"Let's face it," Moody said. "Old people can be grouchy sometimes. With some, there's a little mistrust early on because they don't really know you. But as time goes on, they gradually open up."
One refrain he hears: "My kids don't live that far away, but they don't come to visit me."
His current Little Brothers friend is Rocky Lepore, an 85-year-old blind man who savors the visits. "He always wants to give me something," Moody said, "a box of candy, some little mints."
------
NEIGHBORS:
If anyone was pleased by the June report on shrinking circles of close friends, it was Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who viewed it as vindication of his best-selling book "Bowling Alone."
Some academics had challenged his thesis in 2000 that civic engagement and neighborliness were on the decline, but many Americans took the message to heart.
Close to Putnam's home base at Harvard, for example, David Crowley has founded an organization called Social Capital Inc. that is striving to connect neighbors and build civic spirit in the Boston-area communities of Woburn, Dorchester and Lynn.
"People are less connected to their neighbors today, and they miss that," Crowley said.
His projects seek to use the Internet as a connecting tool.
Last winter, for example, SCI members in Woburn received an e-mail notice that one elderly, low-income resident was worried how he would get his driveway cleared of snow. Within a day, Crowley said, a neighbor volunteered to use his snowblower to the keep the driveway clear all winter.
Putnam, in an interview, said vibrant social networks have benefits for individuals in terms of health and happiness, and for communities as well.
"The crime rates are lower, the schools work better, the economy works better," he said.
The challenges to connectedness are many. Strolls through the neighborhood and visits on front porches have been replaced in many cases by retreats indoors to be entertained by TVs, computers and video games.
Spouses are more likely to be both working and less likely to have one or two other couples with whom they forge close, long-lasting ties. Instead, they may have a broader circle of couples they know only casually through their children's schools or sports leagues.
"We've brought more women into the workplace, but we have not addressed the consequences for families and communities," Putnam said. "We need to invent new ways of connecting."
By David Crary, AP National Writer August 5, 2006
NEW YORK --In bleak nursing homes and vibrant college dorms, in crowded cities and spread-out suburbs, Americans confront an ailment with no single cause or cure.
Some call it social isolation or disconnectedness. Often, it's just plain loneliness.
An age-old ailment, to be sure, and yet by various measures -- census figures on one-person households, a new study documenting Americans' shrinking circle of intimate friends -- it is worsening.
It seems ironic, even to those who are affected. The nation has never been more populous, soon to reach the 300 million mark. And it has never been more connected -- by phone, e-mail, instant message, text message, and on and on.
Yet so many are alone in the crowd.
"People are increasingly busy," said Margaret Gibbs, a psychologist at Fairleigh Dickinson University. "We've become a society where we expect things instantly, and don't spend the time it takes to have real intimacy with another person."
Some Americans are making a new commitment, getting reconnected in groups or one-on-one and combatting a phenomenon that can take a heavy toll on communities and individuals.
In its most pronounced forms, loneliness is considered a serious, even life-threatening condition, heightening the risks of heart disease and depression. A sense of isolation can strike at almost any age, in any demographic sector -- parents struggling to adjust to empty-nest status, divorcees unable to rebuild a social life, even seemingly self-confident college students.
John Powell, a psychologist at the University of Illinois counseling center, says it's common for incoming freshmen to stay in their rooms, chatting by computer with high school friends rather than venturing out to get-acquainted activities on campus.
"The frequency of contact and volume of contact does not necessarily translate into the quality of contact," Powell said.
The trend toward isolation surfaced in the last U.S. census figures, which show that one-fourth of the nation's households -- 27.2 million of them -- consisted of just one person, compared to 10 percent in 1950.
In June, an authoritative study in the American Sociological Review found that the average American had only two close friends in whom they would confide on important matters, down from an average of three in 1985. The number of people who said they had no such confidant soared from 10 percent in 1985 to nearly 25 percent in 2004; an additional 19 percent said they had only one confidant -- often their spouse.
"That may be the most worrisome thing," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who co-authored the study. "If you lose that one person, because the relationship declines or the person dies, you have no one to support you. If we're all becoming more dependent on our spouse or partner for that kind of complete knowing of each other, we're all vulnerable to losing that."
The study suggested an array of possible causes -- including an increase in working/commuting hours and expanding use of the Internet to stay in touch with other people, lessening the need for face-to-face contacts.
"We e-mail each other rather than calling or meeting, so there can be a sense of connection but also a loss of actual time spent with friends and families," Gibbs said.
Some Americans shrug off the trend, content with their ever-evolving social circles. Others, though, are unsettled at what they see and feel, and search for remedies.
------
MID-LIFE SINGLES:
Karina Penaranda was at Mass in 2002 when it dawned on her that her peers at her Roman Catholic church in Phoenix -- single adults 35 to 60 -- had no fixed place in the diocese's social orbit.
"There were groups for elderly people, marriage encounters for couples -- and youth groups are everywhere," said Penaranda, who is in her 40s. "Once single people reach this age they don't have a community. They don't really have a place to go where they can share their hopes and dreams."
With a few other parishioners, Penaranda founded a group called Catholic Singles Ministry. It now draws scores of people from across the Phoenix area and beyond to twice-yearly retreats and to events ranging from prayer breakfasts to bowling nights to food-bank volunteer work.
"We have people who've been divorced, been widowed, never been married," she said. "At our retreats we talk about loneliness, relationships. ... You know that you're not alone in going through this journey."
Penaranda, a project manager for a bank, has never been married. She savors socializing, but it takes conscious effort.
"The busyness in people's lives is one of things that prevents it," she said. "That happens to me -- I get immersed in work, and have to step back and say, 'Time out.'"
One of Penaranda's colleagues in the ministry, Monica Smith, said community service is a key element.
"We're reaching out to others in our singleness, our aloneness," she said. "It gives us, without family, without children, a greater sense of belonging."
Singles ministries have proliferated nationwide, notably at megachurches. At Parkcrest Christian Church in Long Beach, Calif., about 150 of the 2,500-member congregation participate in a group for singles aged 35 to 65.
"They're looking to connect with other people in a society that's geared to married people, to people with families," said the Rev. Jim Vlahos, Parkcrest's singles minister.
Many of the group's members are divorced, said Vlahos, himself a never-married 41-year-old.
"Once someone gets divorced, they tend to lose their married friends," he observed. "It's not a stigma thing, it's an awkward thing -- 'Oh, you're single now, and we do married things.'"
------
EMPTY NESTERS:
Having a spouse and children doesn't insulate adults from bouts of loneliness; one particularly vulnerable subset are parents confronting the empty-nest syndrome as their children reach young adulthood and leave home.
"Some take it really really hard," said Jeanine Herrin of Inglis, Fla., who launched an Internet chat room called Empty Nest Moms. "That's all they did -- they lived and breathed kids, and all of the sudden the kids are gone."
She noted that many such parents had a network of adults they knew through their children's activities -- a network that can shrink or vanish when the children leave.
"Some moms are almost basket cases when they come into our group," Herrin said. "But with most of them, you can feel that sense of relief, that they're not really going crazy, that there are so many others feeling the same way."
Some husbands share the emotional rollercoaster, while others "just don't understand at all," Herrin said. "Some are thrilled to death the kids are gone."
Many of the hundreds of women who have posted messages on the Web site candidly acknowledge their bouts of crying and self-pity. One mother described in detail her devastation over the departure of her youngest child, and then the elation of filling the emptiness by becoming a foster parent.
Ellen Ritter, who has a doctorate in psychology, works as a "family transitions coach" in Hudson, Ohio, and often counsels empty-nest mothers. "It's really hard to make new friends," she said, "and that's why so many women are reaching out to the Internet."
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COLLEGE STUDENTS:
If some empty-nest parents feel a void in their lives, so do some of their absent children
"A lot of students go through periods of loneliness," said Zanny Altschuler, 20, of Menlo Park, Calif., who is completing her freshman year this summer at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.
"The social life on campus can be crazy," she said. "Rather than sticking with close friendships that can be hard to maintain, people forge a broader circle of acquaintances."
Altschuler cited the phenomenon of Facebook.com, the social-networking Web site on which students can enumerate their "friends."
"You go on some profiles and they say they have 1,000 friends, and they probably don't even know half of them," she said.
John Powell, from his vantage point at the Illinois counseling center, says students increasingly have difficulty "making really satisfying connections" even though the university offers many activities to bring students together.
"All the students I work with have incredibly many pseudo-intimate relationships online -- but without the kind of risk and vulnerability that goes with sitting across a cafe booth from another person," Powell said.
Sean Seepersad, who now teaches at California State University, Fresno, earned his doctorate at Illinois last year by designing an intervention program for lonely students.
Seepersad said some of the students were predictably shy and withdrawn, others on the surface seemed extroverted and socially skilled. He encouraged them to share their feelings, analyze why they felt lonely and work on their social skills.
"Lonely people may not be aware of things they're doing that perpetuate the problem," he said. "It's something that can be helped."
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OLD AND ALONE:
She laughs gently at her blunt self-analysis, but Helen Granath doesn't mince words.
"It's a very lonely existence -- most of the time the loneliness can be excruciating and painful," says the 84-year-old widow from San Francisco. "I have very few friends. They're either ill or they've passed away or moved somewhere else."
Her husband died 30 years ago; she says her son "is very busy in the computer business. I don't see him very often."
No data set enumerates how many elderly Americans feel such pangs of loneliness, but undoubtedly there are millions who could empathize with Granath. She ventures out of her apartment for errands and movies, but is slowed by leukemia and arthritis and -- after the latest in a series of hip replacements -- sought help and companionship from a volunteer group called Little Brothers-Friends of the Elderly.
For the past several years, the group has sent volunteers to visit her -- bringing flowers on holidays and gifts on her birthday.
Jim Doyle, 48, who does promotional work in San Francisco for a movie theater chain, started volunteering for Little Brothers this year, and has become the sole loyal friend of a 67-year-old developmentally disabled man named Frank.
"He lives by himself, and does custodial work, but other than that he didn't have a whole lot to do," said Doyle. "He'd stay home and watch a lot of TV. Now we got out to the movies, for walks -- he calls me all the time. He appreciates it, and it's been great for me."
Bob Moody, a retired Chicago businessman, has been volunteering for Little Brothers since 1981 -- he had been visiting his cancer-stricken mother in a nursing home and noticed that many patients didn't have visitors.
Since then, he's devoted each Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter to visits with isolated seniors, as well as making visits periodically throughout the year.
"Let's face it," Moody said. "Old people can be grouchy sometimes. With some, there's a little mistrust early on because they don't really know you. But as time goes on, they gradually open up."
One refrain he hears: "My kids don't live that far away, but they don't come to visit me."
His current Little Brothers friend is Rocky Lepore, an 85-year-old blind man who savors the visits. "He always wants to give me something," Moody said, "a box of candy, some little mints."
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NEIGHBORS:
If anyone was pleased by the June report on shrinking circles of close friends, it was Harvard professor Robert Putnam, who viewed it as vindication of his best-selling book "Bowling Alone."
Some academics had challenged his thesis in 2000 that civic engagement and neighborliness were on the decline, but many Americans took the message to heart.
Close to Putnam's home base at Harvard, for example, David Crowley has founded an organization called Social Capital Inc. that is striving to connect neighbors and build civic spirit in the Boston-area communities of Woburn, Dorchester and Lynn.
"People are less connected to their neighbors today, and they miss that," Crowley said.
His projects seek to use the Internet as a connecting tool.
Last winter, for example, SCI members in Woburn received an e-mail notice that one elderly, low-income resident was worried how he would get his driveway cleared of snow. Within a day, Crowley said, a neighbor volunteered to use his snowblower to the keep the driveway clear all winter.
Putnam, in an interview, said vibrant social networks have benefits for individuals in terms of health and happiness, and for communities as well.
"The crime rates are lower, the schools work better, the economy works better," he said.
The challenges to connectedness are many. Strolls through the neighborhood and visits on front porches have been replaced in many cases by retreats indoors to be entertained by TVs, computers and video games.
Spouses are more likely to be both working and less likely to have one or two other couples with whom they forge close, long-lasting ties. Instead, they may have a broader circle of couples they know only casually through their children's schools or sports leagues.
"We've brought more women into the workplace, but we have not addressed the consequences for families and communities," Putnam said. "We need to invent new ways of connecting."
A battle cry for the rank and file
`Dignitarian' cause gives voice to principle that every worker deserves respect
By Penelope Trunk August 6, 2006
Here's a new word for the workplace: rankism. File it in your brain next to racism and sexism, and brace yourself for a big change at the office, because rankism is another kind of discrimination we should not tolerate.
What's rankism, or rankist behavior? It is hiring an intern and ignoring her all summer. Or pointlessly yelling at the receptionist about a manager who is late. Or a professor's taking credit for a graduate student's research. All these are examples of people who think they can treat someone disrespectfully because of their lower rank. ``The Devil Wears Prada" has tons of juicy examples as well as snappy fashion and a happy ending to make the story acceptable.
But rankism is never acceptable. And Robert Fuller, the man who devised the word, is on a mission to end the behavior. His big idea is that people have a right to be treated with dignity no matter where they are in the pecking order. He's part of what's become known as the ``dignitarian movement."
Wondering if you're at a job where you're treated with dignity? You need to receive recognition, humane treatment, and a living wage.
If your job doesn't qualify, you need to speak up, which is hard to do, but having a word to identify the problem is half the battle. ``Vocabulary changes things," says Fuller. `` `The Feminine Mystique' referred to the `problem without a name.' Sexism was not a word until five years after that book came out. Once the word sexism was available, women had a weapon to make demands."
Fuller wants you to take cues from the success of that movement. Say, ``Hey, that's rankist," the same way you'd say, ``That's sexist."
But don't yell: ``Having the words rankist and rankism will give workers in every line of action a battle cry. They won't scream at the top of their lungs. They will mention it calmly and cause the person on top to look at their actions."
Here are five more steps you can take to combat rankism in your work life:
Get a good read on potential managers. Management sets the tone of respect or disrespect at work. So sniff out offenders before you take a job. Vanessa Carney works at Let's Dish, a food-preparation company. ``The management team here is genuine," says Carney. ``The people who run this company have a good attitude and it trickles down." Carney was especially impressed when the owner sat down with her after a few months to find out what, exactly, she wanted to do in her career.
Let people know that rankism matters. Probably those behaving this way are not even conscious that they're doing it. In one study about harassment, most people who were disrespectful were not aware of it -- they thought they were making jokes at the time.
``They are misguided comedians," says study author Catherine Hill, director of research at the American Association of University Women. She also found that people respond to what they perceive as cultural norms. So speak up when you see it, even if you are not on either side of the exchange.
Don't accept rationales for rankism. Common refrains: ``This is the only way the business can work," (to justify long and unpredictable hours ); ``I got through this so you can too," (to justify hazinglike practices).
Joanna Vaillant is a management consultant -- a position known for difficult work conditions. But she did research to find a consulting company that respects its employees, and chose Boston Consulting Group. She recommends talking to people who work in the company about the company. ``In business school I talked to classmates who worked at different companies," says Vaillant. And she chose well. She recently got married and received assignments that would allow her time and headspace to prepare for that big day.
Take a bad job. Working at a low-level job is not just a headache, it's an integral part of your personal development. A big barrier to fighting racism and sexism is that if you are white you don't know what it's like to be black, and if you are male you don't know what it's like to be female. But anyone can work in a low-level job -- especially in the service industry, where the exposure to rankist behavior from customers is huge.
Consider leaving. One of the scariest things about demanding change at the workplace is the prospect of getting fired. But young people today -- who invariably fill entry-level positions -- switch jobs often. So the risk of offending a boss for speaking out against rankism does not seem that big a deal.
The workplace is ripe for eradicating rankism. The youngest workers are optimistic that they can change the world and passionate about diversity. Also, in poll after poll, young people report less interest in money and more interest in the quality of the work experience and the quality of life that work affords. So it makes sense that now is the time for the dignitarian movement, and we should all jump on board.
`Dignitarian' cause gives voice to principle that every worker deserves respect
By Penelope Trunk August 6, 2006
Here's a new word for the workplace: rankism. File it in your brain next to racism and sexism, and brace yourself for a big change at the office, because rankism is another kind of discrimination we should not tolerate.
What's rankism, or rankist behavior? It is hiring an intern and ignoring her all summer. Or pointlessly yelling at the receptionist about a manager who is late. Or a professor's taking credit for a graduate student's research. All these are examples of people who think they can treat someone disrespectfully because of their lower rank. ``The Devil Wears Prada" has tons of juicy examples as well as snappy fashion and a happy ending to make the story acceptable.
But rankism is never acceptable. And Robert Fuller, the man who devised the word, is on a mission to end the behavior. His big idea is that people have a right to be treated with dignity no matter where they are in the pecking order. He's part of what's become known as the ``dignitarian movement."
Wondering if you're at a job where you're treated with dignity? You need to receive recognition, humane treatment, and a living wage.
If your job doesn't qualify, you need to speak up, which is hard to do, but having a word to identify the problem is half the battle. ``Vocabulary changes things," says Fuller. `` `The Feminine Mystique' referred to the `problem without a name.' Sexism was not a word until five years after that book came out. Once the word sexism was available, women had a weapon to make demands."
Fuller wants you to take cues from the success of that movement. Say, ``Hey, that's rankist," the same way you'd say, ``That's sexist."
But don't yell: ``Having the words rankist and rankism will give workers in every line of action a battle cry. They won't scream at the top of their lungs. They will mention it calmly and cause the person on top to look at their actions."
Here are five more steps you can take to combat rankism in your work life:
Get a good read on potential managers. Management sets the tone of respect or disrespect at work. So sniff out offenders before you take a job. Vanessa Carney works at Let's Dish, a food-preparation company. ``The management team here is genuine," says Carney. ``The people who run this company have a good attitude and it trickles down." Carney was especially impressed when the owner sat down with her after a few months to find out what, exactly, she wanted to do in her career.
Let people know that rankism matters. Probably those behaving this way are not even conscious that they're doing it. In one study about harassment, most people who were disrespectful were not aware of it -- they thought they were making jokes at the time.
``They are misguided comedians," says study author Catherine Hill, director of research at the American Association of University Women. She also found that people respond to what they perceive as cultural norms. So speak up when you see it, even if you are not on either side of the exchange.
Don't accept rationales for rankism. Common refrains: ``This is the only way the business can work," (to justify long and unpredictable hours ); ``I got through this so you can too," (to justify hazinglike practices).
Joanna Vaillant is a management consultant -- a position known for difficult work conditions. But she did research to find a consulting company that respects its employees, and chose Boston Consulting Group. She recommends talking to people who work in the company about the company. ``In business school I talked to classmates who worked at different companies," says Vaillant. And she chose well. She recently got married and received assignments that would allow her time and headspace to prepare for that big day.
Take a bad job. Working at a low-level job is not just a headache, it's an integral part of your personal development. A big barrier to fighting racism and sexism is that if you are white you don't know what it's like to be black, and if you are male you don't know what it's like to be female. But anyone can work in a low-level job -- especially in the service industry, where the exposure to rankist behavior from customers is huge.
Consider leaving. One of the scariest things about demanding change at the workplace is the prospect of getting fired. But young people today -- who invariably fill entry-level positions -- switch jobs often. So the risk of offending a boss for speaking out against rankism does not seem that big a deal.
The workplace is ripe for eradicating rankism. The youngest workers are optimistic that they can change the world and passionate about diversity. Also, in poll after poll, young people report less interest in money and more interest in the quality of the work experience and the quality of life that work affords. So it makes sense that now is the time for the dignitarian movement, and we should all jump on board.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Bye-Bye, Bootstraps
By DAVID BROOKS
In all healthy societies, the middle-class people have wholesome middle-class values while the upper-crust bluebloods lead lives of cosseted leisure interrupted by infidelity, overdoses and hunting accidents. But in America today we’ve got this all bollixed up.
Through some screw-up in the moral superstructure, we now have a plutocratic upper class infused with the staid industriousness of Ben Franklin, while we are apparently seeing the emergence of a Wal-Mart leisure class — devil-may-care middle-age slackers who live off home-equity loans and disability payments so they can surf the History Channel and enjoy fantasy football leagues.
For the first time in human history, the rich work longer hours than the proletariat.
Today’s super-wealthy no longer go off on four-month grand tours of Europe, play gin-soaked Gatsbyesque croquet tournaments or spend hours doing needlepoint while thinking in full paragraphs like the heroines of Jane Austen novels. Instead, their lives are marked by sleep deprivation and conference calls, and their idea of leisure is jetting off to Aspen to hear Zbigniew Brzezinski lead panels titled “Beyond Unipolarity.”
Meanwhile, down the income ladder, the percentage of middle-age men who have dropped out of the labor force has doubled over the past 40 years, to over 12 percent. Many of the men have disabilities. Others struggle to find work. But in a recent dinner-party-dominating article, The Times’s Louis Uchitelle and David Leonhardt describe two men who are not exactly Horatio Alger wonderboys.
Christopher Priga, 54, earned a six-figure income as an electrical engineer at Xerox but is now shown relaxing at a coffee shop with a book and a smoke while waiting for a job commensurate with his self-esteem. “To be honest, I’m kind of looking for the home run,” he said. “There’s no point in hitting for base hits.”
Alan Beggerow, once a steelworker, now sleeps nine hours day, reads two or three books a week, writes Amazon reviews, practices the piano and writes Louis L’Amour-style westerns. “I have come to realize that my free time is worth a lot to me,” he said.
His wife takes in work as a seamstress and bakes to help support the family, as they eat away at their savings. “The future is always a concern,” Beggerow said, “but I no longer allow myself to dwell on it.”
Many readers no doubt observed that if today’s prostate-aged moochers wanted to loaf around all day reading books and tossing off their vacuous opinions into the ether, they should have had the foresight to become newspaper columnists.
Others will note sardonically that the only really vibrant counterculture in the United States today is laziness.
But I try not to judge these gentlemen harshly. What I see is a migration of values. Once upon a time, middle-class men would have defined their dignity by their ability to work hard, provide for their family and live as self-reliant members of society. But these fellows, to judge by their quotations, define their dignity the same way the subjects of Thorstein Veblen’s “The Theory of the Leisure Class” defined theirs.
They define their dignity by the loftiness of their thinking. They define their dignity not by their achievement, but by their personal enlightenment, their autonomy, by their distance from anything dishonorably menial or compulsory.
In other words, the values that used to prevail among the manorial estates have migrated to parts of mass society while the grinding work ethic of the immigrant prevails in the stratosphere.
This is terrible. It’s a blow first of all to literature. If P. G. Wodehouse were writing today, Bertie Wooster would be at Goldman Sachs and Jeeves would be judging a meth-mouth contest at Sturgis. Anna Karenina would be Miranda Priestly from “The Devil Wears Prada.” “The House of Mirth” would become “The House of Broadband.”
More important, this reversal is a blow to the natural order of the universe. The only comfort I’ve had from these disturbing trends is another recent story in The Times. Joyce Wadler reported that women in places like the Hamptons are still bedding down with the hired help. R. Couri Hay, the society editor of Hamptons magazine, celebrated rich women’s tendency to sleep with their home renovators.
“Nobody knows,” he said. “The contractor isn’t going to tell because the husband is writing the check, the wife isn’t going to tell, and you get a better job because she’s providing a fringe benefit. Everybody wins.”
Thank God somebody is standing up for traditional morality.
By DAVID BROOKS
In all healthy societies, the middle-class people have wholesome middle-class values while the upper-crust bluebloods lead lives of cosseted leisure interrupted by infidelity, overdoses and hunting accidents. But in America today we’ve got this all bollixed up.
Through some screw-up in the moral superstructure, we now have a plutocratic upper class infused with the staid industriousness of Ben Franklin, while we are apparently seeing the emergence of a Wal-Mart leisure class — devil-may-care middle-age slackers who live off home-equity loans and disability payments so they can surf the History Channel and enjoy fantasy football leagues.
For the first time in human history, the rich work longer hours than the proletariat.
Today’s super-wealthy no longer go off on four-month grand tours of Europe, play gin-soaked Gatsbyesque croquet tournaments or spend hours doing needlepoint while thinking in full paragraphs like the heroines of Jane Austen novels. Instead, their lives are marked by sleep deprivation and conference calls, and their idea of leisure is jetting off to Aspen to hear Zbigniew Brzezinski lead panels titled “Beyond Unipolarity.”
Meanwhile, down the income ladder, the percentage of middle-age men who have dropped out of the labor force has doubled over the past 40 years, to over 12 percent. Many of the men have disabilities. Others struggle to find work. But in a recent dinner-party-dominating article, The Times’s Louis Uchitelle and David Leonhardt describe two men who are not exactly Horatio Alger wonderboys.
Christopher Priga, 54, earned a six-figure income as an electrical engineer at Xerox but is now shown relaxing at a coffee shop with a book and a smoke while waiting for a job commensurate with his self-esteem. “To be honest, I’m kind of looking for the home run,” he said. “There’s no point in hitting for base hits.”
Alan Beggerow, once a steelworker, now sleeps nine hours day, reads two or three books a week, writes Amazon reviews, practices the piano and writes Louis L’Amour-style westerns. “I have come to realize that my free time is worth a lot to me,” he said.
His wife takes in work as a seamstress and bakes to help support the family, as they eat away at their savings. “The future is always a concern,” Beggerow said, “but I no longer allow myself to dwell on it.”
Many readers no doubt observed that if today’s prostate-aged moochers wanted to loaf around all day reading books and tossing off their vacuous opinions into the ether, they should have had the foresight to become newspaper columnists.
Others will note sardonically that the only really vibrant counterculture in the United States today is laziness.
But I try not to judge these gentlemen harshly. What I see is a migration of values. Once upon a time, middle-class men would have defined their dignity by their ability to work hard, provide for their family and live as self-reliant members of society. But these fellows, to judge by their quotations, define their dignity the same way the subjects of Thorstein Veblen’s “The Theory of the Leisure Class” defined theirs.
They define their dignity by the loftiness of their thinking. They define their dignity not by their achievement, but by their personal enlightenment, their autonomy, by their distance from anything dishonorably menial or compulsory.
In other words, the values that used to prevail among the manorial estates have migrated to parts of mass society while the grinding work ethic of the immigrant prevails in the stratosphere.
This is terrible. It’s a blow first of all to literature. If P. G. Wodehouse were writing today, Bertie Wooster would be at Goldman Sachs and Jeeves would be judging a meth-mouth contest at Sturgis. Anna Karenina would be Miranda Priestly from “The Devil Wears Prada.” “The House of Mirth” would become “The House of Broadband.”
More important, this reversal is a blow to the natural order of the universe. The only comfort I’ve had from these disturbing trends is another recent story in The Times. Joyce Wadler reported that women in places like the Hamptons are still bedding down with the hired help. R. Couri Hay, the society editor of Hamptons magazine, celebrated rich women’s tendency to sleep with their home renovators.
“Nobody knows,” he said. “The contractor isn’t going to tell because the husband is writing the check, the wife isn’t going to tell, and you get a better job because she’s providing a fringe benefit. Everybody wins.”
Thank God somebody is standing up for traditional morality.
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