The other day I expanded on a classic Steven Den Beste post, Mercurial America, and I've been pleased to see the response that it's engendered, and, since there really is a good deal to expand on here, well, I thought I might unpack it in a couple more posts.
In part one, I received a good deal of comments, but there was one lengthy comment that I felt deserved a more comprehensive engagement. The author, Scott Harris, sought to explain how it is that America is misunderstood because our society doesn't operate under a "honor/shame" dichotomy, unlike the vast majority of traditional cultures around the world. His article is called "DISHONORABLE AMERICA", and while it is both insightful and problematic, it also delves into a very rich subject.
A fundamental reason America is misunderstood by other societies, regardless of race or continent, is that many throughout the world view America as dishonorable. This is due to the fact that the way Americans relate to one another is not based on the historical concept of honor, or "face."
How can the United States tolerate insults from every corner of the world? Americans differentiate between insults and threats. We happily tolerate insults, because we do not perceive the need to "save face." But to those who live according to the historical concept of honor, any insult is a threat to honor and must be vigorously defended.
Yes and no.
I think that yes, honor is not an informing and regulating, almost metaphysical concept in American society. And no we don't tolerate insults from every corner of the world. ContraCostaTimes:
"We will be back in Fallujah," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said in Baghdad.
"It will be at the time and place of our choosing. We will hunt down the criminals. We will kill them, or we will capture them. And we will pacify Fallujah."
So, maybe it's just under the leadership of Democratsthat we suffer fools lightly. But that's just a cheap shot.
Returning to Mr. Harris:
The nasty fact is that the concept of historical honor is inseparably linked to the darker concept of historical dishonor. In rejecting this concept, Americans do not view defeated enemies through the lens of honor. Hence, Americans have an unusual capacity to forgive former enemies and contribute to their rehabilitation. We do not perceive their defeat as “losing face.”
I'm not sure that I agree with this, either. While Americans do not organize their society following a logic of honor/shame, we do, in fact, "view defeated enemies through the lens of honor". How many WWII movies have you seen that take great lengths to differentiate SS from Wehrmacht ? And how many times have you seen General Erwin Rommel elevated to semi-mythical status? We do view defeated enemies through a lens of honor, their honor. In spite of this, the loss of face is not a concept easily understood by Americans, because "face" is not useful.
Let me unpack that, because there is more at work than might seem. "Face" is useful, if not an end in itself in a honor/shame culture. That is to say, it has value within that particular frame of reference, within that validity. Continuing,
You see this concept of historical or collective honor throughout the Oriental cultures; you see it in caste-conscious India; you see it in most tribal situations, which includes many of the Middle Eastern, African, and Native American cultures. It is very pronounced in Latin America. You see it in urban ghettos. And finally, you see it in Europe and Russia, with their historical ideas of royalty, landed gentry, and working classes.
Then,
This is not to say that Americans do not have a sense of honor. But our sense of honor is based on personal achievement and integrity, not hereditary position. The son of a rich man may have more privileges, but in America he is not automatically accorded more honor than the son of a poor man. In fact, the opposite is true. Rich heirs are seen as soft, coddled, and not fully tested. Hence the practice of leaving home to "make it on your own."
My experience has shown me that the latter sense of honor, the sense of "personal achievement and integrity" is nearly universal. Rich heirs are seen as soft and coddled everywhere. It's just that some cultures are more fatalistic than others. Having seen firsthand (over the course of 12 years) the example of Latin American machismo, this sense of face is wholly individual, perhaps even more individualistic than the "rugged individualism" that we exalt. In a society where the individual's needs and desires are more or less dependent on the whims of others, Latin men stake out positions, often foolhardy ones, to emphasize that they are "their own man", that they cannot be broken to another man's will. Another excellent example of the need to prove one's manhood comes from Native American tribes on the Great Plains. "Counting Coup", as it was called, made almost no sense to European settlers, because the young Plainsmen warriors would charge them in battle, only to touch them, or steal a hat, and thus, prove their courage and their skill, and thus, earn personal honor in the eyes of both their tribe and the enemy. It is safe to say that only in the most sycophantic and decadent of situations, like say, Louis XIV's Versailles, is the consuming need to be "one's own man" shunted to the side and debased as trivial.
Yet, if this is what is shared by (nearly) all peoples, everywhere, the question gets reconfigured into something more like: "Why doesn't America possess the 'historical' or 'collective' honor that more traditional societies display?" Scott's take on this is because, instead of viewing everything through a lens of collective honor,
Americans look at issues based on merit. When criticized, we tend to examine the merits of the criticism. Is there any truth to the accusation? If there is, we thank the critic, change and move on. No loss of face is perceived or recognized. If untrue, we dismiss the accusation. I am personally fond of saying, "I would rather be right at the end of the argument than at the beginning." But for those whose identity is built upon the concept of historical honor, the challenge itself is cause for violence regardless of the merits of the challenge.
When I lived in Egypt, I used to see a lot of fights. Cairo was crowded, polluted, and frustrating, and people would lose their cool. This was a regular occurrence. But these "fights" (almost) always took on this following shape: Two guys get into a shouting match over some trivial reason. A crowd gathers at the noise. Once there is a crowd large enough that had gathered, and bystanders begin to interpose themselves between the adversaries, only then would they "lose it". Yet, very rarely would you ever see a punch thrown, a push, or a tackle, because the tipping point always came after there were enough onlookers to allow the posture of reckless aggression, but, all the while, being "held back" by the gathered crowd. Cooler heads would prevail, feathers would be smoothed, and nobody sacrifices "face". The end. Why does this make no sense to us? Because, as you say, it has no "merit". So, what then, is "merit"?
1a. Superior quality or worth; excellence: a proposal of some merit; an ill-advised plan without merit. b. A quality deserving praise or approval; virtue: a store having the merit of being open late.
2. Demonstrated ability or achievement: promotions based on merit alone.
3. An aspect of character or behavior deserving approval or disapproval. Often used in the plural: judging people according to their merits.
Merit is a value! So then, what is its criterion and how is it so easily presupposed? How do we determine this value? And, is this value particular to America, or do others share it, as well?
The genius of America is not in our form of government, but in our reliance on personal integrity and personal responsibility. It is a concept of honor that is foreign to most of the world. It is why they don't understand us. It is why we don't understand them.
It is also why America is the cradle of creativity, vitality, and strength. Much like a fruit tree must be regularly pruned so that it produces more fruit, American civil society demands a constant reevaluation of one's status based on his RECENT achievements, and his personal integrity. We regularly celebrate those who are newly successful more than to those whose success is more distant. And we ruthlessly destroy the reputations of those who are discovered to have achieved success by compromising integrity.
The operative phrase in America is "What have you done for me lately?" To maintain status, you must continuously have new successes. And this concept is not limited to monetary issues. Someone who does voluntary philanthropic work is awarded community honor for his recent contributions. Another very American phrase is "Don't rest on your laurels."
Once again, I take issue at the idea that "personal integrity and personal responsibility" are unique to Americans. I've known too many Mexican agricultural workers and too many Californian university students to know this to be preposterous.
But, to paraphrase Scott, America is a source of creativity, vitality, and strength. This is true, but surely there there is a great deal honor to be gained in "creativity, vitality, and strength" -- how is it that other cultures don't seem to manage the level of innovation that America is capable of maintaining?
And, more to the point, "What have you done for me lately?" isn't exactly the position of an honorable person, one full of "personal integrity and personal responsibility". This is precisely the attitude that made the French, Turks, et.al. seem so base, so dishonorable. And it is this attitude that is precisely what other nations can't stand about us. We're fickle, mercurial; we have short memories, and we're always looking at the percentages.
Honor is a very difficult, slippery concept. This is because honor is something interpreted, and as such, has different value within different cultural configurations. This is why I agree wholeheartedly with Scott on is his summation:
It is our values, not our form of expressing them, that provide the foundation for American success. Only by adopting our fundamental principles of mutual respect, professional honesty, personal integrity, individual responsibility, and hard work can others expect to truly copy our success.
But this, in turn, begs the question: what "mutual respect, professional honesty, personal integrity, individual responsibility, and hard work"? Simply: it's a morality -- and who better to explain morality than Nietzsche:
Herd-Instinct. -- Wherever we meet with a morality we find a valuation and order of rank of the human impulses and activities. These valuations and orders of rank are always the expression of the needs of a community or herd: that which is in the first place to its advantage - and in the second place and third place - is also the authoritative standard for the worth of every individual. By morality the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself value only as a function. As the conditions for the maintenance of one community have been very different from those of another community, there have been very different moralities; and in respect to the future essential transformations of herds and communities, states and societies, one can prophesy that there will still be very divergent moralities. Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Many traditional cultures developed their moralities in subsistence economies, overcoming severe challenges by an implacable, indifferent, and inhospitable nature. Nobody rocked the boat because it meant death. Things were done according the way things had always been done, i.e., the surviving traditions and customs which had preserved the community. Consider a caravan route through the Sahara. If one didn't pay attention to doing things how it had been done, following the same route, the same prescription, it would be disaster for the "herd" -- so the rules took on cosmic significance.
In contrast, America is, and always has been, a great dynamo, a locus of creative-destructive forces, all of which center around utility and production. This is what is terrifying about America: following Scott's metaphor, the tree must be pruned in order to bear fruit -- to be made useful, productive -- and few other nations can face the inherent danger and anxiety that accompanies such struggles and open the door into a great maelström of creative-destruction.
Who, in their right mind, would get on that ride? Isn't it the case that most people, if given the choice, would look to escape, and like so many George Jetsons scream, "Hey Jane,…how do you stop this crazy thing?!?!?!?" Seen from this worldview, isn't it the case that Americans are just plain crazy? You bet. Crazy like foxes. Fearless, crazy, foxes.
You know, there's a reason that the "No Fear" brand got so overblown a couple of years back. It speaks to a fundamental quality of ours: Americans, relative to the rest of the world, live fearlessly. This is what is so puzzling to the world (albeit, in greater and lesser degrees of puzzlement): We pull up stakes. We risk. We gamble. And we take it to the extreme. We sacrifice stability, order, and predictability in order to "make things happen". Aye, there's the rub.
UPDATE: Part III is up.
Andrew,
I appreciate your criticism of my article. It helps to refine arguments when someone gives an intelligent rebuttal. Let me expand a little.
America is made up of immigrants who turned their back on family honor, and threw off their historical allegiances to their homelands. It is something we still demand of immigrants today. We demand that naturalized citizens swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. But we also demand that they renounce allegiance to their homelands.
This is not a triviality. It is why children of illegal immigrants, though American by birth, are held in suspicion. Their parents never officially and publicly renounced their homeland allegiance. It is necessary to be fully American to make a clean break. My wife is of Mexican heritage, but has zero emotional ties to Mexico. In fact, she resents the implication that she should have any allegiance to Mexico just as I would resent anyone implying I owe fealty to England. We are both fully and completely American.
But the very process of renouncing allegiance to family and country is one which requires a break with the historical concept of honor. It requires a commitment to self, and a commitment to an idea of personal liberty and freedom that differs from other countries. Citizens of other countries have a theoretical commitment to the ideas of freedom and liberty. But Americans have an experiential commitment. Americans have acted on the theory where citizens of other countries have not.
This requires a level of uncommon personal courage, and a certain ruthlessness. You are correct in identifying Fear as something Americans hate. We are descended from a stock of people that loved liberty more than life itself. We loved liberty more than family and more than country. Having braved oceans and enormous personal peril to arrive on the shores of America.
Americans from the early settlers to the Vietnamese boat people risked their all (including the lives of their families) on the hope of success and freedom in America. Is it any wonder we ruthlessly pursue excellence, and ruthlessly destroy obsolescence. Unlike many Europeans, I do not wax nostalgic about some old building. I want it torn down, so something better can take its place.
American "Preservation Societies" run a constantly losing battle because they are at cross purposes to our culture. Our culture demands continual improvement. Labor Unions were tremendously useful in overcoming the abuses of mangement. But they have lost their power because of their success. Their greatest contribution was and is in safeguarding the working conditions of Americans, not their economic conditions. Now may young Americans see them as impediments to progress exactly because preserving the status quo is not a dominant American value.
When the Republican party was perceived as a roadblock toward progress, they remained out of power for two generations. Today, it is the Democratic party that is seen as trying to protect its past accomplishments rather than moving forward. It is no wonder that they are losing power for they have lost the initiative.
In America, we fear inaction. We weigh the cost of passivity. We fear the lost opportunity, the loss of inaction as much as the potential loss of action.
“It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
~ Teddy Roosevelt
Americans demand courage. I personally hate fear. I despise it with a red-hot passion. When I find it in myself, I judge myself as less than a man. When I find it in others, it engenders disgust.
In my article, I did not really mean that Americans have no honor. But our idea of honor is foreign to most of the world. Our morality does not include preservation for preservation's sake. Instead of first asking "Why?", we first ask "Why not?" Our default position is the affirmative, not the negative. And even when we find negative reasons to delay progress, our internal conscience looks for ways to overcome the obstacles rather than view nagatives as permanent.
American society resembles a conveyor belt running backward, where one must continually be moving forward else one falls behind. It is not acceptable to stand still, for standing still moves you backward.
Posted by: Scott Harris | Monday, April 05, 2004 at 08:43 AM
Dear Scott,
Amen, bruddah!
Absolutely, Americans have, as you say, an experiential commitment to the ideas of freedom and liberty. And it is a rabid commitment to those ideas. The commitment is shared by the US's sibling, Anglosphere countries, but it gets configured a little differently, according to each locale (and, with varying degrees of fidelity).
Concerning the question of illegal immigration, I'm not sure that it is as cut and dry as you present the issue. I was thought that the resistance to immigration was dependent on the size of the émigré population, and whether they threatened the status quo, especially an economic status quo.
Let me explain. In the states that border Mexico, there is already an acceptance of illegal immigration. What is of concern is whether or not the state governments will be compensated by the federal government for the monies that it spends meeting what are essentially unfunded mandates.
The only voices that I hear appealing to "close the border" or -- God forbid -- militarize the border, come from places that, historically, have not had a large Mexican population, viz., New York, Utah, Illinois, etc. Here in California I'm not sure that you'll hear that argument made -- loudly, anyway.
Then, take the example of the Cubans and the Haitians. We have a long history of providing political asylum, just not a evenhanded one. Cubans, because of the accursed Fidel (when will he just die already?) have been welcome here, although, the rules have changed somewhat (you have to get to dry land, or they'll send you back). But, if you're Haitian, we won't take you under any circumstance. I'm not sure what to call that, but maybe "dishonorable" would fit the bill.
But this still doesn't address your main point, and that is,
This is true. We don't recognize "dual citizenship". Unless, of course, they're Israeli. By special act of Congress, Americans can serve in the Israeli Army and not lose their citizenship. They can even accept a commission in the IDF. There is no other such agreement with any other nation. I don't really want to get into an argument on dual-loyalty, I just cite that as an example.
Having said that, I applaud you and your wife for being fully and completely American. So am I. But my families are Dutch and Mexican. No hyphens, thank you, but still recognition of where I come from, ya know?
And it warms my heart to see that we both hold immigrants and immigration in high esteem. It is, as you say,
Posted by: Andrew Schouten | Monday, April 05, 2004 at 07:50 PM
Andrew
We get down into the definition of labels. I believe Americans are essentially liberal and progressive. At least according to the dictionary definitions of such terms. That leftists have co-opted the terms liberal and progressive is so much Orwellian double-speak. Leftists are reactionary by temperament, and cannot be honestly described as liberal or progressive.
Americans are not progressive in a political sense. But we give outlandish rewards to pioneers in industry and commerce. Witness Sam Walton - who would still be the world's richest man if his fortune had not been divided among his heirs, and Bill Gates. Americans are progressive in the sense that they do not highly value tradition.
This is a knife that cuts both ways, because we sometimes are too quick to discard good tradition and too quick to adopt fads. But because we are, as you say, utilitarian, we tend to reverse course fairly easily without loss of face. It is no shame in America to admit failure or defeat. The shame comes in wallowing in defeat. It is ever onward and upward, and those who fail to keep pace are ruthlessly left behind. Their is a certain Darwinian aspect to our society that is ultimately beneficial. Even our tendency to follow fads reinforces the necessity for continual improvement and the demand for a steady stream of new ideas.
Other countries fear our dynamism more so than our arms. We are at War in the Middle East precisely because Islamofascists feared our culture more than our military might. This fear is well-founded because any society which adopts portions of American culture will find a good portion of itself being destroyed and rebuilt. There is no greater threat to reactionary forces everywhere than the prospect of creative destruction. And American culture is the epitomy of creative destruction.
Where reactionaries go wrong is that they fail to comprehend that they can participate equally in the creative-destructive process. They are stagnant and are actually the biggest bigots against their own people. For they believe that their people cannot keep up with Americans in the idea competition. This is true only when their people are oppressed by either tyranny or bureaucracy, not when they are free.
America is not only the land of the second chance. It is the land of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, ...700th...4564th...etc chance. The only limit to one's ability to attempt success in America is one's own stamina and willingness to get up off the mat after being knocked down.
Posted by: Scott Harris | Tuesday, April 06, 2004 at 03:04 PM
One other comment Andrew. While it might be true that the average American is essentially conservative, it is also true that the average American is individually and specifically liberal in selected areas. So someone might be 90% conservative, and only 10% liberal, but that 10% gets to have its way without much societal interference. And another person might be 10% liberal in a totally different way.
For example, who would have thought former President Bush had a life-long dream of jumping out of airplanes. Certainly, it was not "conservative" for him to attempt his 1st parachute jump well into his 70's. But he did. And no one thought any less of him for doing so. In fact, most Americans probably applauded him for doing something so essentially and individually quirky.
We celebrate each others quirkiness. How often have you heard, "I never would have guessed that about him." But it is not said in a condemning way, but in an approving manner. We allow for each others idiosychrosies. And fairly often, one of those quirks turns into something revolutionary. It is why inventors come to America.
I had an idea just the other day about something to enhance trucking safety, and I have never been a trucker and do not hold a commercial license. But if I wanted to pursue my idea, no one would condemn me for it. We even are allowed to reinvent ourselves. Try that in other cultures. When I lived in Canada for two years, students had to decide their life's course at about age 14. What an unfair burden for a 14 year old.
Posted by: Scott Harris | Tuesday, April 06, 2004 at 03:12 PM
Scott:
You're a great foil, do you know that?
As to the question of labels -- it's always problematic to use labels -- and a typology of American political belief, here's what I can offer:
In the history of political philosophy America -- and, indeed, the entire Anglosphere, to varying degrees -- is Classically Liberal. I'm sure that you and I agree on this. But, for arguments' sake, this means that Classical Liberalism believes in constitutional, limited government (limited insofar as civil liberties and rights are concerned, not necessarily small, government) that governs by the consent of the governed; and that operates according to the rule of law. This is grounded in an essential, subjective ego-self that enjoys natural rights by virtue of its ability to make moral decisions and the dignity that entails (or is it the other way around...dunno, natural rights are really difficult to find. I mean, have you ever seen any in nature?)
When I say that Americans are inherently reactionary its that our political philosophy is the highlight of the 16th Century. In that sense it is reactionary. That is to say, whenever you hear Fidel Castro calling the US reactionary, he's right, but only insofar as Marxism is a more recent development in the history of ideas.
I do think that the American people, are, as you say, rather quirky when it comes to their personal politics and beliefs. And that means that sometimes it is impossible (if not embarrassing) to ass-u-me someone's political stances, especially based on regional color.
You make a good point about how Leftists are essentially reactionary, too. Contrary to their own mythology, Leftists have been reactionary since Rousseau ("Man is born free, and everywhere enslaved"), and just as misanthropic. They profess to care for mankind, even as they loathe and despise the individual man for not conforming to their view of what proper humanity should look like. (As long as we're making gross and unfair generalizations, let me say that, conversely, conservatives tend to care for individuals because they positively disrupt unfortunately low expectations and run counter to the idea of a degenerating mankind that they secretly despise.)
Having said that, I don't believe that Americans, or America, for that matter, are progressive. When I say that, it's a very narrow sense of "progress" (which happens to be the prototypical sense of the whole concept). Progress, you see, is a descriptor for a teleological development of society. It posits an end goal to the process of development, which is predetermined -- and determined -- by an un-assumed and implicit principle. In the history of philosophy, this has meant the progress toward a rational humanity.
There can be no doubt that America has developed institutions which are rational, but often, the culture assumes configurations which are anything but rational.
What I am skeptical of is that society is the notion that somehow progressing along such a principle. Especially when one considers that the very reason that the American "Center"-Left is (violently) reactionary today is precisely because an increasing proportion of the American electorate is opposed to the excesses of the Democratic Party (both traditional New Deal and more contemporary Identity Politics dogma).
The idea of progress denotes a dynamism, but a pre-determined, if not soothingly safe, dynamism. It's the result of retrospective (i.e. hindsight) thinking: making sense of how things turned out the way that they did, and then projecting that "sense" into the future. This runs counter, I believe, to the very notion of creative destruction. There is no way that we could accurately know (in every instance) how things will turn out, em>a priori. Anyone that tells you differently is trying to sell you something.
When this becomes truly and terribly problematic is when the uncritically assumed "end" of progress is based in a an equally uncritically assumed starting point. There are two wonderful examples:
These two examples are, to be sure, singularly brutal historical examples. Still, they are effective expositions of the irrational results of taking the notion of "progress" to have cosmic significance.
But this does not refute your point: Americans are accepting and welcoming, if not ideologically committed, to change. Nor do I seek to refute it, because I agree with you on this matter.
I'm not going to address the current conflict with Fundamentalist Islam in this space. I intend to do so at a later date in this series.
As for the differences in educational curricula between the US and the World, what you say is correct. In my experience Americans are afforded a luxury of "finding themselves" and declaring their major later in their educational career than in other nations. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that this is the result of different sensibilities regarding public monies. I was always under the impression that the reason that there was a gross amount of pressure placed on 14-16 year olds in other educational systems was due to the more centralized and socialist inclinations of those governments. That is to say that the government requires students to accommodate themselves to the national educational bureaucracy for the sake of the State's convenience, and with little regard to the personal desires of the students. Such a devil's bargain is possible only in those States that promise free education to all -- the only way to make it work is to, metaphorically speaking, separate the wheat from the chaff earlier, and minimized wasted resources. It is an unfair burden for a 14 year old, but bear in mind that this case proves the venerable adage "there's no such thing as a free lunch."
Posted by: Andrew Schouten | Tuesday, April 06, 2004 at 09:19 PM