So much more to say about the trip, but for now back to the book.
In the last “book” post, I introduced “cultural models” in the context of a discussion about whether a hypothetical “Tom” should join a rock band or go to college. Here we’ll look at some actual linguistic data. An excerpt from the Americans (names changed):
(Jill) And who is right? I think Tom is right, because an education is a good thing in my opinion, but it’s Tom’s life, and if he wants to join a rock band then I think that’s his choice. We need to have some rock band people.
(Sarah) I think he’s right too, because if his parents force him to go to college, and he ended up going to college instead of joining the rock band, he wouldn’t try hard, he wouldn’t study, he wouldn’t do any of that, because that’s not where he wants to be, so it’d be a waste of his time and of the parents’ money and of just…it’d be a waste of everything ’cause like he won’t be trying hard because he doesn’t want to be there, so it’d be better for him to do what he wants to do, because then he’ll put in a lot of effort to do what he wants to do. And if he wants to be a rock star, then he’s gonna try really hard, and he’s gonna be happy doing what he’s doing, instead of listening to his parents and being miserable.
Several cultural models show up here:
- “Pursuit of Happiness” — Do what makes you happy.
- “Follow Your Dreams” — Closely related, but with a different emphasis: Whatever you love most, are most passionate about, that is what you should do with your life.
- “You Can’t Change Me” — People are who they are, and they will do what interests them. Especially young people. Trying to force people to do things they don’t want to do will have the opposite result.
These three cultural models together paint a clear picture of what is to be done: Tom should give the rock band thing a serious try. This is most forcefully expressed in Sarah’s use of waste. We use the word waste when we are conscious of the limits of our resources. What is the resource here? She mentions time and money, probably the most precious and carefully accounted-for resources there are. And she makes the case that Tom doing what his parents want, instead of what he wants, would be a waste of these resources. There’s much more to this “waste,” though, which I’ll save for another post.
Hidden beneath the surface of these three cultural models is the powerful idea that there is a particular “life path” each of us is meant to follow. Often in linguistic and anthropological studies, the deepest, most influential cultural models are the ones that are hardest to find evidence for, precisely because they underlie such a vast expanse of shared cognitive space in a culture. The Life Path model is no different: it is so deeply assumed that each of us has such a path that it is rarely stated. The clearest articulation comes in the following exchange:
(Joe) I have a friend who did exactly this. His parents wanted him to go to college, and the family members at first were like, don’t do it, don’t do it, and they were all angry about it, and then they speak badly of the idea to one another, they think it’s bad, but eventually, they’ve resolved it with saying, well, this is what he wants to do, he’ll learn or he won’t, but this is his path.
(Bill) I think that’s right too. Conventionally, you know, it’s not a safe thing to do if you want to be financially secure all your life or something, but if that’s not your big important thing…
(Joe) …which it shouldn’t be…
(Bill) Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. But then I think you should just…I think you should pursue what you’re interested in.
This exchange weaves together Life Path, Pursuit of Happiness, Follow Your Dreams, and another key American cultural model, Live and Learn.
Let’s look more closely at the statement, “He’ll learn or he won’t, but this is his path.” The but serves its usual role of prioritizing: the fact that this is his path is more important than the question of whether or not he’ll learn — which says a lot about the importance of Life Path, since, in these educated circles, learning is thought of as extremely important. What makes Life Path here even more important?
Bill and Joe’s exchange leaves some things to the imagination. Lurking behind their reasoning is a “dirty little secret” that would make high-minded, educated, avowedly secular liberals cringe: human life is holy. God is there, behind all the trappings of “higher” reasoning.
Sociologist Robert Bellah deserves much of the credit for bringing this to our attention. He famously studied what he termed American Civil Religion: a set of religiously-based beliefs shared by Americans of all religious and non-religious stripes. These beliefs — about many things, including our duties toward our fellow humans, as well as the uniqueness of human life and the need to “express ourselves” and develop our talents — provide the energy behind much of the language used by the Americans in my research, including Joe’s privileging of Life Path over learning.
In case you’re thinking, “I’m not religious,” or “I’m not spiritual,” you’re not off the hook. These beliefs go to the core of who Americans are. If you subscribe to the notion that we each have dreams and talents, and that there are ways in which our talents are “supposed” to be used, and if you feel we “owe” it to ourselves (and maybe to others) to pursue our dreams, and if you think God has nothing to do with this, then I invite you to ponder: according to whom are we “supposed” to use our talents? To whom do we really “owe” the pursuit of our dreams?
This is interesting. I agree that the cultural models you describe above can be considered American, and I agree that it is plausible that having a Life Path is another such model.
However, I think that there are alternatives to a spiritual basis for such cultural phenomena.
For instance, what if behind the “trappings of ‘higher’ reasoning” there is simply irrational and emotional conviction? Assuming that there is this sentiment that life is holy, one could argue that the sense of something being preternaturally precious is generated by our capacity for emotion. Rather than “holiness” being objectively created by something external to us (God, in this case), “holiness” is instead a subjective assessment.
Related to this are your assumptions in the last paragraph that our sense of duty (which is the emotion that I think underlies that sense of being “supposed” to do something or “owe”-ing someone something) requires a “whom.” Just like the conviction that something is holy can be a subjective conclusion, the feeling of duty can also be generated in our brains, even if there’s no clear “to whom.” Our rational minds might note that duties are usually accompanied by “to whoms” (to parents, to family, to country), so we flail about looking for that “to whom,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is one (again, God, as per your post).
In short, just because we “have a sense” and our efforts to understand that sense yield no rational explanations does not mean that we have to immediately jump to a spiritual conclusion. It is possible (and I would go so far as to say probable, given what cognitive psychology and neuroscience have taught us) that such feelings are simply that, feelings that don’t necessitate some ultimate external explanation. Much like déjà vu doesn’t actually indicate that something has really taken place before, however convincing it feels.
I should note that I do think it is likely that many American cultural models either have their historical roots in religious belief or were reinforced over time by religious conclusions. Here’s an analogous situation: the idea of “inalienable rights” is an outgrowth of natural law, which originated out of religious thought, for the most part. Yet even after mainstream Western jurisprudence discarded notions of natural law for positive law in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the cultural tradition of rights persisted, albeit with equally plausible alternative rationales for why we should have them. And perhaps such rationales were irrelevant, and the notion of rights was passed on simply because of cultural inertia, or the fact that the outcomes that came out of having a system of rights generally turned out okay in the West.
I think something similar has happened with cultural models. While the concept of God might have been a “Prime Mover” for them in a historical sense, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the concept continues to vitiate all instances of such cultural models in the present day. Sorry for the long comment, and thanks for the post–it certainly got me pondering!