“We have met the enemy and he is us.” So claimed Pogo cartoonist Walt Kelly in a well-known poster for the first Earth Day in 1970.
The historically curious may recall that Kelly’s line was itself a turn on Commodore Oliver Perry’s classic dispatch to his commanding officer during the War of 1812. Then the enemy was the British and the conquest was the control of Lake Erie.
Although some like to imagine that our difficulties are caused by some external foe who must be “taken,” many of us realize that we are often our own worst enemies. Trying to find happiness—a persistent theme of my posts—we commonly manufacture difficulties, not just for ourselves but for other people. The problematic “us” Kelly alludes to is both ourselves as millions of individuals and as the collective society that organizes our lives.
Understanding the connection between private life—with all its triumphs and travails—and the conduct of the wider society is the challenge that C. Wright Mills presented to readers in his noted book The Sociological Imagination. It is also the theme of my own recent book Anatomies of Modern Discontent: Visions from the Human Sciences. In that writing, I discuss many classic visions of what’s wrong with modern existence. Let me share a few of those below.
1. The decline of community.
In earlier times, people were held together by facts of geography or local circumstance. People worked, shopped, prayed, and played with familiar others. Many of us who are older can recall a “small-town America,” where people recognized one another and knew details of their lives. Acquaintances—and deep friendships—might last a lifetime.
I won’t romanticize that world. After all, small communities could also be very status-conscious and confining. But clearly, many of us have lost that commitment to neighborliness, local pride, and intergenerational family bonding. Today, few people recognize us as we go about our daily affairs; even fewer “know” us. Public identity is superficial and fragmentary.
Many would say that we now have new “communities,” fostered by social media sites. We belong to specialized groups with whom we work, play, and bond. More than that, we’re stimulated by the prospect of mobility. We like choosing our associates. We’re not stuck with the “same old people.”
Fair enough. However, that loss of place and placement means that it is increasingly difficult to comprehend and plan our lives. And as great social thinkers like Erich Kahler and Robert Nisbet stressed, modern “organizations” or “collectives” are not the same as communities. Vastly arrayed, those new forms confront us with their powers. Existence moves beyond human scale.
2. Marginality as powerlessness.
Powerlessness, or subordination, has long been part of the human condition. For countless centuries, men have abused women; ethnic groups have been vilified and enslaved. Even children have been brutalized. Commonly, that subordination was familiar, personal, and “day-to-day.” People couldn’t escape the circumstances of their birth.
I defend none of that. However, modernity presents a colder, more distant brand of subordination. Disadvantaged people are cast to the edges of society, where they live in conditions others wish to know nothing about. As isolated individuals, they try to find places to work and settle. Typically, those connections are precarious; problematic as well is protection from predators who haunt their neighborhoods.
Writers in the tradition of humanistic Marxism or “critical theory” have stressed that we must never forget the dispossessed. Freedom should not mean freedom to starve or to die from neglect and violence. Note too that many of us who are more comfortably situated sense the dangers of marginality. What if we lost our job tomorrow and couldn’t pay our housing costs? What if a major health crisis took everything we own? In modern society, vast numbers of people live just a paycheck or two from disaster—and there is no safety net to break their fall.
3. Meaninglessness.
In his great book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl argued that people need some sense of purpose or meaning, even if they must fashion it from very thin cloth. That is how humans made it through the concentration camps and, more generally, face the absurdities of the modern world.
Most of us would agree. Note, though, that this premise—that people should invent their own meaning systems—is a very modern notion. In traditional societies, people are born into well-established belief systems that are societal as well as personal. Religion and public morality are not things individuals “come up with.” They are frameworks that give order and direction to existence.
In the worst case, public meaning systems fail completely. No shared understandings keep people in check. Anarchy—or simply private appetite—prevails.
That specter of amorality or “anomie” haunted the writing of France’s Emile Durkheim. As he saw it, modern people cannot return to a tradition-bound rural society. But they can commit themselves to the importance of civil society and honor social norms that protect and coordinate the behaviors of all.
4. The culture of money.
What expresses the character of modern society more than money? Money—both as a medium of exchange and a measure of value—is the calling card of many modern relationships, what we show at the door to get into places that would otherwise refuse us. Gathered and stored, money is the chief symbol of personal potency and family security. With money, we can get people to do things for us. Seemingly no place is beyond money’s reach.
Such was the argument of sociologist Georg Simmel. As Simmel saw it, money’s qualities—impersonality, numeracy, and transportability—made it the ideal currency for dealings between strangers. Its possession allowed people to accumulate possessions that expressed “personality.” Wealthy people could isolate themselves from others. Indeed, it was central to the cult of individuality.
Nowadays, we find ourselves deeply embedded in what Juliet Schor has called the “work and spend” cycle. Shopping for many is a form of social interaction, a way to show discernment, and a game of managing resources. The same can be said for money accumulation. “Winners” have income sources that make them feel good about themselves. “Losers” remain hungry and aspiring.
Rare is the person who turns entirely from the culture of money. The rest of us know well that it is a pursuit with no clear ending. We never have enough. We fear losing what we have. If insecurity is the energy of capitalism, then money is its fuel.
5. Extravagant expectations.
It is the birthright of every child to have big dreams. Surely, we will at some point become sports stars, prima ballerinas, and the idols of screen and stage. We will attain these positions while retaining our youth, good looks, and vital energies. Both money and fame will be ours. People will love and respect us. We will have it all.
As adults, we learn to temper those ambitions. We still dream—perhaps success in the lottery—but we don’t expect great heights. We stop claiming that we merit or “need” life’s superfluities.
According to Daniel Boorstin in his wonderful book The Image, those statements aren’t entirely true. Modern people, or at least American moderns, increasingly believe that they “deserve” the good things in life. That often means fancy kitchen countertops, a closet full of shoes, and a new-model car equipped with an arsenal of gadgets.
More than that, they expect the contradictory and the impossible. Most of us desire to eat heartily and stay thin, be well-read and up to date on the most popular television shows, be ever on the go and still know the securities of home. Large automobiles should be gas-saving; huge homes, energy efficient. We should have the bodies of young adults and the wisdom of old ones.
Our advertising culture and its glossy products tell us these accomplishments are possible. But it is dangerous to believe that self-fulfillment of this sort is possible or even desirable. All the above are “images,” concocted for public regard. To chase those images is to chase disappointment. By contrast, real happiness is found in solid relationships and substantial commitments.
I could add many other warnings about contemporary life—like cultural narcissism, machine culture, emotional overstimulation, and medicated experience. I discuss these in my book. However, I’ve said enough to make the point that we do not make our lives just as we conceive them. We live in social and cultural contexts that encourage us to pursue certain avenues of experience. Just as those contexts offer inducements to go down those trails, so they block movement in other directions.
Real wisdom means being sensitive to which of those opportunities represent good investments of our life energies and which are destructive shams. In the end, our better selves—like our worse ones—are collective affairs. And we must work together to achieve them.
References
Boorstin, D. (2012). The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Vintage.
Frankl, V. (1959). Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press.
Henricks, T. (2022). Anatomies of Modern Discontent: Visions from the Human Sciences. London and New York: Routledge.
Mills, C. Wright. (1969). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford.
login
who are we?
contact us
qosheapp
Toi Staff
Gideon Levy
Belen Fernandez
Andrew Mitrovica
Mort Laitner
Nikkei Editorial
Rami G Khouri
Ali Fathollah-Nejad
visit website
