The Dangers of Shallowness

The evidences for cultural shallowness in the United States are abundant. By “shallowness” I mean a disinterest in truth, reality and understanding in preference for whatever immediately attracts the senses. It was not always so. My parents were Iowa farm children. As such they had their chores to perform, which were necessary to the farm’s function. They did what needed to be done for their survival, which being a “dry” non-irrigated farm, meant that their life was contingent upon the weather. What needed to be done were “chores”. Each child had her/his own.

When I was a child my sister and I had “chores” to do from dishes to weeding the lawn of dandelions. Of course these chores were not necessary to our family’s survival, but during the depression I carried papers to pay for some of my clothing. While my sister and I were not nearly as essential to family survival as our parents, we did, in the depression, develop a decent sense of necessity and reality.

The generation following ours was raised in the affluence of the post World War II booming economy in which the United States had the only major undestroyed economy after that war and dominated the world market. This created an environment in which children were increasingly separated from the real world, the world of necessity. Society turned to other modes of presumed importance. Television compounded this turn to fantasy. There was less and less reference to reality. Today children do not know the difference between heroes and celebrities. Our major industries are focused on entertainment. Our technology almost inevitably ends up as an instrument of entertainment. The computer becomes a gaming device and the telephone becomes a camera. Our economy is more focused on making money off of money than on making money by making things. When I was young the daily measure of the economy as broadcast on the radio was the price of steel; now it is the stock market. Our public elections are defined as horse races rather than occasions for articulating the profound issues facing us and the rest of the world. All of these and many more are measures of our increasing disconnect from reality.

I have wondered for some time why, with all the massive layoffs we have had in recent years, we have not seen the level of protest one would expect. Apparently this job loss has been compensated for by borrowing against home equity and credit cards. With the sub-prime loan scandal home values have plunged, the value of equity has plummeted and homeowners not only cannot pay off mortgages, they can no longer borrow against equity. In other words it appears that a large number of people were continuing their life style on debt, not unlike the nation’s debt. The Federal Reserve Board reported on January 9, 2008 that credit card debt rose at an 11.3 percent annual rate in November 2007. They said this jump was largely due to millions of homeowners, having lost the ability to borrow against their homes, turning to credit cards. Borrowing at sub-prime rates, using one’s home as an investment and expanding one’s life style as the value of the home increased, turning to credit card debt when that gambit failed are all indicators of a society deep into fantasy.. This is but one, now very serious consequence, of our culture’s detachment from reality, so serious it may portend a depression. In 1929 there were no credit cards to delay the onset of the depression, it came quickly.

As a historical side note, we are the inheritors of the 19^th century’s passionate belief in progress as the means to free mankind from drudgery and open the gate to the cultivation of the human intellect. Having gained that freedom, we have squandered it on our sensations and escapism. We have, in short, become the 19^th century progressive’s worst nightmare.

So much for the shallowness of our culture and MUCH more could be said. I want to consider another, less obvious consequence of this cultural shallowness. Once a culture departs from reality into fantasy it loses its single most important pole star. Fantasies such as cultural myths, values, etc. take precedence over reality. It should be kept in mind that values are found nowhere in the natural world. We humans create them and as such they can be as disregardful of the real world as any other fantasy. They should be periodically reviewed for their relevance to reality. Fantasies have nothing to reference or react to except other fantasies. Their competition, not mediated by reality, can rise to great heights of intensity and are subject to a multitude of manipulations. Thus we have gay rights or abortion competing with and often taking precedence over global warming or lack of arms control, which can destroy our species. It is in this kind of world, divorced from reality and its sobering influence that people can be panicked way beyond reason and evidence into surrendering their rights, supporting torture, and abandoning their concern for the innocent. If we are to preserve our freedoms and deal effectively with the world’s pressing problems we will have to get a much firmer grasp on reality. We must demand of our leaders that they articulate in terms of reality their views on how to mitigate or solve our unprecedented problems. Let them know that we are no longer satisfied with happy talk or cultural surrogates for the real world.

Bob Newhard