Mixed Values
al., Robert N. Bellah et.
Mixed Values HABITS OF THE HEART by Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M. Tipton University of California Press. 255 pp. $16.95. According to the five...
...Each informant has a "first language" that carries commonly held values but each also employs a "second language" that often contradicts the first and exhibits the ambivalence referred to earlier...
...Such characters have gone so far that neither family nor friends moderate the drive toward total gratification of the self and a concomitant abandoning of the social sphere...
...But despite these lapses, Habits of the Heart is an important study, the more so in these days when Reaganemia has sapped the moral energies of this country and disoriented the perspective of too many progressive forces...
...Still, it's important to note, as I have before, that in America, polarity is always just around the corner...
...Before everything fell apart, that movement exemplified the authors' notion that individualism is truly "fulfilled in community rather than against it...
...Emerson's idea of self-reliance begins with the statement, "Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist" and insists that the poet "stands among partial men for the complete man, and appraises us not of his wealth, but of the common wealth...
...The authors interviewed people from various parts of the country and got them to talk about work, love and marriage, religion, and politics...
...Gene Bluestein (Gene Bluestein teaches American Studies at California State University, Fresno...
...Ironically, they suggest that the autonomous personality Riesman proposes as the mediator between inner-directedness and other-direct-edness has turned instead into the isolated figure their study highlights...
...It was Tocqueville who coined the term "individualism," explaining it as a condition which "disposes every member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellow creatures, and to draw apart with his family and friends...
...The inner tensions of American individualism," the authors state, "add up to a classic case of ambivalence...
...That is exactly the vision which our authors feel is missing from American life...
...At worst, such neglect of public morality could lead to the "tyranny of the majority," the equally insidious alternative to the aristocratic societies of the Old World...
...Similarly, James was far from endorsing the life of self-indulgent, greedy individuals, warning of the "bitch-goddess success" and proposing a major social commitment in the "moral equivalent for war...
...The great danger, Tocqueville felt, was the undermining of public commitment and civic devotion...
...Despite some serious shortcomings in focus, the study has the ring of truth...
...It's a disappointment to see the standard misinterpretation and vulgarization of Ralph Waldo Emerson's and William James's ideas...
...Unlike earlier works which stimulated wide interest and sparked important debat| (I'm thinking of Riesman again or The Greening of America), Habits of the Heart seems to have made almost no impact so far on the American consciousness...
...And underlying all the values is the foundation of radical individualism, which weakens social commitment...
...Throughout the book the authors recall nostalgically the days of the civil rights movement, when Martin Luther King Jr...
...The reason is apparent and a cause for some complaint...
...He searched for the "habits of the heart," those underlying attitudes which shape "the sum of moral and intellectual dispositions of men in society...
...Everyone in the United States thinks largely in middle-class categories, even when they are inappropriate...
...What's left is the jargon of upward mobility and therapeutic analysis, as demonstrated by the lawyer who explained that "life is a big pinball game and you have to be able to move and adjust yourself to situations if you're going to enjoy it...
...The accent is on the negative, and the main failure is the result of what they call "radical individualism...
...According to the five authors of Habits of the Heart, the main purpose of the book "is to deepen our understanding of the resources our tradition provides—and fails to provide—for enabling us to think about the kinds of moral problems we are currently facing as Americans...
...Freedom, he warned, might become only the liberty to avoid social responsibility and the right to concentrate on a lifestyle devoted exclusively to self-gain...
...But when you leave out working-class and ethnic enclaves you have also excluded the main sources of colorful and expressive language...
...The book gives no clues for how the desired balance between individualism and civil responsibility can be reinstated...
...We strongly assert the value of our self-reliance and autonomy...
...The title comes from Alexis de Toc-queville, whose visits to the United States in the 1830s resulted in his classic analysis, Democracy in America...
...It's not what we're "into," as a good many of the informants in the book like to say...
...In every area, the same sets of ambivalent values emerge...
...The accuracy of its observations is most evident in the fact that it has engendered almost no discussion in these waning years of the Reagan Revolution...
...While the use of Tocqueville as a point of comparison provides some useful perspective, the authors are not as strong in the interpretations of American backgrounds...
...We deeply feel the emptiness of a life without sustaining social commitments, yet we are hesitant to articulate our sense that we need one another as much as we need to stand alone, for fear that if we did we would lose our independence altogether...
...The authors "decided to concentrate our research on white, middle-class Americans...
...If the authors' concern about the dangers of extreme individualism is reminiscent of David Riesman's analysis (in The Lonely Crowd and Individualism Reconsidered), it is no surprise since Riesman is one of several advisers to the authors, whose backgrounds include sociology, theology, and philosophy...
...symbolized the coherence and the eloquence of private and public commitment...
...The informants turn out to be generally bland and often dull in expression, especially when compared with the people who show up in the interviews of Studs Terkel or Robert Coles...
Vol. 50 • January 1986 • No. 1
