Here in Canada, we're constantly being exposed to American culture. Go to any major city and you'll find Wal-Marts and McDonalds, stores lined with American products, theatres playing American movies, and radio stations playing American music. I've always maintained that it is absolute folly for the government of Canada to neglect support for the arts, given that we live next to a country that aggressively exports its culture at every turn. At any rate, I'd wager that the average Canadian has, by the time he reaches adulthood, gained a very clear picture of American culture.
For a long time I've always felt that there was something deeply wrong with American culture and its values, something that seemed to deny basic humanity. Sure, I could point to things like how Canada was less violent and a higher standard of living, but that did not get to the root of the matter. No, what I felt was that American culture possessed a streak of callousness and cruelty to it; that there was something inherently deceptive about the promises of "freedom" and "liberty" that the country offered. Yet it was not until I started reading the works of social critic Morris Berman that I finally discovered just what, exactly, was wrong with American culture.
In his trilogy of books, Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America, and Why America Failed, Berman posits that America was born as a nation of "hustlers" and that this "hustling" culture has been part of the cultural DNA of the nation since its founding. "Hustling," as he describes it, is the idea that life is about "winning " or to, as rapper 50 Cent so eloquently put it, "get rich or die trying." This idea is expressed in the cultural narrative as the "American Dream" - to do well for oneself, to be "well-liked" by one's peers by having a high-paying job and plenty of disposable income with which to obtain the latest toys and gadgets. Berman argues that, in America, the traditional definition of virtue - to put the needs of the common good above one's own desires - quickly mutated into the idea that one's own interests were the only thing that one ought to pursue. How else, then, can one explain the enduring popularity of Ayn Rand's toxic "philosophy", whose mantra was that altruism was the basest evil and selfishness the greatest good?
If I might go a step further, I'd argue that there are three basic tenets that are central to American culture:
- Life is a contest with winners and losers
- Doing well for yourself is the only thing you ought to concern yourself with
- Everyone gets what they deserve
Hence why the wealthy are considered to be entitled to every penny they possess, no matter how they obtained it, while those in poverty are derided as being lazy, entitled welfare queens and benefit scroungers. Hence why any attempt at challenging this status quo is instantly denounced as "socialism" by people who have no idea what the word "socialism" means, as it has become nothing more than a code word for any viewpoint that challenges the culture of hustling. Hence why American culture is steeped in the Horatio Alger myth of "pulling yourself up by your own boostraps," and why people believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that all it takes to become rich is "hard work" and that the poor occupy their lowly station simply because they are lazy and lack any sense of personal responsibility. Hence why academic disciplines such as the humanities are constantly disparaged because they provide fewer opportunities for career advancement and, by extension, getting rich. Hence why Americans spend most of their time working, and take far fewer days off than citizens of other western nations.
Just look at the reality TV series Survivor and there you'll find a perfect microcosm of American culture. You have a group of people who have to survive in a hostile environment, and every so often one of them is voted off, either because he wasn't pulling his weight or, as most often is the case, because of some petty animosity. The end goal is to be the last one standing; alliances between individuals may be formed, but these are temporary and purely self-serving. There's not a trace of sympathy for those voted off the island: "if they had only played better, they might have been a winner!" In a sink-or-swim, winner-takes-all society, you'll never be a winner if you stop to help up your fellow man when he stumbles.
The problem with the American mindset of "you're on your own, sink or swim, and may the devil take the hindmost!" is that is completely and utterly inimical to peoples' mental health. The culture of extreme individualism breeds isolation, loneliness, alienation, and violence. Humans are social animals, so how then can we possibly be happy and content in a country with no sense of community, no sense of social connections with one another, and no sense of the common good? An atomised society, consisting only of individuals going their own way, is not a society, but an anti-society, and such a thing cannot hold together in the long run.
Immersed in this pressure cooker environment, is it any wonder, then, that so many Americans just snap and go on killing sprees? Is it any wonder that, on the 2009 Happy Planet Index, America ranked 114 of 143 nations, and that Americans, despite being 5% of the world's population, consume two-thirds of world's supply of antidepressants? In the wake of the Newtown shootings, all this talk about gun control and violent movies and video games skirts the issue - that the United States, with its culture of extreme individualism and dog-eat-dog mentality, breeds violence and mental illness. In another six months or so, maybe sooner, there will be another shooting, and once again there will be no serious introspection, no hard questions will be asked, no thought will be spared for the society that seems to create these crazed killers on a regular basis.
America sees itself as a beacon to the world, but is their culture really the one the world should model itself after? Do we really want their warped and twisted notion of "freedom," where "freedom" means the freedom to step on the necks of those beneath you?
In closing, I'd like to present an excerpt from Berman's Why America Failed, because it sums up my feelings perfectly:
"If you are an American reading this, let me ask you: aren't you tired of it all? The endless pressure and anxiety, the awful atmosphere at work (that's if you can get work), the constant one-upsmanship that passes for friendship or social relations, the lack of community or of any meaningful connection with your neighbors..."
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