Ragged Individualism

The week before attending Sojourners 20th anniversary festival I participated in a conference at the Center for Ethics and Social Policy in Berkeley. Some 20 invited participants, mostly academics, spent a week discussing The Good Society with Robert Bellah and his associates.

There were some obvious parallels between the two events. One was earnest and analytical; the other evangelical and prophetic. Both were concerned with saving the world; both contained indictments of the existing social order in America; and both issued calls for repentance and conversion.

The Good Society will be seen as a sequel to Habits of the Heart, which caught the attention of the academic world six years ago (see "Beyond Heartfelt Habits," October 1986). This in many ways is a better book: better organized, more readable, more persuasive.

In Habits the authors argued that it is difficult to live a morally coherent personal life in America today because of the radical individualism of our culture. In their newest book, Bellah and his colleagues contend that this society's fascination with individualism is the cause of the failure of our major social institutions.

Defining institutions as the normative patterns or values that give meaning to common life, the authors offer a spirited critique of our political, economic, educational, and religious institutions, and the popular culture of individualism that sustains them. Institutions today are dominated by a tradition of individualism that has been inherited from John Locke, and by some particular historical patterns that have developed in American society since mid-century.

Bellah et al. describe the domination of contemporary American culture by a normative (mythical) vision of "the American Century" that was shaped during the 1940s. Our contemporary understanding of our identity has been shaped by the institutional patterns that took form during the postwar years: a society of affluence, endlessly rising standards of living, and stable neighborhoods and families. This pattern has been in crisis in the last 20 years, ensuring the need to recognize and develop new patterns.

One suggestion involves reviving the old Progressive idea of "the Public." The authors are intrigued with the efforts of some major American thinkers early in the 20th century, especially Charles Pierce, Herbert Croly, Walter Lippmann, and John Dewey, to replace the dominant culture of individualism by recognizing the corporate and collective nature of our common life. They echo Dewey's desire to enlarge the sphere of public interest, public participation, and public discussion.

THE AUTHORS ARE PROPOSING a transformation of our society by transforming not our structures or techniques, but our values. The book is directed at the American middle class, challenging that social group to change its habits of the heart. The middle class must "pay attention"--to use the central phrase in the final chapter--to the conditions of our common life.

Bellah tells us that the book tries to be gentle, subtle, and intelligible, but that it says something very radical. America will not be saved unless the whole value system is changed. Our world is in a state of emergency, and the authors are calling for conversion, metanoia; but a conversion that does not lacerate people with guilt.

They are dead right about what needs to change. But the weakness of their proposals for how "the Public" can be created and nourished is most disappointing.

The most serious oversight in the book (which the authors admit) is their neglect of the media. Their suggestions for political and economic reform are thoughtful, but not fundamentally important. The same is true, sadly, of their discussion of education and religion, two institutions that are vital to the kind of cultural transformation they advocate.

Steve Tipton's chapter on the "Public Church" is an interesting and enlightening discussion of the causes of the decline in public influence of the mainline churches in America, but he does not give any very clear indications of how the churches may regain their position of providing a moral vision for our society. Some hope is offered by his assessment of the work of para-church groups.

There is also a question about whether their liberal view of social change is adequate. The old Progressive faith in the possibilities of a democratic public opinion was called into question soon after World War I by a succession of public philosophers, from Randolph Bourne to Reinhold Niebuhr to Walter Lippmann himself.

Herbert Croly's faith in a united public opinion, mobilized by charismatic leaders, has raised ominous overtones in the history of the last half century. Witness the most recent emergence of a united public in the outburst of mindless American triumphalism in the aftermath of the Gulf war. Our political leaders, instead of facing the crisis of our institutions, have for a decade been reviving incantations of a return to "the American Century."

Still, there is something very appealing about their call for reviving public discussion of our common life. If democracy means anything, it must mean the enlargement of public deliberation. If they are weak on their prescriptions for transformation, the authors know that we will not be saved by sociologists from Berkeley, or indeed, by any group of experts, but only by the public forum. Let the conversation continue.

William F. McKee was a professor of U.S. social and intellectual history at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida when this review appeared.

The Good Society. By Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, Steven M. Tipton. Alfred A. Knopf, 1991. $25 (cloth).