I think it’s useful to think about the cultural sphere and the poltical sphere as separate although obviously related areas of social activity. Lot’s of people tend to conflate them, as if for them our politics is in the profoundest sense a representation of their deepest sense of self or identity. In de Toquevilles’s time maybe it said something about the uniqueness of the national character, but not any more. Our politics now are pretty much like politics everywhere in the developed world–nothing particularly special or distinguished about it.
And that’s ok, because our activity in the political sphere, while essential for solving important social problems, is not what defines us as people; it’s not the place in our society where the most important activities occur. I think there’s something wrong about a society in which politics plays a disproportionate role in defining its identity and sense of purpose. Identity, meaning, purpose are properly developed in the cultural sphere, not the political.
I think that most of our social pathologies today derive from a
society-wide misunderstanding in which people have been mistakenly enculturated
to believe that their activities in economic and/or political spheres give their lives a sense of purpose and meaning. Clearly for many it does. But I would argue that in a healthy society its citizens understand
that purpose and meaning are pursued in the cultural sphere in which activities center around family, food, and friends; art, music, and sport; learning, philsoophy and religion.
It’s where real life happens, and its where the human soul is nourished
and flourishes.
Nourishment of the soul is not something that ordinarily we find to be the primary benefit of our participation in the
political or economic spheres. What we do there is important and necessary, of course, but in a healthy society they should be less important to what we do in the cultural sphere. It’s a question of what comes first, and how what we care about most shapes the way we develop as human beings.
People can argue with me about it if they want, but I think that to the degree that people derive meaning and purpose primarily from economic and political activity, there is a correlative withering of the soul. People
for whom the pursuit purpose and meaning in the political and economic spheres is primary do so as compensation for having little or no soul life in the cultural. And typically that means that people seek wealth and power to fill up the emptiness where there should be a soul tend to dominate in the economic and political spheres because they want–need–power and wealth more than people with a healthy soul life do. And the result is that we have a soulless economics and a soulless politics whose agendas are determined by fanatics.
There’s another reason why I think it’s important to think of the cultural sphere as a separate from the political. It’s the only way that a pluralistic society can flourish. Pluralism is impossible when the political and cultural are conflated. In my view the most important thing that American society has contributed to the world is its precocious grappling with the thorny problems associated with pluralism. American success here in this age of converging cultures is what can really make America special. It’s not a done deal yet, but the success of the experiment depends on its avoiding two extremes: multiculturalism on one end and monoculturalism on the other. Lately, we’ve been stalled in moving toward this goal because we have been pulled back and forth by articulate factions on both extremes.
A multicultural society is one that insists on maintaining the autonomy of different cultural groups, usually defined by language and religion, but under one government. Canada and Switzerland have made it work, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. The old Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, N.Ireland, Spain, Lebanon, Iraq, India/Pakistan are the rule. In multicultural societies where there isn’t open civil war, there is usually an uneasy peace between the majority and one or more aggrieved minority groups, and everyone is walking on eggshells.
Monoculturalism is what nativist majorities in a society want, and as a result, it’s usually what separatist minorities in the same society want in order to free themselves from the oppression inflicted by the monoculturalist majority. Monoculturalists, for complex social psychological reasons, are uncomfortable with the "Other." And majority cultures, when they are monocultural in their attitudes, want minorities to either assimilate into their culture or move somewhere else. Ethnic cleansing is the most recent policy designed to achieve that. But pogroms, concentration camps, and reservations accomplished the same thing in the past. Monoculturalism is a form of social pathology in a globalizing world; it needs to be relentlessly identified as such and repudiated wherever it raises its ugly head.
The mistake a lot of Americans make is that in their resistance to monocultural factions within American society (mainly Anglo-Protestant nativists), they want to promote the legitimacy and equality of other cultural traditions. And some argue that, for instance, the requirement that all citizens speak English as a requirement for citizenship is a form of cultural imperialism. This is a mistake that, while well-intended, too often leads to the Balkanization described above. We can argue about it in more detail if readers want to, but in my
opinion a multicultural society if it isn’t already a disaster, is one waiting to happen, and it’s a
path to be avoided at all costs in the U.S. Multiculturalism is not the only or the best way to resist monoculturalism.
The better option, and it’s the one that would naturally evolve if people allow it, is the development of a pluralistic culture. And I believe that American society can continue to lead the way for the world in developing a model for a healthy pluralism. Pluralism allows for a multiplicity of subcultures whether they are defined by race/ethnicity, sexual preference, religion, or whatever. Within their own worlds they should be left alone to pursue their lives according to whatever values or behavioral norms they work out for themselves.
This is where I connect with the theme developed above about the cultural sphere being where individuals develop their souls and find meaning and purpose. It has hardly anything to do with the poltical sphere, and acitivity in the poltical sphere should do nothing to restrict any individual or group from developing his soul in whatever way it chooses. The only rule for American citizenship is that citizens respect the rights of those in other subcultures and that they actively participate in the political sphere in which legislation is debated and written in English. Maybe there are a few other minor things that can be added here, but the foundation is built on this very simple premise.
Pluralism is superior to multiculturalism because it demands a certain level of compromise and assimilation. No subculture can easily exist in isolation from the others, and when conflicts arise citizens from conflicting subcultures will go into the political sphere to seek solutions, and they should be able to expect to find there a fair, neutral political process. That neutrality is established by preserving a rigorous secularism in the political sphere. Some groups may not like that, but it’s the price they must pay in exchange for the stability and equity that ideally citizens will find in the poltical sphere.
I’m basically describing the way most of us live already. And it would be common sense if it were not for the efforts of monoculturalists on the Christian right who are bent on having the political sphere operate according to the values and behavioral norms of their subculture–that’s all it is, a subculture. Even if at one time it was the dominant subculture, it’s not now, and will not be in the future. The people on the Christian right knows this, and like the mullahs in the middle east, their attempt to dominate the political process is a last, depserate effort to assert themselves before they disappear into fringe-group irrelevancy. That doesn’t mean that they can’t cause a lot of problems in the meanwhile.
In any event their mistake is in thinking that the political and cultural ought to be conflated, and it just can’t happen if a thriving pluralistic society is to be achieved. Any subcultural group can decry the low state of morals or the superficiality of those outside their world, and they should be free to proselytize and persuade in the cultural sphere. And if, indeed, they offer a better way, people will be attracted to it. But in the political sphere no group can demand that any other conform to its norms and values. And for this reason the language in the political sphere should never be religious language or any language that derives from a particular subculture.
The political sphere in an American pluralistic society needs to speak
secularese English–it’s the neutral language that is the only way people from
widely differing subcultures can communicate. Our continued speaking of English is, if nothing else, a gesture of gratitude to the English political traditions out of which developed the first modern democracies. And the language of
secularese should be mainly rights language, the language of civil
rights. And the state’s main responsibility is to define what those
rights for all citizens and to protect them from any threats that come from
individuals or groups.
But the point is this. We can all pursue the life we want in the cultural sphere without insisting that others conform to our ideas about what the good life is in the political sphere. It shouldn’t be a controversial idea. But it is so long as a basic cosmopolitanism isn’t embraced by all, no matter what particular subculture any American citizen belongs to. Cosmopolitanism while it does not at all require rejecting the particularities of one’s own subculture, it does require a healthy respect and curiosity about the subcultures of those outside one’s cultural milieu. We must all become cosmopolitans now, no matter how committed we might be to the values of our particular subculture, be it traditional, religious, or secular–it’s the only sane way to live in a globalizing world. And the world needs Americans to do this well so they can see that if it can work for us, it can work for them. It’s really not that hard to do, and we no longer have the luxury to do otherwise.
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