Tag Archives: individualism

Society enables people more than it constrains them, part six

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My argument in a series of blog posts in the last week is that society enables individuals more than it constrains them. Rather than viewing modern society as a hindrance to individuals who want to be free to pursue their own objectives, we could instead look at how the human need and capacity for relationships is empowered by institutions, social networks, and society. And what humans can accomplish in societies far exceeds what they can do alone or in small groups.

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Looking back, this is one of the key things I have learned in 20+ years of studying sociology. In this particular social setting and time, we are often determined to see ourselves as individuals slowed down by society and its constraints. We cannot do what we really want or be who we really want to be. Our mass society wants us to conform and we want to break free.

But many of the features of life today that we know and take for granted came about because of mass society. Large cities. The Internet and social media. Clean water, available health care, and long life expectancy. Airplanes hurtling through the sky. Educational opportunities. Libraries. Music festivals. And much more.

On the whole, we could argue that society empowers people. To be in relationships with people and institutions can be good. They provide access to things humans not that long ago might only have only dreamed of. These changes might come with downsides – rapid change, traditions that faded away, a changed physical landscape, and so on – but humans working with other humans can lead to increased humanness, not just restrictions and limits.

One last example of how we might see this better. Multiple times, I have asked my Introduction to Sociology students to finish the course by writing a sociological autobiography (a project borrowed from several other sociologists). How would they narrate their life through sociological categories? I ask them to step back from just an individualistic view. In doing so, they both demonstrate that they can apply sociological concepts we have discussed throughout the semester and they can reflect on a different angle to their life: how their individual actions and experiences fit within relationships and social systems around them.

To repeat the argument, over the long term society enables people more than it constrains them. To not be in a society or connected to other humans is not ultimately freeing. How society is best ordered or organized is another matter; humans have promoted and experienced different approaches in different times and places. With relationships with other people and institutions, we can be empowered.

Society enables people through the human need for sociability, part four

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Humans are social beings. They need connections, interactions, and care. They require this early on as babies as newborns can do nothing for themselves. However, the need does not go away as people age; human sociability is essential to being corporately and individually human. Societies provide spaces and resources to be social.

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Surrounded in today’s ethos of individualism, we often like the idea that we can pick and choose relationships. We can go low contact or no contact with people who might have some claim to interact with us. We choose our friends. We pick our level of engagement in-person and online. We join the groups or organizations we want to join as long as they serve us.

All this choice might represent hard-fought wins of making our own choices free of what we perceive as constraints. But it can also provide the illusion that we do not need other people.

One research project has evidence regarding this issue. The long-running Harvard Grant Study found this regarding the importance of relationships over the long course of life:

“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships,” Vaillant says. Close relationships, the data indicates, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. The study found strong relationships to be far and away the strongest predictor of life satisfaction, and better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, wealth, fame, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.

And strong relationships are not only correlated with happiness, but with physical health, longevity, and financial success, too.

“The really surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health,” says Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who is the current director of the study. “The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80. Strong relationships help to delay mental and physical decline. Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care too. That, I think, is the revelation.”

This revelation can be seen in both positive and negative terms. Meaning that while strong community seems to protect us from the literal coughs and colds of everyday life, a lack of community is also deadly. “Loneliness kills,” Waldinger says. “It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.”

Humans do better when they are not alone. They benefit from strong relationships and connections with others. This does not mean there will not be conflict or hurt in these relationships. Yet the long-term effects can be positive as sociability helps individuals and groups.

Human beings are not the only species that are social. At the same time, the social component of human life helps boost what humans can do. Societies are built on these relationships and interactions, also providing resources and norms regarding how this sociability happens. To interact with, relate with, and care for others is critical to the human experience and what humans can accomplish together.

Society enables people more than it constrains them, part one

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As I regularly teach sociology courses, I continually come up against the idea that society constrains people. It tells them what to do. It limits them. It imposes behaviors and beliefs and belonging that they do not necessarily want. Society is an anchor many want to cut loose.

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This may reflect my setting: teaching sociology within the United States, a country where students have heard they are to be free to follow their own paths, to pursue their own goals, to become successful on their own merit. Individualism is alive and well in the United States and perceived conformity and constraint are negative.

But I will argue in this post and four to follow that society enables people more than it constrains them. To be human is to participate in social relationships. To live the good life as an individual involves being part of society. To participate in and contribute to social life is empowering in the long run.

Another way to put this: there is no solo human being. To be cut off from others from a long period of time is not healthy. Yes, relationships and society can bring pain and destruction; this is true now and throughout human history. But to now be part of a collective, something bigger than each of us as individuals, is to miss out on something fundamental to humanity.

One brief example from the classroom illustrates these points. What might we gain if we take a college class together as opposed to learning on our own (books, online, etc.)? Many people might feel frustrated by the classroom setting where the instruction, pace, conversation, or setting may not be exactly what they want. But what if we, in the long run, learn from and through experiences with other people? One can have a conversation with oneself but this looks very different than the talk possible when people bring their knowledge, experiences, and struggles to a focused conversation together.

In the next post, I will use the analogies of (1) groups of musicians and (2) sports teams to further the argument that society enables people.

Evangelicals and suburbanites: individualistic and “populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian”

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Historian Mark Noll described the cultural ethos of American evangelicals in his 1994 book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind:

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To put it most simply, the evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment. (12)

Does this cultural approach to life among American evangelicals match the cultural life in American suburbs?

I make the argument in Sanctifying Suburbia that there is significant overlap in the cultural toolkits of evangelicals and American suburbs. Suburbanites might not always be activistic – or might rally to a few particular causes that threaten their way of life – but the description above generally holds. Suburbanites often want to know what works to achieve the American Dream where they can own their own home, ensure a good life for their kids, and control their surroundings. They do not need experts or intellectuals to tell them about loftier goals or long-term projects; they want a good life for themselves and their households.

One important element I would add to Noll’s description above is “individualistic.” Suburbanites and evangelicals both privilege their standing before considering the collective fate of their neighborhoods, communities, and country. They envision social change starting with the efforts of themselves and a few others around them. They spend much of their energy focused locally. They think less about larger social structures.

Evangelist Billy Graham adopted this approach when considering the world’s ills. In his messages across decades, he often started with the issues facing the world. Crime, communism, war, unrest. And the answer Graham provided to all this was not to listen to experts and scholars talk about social factors that provoke bad activity but rather to address the issue of sin in every person and for people to turn to Jesus. By transforming individual hearts, Christians could then positively influence society and address the social ills Graham started with. I discuss this in more detail in Chapter 8 of the book.

Thus, evangelicals found suburban settings to be welcoming or comfortable as their approach to the world complemented and was influenced by suburban settings.

The line between good and evil in individual hearts – and across society

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I was recently rereading an abridged version of The Gulag Archipelago and came across one of the most famous lines:

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But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

This line gets at the nature of human beings and the fate of every individual. But as I read the sentences around this quote, I picked some sociological leanings. Here is more of the passage:

So let the reader who expects this book to be a political expose slam its covers shut right now.

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good an evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

An individualistic reading may not be the only one. Solzhenitsyn argues this issue faces every person. Individuals did make choices for evil and good but a these do not take place in a vacuum. At the same time, we can be swayed toward evil. He mentions “various circumstances.” Those might be our reactions to situations but it could also be about the people and norms around us. How much harder is to choose good when the people and institutions around us are pushing a different direction? The archipelago described in the book is not solely the result of one person; it was a system developed over time that involved millions. By the time Solzhenitsyn encountered the gulag, it had been operating for decades and would continue to do so.

American minivan sales peaked in 2000

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As the era of the McMansion and SUV emerged in the early 2000s, the minivan went into decline:

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Even so, minivan sales have been falling steadily since their peak in 2000, when about 1.3 million were sold in the United States. As of last year, that figure is down by about 80 percent.

What caused this decline? The same article suggests this:

However it evolves, the minivan will still be trammeled by its fundamental purpose. It is useful because it offers benefits for families, and it is uncool because family life is thought to be imprisoning. That logic cannot be overcome by mere design. In the end, the minivan dilemma has more to do with how Americans think than what we drive. Families, or at least vehicles expressly designed for them, turned out to be lamentable. We’d prefer to daydream about fording Yukon streams instead.

I am interested in some of the bigger connections that might be made around this same time (early 2000s). So family life in the suburbs – embodied by the minivan – became uncool? The 2000 Census was the first time 50% of Americans lived in suburbia. By this point, several generations of Americans had experienced or grew up in suburban settings. Is a choice of vehicles really pushing back against family life in the suburbs (even as plenty of Americans continue in these settings)?

Or another way to take the argument above is that individualism wins out over any symbols of family life. The iPhone and SUV somehow broadcast a consistent message of a cool or unique individual – regardless of how many people own the same model – while the minivan is saddled with family life. Did the long-term American yearning to be an individual doom the minivan (despite its peak in 2000)?

A third consideration: is this just a branding question? If so, other products have been revived so why not the minivan? Imagine a famous celebrity endorses the minivan and drives one around. Or a new brand emerges. Or problems arise with SUVs and the minivan is dependable. Or families become cool again. There may be limited interest in trying to revive the minivan but this could provide someone a marketing challenge.

Religion in the American suburbs: religious practices interacting with a suburban lifestyle

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What does religious practice, activity, and belonging look like in the American suburbs? Is it different than religiosity in other settings, particularly urban and rural settings? This can be hard to parse out. Because more Americans live in suburbs than other settings and because of the pervasive features of American religion, it can be difficult to know how different religious faith in the suburbs is from religious activity in the United States as a whole. But, here are three consistent ideas from scholars and pundits regarding what marks suburban religiosity.

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First, suburban religiosity is an individualized faith occasionally set within larger religious communities and traditions. If “Sheilaism” from Habits of the Heart was true generally of American religion in the 1980s, it could easily be placed in suburbia. Suburban residents, often with some means, make decisions for themselves about what to believe and practice. They have numerous options to explore, ranging from highly individualistic practices unique only to them to being part of large religious organizations with broad reach and influence. This individualistic approach has consequences; religious faith may be centered in nuclear families or religious small groups or disconnected from larger neighborhood or regional concerns.

Second, megachurches are often in suburbs. They are not exclusive to suburbs. But, the megachurch that we think of now begins to emerge in the postwar, suburban-dominated decades. These congregations are often in easy to access locations (near major roadways), offer high energy experiences, and draw people from near and far. The majority of American religious congregations are smaller with a median congregation under 100 people but suburban megachurches, think of a Willow Creek or Saddleback, have exerted outsized influence.

Third, religious congregations and practice have adapted to suburban lifestyles and patterns. This was a concern of critics in the postwar era: how could relatively wealthy suburbanites in comfortable settings practice their faith? Could religious faith challenge their lifestyles? It may be the concern of new residents in the suburbs today who wonder how their faith mixes with American life in the suburbs. Even with the amount of religious activity in the suburbs, can traditional religious practices, beliefs, and belonging in different traditions survive an encounter with American suburbs and their particular emphases? Given the amount of religious activity in suburbs, the answer appears to be yes – religion has survived – but it is probably not the same after interacting with suburbia.

How do we know these features of religiosity in the suburbs? The final post will look at sources for exploring this subject.

Housing, design, and keeping living spaces private

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While discussing the potential of cohousing, Kristen Ghodsee describes how the design of housing in the United States tends to emphasize individualism:

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Our bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, and dining rooms are places of great physical intimacy, and we often measure our closeness with others by the rooms we are willing to share with them. Close proximity also means vulnerability, and trust is an essential component of inhabiting common spaces and microbial environments. But our preferences are malleable. Both individualism and cooperation are learned traits; like muscles, the more we use them the stronger they become. Some of us just uncritically accept the private apartment or single-family home for ourselves because it is what our societies consider “normal.”

Americans like single-family homes and private dwellings. Even within these private dwellings, there can be plenty of room for people to have their own space and choose when they want to interact.

As noted above, imagining different housing possibilities is difficult because Americans are used to these options and what tends to be idealized. These options have been promoted for decades and backed with government funds and policies, ideologies, and preferences. To promote other options – like cohousing – requires a concerted and prolonged effort. Even calling such options “utopian” suggests it is unusual and perhaps unattainable.

And it is not like Americans are that much more likely to public to share spaces with others. We do have some spaces that are cosmopolitan where people of different locations and backgrounds can coexist and interact. But, we also more private spaces outside of the home that allow sociability and restrict who can be there.

This reminds me of the 2010 book In the Neighborhood where Peter Lovenheim tries to get to know his neighbors, with the mark of success being able to stay overnight. It is one thing to say hi to a neighbor, it is another to regularly welcome them into your home.

When strangers disappear from all of our photos

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This has been possible with Photoshop and similar tools for years but Magic Eraser from Google makes it even easier: we can get rid of strangers in our photos. Should we?

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My most Andy Rooney opinion, at least since the latest flare-up of the sleepover debate (I’m pro), is that we should not erase strangers from our family pictures. My original nuclear family’s albums, which my mother maintained in those classic 1980s scrapbooks with self-adhesive pages, annotating each image in her distinctive handwriting, are absolutely, positively chock-full of randos. When I was in elementary school, I loved to look at these pictures, hauling out two albums at a time and paging through them at our kitchen table. It was a time when I was becoming acutely aware of the difference between our family and others—not in a bad way, but in an interested one. We lived in a small town, and our family vacations gave us information about how things were elsewhere. I wasn’t going to pass up analyzing those clues.

The people we are around are also parts of our lives, even if we do not know them. To take pictures in public often means that others are present. We may not interact with them but we do not live in a world where we have our own bubbles and no one else is around.

There may be occasional times where removing strangers makes sense. Perhaps we want to focus on particular people or a particular scene. But, doing this at a larger scale always puts us at the center and makes it appear as other people do not exist.

Is this a continuation of the emphasis on the individual self? Social media, which is linked to the images we take, see, and use today, also encourages emphasizing ourselves. In images and a world where there is no one portrayed around us, we are at the center.

A future world where our pictures only feature us makes me think of Black Mirror or an extended global pandemic where streets and public places are empty. It would be a loss of our collective memories and the ways that we rely on nameless others every day.

The problems with suburbs: carelessness, lack of community

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Jason Diamond’s book The Sprawl: Reconsidering the Weird American Suburbs argues the suburbs suffer from these problems:

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The overall problem with the American suburbs has always been carelessness. Profit over people; keeping people out to keep up the property value; building up and out without much reason besides making more money. The idea is that what you and your family have is enough. What else could you need? Everything, you’re supposed to think, is fine as it is.

Almost every suburb in America has one thing in common: somebody built the place and moved on. These little subdivisions and towns were built, but they weren’t completed. Developers built houses and stores, but they couldn’t create community. And that’s the piece I saw lacking in so many suburban places from coast to coast: community. You can call the place you live one, but a community is only as good as the people who work to make it stronger. Nothing is complete: we’ve built the suburbs out, and now it’s time to grow them from within. It’s time to look at the past to see what we’ve done wrong, apply it to the present, and learn for tomorrow. Because whether we like it or not, the future is still in suburbia. We just need to reclaim it. (217-218)

Arguably, if you and your family have all you need in your single-family home and middle-class or higher lifestyle, what need do people have for community? People can believe they are self-sufficient enough to avoid reliance on others and can limit conflict with others. Whether this is actually true does not matter. Even as the suburbs have all sort of social networks and social interactions and are built on a long history of policies, decisions, and ideology, the perception that people can be independent and live the good life matters. This all contributes to the idea of individualism.

Reclaiming community at the suburban level is an interesting task. There are multiple communities already present in suburbia, but they do not necessarily advance the interests of the community as a whole or the people who might want to live there and cannot. For example, people are involved with local schools, public and private. Suburbanites care about education and how good school systems support higher property values. These interests and existing connections may be helpful or not for thinking about the community as a whole. Suburbanites like exclusion and local government control, two factors that can work against creating community for everyone.