How America Got Mean
There is more to this article than what is posted here. You can see the resat at
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/09/us-culture-moral-education-formation/674765/
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
How America Got Mean
O ver the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married . More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.
My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy , polarization , mass shootings , trauma , safe spaces .
We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy. What is going on?
Over the past few years, different social observers have offered different stories to explain the rise of hatred, anxiety, and despair.
The technology story: Social media is driving us all crazy.
The sociology story: We’ve stopped participating in community organizations and are more isolated.
The demography story: America, long a white-dominated nation, is becoming a much more diverse country, a change that has millions of white Americans in a panic.
The economy story: High levels of economic inequality and insecurity have left people afraid, alienated, and pessimistic.
I agree, to an extent, with all of these stories, but I don’t think any of them is the deepest one. Sure, social media has bad effects, but it is everywhere around the globe—and the mental-health crisis is not. Also, the rise of despair and hatred has engulfed a lot of people who are not on social media. Economic inequality is real, but it doesn’t fully explain this level of social and emotional breakdown. The sociologists are right that we’re more isolated, but why? What values lead us to choose lifestyles that make us lonely and miserable?
The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. The story I’m going to tell is about morals. In a healthy society, a web of institutions—families, schools, religious groups, community organizations, and workplaces—helps form people into kind and responsible citizens, the sort of people who show up for one another. We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation.
[ Read: American shoppers are a nightmare ]
Moral formation, as I will use that stuffy-sounding term here, comprises three things. First, helping people learn to restrain their selfishness. How do we keep our evolutionarily conferred egotism under control? Second, teaching basic social and ethical skills. How do you welcome a neighbor into your community? How do you disagree with someone constructively? And third, helping people find a purpose in life. Morally formative institutions hold up a set of ideals. They provide practical pathways toward a meaningful existence: Here’s how you can dedicate your life to serving the poor, or protecting the nation, or loving your neighbor.
For a large part of its history, America was awash in morally formative institutions. Its Founding Fathers had a low view of human nature, and designed the Constitution to mitigate it (even while validating that low view of human nature by producing a document rife with racism and sexism). “Men I find to be a Sort of Beings very badly constructed,” Benjamin Franklin wrote , “as they are generally more easily provok’d than reconcil’d, more dispos’d to do Mischief to each other than to make Reparation, and much more easily deceiv’d than undeceiv’d.”
If such flawed, self-centered creatures were going to govern themselves and be decent neighbors to one another, they were going to need some training. For roughly 150 years after the founding, Americans were obsessed with moral education. In 1788, Noah Webster wrote, “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities ; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head .” The progressive philosopher John Dewey wrote in 1909 that schools teach morality “every moment of the day, five days a week.” Hollis Frissell, the president of the Hampton Institute, an early school for African Americans, declared, “Character is the main object of education.” As late as 1951, a commission organized by the National Education Association, one of the main teachers’ unions, stated that “an unremitting concern for moral and spiritual values continues to be a top priority for education.”
The moral-education programs that stippled the cultural landscape during this long stretch of history came from all points on the political and religious spectrums. School textbooks such as McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers not only taught students how to read and write; they taught etiquette, and featured stories designed to illustrate right and wrong behavior. In the 1920s, W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine for Black children , The Brownies’ Book , had a regular column called “The Judge,” which provided guidance to young readers on morals and manners. There were thriving school organizations with morally earnest names that sound quaint today—the Courtesy Club, the Thrift Club, the Knighthood of Youth.
Beyond the classroom lay a host of other groups: the YMCA; the Sunday-school movement; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; the settlement-house movement, which brought rich and poor together to serve the marginalized; Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which extended our moral concerns to include proper care for the natural world; professional organizations, which enforced ethical codes; unions and workplace associations, which, in addition to enhancing worker protections and paychecks, held up certain standards of working-class respectability. And of course, by the late 19th century, many Americans were members of churches or other religious communities. Mere religious faith doesn’t always make people morally good, but living in a community, orienting your heart toward some transcendent love, basing your value system on concern for the underserved—those things tend to.
I think most of this can be traced to the dehumanizing effect of technology.
Sorry if that makes me sound like Ted Kazynski.
Maybe YOU can....
High Lights had that, too. Two boys were confronted with the same situation. The moral was Be like David, don;t be a Butthead or something like that.
Many young people are rude. Today I was coming back into the building and I was standing right there and the rude young man in front of me couldn't be bothered to hold the door so I could grab it. I see this all the time. Holding doors open for people and not getting a thank-you. People stepping in front of you in line. It's not social media, totally. Parents don't teach their kids manners.
A culture that indoctrinates instant gratification and kick the can down the road mentality into its youth creates a lot of people with main character syndrome who don't deal with setbacks, or really any inconvenience, well.
“A culture that indoctrinates…”
Which is no different than adhering to a policy that ignores how our society is changing in a vainglorious and impotent effort to revisit the entirety insular postwar glory years.
Sure that's it. Our culture is dominated by people trying to revisit "the insularity of postwar glory years." Fits internet culture and Hollywood to a T.
[deleted]
Who's policy and who is adhering to it?
Well, that's not very nice, is it?
I guess I'm mean because I object to lying, bullying, death wishing people for their political beliefs, rooting for the kids of politicians to die to teach them a lesson, advocating for shooting random cops, racialists, etc. When I start cheering for people to die of a disease because I think it will help my political party, you can call me mean. I don't even tattle on people for attacking me.
[deleted]
Oh, yeah...I'm not a nice person. I'm the Queen of Mean and very proud of it. So don;t try to make me feel bad for telling me I'm not nice
You can count the amount of flags I've raised on this site in all my years here on one hand. I think one was for literal incitement for a crime, and a couple were for particularly viscous attacks on other people. I remember a poster who I believe has since died used to get brutally mocked for his looks and being old by some former moderators here and I remember flagging that a couple times years ago.
Maybe one or two others to prove a point. That's about it in God knows how many years of posting here.
Why are you trying to justify yourself to me? I know what I think about you and you can't change my mind. I don't think you're as fond of the truth as like to portray.
I just don't like being lied about.
[Deleted]
Makes some people feel superior. I have a tendency to laugh them off.
Overpopulation and overcrowding is a major factor
Exactly.
There are plenty of menial low-paying jobs, but advancement usually means continuous education and a 7-day work week for the salaried.
The miniscule number of lucky people get to make millions in the entertainment industry either in media or in professional sports. The competition is ruthless and the people who "feel" they were robbed by not getting one of those lottery winning slots is probably another major source of societal anger and hatred and how America got mean.
Seriously, how many people want to be friends with the people who got the position in life that they want for themselves?
I think this is kind of a closed-minded approach to this problem. It has become a matter of reflex to blame our problems on white racism. While this is a popular reaction, that doesn’t make it right.
Even though I, myself, enjoy diversity, I can recognize that several societies do very well with a lack of it. Consider Japan, Korea, Scandinavia, and Central Europe. These are some of the least racially and culturally diverse places on the planet, and yet socially and economically, they thrive. There may be something to be said in favor of homogeneity - perhaps not of skin color so much, but of culture.
It can give a population a common history, common morality, and thus common goals for the future.
We used to have this goal in our schools, particularly in the teaching of history and government. In the 19th century, educators began intentionally glorifying the Founders, the Constitution, and all things America. This trend was not about race, but about culture. It gave young students a sense of commonality. We are all Americans, and that means something. Today, that approach has fallen out of favor and is dismissed as white-washing.
To be sure, American history is not filled with events and people that might make us proud, but I suspect that the hard turn we have made to the opposite extreme (every settler was a butcher, every founder a slave-owning racist, tear down all monuments, racism is just as bad as ever - if not worse, etc.) has contributed to younger generations who know next to nothing about how this country was founded, how it runs, or what we are supposed to stand for.
Thus, everything around them is mysterious and dangerous to them. They don’t feel like they are a part of any of it. They put no faith in justice. They themselves feel no power to improve life and are not compelled to contribute to the community. They are hopeless.
I have repeatedly asked people on Newstalkers to point out one period, one era, one decade, even one year , in America's history when racism was not a major feature of American society. No one can do it because there never was such a period.
Thomas Jefferson described blacks in very derogatory terms. George Washington owned slaves that he never freed. Many of the founding fathers held slaves, and most of the first 15 presidents did.
And, the US has an unchangeable history of mistreating the Native Americans who were displaced, or worse by "manifest destiny".
For most of American history these things were whitewashed. I'm sure it is less now but we see in the plans of a Ron DeSantis the continuing desire to relieve whites of any uncomfortableness over racism.
Hopefully as older racists die off things will get a lot better, but we are hardly there yet.
Are only white people acting meaner now?
I would not dispute that. As someone who has actually taught history, I have said for years that you can’t study the history of the country without considering race. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing to focus on.
Ok, but so what? People everywhere, throughout time, have described someone in derogatory terms. Is that historically significant? I don’t think so. History is more than just a recitation of things that happened. There is a narrative to any history. The historian selects not just events, people and ideas for study - but those things that are significant for the narrative.
Thomas Jefferson being a man of his age is not historically significant. It’s not why we study him. We study him for the remarkable, new things he was doing, saying, or writing, and what they mean for us in the present.
That has been part of the history curriculum for pretty much forever. You’re not breaking bold new ground by declaring it 2023.
I don’t think that’s true. Matters of slavery, natives, women, immigrants, civil rights, and so on have always been taught. But when you focus on minutiae, like something TJ said about black people, you lose the forest for the trees. And survey courses aimed at the general population should be about the forest.
Are you still trying to sell the fiction that there is widespread and/or systemic racism in this country today??
The US has never been more diverse, and minorities have never had it as good as they do now.
Give us some evidence to prove otherwise. Someday maybe you'll realize that people like you are part of the problem
Your comment is, at best, condescending to racial minorities. You are clueless.
In some people's world, white people are the root of all evil.
You should think through this "racial demography" argument if you want to talk about condescending to racial minorities.
So Jefferson is "significant" only for the remarkable things he was doing but not the racist things he was doing. I'm sure this is the approach that led to the 1619 Project.
No individual is responsible for past racism, but the country is. Deny it all you want, it wont change a thing.
Yes! Is that really so hard for you to understand or accept? If Jefferson was only a wealthy Virginia landowner, who never wrote the Declaration of Independence and was never President of the United States, nor held any other office, and had no part in the creation of our country, why would we study him? What would be the point?
So when whites become a minority, and the left treats them like you dream whites treat minorities today, will you call them out and claim they are the cause of systemic racism?
Or are you perfectly OK for them to be racist against whites?
Instead of trying to avoid presentism in your interpretations of history, you embrace it as you distort the understanding of the subject.
Perhaps presentism helps to validate you political beliefs. Instead of depicting the past in objective historical context but instead viewing history only through the lens of contemporary progressive beliefs emphasizes the relevance of history to the present.
Jefferson was a part of the time in which he lived, not your time.
Are you a serious person?
As the saying goes "as serious as a heart attack".
Now, are you going to answer the question?
nice word salad.
If Jefferson was a mere product of his times why do we still teach kids how great he was DOWN THROUGH HISTORY?
You guys want the sweet without the bitter. Jefferson is a bittersweet figure in history, and there is hardly a historian of merit who does not acknowledge that.
I had a heart attack and you are not as serious. As serious as a laugh attack maybe.
"...all men are created equal" are arguably Jefferson's most famous words. Jefferson did not completely believe them. If you dont think that is historically significant I dont know what to tell you.
Meh...whatever.
Still won't answer the question, though.
There is a limit on how much I am willing to waste my time.
But I mean, you already know this.
If you don't get it still, then answer this question: Thomas Jefferson was the third of ten children. We have no reason to believe they were any more or less racist than he was. So why don't we study any of his nine siblings?
OJ Simpson was ONLY a famous football player until he wasn't. Saying Jefferson's racism is irrelevant to American history seems to be more denial than anything else.
We had hundreds of years of white people writing history. Now there is a more full picture. So what? It doesnt detract from the Declaration Of Independence.
It's about why we study Person X versus Person Y. The fact that Jefferson wrote those words while owning slaves is a footnote. Many people owned slaves. Only one wrote those words.
The importance of those words has nothing to do with slaves. It also has nothing to do with what Jefferson actually thought of Africans, Natives, women, or any other group.
It has to do with concepts of government and the philosophies that lay at the foundation of our country. They are part of a bold act of defiance against the most powerful country in the world at that time. He was composing his death warrant. It set the stage for a revolution of government and society that was unprecedented.
That is why we study Thomas Jefferson and the words he wrote. Because he did something that had never been done before and the stakes could not have been higher.
But you want to focus on the thing he did that literally everyone else (who had the means) was doing, had been doing for a couple centuries, and would go on doing for another 80+ years.
Your version of history is pointless. The study of American history should have a point.
That's not my point.
If you believe this racial demography nonsense, you are arguing minorities lack agency and their behavior is dictated by whites.
So, the thesis underlying this absurd analogy of yours is that everybody murders?
Don't allow your politics to justify lies. I haven't denied anything on the facts. Just the importance of those facts.
I'll tell you so what. We are talking about teaching history in the context of K-12 survey classes. Very general American history. You can always find new information, but is it worth changing the curriculum to focus on it? That depends on what you are trying to achieve with the curriculum.
Why do we study Math? Because it is useful to us all in our personal lives, and for many of us in science careers.
Why do we study English? Because it is our most spoken language, and mastering it aids in more effective communication. That benefits our whole society. Also, literature exposes us to artistic expression of the language.
So why do we have kids study History? You would have them study it to feel superior to people who lived 250 years ago. Or maybe so people of color could feel superior to white kids.
I would have them study American History so that every kid in the room understands they are American - what that means, and why it's a good thing. Part and parcel of that is the understanding that we have high sounding words in our history that were unfulfilled at first. Living up to our ideas of ourselves has been a long, difficult process. That caveat - if you like - has been in part of American history classes for generations.
But students still need to understand that the American revolution was something special and unprecedented that led to some amazing things - including them and their world. They need to understand what came before, and what the founders were trying to create so that they - as modern Americans - can be educated participants. One of the things the Founders relied on was that educated Americans would be taking an active and caring role in running the country.
If you are taught to hate the country, why would you bother trying to run it or improve it? Why, for that matter, would you even care about the people who live next door?
At no point am I suggesting that you hide the fact that Jefferson owned slaves. But I wouldn't spend a lot of time on it, and it is not why we study him.
You sound agitated.
I disagree that explaining that Jefferson was racist detracts from his place in history as the author of the Declaration Of Independence.
I dont know if there is anything else to say on this.
Is there a national character associated with Americans? Freedom loving? Hard working? Independent? If so, why deny racism as part of that character?
Or are individuals freedom loving and independent and those are not national traits?
You seem to want to promote an American exceptionalism in a way that precludes any bad traits in the national character. That is not reality.
[deleted]
makes that comment all the time. If you answer it he will just slink away in embarrassment like he did here:
[deleted]
You respond to everything I have said by dismissing me as irrational?
There are a limited number of school days. How much time would you like to spend on Jefferson’s racism?
You might ask the class to list the five most historically important things about Thomas Jefferson. Something derogatory he said about black people would not be in that list. It probably wouldn’t even make Top 10.
There could be. But it’s not going to happen on its own. We need to be intentional about it.
Yes! The whole purpose of any school system teaching a history course focused only on their country - by definition - is exceptionalism. Otherwise, we would just teach general history without regard to nationality. If you don’t want to spend time on what makes America unique and special, then there is no need at all for an American History course.
Remember the whole point of your seed. We want young people to care about life, about community, and about their country. If you focus on telling them that the history of the country is all dark and fucked up, and do it out of all proper proportion to the positive, then why would they choose to be anything other than selfish?
If you have been reading what I have written, you should know this is not true. I have never said anything close to this.
Word salad?
Tacos already gave you that answer.
I like objective history and you haven’t cited your presentist historians.
you could have fooled me
Huh?
What have they been taught?
"...never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. — . Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination…
… I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."
Damn his illiteracy of our genome, and population migrations. He is like the progressives 150 years later that supported eugenics. What a bunch of racist, bigoted mother fuckers.
Well, apparently that’s easily done here.
Actually I dont need you to interpret history for me.
I’ve never offered to. It’s clear that your bias has been baked in for years.
Did you ever the notice the people who judge those of prior generations for opinions that were conventionally accepted during their lifetimes almost universally offer nothing but conventionally acceptable opinions?
And that they also believe had they been alive hundreds of years ago, they would have been the of the small percent who opposed the dominate beliefs..
That’s my point. What are you going to teach them? Why? What is the desired learning outcome? What’s number one on your list? Is it “he said something bad about black people?” Will that be number two? Three? How much time will you spend on each?
You have to prioritize the curriculum. What you teach them is going to shape what kind of Americans they become.
So, you’re offended that a thoughtful man was speculating on an issue that was something of a mystery for most people at the time. I mean are you even reading how much he is hedging his own thoughts?
[✘]
I don't think that JR is interested in complexity or nuance.
That’s a big problem for our society these days. Everything has to be all one way, or all the other way. In this case, it’s with no consideration for what we’re trying to accomplish.
LOL. He wrote all that in a book. This discussion is becoming ridiculous.
[Deleted]
[✘]
You’re not addressing what is being said to you.
[Deleted. Further trolling will lead to suspension.]
That was the theme of Lincoln's electric cord speech. That immigrants who had no blood ties to the Revolution were just as American as those whose grandfathers fought in the Revolution because the principle of the declaration bind us as one.
Lincoln's been rejected for racial balkanization this century.
I enjoy the diversity of the different ethnic restaurants here. It complements the regional cuisine across the nation. As much as I love it, I can't eat Texas BBQ brisket at every meal.
Maybe the good doctor doesn't understand the definition of majority. Projected deographics of then USA in 2050:
I'm surprised she used the term freaking out.
Billy in Easy Rider: I never really thought of myself as a freak. But, I love to freak.
If one notices, almost all race demographics either rise or fall over the years, but the percentage of black population stays the same.
Probably because the number of black abotions and black on black killings will continue as they do today, keeping the numbers the same.
Last I checked 47% is less than 50.
Whites will be a minority along with all the others, and if you break it down "white / non-white" whites will be the minority.
Its hard to tell what your point was.
Drinker is correct. 47 percent is the highest number of all demographics, making them the majority. All others still minority.
Yeah, I don't think those statistics are right. Over 50% of Hispanics identify as white so that would make it around 62%.
No, 47% is the largest minority (of those stated). The largest minority is not the majority. The term "in the majority" means in the part that is 50%+ of the whole.
Not going to go down yet another of your never ending rabbit holes.
47 percent has the most people of all other numbers, hence, they are the majority.
Majority...the greater part or number
No other argument needed.
Yes, but much greater than 29%, you can see that even if the good doctor doesn’t.
Well that’s another wrinkle in the ID political game.
You can argue til your jaw falls off, but 47% will never be a majority.
From your link:
47% is not a majority.
I wouldnt go around saying that in public if I were you. If you total
you get to 98% (even that is incomplete because there is 2% of the population that does not fit those four designations , such as Native Americans) . Although the total population has to be 100%, lets just stay with the 98% listed above. 47% is still not a majority, the majority would be somewhere above 49%.
Find a better dictionary.
Relative to the whole.
From your own link:
The dictionary is fine. The perception of the definition is not.
Our great US Census doesn't break it down that way, why would you?
Let me clarify for you, demographic projects still show whites as the majority race in 2050 and our good doctor might be freaking on that reality.
Maybe Americans and America might not gain the reputation of meanness which IMO is closely related to arrogance (e.g. "We're number 1, the best there is.") if they and it were to adopt a little humility.