For some time I have been reflecting on what it means to be an American (North American that is). This question has been pounded by nearly every expert and amateur imaginable.
My approach to this answering this questions is by asking two more questions that help clarify things.
Before I pursue these questions, I feel that a little background information about how I stumbled on this question is necessary. As you may well know, I am/have lived in Japan for some time now and I live my life in Japanese (the language) and in a more-or-less Japanese way. Outside of the USA, I am often confronted with questions about "what do Americans do?" Normally, these questions are put aside easily by explaining that all Americans are different. However, after some thought I realized that that answer is not really doing the question justice because after all no matter where you go everyone is different. There is nothing remarkable about that.
Furthermore, when you start to talk about anything real the distinction between individual wholes (be them people or things) becomes apparent. Nonetheless, we can make generalizations or models that help us predict things or explain the whole we live in. Thus, for this reason I feel that the relativistic viewpoint of America is rather limited. This viewpoint is often characterized by saying that American is distinguished by its differences. That differences are the essence of American culture. Which is true at the external level - at the level of culture, language and ethnic background. However, when we start to talk about the messy area of what characterizes the psychology of large groups of people, we start to encounter problems because we are discussing things with no physical existence we can never come close to the reality in "factual" form. Rather, all we can do is articulate and refine the defining images that govern the psyche of a large number of people.
Whew! That was a mouthful. Sometimes, I wish I could put things in a different way so that they did not sound so intellectual. So, please read this and use your good sense to determine if my words make sense. Do not trust any bullshit about sources. Who reads them all anyways? And most importantly do not trust ME. Trust your own good sense about being able to determine the truthfulness of what is written. If you read this essay until the end, it is my hope that you will see what I mean.
In Japan, I often tell people about the America that I know - not the television American, but the America of my family and friends. When I go home or when I meet American's in Japan, I am often very surprised at how different their way of thinking is from mine or that of my family's. Sometimes, it is so acute that I feel like we are from different countries.
Thanks to some much needed inspiration from John Taylor Gatto it hit me that in terms of philosophical tradition America is divided in two. The first half is the European/Mesopotamian/Asian/EveryWhereElse paradigm of dependence. And the other prevalent image is that which the transcendentalists hooked into which was articulated by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay "Self Reliance".
The first image of dependance is as old as agriculture and is a big big subject that I cannot cover today - nonetheless, very important. In short, nearly all non-hunter gather societies governing trait is that the individual is subjected to the benefit of the group. People must cooperate and do certain jobs and tasks together such as growing food. More often than not, this puts the good of the group before the individual. Theoretically, this action poses no problem. It even seems good from the outside. However, since each individual has unlimited egotistic desires and they desire to be better than other members of the group, the actual implementation of societies becomes much more haphazard. Naturally, all living things have a desire to distinguish themselves from others. Furthermore, this desire to be unique leads to an innate instinct towards self-preservation and reproduction, which in humans in further expanded into a instinct toward domination. Which creates social orders that are characterized by master-slave relationships - with someone with power, who makes an other person do their bidding.
As people are born with different gifts, some people and/or groups have developed the ability to influence other humans' decisions (think advertising, torture, blackmail, education, pavlovian conditioning and manipulation of images). Thus, we have pyramids for social structures, with a few people on top who govern the masses on the bottom.
So what does this have to do with America? Everything. This is the common situation of most cultures in the world and hence most of the cultures that people fled from to come to America. Riding on the waves of transcendentalism, protestantism and masonry, Europeans came to America seeking something different than the poverty (both physical and psychological) that they experienced in their home countries. These people's psychology was quite possible heavily shaped by the conditioning of the Old World. They were programmed to be dependent. However, once they had children in the New World, the children were suddenly free from the shackles of the Old World. In order to survive outside of the urban centers, people had to be able to educate themselves and be independent.
These unique circumstances, helped create such self-realized individuals like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Edison and lastly Emerson. Even-though, the time periods of their lives are quite different - what they have in common is a type of individualism that now seems remarkable or exceptional.
This image of self-reliance or individualism is perpetuated by the individual actions of people - by the choices that they make in their lives. Through these choices the values of individualism becomes a part of their being. Then, as they manifest these values in their lives the people around them - their children, family and friends can experience and taste the values through contact with these individuals. This is nothing remarkable. Just people being good wise simple people. This image of independence is what I am trying to articulate in this essay. I feel that this independence is the essential Americanism.
Furthermore, this is not a cultural characteristic (however, it does have a cultural manifestation). This independence is actually a universally available value. However, it just so happened that groups of people tried to actualize a social form of it in America. This has always been the balancing force against the social binding of dependence in American society.
Now, you do not have to look very far in America to see how the proliferation of "systems" have limited peoples freedom. Everywhere you look there is some system of dependence trying to capture a few more souls in its web. It is too much for me to go into depth about what systems exist, but to name a few: banking, debt, education, pscho-pharmaceutical industry, mega-corporations, agribusiness, the military industrial complex and many other.
In the end, what does it mean to be an American. It means that you value independence (spiritual, psychological, economic, social, etc.) over dependency. You are willing to sacrifice safety for freedom. In the words of Patrick Henry "Give me liberty or give me death!"
Posted by Elijah at October 28, 2004 09:51 PM