Our World is Upside Down

It strikes me that the principle difficulty facing traditional norms and values today is not liberal secular ideology (the right-wing radio boogeyman), but simply the rate of change in our world. When I was a child, I watched Captain Kirk say "Beam me up, Scotty" into his transponder. That was science fiction.

Today, I have an iPhone. Granted it doesn't do the full blown teleportation yet, but according to WikiPedia:

In August 2008, physicist Michio Kaku predicted in Discovery Channel Magazine that a teleportation device similar to those in Star Trek will be invented within 100 years.

So, the difficulty in passing on traditions to the next generation is that, other than certain basic ethical propositions (don't kill, steal, lie, etc.), the world today's children are going to have to navigate is going to be significantly different from that of their parents and light years different than that of their grandparents.

See Dreher for an anecdotal example:

The day I got my first paycheck in my first post-college job, I walked into my old campus saloon - the gang hardly recognized me in a suit - leaned on the bar and ordered a Heineken. Not a pitcher of whatever watery suds were on sale to the penurious undergraduates, whose wretched lot I shared only a few weeks earlier. Nope, I asked for an imported brand. And you know, for once I didn't have to worry about it.

That was 20 years ago. I don't know when I drank my last actual Heineken, but in a way, I've been a Heineken man ever since. That is, though I've never known wealth in my working life, I've also never had to do without, not in any serious way. There has always been money for Heineken. Live that way long enough, and you begin to think that the easy availability of Heineken is the natural order of things.

My father, he drinks whatever's on sale and doesn't care. That's his way. He was a child of the Great Depression. When I was a senior in high school, I tasted my first Heineken in, no kidding, Holland (cheap flights, a strong dollar - ah, 1984). When Daddy was a senior in high school, he installed the first indoor plumbing in his family's house.

Same planet, different worlds. [em: mine]

Economic dynamism loosens the relevancy of the past. The world changes, sometimes radically. In such circumstances, the wisdom and rituals of ones forefathers can seem less like the insight of the ages and more like old fuddy-duddyism that is simply out of touch with the times.

And, in such a chaotic environment, it is harder to implicitly teach the next generation simply "how to be," much less how to be successful or moral or wise. Not only are there not commonly agreed upon standards for what constitutes such behavior, but the very nature of society itself, and the demands it makes upon individuals, is constantly shifting.

And, gaping into such uncertainty can be daunting, decentering, and even disabling. A commenter on Dreher's blog captures the sense of cultural dislocation well:

(Caveat: I am Indian, so no scolding me about using the term "Indian"...that's what we call ourselves among ourselves).

Long ago, when Indian boys were very small, 5 or 6 maybe, their Dads made them a little set of bow and arrows. They used these to practice hunting. When they got a squirrel, or a rabbit, or even a little bird, they would take it solemnly to Mom. Their first kill was celebrated, no matter how small it was, and they were praised as hunters for anything they brought in to feed the family.

They were called "that MAN" when they did things like this, to build them up. And most importantly, ANYthing they brought in, the scrawniest little bird, a big deal was made about it, and right in front of everyone, the little morsel went right into the family cooking pot, alongside the deer or buffalo or anything else. It started that early, the work, the praise as men feeding the family. Yes, we men need that building up, from the earliest experiences. You would be surprised what proud words can do, or what the reverse can do to.

Now of course, little girls too were given miniatures of the tools they would use as women, would work alongside mom and grandma, learning to bead, to tan hides, making food, caring for the babies...this again from the age of 5 or 6. And they were also praised, and a big deal was made about the moccasins they made, and called "this WOMAN" even as a little girl when she did grownup work.

I contrast this with what I see when I see 18 year olds in this culture, doing horrible things, and people trying to keep them out of jail saying they didn't know any better, or they were so young. Doing terrible terrible things to each other. Unbelievable some of it. And all excused by parents, who want to be friends rather than parents.

If parents built up kids from the earliest age, 2 or 3, saying how proud they were when the kid did something good, was kind, picked up toys, made a big deal, that would be something. Not ignore them when everything is going ok, or act inconsistent. And when kids do bad, shame them, be disappointed, call them a "baby." Give them a rattle or a bottle. But then praise them again when they do good and call them a MAN or a WOMAN. That was how it was in the old traditional days among our Indian people. Back in the old days, sometimes kids even had to fight to protect their families, go to war, life and death.

I am really sad when I see the homeless kids. No one told them to be a MAN or a WOMAN was to help the family, be courteous to strangers, have self-respect. They think being a man or woman only means to have sex, to talk vulgar, drink, be violent, nasty, do drugs. That's not being a man or a woman. That is just being crazy (although now to many "crazy" means something good) and ugly. Teens want to be thought of as adults, it is a major thing. So how has it come to mean "adult" means sex and vulgarity, while taking care of yourself and others is "lame." Our world is upside down.

When the world is upside down, the old frameworks, standards, traditions no longer graft easily onto it. It becomes harder to always know where to turn, which direction to point ourselves, which way to guide our children. Many get lost.

And, according to Grant McCracken, it isn't likely to get any easier.

The original transformational power, once the property of gods, elders, and shamans, is now in civilian hands. Once collective, it is now individual, open to everyone. Once sacred, it is now profane. Once directed by the ceremonial calendar, it can now happen anywhere, anytime. Once strictly bound by tradition, it is now free, or at least freeform. When the power of transformation entered the profane world, it was exhuberantly transformed. Once this culture learned to give itself "bodies of another kind," it did not cease until it was capable of endless range and variety.

The price, of course, was high. Driving ritual from the temple cost us dearly. The punishment was the loss of an enchanted world that submitted to, that resonated with human designs. The universe became a chilly alienated, dislocating place. Good thing everyone now had their own powers of self-invention. They were going to need them.