Introductory Essay to an
interview with Murray Milner
MARS
HILL AUDIO
Journal Volume 68 (May/June
2004)
By
Ken Myers
People
often ask me how I come up with ideas for features on the Journal. The quick, if question-begging,
answer is that I read a lot of periodicals and publishers’ catalogs which
announce forthcoming books, looking for authors whose work seems to offer some
insight into our cultural moment. I said that’s a “question-begging” response
because it leaves undefined the issue of what criteria I use for identifying
potential insight.
Among
the criteria for insightfulness is an attention to cultural forms and
institutions. One approach to understanding culture is to focus on the ideas and
beliefs that are explicitly sustained, and to trace a history or genealogy of
ideas. Following the dictum that ideas have consequences, it is thus assumed
that the values, practices, and institutions of a culture reflect fundamental
beliefs. According to this method, the history of philosophy has a certain pride
of place in understanding how a culture’s values have taken shape. And if one
wants to challenge or change a culture’s values or practices, one challenges
fundamental beliefs, showing them to be faulty, inconsistent, or of dubious
origin.
This
is a helpful and often fruitful approach to understanding cultural life, and it
would be entirely adequate if human beings were brains in vats, that is, if
culture was purely an abstract matrix of ideas.
We
are not, however (and praise God), just brains in vats. We are, to borrow a
phrase from Marion Montgomery, created rational souls incarnate. We live in
bodies in space and time. Our beliefs take shape in cultural forms, and those
forms, effected by ideas, become causes of other things, sometimes of further
ideas. Ideas have antecedents: they come from somewhere, and not always simply
from the cross-pollination of earlier ideas. Values, commitments, and beliefs
are all influenced by, sometimes to a great extent, the concrete shape of our
life together. So, for example, a body of assumptions about human nature that
might be labeled “individualism” contributes to cultural institutions that
protect and advance individual autonomy, such as the prevalence of individually
owned and operated automobiles as opposed to vigorous public support for mass
transit. But living in a society with a complex network of individualistic
institutions lends great plausibility to beliefs about the individual. Ideas
have consequences, but ideas are also shaped and nurtured in the context of
concrete experience.
Now
that took a little while to explain, but it should shed some light on the sort
of thinkers I am more likely to regard as insightful: those who are exploring
the complicated interrelationship between beliefs, values, and cultural forms. I
say “exploring” rather than “explaining,” because this isn’t, as they say,
rocket science. Rocket science is much easier, simply a matter of physics and
chemistry. The study of how human beings come to assent to certain ideas, how
they act on those ideas, and how they act in spite of certain ideas, is a lot
more complex and mysterious.
Another
way of putting this is to observe that the way we believe shapes the way we
live, and the way we live shapes the way we believe. There are no hard and fast
laws here. People may live in ways that contradict their beliefs, or believe
things that are inconsistent with the way they are living. But there is some
relationship between the two. And since certain institutions shape the way we
live more than others, they are likely to influence the way we believe as well.
By
“the way we live,” I don’t just mean the explicit ethical choices we make. I’m
referring to very mundane, concrete things: whether people live in cities, in
the country, or in suburbs, whether they drive to work, whether they live near
extended families, whether they change jobs frequently, how much time they spend
with their kids and in what circumstances, whether they bowl alone or in
leagues. Many of the ways we live are encouraged by large economic, political,
and technical forces, so the range of choice on such things is narrow. One could
choose, for reasons of principle, not to own a car, but then the number of
places you could live would be extremely limited. One could decide that living
close to extended family is healthy and beneficial, but what happens when the
company you work for relocates or transfers you job to the other
coast?
How
we believe is shaped (in some measure) by how we live, and how we live is shaped
by larger institutional forces with long histories and powerful momentum (which
is why our periodical, committed to understanding contemporary culture, often
looks at long-term historical trends).
Christians
believe that some ways of living and believing are better than others. And some
of us take a rather comprehensive view of this, insisting that Christian
conviction begins with what we believe and practice concerning God and sin and
grace, but continues into how we understand and pursue law and education and art
and farming. Some of us even believe that how we live is more than simply a
matter of sustaining kindness, fidelity, and sacrifice,
that in fact some forms of social organization do a better job than
others at reflecting the kinds of creatures we are. So living well is not simply
a matter of holding onto the right ideas and having the best intentions. Living
well, under God, involves pursuing a kind of order, cultural forms that accord
with the nature of nature and human nature. Truth and goodness, the rational and
the volitional aspects of life, are complemented by beauty, the formal
element.
So,
how do I come up with ideas for features on the Journal? I’m looking for people who will
help us understand specific trends and tendencies in contemporary American life,
and who share with me some sense that structures and convictions are
inter-related. For example, when I first read a description of a new book by
sociologist Murray Milner, I learned that he was trying to understand why
American teenagers act the way they do toward each other. Why are there
increasingly rigid social pecking orders in high schools and ever-more strict
boundaries between groups? How do the cool kids learn to be cool, and why are
the mean girls so mean? Why is it that coolness is
increasingly tied to expensive consumer goods, to something one buys? Does the
behavior of teenagers toward one another and with their stuff reflect some prior
beliefs about the good life and social belonging, or do beliefs emanate from the
behavior, which is induced for other reasons?
Murray
Milner’s book is called Freaks, Geeks,
and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption.
As soon as I saw the title, I was intrigued: Milner was looking at three very
important social institutions in American culture: the institution of the
Teenager, a concept that is only about 60 years old; schools, especially
age-segregated, compulsory, universal schooling as we now know it, also a new
thing; and the world of consumerism. Three powerfully influential institutions,
each of which is so thoroughly established in social experience as to be
rendered invisible, and each of which depends on the other to sustain power and
influence. As Milner observes, “Our educational system plays a central role, not
just in giving people technical skills, but also in molding their desires and
ambitions. Life with one’s peers, in and out of the classroom, powerfully shapes
people’s world-views and personalities.”
Schools
and the structure of schooling orient the affections of our children. How and
why are they doing so? There aren’t many questions about culture more important
than that. As Milner approached this topic and began to research it, he saw that
status differences were profoundly important in high school peer relations.
Status rankings were so important to high-schoolers
that they reminded Milner of earlier research he had done on the caste system in