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Do Ideas Matter in America?
Americans like to think of themselves as a pragmatic people, with little use for professors and fancy ideas. Yet they also live and die for abstractions such as freedom and equality. That’s not just some inexplicable paradox but a key to understanding the American intellectual landscape.
In his classic study, Childhood and Society (1950), the psychologist Erik Erikson observed that “whatever one may come to consider a truly American trait can be shown to have its equally characteristic opposite.” Though a similar ambivalence can be found in many national cultures, traceable to a variety of causes, Erikson insisted that the bipolarity was especially pronounced in the modern American instance. In none of the other great nations of the world, he contended, were the inhabitants subjected to more extreme contrasts than in the United States, where tensions between individualism and conformity, internationalism and isolationism, open-mindedness and closed-mindedness, cosmopolitanism and xenophobia were powerfully felt.
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Wilfred M. McClay teaches history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he also holds the SunTrust Chair of Excellence in Humanities. He is a former Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow, and the author of The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America (1994). This article will appear in an extended and adapted form in The Blackwell Companion to the Twentieth Century, edited by Stephen J. Whitfield, to be published later this year.
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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and in no way represent the views or opinions of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. This section is moderated by Wilson Quarterly staff.
Thanks
Thank you very much, I really enjoyed this article. I think it would be interesting to consider why "middle ground" thinkers like Lincoln and Emerson hold appeal across the low brow - high brow spectrum as you describe it. Also, is the problematic role of the artist as it stands in America unique to America? Granted, Americans do not largely support the arts, but they do thrive in many ways, and if the goal of the American artist is to reach a populace tensely negotiating many ideas do not the themes of most of their works regard that tension? My only problem is that if only a few intellectuals like Lincoln, Wolfe, McCullough and others you mention manage to reach that tumultuous middle ground I believe it follows that they are the most gifted communicators of their ideals. For high brow thinkers may have a well developed lexicon to elaborate and share their ideas, but if they cannot effectively persuade the middle and low brow populations their ability to communicate is limited. I think it follows that the thought that American artists aim to appeal to that common group reveals the true value of an American landscape rich in diverse idealiogies: that leaders can emerge from different aspects of our society and in their chosen fields, whether political or artistic. Finally, those same leaders often participate in many of those aspects. Lincoln afterall was well read in and valued poetry and Oliver Wendel Holmes, jr. was a soldier as well as a writer. Thanks again.
Posted by: J Moran | 1/10/04
Americans what to be left alone to ........
As a thought general thought Americans what to be left alone to do whatever their life is. Example WW II " the Big War" No matter what one did before the war is not relative ( work or life style ).Americans what to be , who they were a postman, teacher or a bum. It did not matter. They would do what was required of them , ( foot soldier , officer , airmen , sailor. What they wanted in the end was to do what they were before the war . To be left alone to do what ever success or failure .And not have someone or thing tell them different.Americans have the 'right'to be and do stupid things or great things.We what to be left alone and since we singular in nature we belive we have the right to right about any and everything and wrong and NO FOUL . Americans look forward, the past is used only to show success and the possibilities,
Posted by: Ed Seczney | 7/26/04