FOR all her talents and accomplishments, it is clear that Sarah Palin became the Republican vice presidential candidate more on the merits of who she is and where she came from — an identity that is partly real and surely carefully constructed — rather than on what she has done or promises to do. The same can be said to a lesser extent for the other hit persona of the season, Barack Obama — at the least, he ran his own successful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Once upon a time, Americans prided themselves on establishing what sociologist Philip Slater called “a culture of becoming.” Our uniqueness, in Slater’s words, lay “in our aptitude for change and our willingness to engage in continual self-creation.”
Our heroes were self-made men, and we lauded and emulated their journeys. We knew that the journey remade the man, and although we revered the original character traits that drove them to achieve, it was still their achievements that we ultimately prized.
But four decades of the “me” culture — the contemporary cult of self-esteem — have changed all that. We’ve replaced Slater’s idea of becoming with one of merely being. We’re all great, just the way we are.
We don’t have to win or be the best or do much of anything at all, because those concepts have been erased by the fact that whatever we do, whoever we are right now, is good enough.
But we sometimes forget that if we are to maintain our democracy, we also need to maintain and encourage high levels of real achievement — as opposed to mere self-satisfaction — by as many people as possible. In Thomas Jefferson’s words: “Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity.”
Call it the Popeye-ization of America — “I am what I am.” Rather than emphasizing how far someone has come from where they started, we demand that our heroes personify where they came from. A different kind of “me” fixation used to prevail: traditional American individualism. It was a positive force in US society. It contributed to our cultural dynamism, what Tocqueville called our “restlessness.” The inalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are individual rights. The Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights established a social space free of government interference, which encouraged people to pursue their own paths, live up to their potential, do great things. The freedoms we enshrined were intended to facilitate “becoming.” The rest was up to us.
It says a lot about who we’ve become that it no longer offends us that someone can be famous just for being famous. It says a lot that we don’t think twice when a candidate asks for our vote almost purely based on issues of identity rather than on policy positions or proven results. We’ve gotten used to the fact that it’s no longer about what you’ve made of yourself, but where you came from and who you “are.”
