November 21, 2003
OUR OWN CARGO CULT:
Wannabe Yanks: Theodore Dalrymple regrets that we import many of America’s vices but none of her virtues (The Spectator, 11/23/03)
American virtues are much harder to convey, let alone imitate, than American vices. These virtues are, in a loose sense, spiritual, or at least philosophical. As Marx wrote in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, ‘Theory becomes a spiritual force when it is gripped by the masses.’ And Americans, en masse, believe that their lives are what they themselves make of them. It is from this belief that their wealth arises; and it is from their wealth that their high culture arises. What Virtual America does not convey is that the world’s best universities, best libraries, best scientific research laboratories, best cultural institutions are American. America is simultaneously demotic and elitist, but only the demotic is communicated to consumers of Virtual America. But it is the products of the elitism that are admirable, and so essential to American affluence.The consumers of Virtual America see the affluence and are embittered that it is not theirs, but they do not understand the culture or effort that created it. They are like Africans who see the wealth of Europe but have no idea where it came from, or of the depth of the intellectual tradition that created it. Like Africans, they become cargo-cultists, expecting wealth to drop from the skies by supernatural delivery. When this fails to happen, they grow bitter and enraged.
In fact, a combination of American demotic culture and expectations inculcated by the welfare state is a disastrous one. When the demotic culture is not combined with or ameliorated by a belief in personal striving for material improvement, but rather with the idea that affluence is delivered by the government through confiscation and redistribution — that is to say by the promotion of ‘social justice’ — a uniquely horrible, new culture is forged, the culture of embittered slovenliness. The British are increasingly a nation of angry slobs.
Well, that crack about baseball caps was unnecessary. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 21, 2003 8:19 PM
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but the Cargo Cultists were Pacific Islanders, not Africans.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 21, 2003 8:48 PMJeff,
Not pedantic at all, merely accurate.
Errors like this call into question everything in such opinion articles.
That said, I agree with the conclusions.
It is really good to see Dr. Theodore Dalrymple quoted on this blog so often.
He's a British psychiatrist whose insight into current problems in society (mainly, British, but plenty US) can blow your mind (was that a pun?).
He sure receives a lot of flak in England for his commentary.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at November 21, 2003 11:13 PMWhen Dr. Dalrymple speaks of "white-trash American" styles of dress, I wonder if he's refering to hip-hop styles, which are urban black American ?
It seems far more likely, as white trash styles aren't cool in America, so it would be surprising if Europe picked up on it as avant garde.
Although I don't disagree with the good Doctor's analysis of the effects of television on society, it should be noted that people engaged in violent and potentially self-destructive behavior, in an effort to ward off boredom, since at least the advent of agriculture.
For instance, once the British figured out how to make distilled spirits cheaply enough for the masses to purchase, public drunkenness and alcoholism skyrocketed.
As I read it, he knows the cargo cultists were Pacific Islanders; he was comparing both the African elite and the European "consumers of Virtual America" to the cargo cultists, presuming familiarity with the African socialist claim to be entitled to the same wealth as the West without any willingness to recreate the culture, liberty, or rule of law that the West enjoys.
Posted by: pj at November 22, 2003 6:38 AMI read it the same way as PJ.
Posted by: Bruce Cleaver at November 22, 2003 9:04 AMI concur. While the Cargo Cults were first noticed in the Pacific, they've since been recognized, as Dalrymple notes, throughout the rest of the non-Western world. What's scary is that he is saying that large portions of Europe have adopted the same pseudo-religion.
I remember when the Pathfinder landed on Mars a number of years ago, and one of the scientists in charge was estatic about the images being returned. He insisted that they were as good as being there, it proved there was no need to travel in person. I was struck by this statement-- do people really watch Cancun beaches on television and consider that to be as good as going in person? Why do people spend all that effort to travel to exotic places when they could stay home, saving time, effort and money, and let some mobile robot do it all for them? Then again, one of the first things that happens to places like Cancun is that they are made over to resemble American suburbs, so that the people who do go there won't have to experience anything too much out of the ordinary. And what local culture people do encounter is treated like a theme park, a Williamsburg displaced in space instead of time. I half expect people who go "trekking" to places like Nepal think that all those quaint foreigners are being paid to wear those costumes and only pretend to live that way during working hours.
But I digress...
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at November 22, 2003 3:53 PMMr. Ortega;
You're conflating two complete different activities. The scientist was thinking of "being there" in terms of acquiring information about the location, where as vacationers in Cancun are interested in experiencing certain things. If your only intestest in Cancun was was the beach looked like and the local topography, I don't see why you wouldn't prefer a robot. If you want to breathe the sea air and feel the sand between your toes, that's something else again.
Therein lies the problem with our current space program, AOG. Americans want vicarious experience, and robots just don't cut it.
Posted by: Timothy at November 23, 2003 1:37 AMI too was offended by the baseball cap remark.
Equating this American original with "white-trash"
culture is clearly a misinterpretation on Mr.
Dalrymple's part.