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Is It Bad to Come Apart?
At one time in my life, Charles Murray’s Coming Apart influenced my thinking quite a bit. That’s not necessarily a gold-star testament to the book (though it’s pretty good) since other authors or books could have acquainted me with the same trends. But since I learned it from Murray, his perspective was disproportionately influential in my early reflections about the sociological trends that are causing so much angst in America today.
I’ve now come to think, though, that Charles Murray has one thing rather wrong. Like so many others, he’s too attached to “together” America.
Murray presents the “coming apart” of America as a kind of crisis. I think most Americans share that feeling, and our politics reflects it: we keep looking for ways to come back together as a country, and regain our sense of purpose and our thriving middle class. What if we’re getting the wrong end of the stick here? What if the goal at this juncture should be more to arrange an amicable divorce?
Americans are still powerfully under the sway of mid-century nostalgia. We feel that our parents’ or grandparents’ time should stand as a model for how the country really needs to be. Truthfully, though, that period was kind of freakish. Our population was mostly native-born, which is an aberration for us historically. Wealth gaps were historically small. The war left us feeling enormous amounts of national solidarity, such as really can’t be maintained continuously across decades of cultural and economic change.
In short, division is more the natural way of things, so the trajectory Murray sketches (from “together” to “apart”) is perhaps deceptive, since it leaves one with the impression that his pre-Great Society starting point is really the natural orientation of American life, which may not be the right way to think.
Now, the plight of Murray’s “Fishtown” is of course genuinely alarming, and I find Murray a bit annoying in that he mostly shares the culturally and metaphysically impoverished views of the elite, and so won’t sign on to the sorts of measures that (in my view) would actually give us a chance at a healthier culture. I wonder what America would look like now if we had done a better job containing the damage of the Great Society and the Sexual Revolution? We could probably argue that both in their way (but especially the former) were the evil fruit of a society that was a little too obsessed with togetherness. One reason “coming apart” is so painful now is that we have whole demographics that are really too dependent on government assistance to function as internally cohesive classes. But for that, we might be able to drift apart without so much rancor.
Even despite those challenges we should realize that, Tocquevillian egalitarianism notwithstanding, most of our history has involved quite a lot of de facto class divergence (ethnic, religious, material and moral). If we work at it, we can find ways to handle those splits without tearing society apart.
Mind you, I’m not suggesting that we should segregate America into a caste system or anything like that. I want everyone to have as much opportunity as we can give them, and I like having an America in which any man can break bread with any other, regardless of the circumstances of their births. That does seem to be in the spirit of our society. What we don’t need is to obsess endlessly about “disparate impacts,” “microaggressions,” “equality of outcome” and other such concerns that mostly just speak to the basic (and really fairly obvious) fact that certain involuntary features of your life will inevitably affect your prospects and the way people respond to you.
The goal now should be, not to come back together in a nationwide American culture, but rather to establish a more workable modus vivendi so we can live more peaceably with our (ethnic, religious, moral and material) diversity. Maybe the ’50s were a golden age, or maybe not. But we can’t have them back again, so perhaps it’s time now for someone to counter Murray with a book called Coming Apart Gracefully.
Published in General
Right, wishing to protecting my country from criminals and terrorists makes me their equivalent. Utter nonsense.
You’re right, your statement is utter nonsense.
Argumentum ad Pee-Wee Herman.
It’s ignored in the analogy because the root cause is not relevant to the question at hand.
The analogy hinges on whether Rome had a permanent underclass (it did), and whether the U.S. is developing a permanent underclass (it is), and whether the underlying problem of that underclass being unemployable existed in Rome (it did) and will exist in the U.S. given time (it will).
How much time then? Well that depends. Obviously, removing labor laws that make people unemployable delays this problem substantially. Eventually however, automation catches up. Service industry jobs are on a clock, and a much shorter one then most people seem to realize. There will be plenty of jobs in the future, but they will require skills that are beyond a certain percentage of the population at the moment.
Figuring out how to get the least intelligent of our population enough skills to sustain themselves in a tech dominated future is a very real problem, and too many people (Pethokoukis for example) have resigned themselves to the Roman solution.
That’s quite a tease. ;) Have I missed something?
BTW, good piece.
I think that Murray’s phrase “coming apart” was meant in two senses. First, far too many of the nation’s families have been falling apart. Second, family failure has led to failed, unsatisfying, unproductive lives.
Excellent point, LM. The new gig economy is running square up against the bureaucratic labyrinth of regulations. Technology is eliminating the need for many regulations which were designed to keep the public safe. I’m much safer in an Uber car where the all the driver’s vitals are recorded than some taxi driven by a guy who was in Somalia last week.
People don’t necessarily need to change professions to thrive in the gig economy, they just need to adapt how they use their skills to make a living. If they have no skills to provide in the gig economy then they either need to get some skills or have a low-paying, no skill needed job.
Government regulation and the labor unions want to kill the gig economy because they lose power and revenue. People need to choose between the past and the future when they vote.
This is the piece that hasn’t been spoken yet (or if it has I missed it); our public education system is also a relic of the post-war generation. It became captured by the education lobby/bureaucracy.
The way we get everyone the education needed is in radical, persistent individual and community experimentation. Homeschooling, charter schools, private schools, vocational schools, Khan Academy and all manner of online resources, technical schools, etc., etc. A breakup of the education monopoly will, over time, help address the skills problem. Having families that push kids and find the right alternative, that’s the other part of this equation.
Apologies if you were already headed this direction.
When you start thinking about this seriously, you start down some dark paths. In particular the Gattaca path. In the future you don’t let people with low intelligence to be born, and the small percentage that are will be relegated to existence at the sufferance of the State.
They’re are plenty of options that avoid distopia. Eventually automation will reach a point where almost no one works, but everyone easily has far more than they need.
Though I guess that is a distopian future of a different kind.
Entering and living in someone else’s country illegally isn’t “poping anyone’s bubble.” Who knew?
Well its all good till the Borg invade.
(This is how I think in my darker moods.)
Demography is an interest of mine. If you look at the demographic trends, instead of an over populated planet in 50 years we will be talking about under population. Europe and Africa will be Muslim (they can’t go east toward India because of India’s growing population), and the US will mostly Hispanic, with a substantial Indian minority.
In 100 years the world population will be declining so rapidly that automation will be a necessity just to keep living standards up. The human race has conquered the biological mandate to reproduce. If we are unlucky we will be the first species to commit suicide. If we are fortunate our robot servants will have human breeding program similar to the world-wide Panda breeding program to save humans from extinction.
Hispanic birth rates in the US are dropping. They will eventually reach parity with whites and blacks. Demographic trends rarely roll on uninterrupted for a century.
Will be necessary to keep GDP growth up, not living standards. Living standards will continue to increase quite easily.
The incoming bubble poppers I am speaking of form communities that are supporting beliefs contrary to democratic values long held and embraced by other people that have immigrated to this country. Recently we had a father murder his two daughters because they had become too westernized in his opinion. His community hid him and helped him escape justice by returning to his country of origin. Obviously that community has not assimilated to their new homeland or it’s laws. They also have protested and sued city government to allow enstatement of “their” laws. Their “bubble” is very different from past bubbles that have developed here. By settling in a certain electoral area they have managed to fill a couple of city council seats. We are holding our breath waiting for what comes next.
Well… as Murray pointed out, the Belmont folks actually do tend to attend church more, postpone childbearing till marriage, and generally live lives that appear to comport more with traditional morality than the Fishtown folks.
Nor is all postponement of childbearing among the Belmont folks due to contraception and abortion: young women who regularly attend non-Evangelical religious services postpone sex longer than the average Evangelical. Even girls brought up in those “Godless mainline” churches do this!
The Evangelical world, on the other hand, is more divided when it comes to sexual behavior: very devout Evangelicals are good at postponing sex, but something like 75% of the Evangelical population is not very devout, and this 75% is sexually precocious (explaining why the average age of sexual activity for Evangelicals is so low – even lower than for the “Godless mainline” denominations).
Pure anecdote: I grew up in a Philly suburb in the late 50s & 60s where many of the residents were Catholic. The parish church was the center of the lives for most of the parish which represented almost every strata of society. We had the impoverished, blue collar workers, mid-level white collar workers, college professors and very wealthy businessmen.
In addition to a parish school and clubs, socials, etc., once a week my father would go to a meeting of the Holy Name Society and mingle comfortably with men from all types of backgrounds. My husband relates a similar experience. His father was a dentist and his family was involved in many Polish-Catholic organizations and events. My husband talks of how his father took his patients fishing, stopped by the local bar to have drinks with ‘Lefty’ and ‘Buster’ and although they might not be invited to Sunday dinner, his father (and mine) developed friendships from all walks of life. Our mothers had similar experiences. Even Protestants (gasp) joined us in scouts, Little League and although there were few minorities, those that lived among us appeared to live just like us.
My husband and I grew up in a world where we didn’t recognize barriers until many years later. But sadly, I think that world is gone for good, I don’t see the churches, communities and shared civic life that created these bonds and mobility coming back.
I’ll add one more anecdote. We live in an area surrounded by much poverty and crime. Many (most) of our school students are immigrants. Having some free time on my hands, a few years ago I went to the local library and offered to host a free Craft Class for after school students. Each week, I’d pick a craft and make up individual kits, using mostly unused craft supplies in my house.
The class was announced with great fanfare. I started out with about 20 students, ranging in age from 7-14, mostly black and immigrants. The kids were wonderful and amazingly talented. However, as the months went by, attendance dwindled until by the end of the year, there were times no students would appear.
I was so disappointed because I enjoyed the class so much (I love kids), we talked and laughed and the projects were pretty amazing. I finally met with the Head Librarian to see what was up and she told me, quite frankly, that the mothers (mostly African-American) resented the fact that I was white. I’m not sure that Coming Together is a possibility anymore.
Yes, I grew up in a small city where everyone went to public school and there was very little class consciousness. Your dad worked at a factory or was the CEO, made very little difference. We shared a common culture. Now I don’t feel I share a common culture with wealthy people, or poor people, or a lot of the middle class either.
Not necessarily any more that your neighbor having a kid.
I liked (and learned from) Coming Apart, but I thought Murray was a little too enamored of the notion that IQ =intelligence. I say this as a person who did well on IQ (and other) tests, and nonetheless know myself to be, in many significant ways, a moron. (Just ask the game wardens I work with. Or my husband.)
All six of my darling children are intelligent. Each of the six uses his or her very-fine-brain in a completely different way from all the others. It’s bewildering, frankly, but illuminating nonetheless.
Even if we confine the definition of “intelligence” to “doing well on the IQ test and/or at Harvard” I think there are still vast reservoirs of very intelligent people that have yet to be snapped up and sequestered by the meritocracy. The well of smart old-line WASPS (moi) is probably pretty tapped out, but there’s lots of talent still trapped in inner cities, Downeast Maine and, for all I know, Congo.
I did say this was my “darker” mood.
I tend to agree about automation leading to unimaginable material abundance. (In some sense, we are already there.) However, this sort of world provides interesting challenges to the anti-socialist. When production requires little to no human labor, income is determined solely by capital. We then have two choices: redistribute income or redistribute capital. We are also then faced with how to handle envy. If we think the protests over inequality are bad now…
The most important thing we have lost as a result of the 60’s revolution is a shared belief in what is moral and immoral. Of course we had differences, most groups accepted artificial contraception while some did not. However any person who ran for President declaring that they supported abortion in all 9 months of pregnancy, would have been soundly defeated by the largest landslide in US history.
Now the problem is that most people accept the premise that there is no absolute truth. If there is no truth then their can be no agreement on morality. More importantly if their is no truth there can be no justice.
Fortunately, Z, this won’t be our problem. It will be our children’s (or grandchildren’s, or great-grandchildren’s) problem, and I have a lot of faith that they’ll figure it out. We don’t give ourselves credit for all the weird things we’ve adjusted to…they’ll adjust as well. It’ll be okay. Human beings will be human beings, God will show up in interesting new/old ways, and freshly baked bread with melting butter will still be just unbelievably freaking good.
Re # 27
I think anyone of any color who voted for LBJ owes reparations to inner city black school children, and should donate to some school that is now effectively teaching them.
Re # 50
Well off conservatives think a lot of equality talk springs from envy. And maybe it does. But maybe it also comes from the resentment lower middle and working class people feel over the way the rich are now more socially and culturally separated from them.
Yes, anecdote for you, but your data is just part of Murray’s salient datum from which he describes how back then “Fishtown” and “Belmont” had not yet come apart. What Murray describes as having come apart are cultural norms shared by the then “ups” and “downs.” What he sees as worthy of longing, Lu apparently sees as good riddance.
“What if we’re getting the wrong end of the stick here? What if the goal at this juncture should be more to arrange an amicable divorce?”
Huh. Very good question. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s and, indeed, have considered this the gold standard. “And the world began when I was born….” (The Westerner, Badger Clark).
I agree it’s worth pondering. But for our country’s whole history, not just the mid 20th century, the dominant culture had a common morality of sexual restraint, the dignity of work, obligation to one’s community. It seemed to me all classes participated in that culture, honoring it even in the breach. My understanding is that Murray sees that the upper class still mostly lives the sex and work morality for themselves, but encourages and supports a lack of that morality in everyone else, to the extent that the dominant culture is now simple hedonism. I think there was money and power for those who dismantled our common culture, but they have left a dangerous legacy of confusion and hopelessness. I don’t see how you gracefully part ways with that problem.