5. Authority
It will not come as a surprise that a society that admires independence and progress does not have an automatic respect for authority. What deference people in authority do command is based on their actual powers rather than on their age, wisdom, or dignity. Old people are often seen as behind the times. It’s the young who are expected to have some special insight into the modern world.
After all, it was by overthrowing the King of England that the United States was born, and suspicion of authority has remained a pillar of American life. This attitude has helped establish the USA as the birthplace of innovations that have changed the world. If a better way of doing something comes along, we unsentimentally jettison the old way. But we also jettison people. In a society that changes as fast as ours, experience simply does not have the value that it does in traditional societies.
6. The No-Status Society
In a status society, people learn their places and gain some dignity and security from having a place in the social order. Americans, however, are taught not to recognize their places and to constantly assert themselves. This can manifest itself in positive ways—hard work, clever ideas—but also in ongoing dissatisfaction.
As an American is always striving to change his lot, he never fully identifies with any group. We have no expressions such as in China where “the fat pig gets slaughtered,” or in Japan, where “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” Here, everybody is trying to stick out, which limits closeness between people. We say, “It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.” According to Alan Roland, author of In Search of Self in India and Japan, in the United States” a militant individualism has been combined with enormous social mobility,” leaving very little group identity.
Roland psychoanalyzed Americans, Indians, and Japanese and discovered that the two Asian cultures had no concept of the strong inner separation from others that is characteristic of Americans. Because our society is so competitive, we feel in the end that we can only rely on ourselves.
This freedom from the group has enabled the American to become “Economic Man”—one directed almost purely by the profit motive, mobile and unencumbered by family or community obligations. It’s a personality type well suited to national development, but one that leads to identity problems for the individual himself.
“Identity is the number on national problem here,” writes Eva Hoffman, the Polish-born author of Lost in Translation.” Many of my American friends feel they don’t have enough of it. They often feel worthless or they don’t know how they feel.”
But to someone who feels oppressed in another culture, American life can look wonderful. “Americans have a blank check, on which they can write anything they want,” concluded one foreigner after ten years here.
7. Conformity
To an American, what the world thinks of him is extremely important. Only through the eyes of others can success have significance. The theory of culture analyst David Riesman is that Americans are no longer primarily governed by inner values handed down through generations. Instead, he thinks Americans have become outer-directed people—guided not by their own consciences but by the opinions of others. To be liked is crucial.
Although individualism is central in America—in the sense that the self comes first—Americans are not individualists. Actually, persons in status societies who are secure in their niches are allowed more eccentricity than Americans, who rely heavily on signals that other people like them. In America, popularity is a sign of success and terribly important. Nobody can have too many friends—as long as they don’t take up too much of their valuable time.
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