What changed in the 1960’s in America is the collapse of a Christian moral framework, the erosion of belief that morality is derived from God. For the first time many people, especially young people, began to find the external rules arbitrary, senseless, and oppressive. The counterculture did not reject morality; it was passionately concerned with morality. But it substituted Rousseau’s conception of the inner compass for the old rules of obligation. Getting in touch with one's feelings and being true to oneself were now more important than conforming to the preexisting moral consensus of society. By embracing the new morality, the children of the 1960s became incomprehensible to their parents. And as this new generation inherited the reins of power, its ethos entered the mainstream. As a consequence of this change, America became a different country.
The magnitude of the change is evident when we consider the philosophical presuppositions of the "old morality" and the "new morality." The old morality was based on the premise that human nature is flawed. Since human beings are inclined to do bad things, consulting the inner self becomes a very misguided thing to do. The self is the enemy; the self is under the sway of the passions; the self must be overcome. The wayward passions must be ruled by the mind or brought to submission by the will. Through reason or revelation, human beings acquire knowledge of the external order. Conformity to that order is the measure of how good a person you are. And the institutions of society should be devised in such a way as to steer flawed or sinful human beings away from temptation and to keep them on the straight path.
Rousseau turns this paradigm upside down. For him, human nature is basically good. It is society that corrupts man. The means of this corruption is reason, which is deployed to enable one man to advance above another, to accumulate more than the other, to appear good in the eyes of everybody. Since reason has become an instrument of sordid calculation, it is the enemy of morality and truth. In order to discover what is good and true, we must set aside reason and be in touch with our feelings. This is the romantic element in Rousseau. According to him, feelings never lie because they speak with the voice of nature itself. By listening to that inner voice, and following it, we can rise above the corruptions and compromises that society seeks from us, and we can recover our natural goodness.
The triumph of Rousseau's worldview gives rise to a new set of problems that could not have arisen under the old order. In earlier eras people didn't have "identity crises" because their moral identity was supplied by the ethical framework that they all took for granted. This ethical framework might emphasize different virtues in different times or places—thus one society emphasizes the warrior ethic, another the ascetic life, a third the life of production and the family. The challenge that people faced was one of living up to the moral order. The Spartan soldier might have wondered whether he was courageous enough not to retreat in the face of certain death. The medieval Christian monk might have doubted his ability to live by the Benedictine Rule. Undoubtedly there were members of the "greatest generation" who struggled to conform to the demands imposed on them by the regnant code: to remain faithful to their wives, go to church on Sunday, show up for battle when drafted, and so on. But in each case some external framework remained in place and provided an unquestioned standard by which human action was judged.
In Rousseau's new world, however, the external framework ceases to be authoritative for the whole society. A person can, of course, join the marines and embrace the military code, or become a Muslim and follow the Islamic regimen. But now it is the individual's act of choosing that is important. No one sees it as obvious that the military life or the Islamic life is the best or highest calling. Most people's reaction is, "Well, if it works for you," and "Well, if you're happy." In other words, each person must select his or her priorities and moral commitments in a society where other people are sure to choose differently, and in which there are obvious trade-offs to be made.
In Rousseau's world, moral identity is a problem because it is not given: it is self-generated. Authenticity and self-fulfillment represent an ongoing pursuit, and there is constant anxiety from the knowledge that this pursuit can fail. A person who feels inwardly directed to be an artist might, for various reasons, take a job in banking and spend the rest of his life feeling that he has betrayed his true calling, that he has "sold out." Moreover, even commitments that are satisfying at a given time can lose their hold on us; when this happens to the whole moral outlook we have chosen, the result is utter confusion, a crisis of identity. An "identity crisis" is what happens to you when a set of commitments that once seemed right no longer makes sense to you: suddenly you are cut adrift, you have lost your horizon, you no longer know who you are. These problems are peculiar to a society that has adopted the ethic of authenticity: in other words, they are American problems.
Why did the ethic of authenticity win such widespread acceptance in America? Because the drive that sustained the generation of the 1930s and 1940s could no longer sustain its children. The people in the "greatest generation" worked hard to triumph over scarcity and to win the freedom to make their own life—exactly what powers immigrants to the United States today. For those who grew up during the Great Depression, the conquest of necessity was a moral imperative—to own a house, to put food on the table, to save for the children's college education—and when they succeeded in this they felt a profound sense of achievement and satisfaction.
But their children found themselves in a different situation. They took comfort and security and opportunity for granted, and sought something more—something to give uniqueness and significance to their lives. In this quest, they often viewed the dogmatic rules, social conformity, and materialistic preoccupations of their parents as soulless and alienating. At this point they became prime candidates for conversion to Rousseau's way of thinking. He offered them a way to find originality and moral purpose, yet in a way that did not compromise their freedom. The success of Rousseau reflects a failure on the part of the "greatest generation": it failed to replicate itself. The children of the World War II generation emphatically and often bitterly repudiated the moral code of their parents. They rebelled by defecting to Rousseau's camp.
Today we can see the triumph of authenticity in the enormous importance that American society grants to the "artist." I use the term to cover not just painters but also writers, sculptors, actors, musicians, even athletes. In our time a large number of Americans aspire to be artists. I can't tell you how many orthodontists, venture capitalists, housewives, and limousine drivers have greeted me with the sentence, "I too am writing a book." I sometimes find this annoying: when I meet a cardiologist at a cocktail party, I don't say, "I too am thinking about doing heart transplants."
But I cannot blame the aspiring authors: being an artist is cool. And rich people who cannot be artists frequently try to identify with artists in some way. Tom Wolfe has pointed out that in America today it is much more fashionable to donate a million dollars to the Metropolitan Museum of Art than to give it to the Presbyterian Church. The CEO's wife would much rather sit on the museum board than on the parish committee. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that art has replaced religion as the leading cultural institution in America.
The reason that we admire artists is that they draw upon resources within themselves to express something that is distinctively their own. Think of such American originals as Ernest Hemingway, Elvis Presley, Allen Ginsberg, Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicholson, and Oprah Winfrey. It is hard to see these people bearing a close resemblance to their parents. They seem to have sprung out of their own self-conception; they have created their own public identities. We cherish them as pure originals. Historically, of course, art was not seen as producing anything new or unique; indeed, the artist was viewed as an imitator—one who makes copies of nature. The Greeks had a story about an artist who was so skilled that when he painted grapes the birds would peck at them. But today art is not admired for its fidelity to nature but for its fidelity to "inner nature." Contemporary art is seen as a vehicle for self-discovery and self-expression.
Our society attaches great prestige to this quest for authenticity, even when it takes strange or controversial forms. For instance, who can deny that there is something bizarre and even repulsive about people like Dennis Rodman, Howard Stern, Madonna, and Prince? At the same time, most Americans find them fascinating. There is something vibrant, creative, and distinctive about them; they live their lives in italics. Moreover, their outrageousness marks them as nonconformists who refuse to change their ways in order to satisfy social convention. Their personality says to the world, "Whether you like it or not, this is the way I am." Americans recognize the voice of authenticity here, and this is why they are so tolerant of such extremities. Indeed, the United States gives more latitude than any other society to the claims of the loner, the dissenter, and the eccentric. In other countries these people are viewed as losers, malcontents, or crackpots. In America, however, they are seen as undaunted souls who are following their inner convictions even at the cost of social rejection.
It is practically a definition of the cultural mainstream to say that the idea of authenticity—of being "true to oneself"—is now the new morality. We see it in corporate advertising: "Just Do It." "Think Different." "The Greatest Risk Is Not Taking One." Rousseau's influence is also evident in the rise of "victimhood" and "compassion" as political principles. As Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov write, "It was Rousseau who taught us to think of ourselves as good and to blame our sufferings and crimes on society. As for the politics of compassion, Democrats have been displaying moist eyes in public for at least three decades, but now even the Bush administration proclaims its allegiance to "compassionate conservatism."
- Dinesh D'Souza
I think D'Souza is leaving out one important fact in why there was a shift from the old traditional moral order to internal authenticity in the sixties. Many in this movement saw the old order as corrupt and immoral. The racism, sexism, materialism, religious hypocrisy, and American military imperialism (Vietnam) delegitimized the traditional moral order of the fifties.
I think D'Souza is leaving out one important fact in why there was a shift from the old traditional moral order to internal authenticity in the sixties. Many in this movement saw the old order as corrupt and immoral. The racism, sexism, materialism, religious hypocrisy, and American military imperialism (Vietnam) delegitimized the traditional moral order of the fifties.
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