The spirit of capitalism, 2000 - emotional maturity of adults

Public Interest, Wntr, 2000 by David Bosworth

If we survey the list above, the corruption of academia, art, and religion are especially telling--insofar as these were the most likely critics of the commercial order. They demonstrate vividly how one can still talk the talk of critical independence while walking the walk of tacit compliance. The infiltration of the private home by commerce also holds a special significance in that it helps measure the stunning rapidity of the changes that have taken place. As recently as the mid sixties, most of America's women and young children still spent a high percentage of their waking hours outside the official producer economy. (The consumer economy, of course, had already entered with a vengeance via the Trojan horse of commercial TV). Today's mass entry of women into the work force (and, consequently, of children into professional child care) has meant that the entire middle-class family is now being modeled not only by the seductions of the Avid Consumer but also by the over-specializations of the Efficient Pro ducer--by Weber's "iron cage" of highly rationalized, narrowly motivated social structures. As a result of these omnipresent, if contradictory, forms of modeling, our clothing is now stamped with the logos of commerce, our minds are now stocked with the jingles of commerce, our hours are now structured by either the rational regimens of commerce or those of bureaucratic government, and our humane responsibilities--whether as momentary as expressing a "sentiment" to our newly married friend or as monumental as caring for our aging parents--are increasingly purchased rather than performed.

What happened to adulthood with its full panoply of emotions, duties, competencies--its capacity for grace under multiple pressures? Adulthood has been disappearing because we now live in a place (both physical and social) radically different from the one we occupied even 40 years ago. This new habitat is a place fundamentally hostile to the virtues traditionally associated with maturity. This "new and improved" American place "grows" profit but eviscerates character; it renders our experience rationally efficient yet spiritually impoverished. Where has adulthood gone? It has been ramified, outsourced, divided into specialties for expert study and for product creation in the service economy. It has been rationalized and merchandised into non-existence.

What are the deeper sources of such a dramatic conversion? This is obviously a very complex historical question, one I can only address here in summary form as a means of framing the examples to come. To begin with, it is the logical result of the increasing triumph in American life of rational materialism, which is adept at manipulating the physical world but is also, and by design, humanly indifferent, metaphysically dumb, and morally blind. The cultural dangers of such a cluster of traits were largely avoided in America because our own version of rational materialism, "scientific capitalism," was preceded by, and (at first) politically allied with, strong traditions of both local governance and religious freedom--i.e., the original, still spiritually grounded Protestant ethic. Given those origins, our society managed to maintain a humane balance of power.