Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [133]
For the first time in history, large numbers of people can lead the kinds of lives they want, unlimited by economics or culture. However, emotional depression is ten times more likely now than at the turn of the twentieth century. It seems counterintuitive that more choice leads to more depression. However, when we increase people's opportunities for control, we increase their expectations of control and their sense of responsibility for failure. When we have more choices in every domain, we must spend more time researching choices and negotiating these decisions with family members. Never in the history of the world have so many people spent so much time making decisions.
At one time cultures restricted options and circumscribed choices. Traditional morality served as preventive medicine protecting people from themselves. But, in a global shopping mall, many of the constraints from culture disappear. For our own positive mental health, we need to reconstruct some constraints. It is no accident that retreat centers are an increasingly popular vacation spot. Retreats restrict choice and thus, paradoxically, allow certain kinds of freedom. Another example of constraints is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights crafted by Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations after World War II. These rights exist for all people wherever they are. They set bottom-line limits about the choices governments have.
Cicero asked a question that's relevant today: "What is the set of rules that makes freedom possible?" The ideal culture would have exactly the right number of choices to maximize freedom and control in every domain. While citizens should have more choices than they are allowed under repressive regimes, prosperous American teens should have fewer. The perfect culture would be neither an authoritarian nightmare nor an existential Disney World.
WHAT REFUGEES CAN TEACH US ABOUT IDENTITY
E. M. Cioran wrote, "A civilization evolves from agriculture to paradox." As the world changes rapidly and becomes more riddled with paradoxes, we must deal with all that complexity. The challenge is to change in ways that allow us to experience our lives as continuous wholes. To be healthy, we must make choices to restrict choices.
We must prepare ourselves for a future that has arrived. We must educate our children to be global citizens who can live with all the paradoxes of identity, who can change while retaining a core of self. We want to give them the minimum daily requirements for identity. Otherwise, they will have a hard time holding on to their humanity in a world that increasingly defines them as consumers.
Identity is formed by art, writing, dance, music, and other forms of self-expression. It develops by answering questions about the self, whether via philosophy class, self-analysis, or psychotherapy. The questions are universal questions—Who am I? What do I want? How am I like other people? How am I different from other people? Am I a good person? Am I a talented person? Do I have something to offer? Am I loved?
To survive in this new century we all need what refugees need. We must adapt to a world that shifts constantly under our feet. We must be resilient or we will be lost. We need families who love us and will help us, rituals and traditions, and contact with the natural world and with our history. We need communities of friends to hold our lives in place and reasonable conditions in the external world—livable wages, decent schools and health care, safe streets, and opportunities to advance.
In a global village, identity is built by having the attributes of resilience and good moral character. In a world of infinite options, humans need a simple core identity and a solid set of values to sort through all the choices. To quote Beethoven, "Character is fate." Without a moral compass to guide behavior, one is adrift. One risks being swept along in the current of impulsive hedonism or running aground entirely, paralyzed by having the responsibility to choose without the wisdom.
Our moral