The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [39]
On the other hand, perhaps we should not hold Justice Scalia to a higher standard than we apply to ourselves. If we all have blind spots, there is no reason he should not too.
6.
If I am correct in arguing that deeply embedded cultural assumptions and biases influence us in ways we hardly recognize, then we should worry a great deal if the culture around us bombards us with messages that do not correspond with what we would believe if we considered things from a distance. The task for us is to identify the elements of culture that have these influences. In other words, we’re fish that need to discover the water. If we do, some of the power that cultural norms have on our decision making may evaporate.
Of course it is impossible for me to recognize all the influences around me, any more than you can identify all those around you. But let me mention a few:
Patriotism and nationalism. In 2009, a ten-year-old Arkansas boy named Will Phillips made waves in his Washington County elementary school by refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.30 He did so to protest the lack of equality for gay and lesbian Americans—he said he would not say the pledge until there was truly “liberty and justice for all.” Of course it was his right under the First Amendment to refuse the pledge, but that did not protect him from reprimands from teachers or ridicule and bullying from other students. Will deserves admiration rather than correction, since his act gives others a chance to snap out of the rote recitation of the pledge and listen to what it articulates: a promise of loyalty to our country’s banner.
Not all of us may want to promise such loyalty, at least not unconditionally and out of habit. Patriotism is so customary for us that it sometimes disables critical thought. Yet the mere suggestion of that possibility would get you shouted down in most classrooms, public forums, or bars around the country. Laws requiring the pledge to be recited at the beginning of each school day, and the practice of singing the national anthem before the start of any significant sporting event, have the effect of instilling and celebrating national pride. That is a worthy goal. But such patriotism comes at a cost, especially when citizens of other countries are also socialized to believe in the exceptionalism of their own nations. The cultural norm of patriotism makes it much more difficult for citizens in each country to recognize the ways in which their respective nations have acted poorly toward others or would stand to benefit by learning from others.
There are, of course, benefits to socializing citizens to have pride in our nation—we have much to be proud of. These benefits erode, however, if patriotism is not only pervasive but unthinking.
Consumerism. Some of us call shopping “retail therapy” since we shop when we’re happy, stressed, or depressed. Malls are our new public squares, where seniors power walk, teenagers cruise for flirtation, and middle-aged professors try out new electronic gadgets. We teach our children at an early age that one of their primary roles in life is as consumers—one of the newest children’s stores spreading across the country is called BuyBuyBaby.
After September 11, our leaders asked us to express our patriotism by buying something. President Bush urged Americans to “fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.” New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said, “Go to restaurants. Go shopping. Do things. Show that you’re not afraid.” Florida Governor Jeb Bush asserted that “we need to respond quickly so people regain confidence and consider it their patriotic duty to go shopping, go to a restaurant, take a cruise.”31
As my colleague Juliet Schor has written, “In contemporary American culture, consuming is as authentic as it gets. Advertisements, getting a bargain, garage sales, and credit cards are firmly entrenched pillars of our way of life. We shop on our lunch hours, patronize outlet malls on vacation,