In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world
Essay 9: Death by Personality
The Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. But when we say this we must understand that the world-spirit does not always take the same form. So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all. This is especially so for our generation, as the forces at work against us are of such a total nature.
Francis Shaeffer, The God Who is There
Once upon a time in our own country, virtuous, upright living was seen as a noble goal. The quiet life was a grand ambition, free of fetters. One’s highest hope, two-hundred some years ago, was to stake out a tranquil future of domesticity, raising children and putting food on the table.
Our forefathers were not agreeable on many terms of governing, but they did agree on one thing: an American has the birthright to make his own choices. Living peaceably and morally upright (there were plenty of Puritans on those ships, after all)–that quiet life–was high on their list of priorities.
The first coins put into circulation in our nascent country, the fugio cent, was designed by Ben Franklin. At the bottom was stamped the phrase, Mind Your Business.
How American! And how ironically funny, since there are many folk today who would like to banish our current motto of In God We Trust. However, who in this present day, who has the gumption to return to the days of Mind Your Business? How in the world have we made the leap from mind your business to mind everyone’s business?
In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain cites Warren Susman’s idea of cultural evolution over the last hundred years or so. Prior to the change, our society could be labeled a “Culture of Character”. According to Susman, we have shifted to a “Culture of Personality”.
Cain says,
“In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn’t exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of “having a good personality” was not widespread until the twentieth.
But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. “The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,” Susman famously wrote. “Every American was to become a performing self.”
Somewhere around the time of Dale Carnegie and his suave book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, our nation began to lose integrity, bit by bit. Indeed, it is important to watch closely the things we say and how we say them, but did Carnegie foresee an age, ninety years post-publishing, where every respectful boundary in communication would be shamelessly torn down on something called the “internet”?
I think not.
Is it possible he caused more damage in the long run by preaching this gospel:
Say to yourself over and over: “My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.” ?
He is half right, of course, but he is also a hundred percent wrong. We actually weren’t made to live lives dependent on our charming manipulations, only to satisfy our own desires. Carnegie promoted this preliminary notion of self-help to a nation mid-Great Depression. And like a child in front of a bowl of candy, the American people snatched it up without once considering what effect it might have down the line.
Today, the stakes are even higher. Our eyes are trained to read a crowd, to know our audience, to put our best foot forward. Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World describes “how tech companies encourage behavioural addiction: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.” We’ve taken Grandpa Carnegie’s words and embroidered them to our heart; a pulsing, pounding rhythm–our lifeblood, dependent on the performing self.
We are surrounded by folks who cannot put their phones down. We cannot pass up a photo opportunity, we cannot pass up the chance to bring up our kids, our vacation, our job perks, our feelings, our leanings.
To win friends and influence people. It is difficult to tease out what exactly smells fishy–because it honestly doesn’t sound too bad, or even wrong.
Over time, our American M.O. has become less and less about living a noble life and more and more about selling ourselves as the ideal human, as attractive and magnetic as possible. I think it might horrify our predecessors, who sat down two hundred some years ago to “ensure domestic tranquility”. What could this possibly mean for our future, if our fundamental goal is no longer virtuous living, but looking pretty? How can we even be honest with ourselves when climbing a social ladder is basically an addiction to virtual reality?
In Quiet, Cain speaks of high schoolers who
“Inhabit a world in which status, income, and self-esteem depend more than ever on the ability to meet the demands of the Culture of Personality. The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up.”
We see it, we acknowledge the ruin and mental instability it causes, and yet we keep participating in this toxic culture of personality. We raise a glass to the challenge, we set our jaw and throw in our two cents to play. Then we press a weary palm to our forehead and declare we need to see a counselor or take some pills to reduce our anxiety and depression. Quit the game? Never. It doesn’t even occur to us. It’s the way we communicate, the way we advertise. We are enmeshed with our culture and we will receive the blows it offers, because we are still more comfortable playing the game than not.
It paints a sobering picture of the future; we know it isn’t manageable. We cannot ingest more. We cannot produce more. We are saturated and overwhelmed. We are miserable, but we still favor the flashy. Gaining friends and influencing people takes a massive toll. The cracks are beginning to show.
Edwin Arlington Robinson published a poem in 1897 titled, Richard Cory:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,”
And he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich–yes, richer than a king–
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Trust me: If he can manage it, Satan will always, always lead us to the hole dug by our Culture of Personality. It will feel like the most natural of progressions, because there are people we love, wallowing in the mud, beckoning us to join them. We were born close to the pit, and the Carnegies of our world will tell us it is just fine to work the crowd.
But there are Richard Corys, too–the ones who glitter–and you’d never know it by their picture on Facebook. They suffer to the end; they never make it out alive.
Where do you stand, then, when it comes to winning friends and influencing people? How many more Richard Corys must there be? Can one help another out of the muddy hole if we all refuse to look for a ladder?
So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all.
Francis Schaeffer
