Chapter 7 - The Individual His Knights And His Marriage

Ruth and Paul did not know it, but they were born in a country and at a time when they had many rights. If there were any truth to the idea of prenatal impressions (which there isn't), the right to be wanted and the right to be well born would have been written all over them at birth. Both were born in the same neighborhood to middle-class parents who had fully accepted the current ideas of the times. Both were raised by "the book," meaning according to the methods advocated by pediatricians, child psychologists, and child psychiatrists. As soon as they were old enough, they were taken to nearby playgrounds, because all children had the right to play. From there they proceeded in due course of time to schools which made every effort to foster and permit their right to develop. Along with the classroom program, there were sports and sport facilities of all kinds to guarantee their right to be healthy. Likewise there were many school activities to guarantee their right to personal and social achievement. After a public education program which represented the best efforts of their community, both Ruth and Paul went to college. Here the same goals were emphasized—those of mental growth, intellectual development, and social achievement. Meanwhile their parents were straining every effort financially to maintain them there in adequate manner, denying themselves many things and centering their hopes upon the continued progress of their children.

Ruth and Paul had known each other in a casual way through the years, but it was not until after graduation from college that they "found each other." They thought alike about many things, both were full of high aspirations. Ruth wanted to write, short stories perhaps. Paul was interested in the advertising field, where he quickly found employment. A year after their graduation from college, they went to a nearby city and were married. Several days later, they came home and told their parents what they had done. They had thought about telling them before they went to be married. But then, it was their marriage; it was their right to select their own mates and to be happy. Therefore it seemed entirely natural for them to marry first and tell their families afterward.

Some time after their marriage, they talked about having children. They agreed that it would be interesting to have one or maybe two, but not now. Ruth did want to try her hand at writing for a while and Paul allowed as how he wanted to concentrate on his advertising job for the time being. Ruth also mentioned from time to time her interest in radio as a career. She knew of several girls who were making "fabulous" money at the studios.

The next two years were full of excitement for Ruth and Paul. Ruth finished three short stories. One was accepted by a magazine. True, it was a small one in the Midwest, but it was a start. Paul had gotten three raises, and was deeply engrossed in his work. There was a lot of entertaining of other young couples, all with similar backgrounds and interests.

It was in the third year of their marriage that Ruth began to center more and more of her interest in radio. There was talk, too, of the new medium, television, and the marvelous opportunities which it presented. She began spending a lot of time at the studios. It was exhilarating, and instructive too. Dick Forlan, one of the staff, was particularly stimulating—so keen of wit and so sparkling in conversation. Ruth felt herself "grow and develop." At home, she talked almost constantly about the studios, frequently mentioning Dick's name. But Paul seemed not to notice. Perhaps it was that he was thinking a good deal about Jane. Jane was a girl who worked in the research department of the advertising firm which employed Paul. Jane stimulated him, gave him ideas, seemed to relax him when he was tense. The more he saw of her, first at work and then afterward outside of work, the better he seemed to be able to work. Periodically he would get on a creative peak, as he called it, and then Jane would be particularly helpful.

It would be difficult to find the exact time when their marriage came to an end in a nonlegal sense. Ruth and Paul just developed apart, according to the values which had guided their lives from the beginning. After all, it was Ruth's right to develop, through short-story writing, through radio, and through television. For a time, Paul had been the inspiration vital for her development, and now it was Dick Forlan. That might be unfortunate for Paul, but, after all, one must go on. The world needs people like you. And so with Paul. He too had his rights—to develop, to be happy, to be himself, to be inspired. Once it had been Ruth, but that was several years ago. Now he needed Jane. She was a great help, especially when he was on a creative peak Ruth might be unhappy, but you aren't of help to anyone when you aren't happy yourself. Vale Ruth. Vale Paul. Vale another marriage.

People Are Reflections of Their Time and Place

It will help us to understand Ruth and Paul, and the outcome of their marriage, if we see them as reflections of the time and country in which they were reared. They were the products of American life in the middle of the twentieth century, molded in certain respects as precisely as an automobile factory turns out a specific model. Certainly if they had been born and reared in Formosa, Ceylon, Sicily, or Spain, their conception of themselves and their rights, their attitudes  toward marriage, and their duties toward each other, all would  have been quite different. Ruth and Paul were individualists, products of a society which emphasizes individualism as a, supreme value in life. It is this which is the essence of our way of thought and which distinguishes it from that of other nations.

Nations, like persons, are uniquely different, not only in the material aspects of their life, but even more in the ideas and values which they accept, which envelop them at every turn, almost like the air they breathe. Popular speech recognizes this uniqueness about the home we visit, the city in which we reside, and the country we live in, in such phrases as "the atmosphere" of the home, "the spirit" of the city, "the sturdiness" of a people. One might liken it to the theme which runs through a musical composition. In fact, a contemporary sociologist, Morris Opler, has suggested the term theme for something very much like what we have in mind. Dr. Opler conceives of themes as meaning the values, declared or implied, which guide the activities and control the behavior of its members. In other words, themes are the common values which are the keys to the national pattern of behavior, the values by which we live.

One need not be a profound student of history to realize that all of our great nations have been distinguished by some distinctive theme or basic value, commonly accepted by its citizens and similarly recognized by peoples in other countries. The central fact in Greek culture, for example, was form and rhythm, the order and clarity, the precise proportion that one finds everywhere—in its literature, its science and philosophy, its painting, sculpture, and architecture. Perhaps no one has expressed this theme better than one of the characters in Xenophon's Economics in which he points out how beautiful it is to see "footgear ranged in a row according to its kind, garments sorted according to their use," "cooking pots arranged with sense and symmetry." "All things, without exception," he adds, "because of symmetry will appear more beautiful when placed in order."

The mere mention of Rome calls forth the idea of organization—empire-building, construction of roads, administrative ability, and the establishment and codification of law. Or consider the Western medieval world—truly a striking example of a culture dominated for a thousand years by one set of values. God was its central core, the hope of salvation, the prospect of a new heaven and a new earth: these were its logical complements. Time was but a dressing-room for eternity. Earthly existence was not a biological experience but a period of religious preparation. Mankind was like a monk in his cowl, walking across the horizon of time, looking neither to the right of rebellion nor to the left of earthly reconstruction. The medieval culture lived in the dream of eternity.

Various other illustrations could be cited of civilizations distinguished by some one central recurring theme—the Chinese, with their system of ancestor worship; the English, with their emphasis upon character and self-control; historic India, with its obliviousness of time, its material desirelessness, and its interest in cosmic and spiritual reflections; or Germany, with its recurring stress on the importance of race.

When one considers the customs and history of other countries, it is easy for us to see these differences in their dominant values, and how they influence their people at every turn. It is rather more difficult to see this about ourselves; yet, until we do see ourselves as others see us, we cannot fully grasp how our own culture and its values create our problems, in marriage as well as in many other areas.

Our Individualism Is Deeply Ingrained

We have taken a sidewise look at other nations; a brief backward look is equally important, especially since it is said that the chief trouble with modern man's thinking is that he has not read the minutes of the last meeting. Not only is individualism the dominant theme or value in our American culture, but it is deeply ingrained in the national consciousness. Individualism is in many ways the inevitable product of our national history. In other words, we have come by our individualism honestly and naturally. This, too, must be appreciated if we are to understand its meaning for our marital problems.

There are many reasons for the marked individualism of the American people. To begin with, there is the selective process by which this country was settled. It was the self-assertive and self-reliant individual who broke the social bond with his homeland, who left kinsfolk, friends, and neighbors to stake all on a doubtful venture of migrating to a New World. And these hardy early pioneers were the people who gave the new culture its original individualistic base and bias.

Following the first settlements, the next three centuries were devoted to the development of the new continent from coast to coast. This was a gradual process, leading to a series of receding frontiers in which the emphasis was continually upon the individualistic type. The conquest of a new continent places a premium upon individualism. The frontiersman must act upon his own initiative. He must be able to go into the wilderness with axe and rifle and recreate civilization. He must be his own physician and priest. His life is the kind that fosters a strong antipathy to control. Any representative of state or society is resented as symbolizing unwarranted interference or oppression. And if such a representative oversteps the bounds, real or fancied, there is the alternative of the open road.

Meanwhile, as the last frontiers were receding, the industrialization of the United States tended to repeat the process of selecting and rewarding the same individualistic type in an industrial setting. In 1890, when historians were beginning to identify the last frontier in the West, the value of our manufactured goods exceeded for the first time, according to the returns of the Census Bureau, the value of our farm products. Four years later, this country exceeded all others in the volume of its manufactures. With the turn of the century, we appeared on the international scene as the young giant in the economic world and on the dawn of a series of developments destined to revolutionize every aspect of the national life.

All this continued the premium and rewards for the bold, enterprising, self-reliant individual. There were new industries to be established, new capital to be ventured, new products to be marketed, new forms of business organizations and methods to be developed. New cities had to be built, old ones had to be rebuilt, both had to be serviced and governed. The rights of private property were emphasized, the rewards of private initiative were enlarged. Competition was stark and constant in the freedom of opportunity for entrepreneur and worker alike.

One aspect of this industrial and mechanical revolution is of particular importance in this connection, not only as a factor in the development of modern individualism but also, as we shall see later, in its immediate bearing upon the family. This is the revolution in the field of transportation which has made it possible for the individual to move about with comparative freedom. We speak of this as the territorial mobility of the individual. Not that the fact of mobility is new in itself, for the dispersion of the human race over the face of the earth has been going on since the dawn of history. What is new is the unit that moves. No longer is it necessary to move in clans, tribes, congregations, and the like, as in earlier times, but now the individual man, and, what is more, the individual woman or young person, can move about easily, quickly, and cheaply. This Volkswanderung is new because it is the individual rather than the group that is moving about.

This modern form of transportation fosters individualism in many ways. In his freedom to move about, modern man's movements are freed from his group: he can move about on his own. He is freed from the limitations of space and all the restrictions which that imposes. Individuality with respect to spatial position alone is enough, in the judgment of some social scientists, to bring about individuality in other respects, for it involves the continuing exposure of the person to changing circumstances and contacts.

Moving about gives man a sense of his importance. The conquest of distance is an achievement in itself, and multiplying contacts accentuate his distinctness in many other ways. As he moves about, he parcels himself out to many groups of persons instead of being restricted to one or several. His relations with other persons become selective, each man working out for himself a system of life different from that of any other man, and not confined to one set of connections. A man's personality becomes more and more an organization by itself, distinct from any one group, and forming by itself a special and individual choice of social relationships.

We have discussed this historical process at some length to emphasize and to clarify that our individualism is a product of our historical experience, over a long period of time. It is important to remember this: that we are a nation of individualists, not because a cult of intellectual faddists has "sold us a bill of goods," but because of something that is woven into our national history.

How We Have Interpreted Individualism

What, now, does individualism really mean? Stated in its best terms, it means the right to develop as a separate and distinct person; the right to grow in the area of physical development, without the blight of malnutrition, medical neglect, or stunting labor; the right to grow intellectually, as far as adequate educational facilities permit; the right of equal status in the political realm; the right of freedom of religious worship as guided by the individual unit in our society. Seldom has the ideal goal of individualism been better stated than in the words of the late Franklin Lane, former Secretary of the Interior. "We are quickly passing out of the rough-and-ready period of our national life," he wrote in one of his annual reports, "in which we dealt wholesale with men and things, into a period of more intensive development in which we must seek to find the special qualities of the individual unit, whether that unit be an acre of desert, a barrel of oil, a mountain canyon, the flow of a river, or the capacity of the humblest man." Ideally stated, individualism is the motif of intensive development of the single unit. "We recognize nothing higher than individual personality," wrote Chernyshevski.

Turning to the concrete manifestations of everyday living, what does individualism mean? Words, after all, are but symbols, and it is important to know what the symbol means in the case of "for instances." Both Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin used the word democracy in their historic meetings, but the word meant widely differing political practices to these two men.

Suppose we consider the meaning of individualism in the specific field of education. This is usually spoken of as progressive or modern education. What are its ideals? We answer through the statements of Professor William H. Kilpatrick, of Columbia University, commonly accepted as the father of progressive education. According to him, it means: (1) the all-round development of the pupil by enlisting his interests, (2) a sense of creative self-direction on the part of the pupil, and (3) a resultant lack of disciplinary problems because of the friendliness and lack of rigidness in teacher-pupil relationships. Self-discipline is the basis of progressive education.

Other persons, who have become familiar with the practices of so-called progressive schools, charge that as progressive education works out in actual practice it too often means: (1) turning the children loose to do what they please, (2) absence of an orderly course of studies, (3) undue encouragement of self-expression, (4) lack of discipline and training in habits of obedience and the acceptance of authority, (5) lack of emphasis on social responsibilities, and (6) too many self-centered implications and overtones. And when such practices are combined with the widespread application of amateur psychiatric emphases which attribute each vagary of conduct to complexes, feelings of ambivalence, frustration, or the like, and thus requiring "therapeutic attention," a total situation develops which leads many parents to become quite restive with "progressive education."

Or we might examine the meaning of individualism in government. Theoretically, this means a system of government which allows a wide range of behavior and choices in everyday as well as in political life, consonant with the public safety, and the conduct of government in such a way as to promote the public welfare through the development of its individual citizens. This is the theory of political democracy at its best. Unfortunately, here again its concrete interpretation comes often to be an emphasis upon an increasing number and scope of rights which individual citizens claim the government owes to them, until the mounting total creates a statist society far removed from the ideals of the founders of the democratic state.

We have referred briefly to the application of individualism in education and in government. Other examples could be cited, but the question in all cases is the same fundamentally. What does individualism mean? Does it mean what its original intellectual expositors say it means, what their disciplines subsequently elaborate it to mean, or how the rank and file of people interpret and apply it? Is individualism an ideal, a philosophy, or a set of practices and values? It is our contention here that individualism has meaning in the field of family relations, not on the basis of what its intellectual expositors say about its ideals, but how family members express it in their family behavior. It is the practice, not the theory, of individualism that has concrete meaning in family relations. It is how family members live it, not how they talk it, that counts.

The Hard Core of Individualism

Looked at concretely, then, individualism has two fundamental implications. One is to place the individual ahead of the group, the other is freedom of choice. These are the hard core of individualism when it is translated into the practicalities of everyday living.

Let us look at the first of these. Spelled out in detail, it runs like this. Think, plan, work for yourself. You are the one to be considered. Make the most out of your life. Be happy yourself. You can't really make anyone else happy. Even if you want to help someone else, you can best do it if you are a well-adjusted person. Do what is right by your own lights. You are the best judge of this. Develop your own code. Follow your own star. You have your own career to think of. No one is going to thank you for sacrificing yourself. Be whatever you can, but be it wholly.

What, for this individual, is a good society? Clearly, it is one in which the individual is free to develop his own life and seek his own happiness. The emphases in such a society are upon the rights of the individual, not upon his responsibilities. His rights are paramount, in his political life, his social relations, his job, and his family.

If, perchance, some critical reader will consider this to be the harsh setting up of a straw man, let him pore over books on citizenship taught in our schools; let him read the platforms of our political parties; let him listen to official pronouncements, public debates, and popular clamor; let him hear the answers of our leaders, political and judicial; and get his answer. Count the references, weigh the emphases, identify the trends, and the answer will be unmistakably clear. It is so seldom upon responsibility with a clarion call for service. It is upon rights. "We demand ..."

If one stands back a bit and looks at this emphasis upon rights, it takes some curious turns in popular thought. Thus, if the individual fails in any important area of life, it is because his rights have been denied him, the cards have been stacked against him. He never really had a chance, or so he says. If, on the other hand, he succeeds, it is really due to his own efforts. It was because of his own abilities and prowess that he achieved what he did. Thus in marriage, if it fails, it was due to his wife, her parents, his job, the neighbors, and interfering kinsfolk. If he succeeds and his family life is happy, it is because he is really a very easy and forbearing person with whom to live.

Or it may be argued, and it is very likely that it will be, that the self and the egoistic drive are the same in all places and in all ages. "Taking people as they are," and so on, the argument runs. True, true. But the specific drives which actuate the individual, the goals which he seeks, and the values which he accepts do change. The saint with his bowl in the Orient, the broker on Wall Street, the nun in the nursing order, and the gangster in his racket are all developing their personalities and seeking their happiness, but they do differ.

Individualism implies freedom of choice. This is its second basic implication or requirement. Choice, choice everywhere. Choice of beliefs. Since secularization dissipates the hold of the old, the individual chooses from the new what he will believe. Choice of friends. Transportation and mobility of population free him from the limitations of space, so he ignores his next-door neighbor, jumps into his car, and drives eighteen miles to visit his neighbor. Choice in jobs. Specialization of labor multiplies the number of jobs, research constantly creates new ones, and the age-old custom of following in the footsteps of his father too is gone. Choice in leisure-time activities. His nose is no longer on the grindstone ten or twelve hours a day. He has time. He is free. This is true, even for women. The typewriter and the self-starter have been the milestones in their emancipation.

This places the matter of values in the forefront. What of our time-honored values? The modern individualist develops his own values. He rejects fixed truths. The fact that he is the product of his environment, as he has been taught, dissolves the validity of fixed truths. Even instincts are nonexistent, the contemporary scientist tells him. Unlearned inborn equipment offers no guide. Racial experience is not recorded in man's makeup. It is only man's rational choice and self-creativeness that can furnish the answers. He becomes the measure of all things. The deity is a form of his interpretation and also the creation of his need. Man is the crowning glory of creation.

Reinforcing all this is the secularization of our thinking. Science, not past experience, will help find the answers. The physical scientists promise modern man there is nothing he cannot know, and the social scientists tell him there is nothing he cannot have. As a result, the contemporary individualist, especially the urban dweller, develops what Richard Weaver, of the University of Chicago, has called a spoiled-child psychology, petulant with an almost hysterical optimism.

Curiously enough, the modern individualist sets himself up as the supreme authority at the very time he rejects all other forms of authority. But there is a correct answer, he says. Since the answers of the scientists and the interpretation of the individualist are constantly changing, the latest answer is the correct one. The most advanced moment of time represents the point of highest development. The latest automobile model is the best. The most recent book is the wisest. The newest theory abrogates all the earlier ones. Modern youth, as Will Durant said, knows better than the verdict of twenty centuries. All life, thus, is freed of restraint, and becomes frankly experimental. What was it Benito Mussolini said about living dangerously?

Someone is sure to raise the point here that there are few places in modern life where individualism of the foregoing kind is tolerated, and to deny this would be to ignore the obvious. Certainly our big cities, with large numbers of people massed together in small spaces, call for conformity; nor does the impersonality of their life place a premium upon individualism in character and development. Neither do the large school and the large industrial plant, with their regimented activities, foster individual self-expression. Isn't it true that we have been, and are, in the process of creating a society which has little respect for the individual and his vagaries, and that the present age seems determined to make all things uniform? Even our scientific efforts to manipulate personalities and public relations show scant respect for individual personality, nor do the fluctuating values of the market. Isn't contemporary man but whistling in the dark when he proclaims his devotion to the individualistic complex? Obviously there is some truth to all of this, although it can be argued with equal cause that the large school, the large plant, and the large city, with their impersonality and vastness, offer their own opportunities for individualistic behavior.

As university professors, the authors work in one of the most individualistic professions and in one of the most sheltered of environments. Yet we must constantly adjust to the university administration, inept though it has sometimes appeared through the years; to our students, disinterested as some of them are; to the grind of traffic, unreasonable as most other drivers are; and to our neighbors, callously indifferent though they appear. Is there a universe that is entirely free for our individualism?

Our own immediate contention here is that the more the individualist is curbed and limited in these various aspects of his workaday life, the more he turns to other areas to express his own particular bent. Clearly, this means his own private life, and foremost among these are his family relations. In other words, the more the individualist is frustrated at work, in traffic, in his public life, the more of an individualist he becomes in his home. This is another way of saying and explaining what other writers have said: that home is where a person tends to be himself, to let down his hair, to lick his wounds, and to restore his ego.

Individualism in Marriage

No apology should be necessary for this somewhat lengthy analysis of contemporary American philosophy, both because it is so very fundamental to the whole discussion of marriage and also because the reader has already been making applications of it to the field of our chief interest. We need, therefore, only to summarize in briefest form some of these applications.

Individualism in marriage means freedom of choice of mates. And such choice is to be made on the basis of individual desires, as shaped by the latest ideas and "lines." Why consult your parents, your kinsfolk, your pastor or priest or rabbi, as people still do in most parts of the world and have done through the ages? What do they know? Now, really. Why, they didn't even have cars with automatic drives and television sets when they were young. And grandpa, he didn't even know when he was a boy that you went to college to become a business executive. He just went to work. Why should you pay "any mind" to his judgment? Aren't you the one that is getting married? Isn't it your happiness that is at stake? Don't you have your rights?

Perhaps you are going into the service for several years. Why wait to get married? It will enhance your ego to do so now. Besides, Mary can keep on working. And if there is a baby? That will lift your morale, too. Mary will find a way to meet that problem. Also, her parents will take her in, and give her and your child a home. Mary, too, is willing. She can leave the baby with her mother when she goes back to work. Grandma is only fifty-two, came her last birthday, or was that two years ago? And she would love to have the baby to fuss over. Her arthritis doesn't bother her much. And doesn't life owe us something?

Two individualists are married, and living together. What now? The personalities of both must be developed. To each his own is the right to happiness and self-expression. To achieve this, their family life must be organized on an individualistic basis. The scholars speak of this as the personal schematization of life. It is an intriguing phrase. What it means in plain, everyday language is this—you go your way and I'll go mine. He has his job, so increasingly does she, away from home. Both have their own wage envelope or salary check. (And hers may be larger than his.) Suppose, now, he doesn't like the way she looks at Bill Smith who works in the same building. Thinks she, and perhaps says it to her husband: "Simmer down, I'm paying more than half the freight." The personality develops as the salary check increases.

Along with separate jobs may come separate car pools, separate associates, separate interests. The two personality developments are now proceeding in separate directions. Soon one or both may make a discovery. The marital mate no longer serves the purpose for which he or she was selected. And there may be someone else who serves that purpose now. The logic of individualism soon becomes clear—in fact, it is irresistible. If one selects a mate and marries solely for personal happiness and personality fulfillment, then, when the mate no longer serves that function, the basis for marring is gone. The rest is merely a matter of the necessary arrangements, as circumstances permit. Ideas and values have a way of working out to their ultimate conclusions. It is so with the individualistic complex in marriage.

Nor does the individualistic complex manifest itself solely in husband-wife relationships. One sees expressions of it through the whole range of the family cycle. It begins with the ambitious drives of many parents for their children. This is especially apt to be the case in small middle-class families where the parents are seeking to express themselves through the lives of their children. The children are put under a good deal of pressure, sacrifices are made for them, opportunities are opened up for them, none of which is lost upon the children and their own drive for development. Often, because of their superior advantages, such children develop to a point where they look down upon their parents, insisting upon emancipation from their control. One phase of this is the insistence of the children to choose their own mates, because their parents "just don't understand"—this in spite of two decades of sacrifice for them by the parents. Their marriage follows, and continues until the respective individualistic developments of the mates bring them to a parting of the ways. Other marriages follow. Meanwhile, their parents are aging; perhaps they are ill, and in need. To assume responsibility for their parents would impede the relentless drive for individual development. "Let them (the parents) go to a nursing home." Besides, "they have their social security." It is society's responsibility. It is our right as citizens to have good nursing homes and social security.

Here, then, is the lengthwise picture of the contemporary individualist. He has the right to every advantage that society and his parents can give him. He has the right to marry when and whom he pleases. He is not obligated to stay with mate and children if they impede his development. He has no responsibilities for his aging parents, and certainly not for his grandparents. He has the right to have society (other people) step in and assume the burden. If this picture seems harsh, let the reader sit back and take a good look around.

By way of conclusion, it has not been our purpose to depreciate individualism per se. The happiness and personality development of each individual, including the lowliest of men, are desirable goals. We have sought rather to show what their undue emphasis must of necessity involve. The line between the individualist and the self-centered person, between individualism and selfishness, is a very narrow one. That is why the history of individualism as a national theme is not reassuring. Whenever and wherever it has appeared as a major cultural value, untempered by the necessary antidotes it is followed by the downfall or inner decay of a culture. The desire for personal happiness degenerates into social latitude, and the drive for self-expression carries within itself the seeds of self-destruction.

To the extent that individualism is a desirable goal, it must be safeguarded by an emphasis upon complementary and counterbalancing values. Civilization of necessity involves the smooth functioning of inhibitions and restraints. Applied to marriage, this means that the search for happiness and personality development through family life must be accompanied by a_ tempering emphasis upon thoughtful consideration, parental duty care of the aged, and family solidarity through cooperative responsibility. The family is not for me, it is for us.

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