Our Puritanical Heritage

Religious ideas survive even after the cult disappears. From the quasi-polytheism of Latin America to the pagan voodoo traditions of Haiti, psychic habits formed by theological beliefs have a life of their own that seem to carry on inertially long after their formal basis in a particular religion has been displaced. Sometimes words stay the same, but the ideas behind them change, what Spengler called the “revolution within the form.” Other times the formal ideas change, but the ideas remain the same.” A “formless revolution” perhaps? In any case, such seems the case with the persistence of America’s puritanical instincts.

This is most apparent in at least three areas: the environment, our recent obsession with obesity, and sexuality, of course. I was happy to see Alexander Cockburn take note in The Nation that our concern for global warming is as much an expression of our need to condemn ourselves for consumption than it is a rational course of action on the basis of science. (Even so, it masquerades as rational and scientific, though, unlike real science, it is very much an orthodoxy complete with heretics and excommunications.) He writes, “In a couple of hundred years historians will be comparing the frenzies over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the Christian millennium approached. Then as now, the doomsters identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the planet’s rapid downward slide. Then as now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic Church sold indulgences like checks. The sinners established a line of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today a world market in ‘carbon credits’ is in formation. Those whose ‘carbon footprint’ is small can sell their surplus carbon credits to others less virtuous than themselves.”

Dieting too is a funny thing. We are healthier now and living longer than any period in human history. Vaccinations, public health, modern medicine and the decline of malnutrition in the western world have licked most of the traditional early causes of death. So now we look for dragons to slay, including obesity. This has more to do with self flagellation than health, in my opinion. Physical activity, for instance, is more closely correlated with good health even in overweight people. Further, we are learning, that to avoid obesity something almost impossible, the psychological equivalent of starvation, must be endured. The ups and downs of weight loss have been shown to be just as unhealthy as being overweight. And for what? So that we can say a little hosanna each time we have a cupcake or carbohydrate? Life is meant to be lived and enjoyed. Unchangeable genetics have a lot to do with weight gain and loss, in spite of the highly moralistic account of weight in today’s America. The relative “go with the flow” vibe of Latin Americans and Mediterranean Europeans is so striking in contrast and so much apparently conducive to worldly happiness.

Finally, we have what can only be called the moral panic of internet predation. We have “sting” shows on MSNBC and constant calls for worry by parents. But children are reasonably savvy, not least because of the internet. All but the loneliest would seem to know better than to meet some older man at a hotel across town. Further, this concern with strangers masks a much bigger problem: sexual abuse by step-dads and boyfriends in this era of high rates of divorce. But condemning divorce would mean taking stock not of the behavior of others–strange, mysterious–but of ourselves and our friends. This would be too much. Puritans are much more comfortable with witch trials and the ritual exclusion of outsiders and offenders.

America’s Protestant heritage is undeniable, and it is often salutary. It includes everything from our concern with regularity, individualism, and religious freedom. But it also includes a significant psychic debt in our continuing puritanism. If we recognized this for what it is, rather than embracing its symptomatic expressions and ideologies, we would be able more rationally to ask if we’re pursuing happiness and balance as opposed to replacing one set of neuroses and worries with another set. Perhaps Tocqueville observed it best in relation to America’s Puritans, whose ongoing influence (like so much else) he discerned with great acumen:

The chief care of the legislators in this body of penal laws was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community; thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was not subject to magisterial censure. . . .
These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our age.