Expectations Gap

For every indictment of America there appears to be an equal and opposite reaction. Geneva Overholser of the Washington Post used the Cato Institute's study, "Is Our Culture in Decline?" ("U.S.Culture Is Thriving Despite All the Junk," IHT, 2/11/99, p. 9, c. 6.) to reassure gloom and doomers. She observes that Summer 1998, nineteen nations including some of America's best friends (but America was uninvited!) met in Ottawa to ponder how they could protect themselves and their culture from the United States and its culture.

She mocks: "Loathing the culture is as American as apple pie. Americans loathe it from the right, decrying rents in the nation's social and moral fabric, and yearning for traditions lost. Americans also loathe it from the left, bemoaning the distorting grip of capitalism and yearning for more government funding."

So how does this "moral rot" smell? She advises her readers to start with young people. "After two decades of increase, the proportion of high school students who have had sex has fallen 11 percent in the 1990's. . . .For the first time this decade, fewer than half reported having sex;among boys, the decline was particularly striking--49 percent, versus 57 percent in 1991." Notice the assumption that not having sex is a good thing. Scandinavian teenagers might have another take on this "improvement".

"Or take alcohol. In 1980, 72 percent of high school seniors said they had consumed alcohol recently, compared with 51 percent in 1996. In 1985, 17 percent of students said they had tried cocaine, compared with 7 percent in 1996. Violent crime is at its lowest point in 25 years." Notice the glib conflation of alcohol consumption with cocaine as valid indices of mature behavior. Surely German students would have a different take on beer consumption; French ones on wine. That's supposedly the not-bad news.

The really good news is the Culture Explosion: The average American buys twice and many books today as in 1947. "Television and the Internet have clearly not vanquished the book." Without knowing what "book" means in specific terms, this is a meaningless datum. All we so-called book-lovers know is that independent bookstores increasingly feel themselves up against the wall of insolvency. "From 1965-1990, the number of symphony orchestras in the United States grew from 58 to nearly 300, opera companies from 27 to more than 150, regional theatres from 22 to 500. Theater ticket sales are up. More Americans are studying abroad."

(As a professor who directed an overseas program in London 1967-8, I remain skeptical about how much of those visitors learn and how much they merely play.) And while the proliferation of sketchily supported cultural organizations gives many more amateurs the thrill and challenges of becoming part-time professionals, I still find it odd that the Scandinavian countries provide more support for the American art of jazz than we do.

Numbers, when pressed, mean very little. As a native of Philadelphia I revel in the glories of the Philadelphia Art Museum but find it frustrating to have to worry about which public transport I should take to avoid harassment. What profiteth a city or a culture if its upperbrow cultural institutions "thrive" while the city itself shows signs of rigor mortis.

Overholser stresses the diversity of American culture, "a fact that enriches or diminishes it, depending on your view." She concedes that some of the "greatest cultural debates rage over the quick embrace of fleeting trends and the lack of respect for the great voices of the past. But Americans seem in fact to be blessed with a culture that can appreciate Mozart even as it enables women songwriters and singers to soar."

I'm increasingly convinced that cultural statistics can lie, confuse, and mislead even more than their economic brothers. I want to know, not how many attend concerts, but how many parents nurture their children faithfully and imaginatively, how consistent their schools put all children on a rising gradient of self-awareness and autonomy, whether their architects and planners build spectacular museums or good solid affordable houses and clean, attractive, and safe public spaces.

American identity has been beleaguered by the Expectations Gap ever since our Founding Fathers, a clever and perceptive aristocratic lot, saw how far our realities fell short of our high ideals. John Adams, in a letter from Paris to Abigail in the 1790's, couldn't help but try to justify how mean and savage Boston seemed in comparison to the City of Light. He argued that it would be the task of their generation to lay sound political foundations so their their sons could develop an economy productive enough to let their grandsons pursue culture with the panache of the French.

The Adams Family is instructive in its own history on this paradigm of Expectations. Surely it was not at least until 1828 after John Quincy Adams had stolen the 1824 election that Andrew Jackson showed the direction politics had to take if America was to mature. And Charles Francis Adams' work for the Erie Railroad moved the culture closer to the economic level needed to fulfill John's Dream.

I date economic maturity to 1915 when Henry Ford perceived that only a well paid workforce could afford to buy what they manufacture on his assembly lines. Doubling their pay drove the Detroit moguls to wonder if he had lost his mind.

I date the cultural take off point to 1927 when General Motors made styling the focal point of its marketing strategy.

We know that the Adams' grandsons, Henry and Brooks, lost track of John's Dream--Henry retreating to the incontrovertible glories of Mt. San Michel and Chartres while Brooks became the house egghead for the new American Imperialism of Admiral Mahan and Teddy Roosevelt.