An Ideal Culture?

MON., JUNE 19, 1995, 7:05 AM
FARM, STUDY

This American culture, of which you are a part, has a number of pluses. There is relative freedom to become what any person purposes to be, rather than being strongly bound by a caste or class system. It doesn’t work perfectly… no human system does… but it does offer opportunities. You’re a minor example: as the son of only moderately educated parents you earned a doctorate at a prestigious university and were actually on its faculty for some years. You have been a full professor for over 20 years and have some amount of national reputation.

Son John Patrick chose, through this culture’s freedom to be only moderately educated in a formal way but has used his ability and persistence to develop personal and technical skills that result in an income beyond your own.

Yet this very freedom includes the freedom to fail and to see life as miserable because objectives, goals, and status in life could not be reached. In a complex culture the fault for such failure may come not because of personal inadequacies but because of forces beyond individual control and the decisions of others. Thus this very characteristic that seems ideal, and is, for persons like you, results in much personal harm and unhappiness. What does a culture, even a relatively rich one like this one, do with those who haven’t taken advantage of freedom and cannot be productive, in the culture’s “terms”? Freedom is, clearly, a mixed blessing.

Another aspect of freedom, in which I am more interested, is the freedom to be more or less religious even more or less spiritual. Each generation is relatively free to follow a family pattern, to abandon it rather completely, or to choose another one, which can be an older or a newer one. You can be pleased that your sons are devout and dedicated Christians (though Matthew still idles outside the fold), but they have chosen forms different from that of the home in which they were nurtured…and different from one another. You know I like diversity, so I have allowed these variations, which represent variations in spirit and ways in which spirits are nurtured. Yet this culture also allows, and even encourages, in some ways, a non-acceptance and rejection of Me and what I represent in human life.

Your culture is materialistic more than it is spiritual. It exhibits an affluence for more people than most other cultures, though this is certainly not equally shared. (Here’s freedom again.) But this affluence must be fed and sustained by the processing of resources in excessive ways. Excessive commercialism benefits some but subtly and directly diminishes concern for spirit. Much of television fare does not encourage positive spiritual thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and it all must be sustained by endless commercials for products, many of which are expensive and unnecessary. You can tell by My tone that I am not the ideal American consumer.