Rising Expectations and Narcissism

The Atlantic recently published a collection of letters from readers, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, documenting their reactions to the widespread unemployment among recent college graduates. (H/T: First Things.) The letters evince a stark division between the soon-to-retire Baby Boomers and the so-called "Millennials" who now find themselves without work or struggling to advance upward from entry-level jobs.

The young and old, of course, will always view life through different lenses, and when it comes to the process of forging one's way in life their perspectives can differ dramatically. But, in recent years, this difference in perspective seems to have grown into a complete blindness toward the others' position. Here is the extreme version of the disagreement:

The younger, college-educated generation looks up to the older generation, and sees that its parents have reached stable positions in society. They may not be rich, but they certainly have made enough money to raise a family and to purchase a comfortable home. And that is all the younger generation wants: a chance to earn a decent living, do interesting work, and start a family. That's the American Dream. Yet now, after earning a college degree and perhaps even a professional degree, they find themselves unemployed and in serious debt. Even if they do eventually find work, it will be some kind of soul-less office work and most of their paychecks for the foreseeable future will go toward paying down their student loans and covering rent and the utilities. Life is bleak.

The older generation, on the other hand, can remember working its way up through the ranks in its younger days and can't understand what all the whining is about. They remember stagflation, when the interest rates for a mortgage were astronomically high, and the OPEC oil embargo, when it was difficult just to fill the car with gas. They haven't always felt fulfilled by their jobs but they sucked it up and through their hard work they got where they are today. Moreover, once they had some money, they spent it on their children. No generation ever had it easier growing up.

Although there will always be tension between parents and their children and there will be rivalry for jobs in every economy, the older generation does deserve a lot of the blame, and the younger generation should be up in arms.

Why? Because the older generation spoiled us with all its talk of self-esteem. One correspondent seems to be aware of the problem of rising expectations but curiously, and implausibly, denies that he had any expectations of succeeding in life:

Some say that we should not expect things to be handed to us, and that we should just stop whining. That may be the case for some, but what about those of us who never expected anything? There are thousands of us who worked hard and did everything that we were supposed to do. We were told, "If you push yourself and work harder than everyone else, you will succeed."

The problem of rising expectations arises precisely in the kind of situation that this writer describes, when children are given definite ideas what it can hope to receive from their parents when they reach their majority. In the case of America, the parents of the last generation were encouraged by "parenting experts" and professional pedagogues to make their children believe in themselves, no matter what. This boosting of the younger generation's self-esteem is not entirely new, of course; it is part and parcel of what Christopher Lasch called America's "culture of narcissism." A brief perusal of the letters shows that many members of the younger generation are struggling with the issue of narcissism. One admits that he belongs to a "me-first generation." An older writer blames Generation Y for its self-centeredness. One Millennial, though, turns the table and condemns the Baby Boomers for their own selfishness and hypocrisy in telling the rising generation to suck it up. But all the writers agree that the central battle in this generational warfare is whether the younger generation is too spoiled or whether the older generation is unable to empathize with their children's plight.

And the consequence of feeding youngsters' self-esteem is fairly predictable: rising expectations accompanied by a sense of entitlement. And when those expectations are not met, the younger generation reacts with anger towards its parents. After years of being given awards for trying--though not always achieving--in school, many Millennials are being confronted with failure for the first time at the time in their lives when it matters most, when they are starting their careers and forging the relationships that will (hopefully) last the rest of their lives. They are visited by a "sense of inner emptiness" when they no longer receive the attention that was practically their birthright.

The emphasis on self-esteem in education and the consequent inability to deal with disappointment in life lead to the conclusion that America today is being devastated by what a recent book has labeled The Narcissism Epidemic. (Disclaimer: I have not read the book and cannot speak to the details.) But, if the younger generation really is suffering from a narcissism epidemic, the worst approach to the problem would be to cast all the blame on the older generation, thus absolving itself of all responsibility for its problem.

Is there any solution? Unfortunately, this is the type of dilemma that a narcissist cannot find his way out of without a willingness to forgive others and to change his life. But, that is precisely what narcissism makes so hard.

Herodotus, Thucydides and The Idea of History

Earlier this year I read R. G. Collingwood's The Idea of History. The book is quite insightful, a "must read" for any philosopher of history. On the whole, I quite enjoyed it.

However, one passage hit me hard, like watching one friend knife another friend. You see, Collingwood insists that Thucydides is not really a historian. Herodotus gets the honor, but not Thucydides.

Ever since I first read Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War I have been a fan. Not a historian? No, Collingwood explains, Thucydides is really a philosopher. Historians, Collingwood says, recreate the thoughts of past men. That is their task. It is a fundamentally particular task, dealing with men individually. Philosophers, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with the general, those things which are true of all men. Herodotus is often criticized for repeating legends and hear-say, and he deserves the criticism. However, his approach is fundamentally particular, asking here about the Persians and there about the Egyptians; though he makes connections across cultures, he is also willing to accept them with their differences.

Thucydides has a rather different approach, though the difference is not always obvious. In his introduction, Thucydides notes that when he had no report of a given speech, he has filled in the gap with what must have been said. In other words, if we know the speech was preceded by A, and followed by C, the speaker must have said something along the lines of B - it's the obvious way to get from one to the other. Thucydides' method is broadly sound; after all, we infer things all the time, in history and in life. However, this method reveals a disregard for the messy details of life, and leans on broad statements about men generally. Why do men go to war? Thucydides asks. Only three reasons: fear, greed or honor. This is profound insight into the human person, but it is not history. History is more concrete than that.

Must history simply involve disconnected facts? Can it never approach the general? The philosophic historian - and by that I do not mean one that belongs to the discipline of philosophy, but one that desires the deepest truths - must constantly hold together the tension between the particularities of history and the desire for general knowledge. To stray too far from this tension produces something other than good history. The unthinking particularist becomes a kind of antiquarian, collecting factoids and minutia, content never to connect them to one another. This person has no concept of or desire for knowledge of mankind as a whole or justice as a virtue. The more thoughtful man who becomes a particularist is likely a kind of agnostic, someone who recognizes that history cannot produce complete knowledge of general things, but concludes that there is no reason to try to hold together the tension. He is typically a bitter soul, someone who longs for general knowledge but does not believe it possible. The unthinking generalist becomes a Whig historian in the most pejorative sense of the term, shoehorning the complications of the past into broad categories that are inadequate to describe it. The thinking generalist is ultimately a philosopher, someone who realizes that history is always bound up with the particular and lays it aside in favor of another vocation.

History, then, is a curious thing, with one foot in the mud of earth and another on the clouds of heaven. It's not for everyone, but I'm rather happy with that tension.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to read some Herodotus.


Today's image of R. G. Collingwood comes from Ovi Magazine.

Irish Catholicism

I recently came across a series of blog posts written by a priest who lives and works in England but whose family hails from Ireland. Occasioned by a visit to his family across the Irish Sea, the series is a set of personal reflections on the roots of the sexual abuse scandal in Ireland and the wider crisis afflicting the Church there (or being inflicted by the Church on herself). The series starts with 500 (and continues with parts b, c, d, e, f, g, and h).

The series consists mostly of anecdotes rather than systematic inquiry, but it does touch on some of the history of the Church in Ireland and its effect on modern Irish religiosity. Interestingly enough, many of the anecdotes reflect stories I've heard from my own family.

Besides any personal interest it has for me, this series should also be of interest to American readers because of the great influence that the Irish have had on the Church in America. That influence is obviously waning as fewer Irish immigrate and more Hispanics cross the Rio Grande, but it endures nonetheless, especially in cities in the North. From stories about strict, ruler-wielding nuns and priests with no sense for liturgy to grandmothers mumbling the rosary during Mass and eccentric old men attending the wakes of complete strangers, Irish immigrants are often silently assigned the role of the bogeyman in a history of the American Church. Equally characteristic of the Irish, however, was their fierce determination to stay true to the faith in the midst of largely hostile Protestants and even to build up this country's network of parochial schools from nothing. For good and for bad, the Irish legacy cannot be ignored.

How I'll Be Voting

A few years ago I wrote about a raft of policy positions; with another presidential race around the corner, it is time to think seriously about the criteria by which I will be judging candidates. Here are the issues I will be looking at. But first, the red herrings.

The Right to Life. I am firmly committed to the rights and dignity of every human being and I am profoundly opposed to the legalization of the murder of unborn children. With such strong convictions, you might expect this to be a major issue for me this election cycle; after all, for many people of similar convictions, this is the litmus test. But the problem I have come to see is that few pro-life candidates are in a position to do much. As things stand, the question of abortion is primarily a matter for the judiciary, not the legislature or the executive. Moreover, cynics would say that the Republican Party uses the pro-life issue to get votes, but drags its feet on actually ending abortion, lest it lose this powerful source of votes. I wouldn't go that far, but I certainly concede that merely saying one is pro-life, or even voting the right way on certain bills, will effect little change. If I see a true pro-life campaigner - and I haven't yet - I'll take note, but otherwise this issue is low on my radar.

Foreign Policy & Defense. A robust foreign policy is close to my heart for a variety of reasons, but it will not be a major issue for me this cycle. Why? Even in lean and unpopular years, the Department of Defense will likely remain well-funded. This does not mean that certain items which ought to be funded always will be, but at the general level - and when are elections really about specifics? - Congress and the American people will not stand for the total evisceration of the DoD. In some ways the more important questions involve funding of intelligence (especially counterintelligence), public diplomacy and other matters which are unlikely to make their way into the debate. But the other reason I'm not paying much attention to foreign policy positions is that they change. Presidential campaigns are run almost entirely on domestic issues; foreign policy positions are little more than fluff, and are usually overtaken by events. George W. Bush campaigned against Clinton-style nation-building projects. Then September 11th happened and the calculus changed. Barack Obama was perceived as the candidate to get us out of foreign wars; while there has been draw-down in Iraq, one is hard pressed to believe that a Republican would have wielded the military in a significantly different way. While his Cairo speech got him off to a good start engaging the Muslim world, that project was eventually swamped by unfolding events and long-standing realities on the ground.

So if those issues will receive only limited attention, where will I be looking?

Debt. This issue has been in the news of late; I think as a country we are finally beginning to understand the overwhelming size of our government's debt and the dangers it poses to our economic well-being. More than high or low taxes or spending, I want to see balanced budgets. A balanced budget amendment - as a serious measure, and not just a symbolic campaign - may be in order. Bringing the debt under control will ultimately require reform of entitlements and DoD's procurement process (which eats up massive portions of the defense budget with little gain), though for now I simply want to see a commitment to solvency.

Tax Code. America's tax code is mammoth. A last count it was roughly ten times the length of the Bible, and still growing. Aside from keeping accountants employed, this labyrinthine code does our country no good. It erodes transparency, wastes resources and imposes a daunting barrier to opening a new business. Reforming the tax code will be a huge undertaking, but it needs to be done. If cutting down the current version is too much, perhaps we could simply borrow Estonia's or Georgia's. Georgia has only half a dozen taxes, with a code shorter than an undergraduate paper. The result has been strong economic growth and a dramatic drop in corruption, often eclipsing developed countries of Western Europe on both counts. And this from a post-Soviet republic starting from a very poor position. Estonia's story is quite similar.

Immigration. I have written about immigration once or twice before. There are three basic issues here that must be addressed, more or less together: (1) Our borders must be secured and illegal immigration brought under control. Sovereign countries have a right to decide who does and does not enter, and to exercise that right for the good of their economy and security. (2) The immigration process must be reformed. High-tech companies are constantly having to lobby for more H-1B visas and less red tape, as they are having trouble bringing in skilled workers from overseas. Likewise, the difficulty of legally entering the US as an unskilled guest worker is a constant encouragement to illegal immigration. (3) There are millions of illegal aliens living in the US, somewhere on the order of 10 or 12 million. Their presence cannot be ignored in the process of comprehensive immigration reform.

Education. We have tried to make our schools accountable through No Child Left Behind and various state-wide testing and incentive programs. The effort has generally been judged a failure due to (a) bureaucratic bungling, (b) cheating and (c) an unwillingness to hold feet to the fire. But, frankly, the greatest obstacle to school reform have been the unions (as the recent documentary, Waiting for Superman, points out). There is little doubt that a confrontation with the NEA and other major unions will have to be fought before we have real school reform. Any candidate who vows to smash the NEA certainly has my attention. Less dramatically, I'll be looking for candidates who advocate school choice, with open enrollment, more charter schools and vouchers.

Marriage. I find may aspects of the culture wars off-putting. However, recent events have begun to convince me that so-called gay marriage may be the key moral question of our day. I am not opposed to equal taxes or hospital visitation rights for same-sex partners - be they sexual partners, of the sort who get all the media attention, or simply life-long bachelor roommates. What I find disconcerting, rather, is the attempt to use the government to re-define marriage, apart from any benefits it might carry. Some argue that the distinction between state-sanctioned marriage and church-sanctioned marriage will always exist, and churches are welcome to define marriage however they like. In the first place, I do not trust that churches will be allowed to define marriage for themselves. We have already seen in the Diocese of Washington attempts by the civil government to impose its definition. Moreover, I pose the following scenario to you: what if Congress passed laws for the "ordaining" of certain "ministers" to "consecrate the Eucharist". Clearly, a violation of the prerogatives of churches and an affront to most Christians. Some might argue that it is primarily the buzz words here that make this proposition outrageous. But I would argue that this is because words carry meaning. Ministers are different from officials or counselors; that's why we have different terms for them. I can accept same-sex unions, but not same-sex "marriages". This is not, as some have argued, a matter of natural rights, since (a) no one has a right to a vocation (cf. CCC 1578) and (b) same-sex attraction is contrary to nature. Within the American context, same-sex unions may be a civil right, an outgrowth of our social contract, but as such they are subject to debate and should be recognized as conferred by the will of the polity, and not by right. I'll be looking for a candidate who can articulate some of that.

Christ, Present in the Scriptures and in the City

This video received plenty of play in Catholic circles a couple months ago. So why share it again? What struck me then, as now, is just how Franciscan it is. It warms my heart to know that, shortly after their return to England after a hiatus of half a millennium, the Capuchin friars were immediately back at it, being very Catholic, and a little goofy, and in the thick of human life. There are times and places for high liturgy and for complex theology and for hermits. But those things are for other orders. This is the Franciscans doing what they do best. If you have not seen this video, or if maybe even if you have, give it a look.

Four Films Worth Mentioning

On a recent flight back to the US from Albion I watched four (count 'em - FOUR!) films. All were fairly decent, and worthy of a mention. If they have anything in common, it was that all four did something slightly different than expected.


I expected District 9 to be a standard aliens v. humans film (ala Independence Day), with standard battle scenes and some political overtones relating to apartheid and private military contractors. Instead, it is much more of a drama, centered on a small number of characters. There are some fun action moments, but that is hardly what the film is about.


Sticking with aliens, I next watched Battle Los Angeles. Small, intimate stories must be in: this movie followed a single small unit of Marines through the battle. Although there were occasional allusions to the larger conflict, really all we as viewers care about is the fate of roughly a dozen men and women. Humanity as a whole is not really a factor. The other surprising thing here was that when there were not aliens in the frame, much of this looked like a war about Iraq today. In that sense it is much more of a war movie, and less of what you might traditionally think of as sci fi. (Oh, yes, the aliens also have crew-served weapons.)


Aakrosh (2010, not to be confused with the 1980 and 1998 films of the same title) is a fairly standard story: two cops from the central government visit a small town where the locals are kept in the thrall of corrupt leaders due to fear and ignorance. Outsider cops have to win the trust of locals and solve the murder mystery before all the witnesses end up dead. The unusual thing here is that it is set in India, and most of the film is in Hindi. (Yes, there are also a couple musical numbers - could it be Bollywood without them? - but they're integrated fairly well.) In fact, I learned afterward that the film is a scene-by-scene recreation of Mississippi Burning.


I finished the flight with The Adjustment Bureau. If you are expecting Dark City or The Matrix, you are likely to be disappointed. The plot is simply too predictable, the weirdness not nearly compelling enough. Curiously, if all you ask for is a romantic drama with a few moments of comedy, and you don't mind a strange sci-fi type resolution, it works considerably better.

I doubt any of these films will go down in the annals of cinematic history as canonical works. If you never saw them you'd do all right. But all four have points of interest in terms of genre and expectations and what they do (or don't do) with that.

The Men Who Opposed Hitler

Rebecca Haynes has recently produced a volume I am keen to read: In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. As the title suggests, we often forget that Hitler was not the only politician of the Right in the interwar period. Some of the men Haynes considers were Nazi-sympathizers, but others were rivals or even bitter enemies of the National Socialists.

Today is the anniversary of the July 20 Conspiracy (about which I have written before). The conspiracy was an attempt to kill Hitler in 1944 and remove the Nazis from power. Its center of gravity lay in the Germany army, but extended to other segments of German government and society as well. By and large, these were men of the Right, men who believed in tradition and in German greatness. They opposed Communism and had no desire to see anything like a Soviet state established in the Fatherland. Some of them were anti-Semitic; many were not.

Today I'd like to briefly mention two men who opposed the Nazis, and did so from the right wing of the political spectrum. Neither was a among the most important members of the plot against Hitler, nor is either one a well-known figure, even among history buffs. But perhaps that makes them all the more typical (if we can use the term for such extraordinary men) of those who opposed the Nazis. The first is Friedrich Gustav Jaeger. Born in Württemberg in 1895, his father was a doctor. With the outbreak of World War I he quickly completed his secondary studies (with honors) and joined the German army, seeing service in both Flanders and Italy, and being decorated numerous times. After the war he studied agriculture and joined the National Socialist German Workers Party - the Nazis.

But then an interesting thing happened. Although Jaeger was a member of the Freikorps Oberland and later re-joined the army in 1934, he refused to participate in the Kapp Putsch and left the Nazi Party, becoming a fierce critic before World War II.

During the war Jaeger fought in Poland, France and Russia, receiving Germany's highest military honor. All the while, however, he was making contact with anti-Nazi elements of the German army. It was only with reluctance, however, that he agreed to the plan to try to assassinate Hitler: Jaeger's Christian faith caused him to prefer a trial before a proper court.

On the day of the attempted assassination, Jaeger had a variety of tasks, commanding reserve troops, arresting key Nazis and seizing a radio station. All this fell apart as the conspiracy was discovered, and Jaeger was eventually executed for his role on 21 August.

Ernst Rüdiger Starhemberg was born in Eferding, Austria in 1899. A prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he served in the army during World War I, seeing action in Italy. Like Jaeger, he joined the Freikorps Oberland. Though the Austrian monarchy was abolished at the end of the war, he was keen to enter Austrian politics, joining the local branch of the Heimatschutz (an organization dedicated to protecting Austria's borders, but also its culture). He was intrigued by both Mussolini and Hitler, but gave up on the Nazis after the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

Starhemberg briefly served as Austrian Interior Minister in 1930 and became Deputy Leader of the conservative Christian Social Party in 1932. He then became Vice Chancellor in the right-wing government of Engelbert Dollfuß. Say what you will against Dollfuß - and there is probably much that can be said - he was no Nazi, as evidenced by the fact that they assassinated him in a failed bid to seize Austria. Starhemberg briefly served as acting Chancellor until a new government could be formed.

When the Nazis finally succeeded in annexing Austria, members of the Heimatschutz and various political parties with which Starhemberg had been associated were sent to concentration camps. He fled to Switzerland and eventually fought with the British and Free French air forces. Starhemberg was not a member of the July 20 Conspiracy. He abandoned the war effort when the Soviets joined the Allied side - what was the point of defeating Nazism if it were only followed by Soviet domination? - and moved to Argentina, staying until the year of Juan Peron's coup, and then returning to Austria.

Were these men heroes? The case for Jaeger is probably stronger than for Starhemberg. Both men certainly have associations that cause some raised eyebrows. But if they were not unqualified heroes, they were not villains either. They were men trying to make the best of difficult situations, men subject to all the human weaknesses. But in extraordinary circumstances, these men and other conservatives like them not only resisted the allure of Nazism, but opposed it. That is worth remembering.