Over the last 50 years or so, movement conservatism has spread anti-60s propaganda. Unfortunately, progressives and liberals have not effectively countered their anti-60s propaganda. In his New York Times' column "What Is Your Purpose?" David Brooks advances the standard anti-60s propaganda of movement conservatism. I counter his propaganda by drawing on Walter J. Ong's thought about our Western cultural history.

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) May 5, 2015: No doubt the Canadian-born (in 1961) commentator David Brooks is an inner-directed person. Like other inner-directed persons involved in the anti-60s movement conservatism over the last half century or so, he suffers a deep nostalgia for supposedly good old days in American culture before the 1960s -- in other words, before he was born.

Even though inner-directed persons appear to be substantially over-represented among movement conservatives in the United States, many American progressives and liberals may also be inner-directed persons.

Nevertheless, movement conservatism has thrived by spreading anti-60s propaganda. By contrast, progressives and liberals have failed to counter their anti-60s propaganda.

For a discussion of the anti-60s rhetoric deployed by American conservatives nostalgic about the 1950s, see Philip Jenkins' book DECADE OF NIGHMARES: THE END OF THE SIXTIES AND THE MAKING OF EIGHTIES AMERICA (2006).

In my first e-book, WALTER J. ONG: ON HOW AND WHY THINGS ARE THE WAY THEY ARE (2015), which is available at Amazon.com, I have countered movement conservatism's anti-60s propaganda.

BROOKS' COLUMN "WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?"

In Brooks' column "What Is Your Purpose?" in the New York Times (dated May 5, 2015), he selectively reviews how things were in American culture "[a]s late as 50 years ago" -- 50 years ago, Brooks turned 4 years old.

Of course Brooks' column "What Is Your Purpose?" is designed to promote his new book THE ROAD TO CHARACTER (2015) and the website he has set up to promote it.

So from Brooks' own personal experience of life in American culture, he may know something about how certain things have been in American culture since he turned 4 in 1965. But he is deeply nostalgic for how things were in American culture before he was born. In other words, roughly coincident with his birth in 1961, things in American culture turn a turn for the worse. So perhaps his birth in Canada was symbolically a bad omen for American culture, eh?

In any event, my purpose in life is to call attention to and promote Walter J. Ong's thought, which I will draw on in the present essay to respond to Brooks' concerns about American culture over the last 50 years or so.

Now, Brooks says, "Some of these authority figures [in American culture as late as 50 years ago] were public theologians. Reinhold Niebuhr was on the cover of Time magazine."

But in his entire column, Brooks does not mention even one Roman Catholic. But the Roman Catholic theologian John Courtney Murray, S.J., was also once on the cover of Time magazine. He could also be described as a public intellectual who emerged in the 1950s and 1960s, as could the American-born Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003), and the Canadian-born Catholic convert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), both of whom played a role in the intellectual ferment of the 1960s in American culture.

As late as 50 years ago, the Canadian-based commentator Marshall McLuhan was a rising star in American culture, mostly as the result of his books THE GUTENBERG GALAXY: THE MAKING OF TYPOGRAPHIC MAN (1962) and UNDERSTANDING MEDIA: EXTENSIONS OF MAN (1964).

In the time-frame of as late as 50 years ago, both Fr. Murray and the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the Roman Catholic Church would fit into the time-frame. Thanks in large part to Murray, Vatican II decisively changed the church's odious teachings that Paul Blanshard had criticized in his books AMERICAN FREEDOM AND CATHOLIC POWER (2nd ed., 1958; 1st ed., 1949) and COMMUNISM, DEMOCRACY, AND CATHOLIC POWER (1951).

For a discussion of Murray and Vatican II, see Garry Wills' new book THE FUTURE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH WITH POPE FRANCIS (2015). But also see Blanshard's book PAUL BLANSHARD ON VATICAN II (1966).

More recently, Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, was on the cover of Time magazine, when he was named Time's "Person of the Year." But Brooks does not mention this, because it does not fit into his selective nostalgic account of recent American culture.

DAVID RIESMAN'S BOOK

Now, in Brooks' supposedly magic time-frame of as late as 50 years ago, David Riesman's book THE LONELY CROWD: A STUDY OF THE CHANGING AMERICAN CHARACTER (1950) was still enormously influential. Even though Brooks mentions Riesman's psychotherapist and friend Erich Fromm, Brooks does not mention in "What Is Your Purpose?" Riesman's famous book about the changing American character.

Briefly, Riesman describes three broad American character patterns: (1) tradition-directed (also known as outer-directed), (2) inner-directed, and (3) other-directed. Like Fromm, Riesman himself was a decidedly inner-directed person. As a result, he was worried about the emerging other-directed character pattern that was then emerging in contemporary American culture.

No doubt movement conservatism over the last 50 years or so has celebrated inner-directed persons.

No doubt other-directed persons emerged as more influential in certain progressive and liberal movements in the 1960s and subsequently in the political correctness police.

Of course the political correctness police fancy themselves to be the champions of their version of morality and character development, just as Brooks and other movement conservatives fancy themselves to be champions of their version of morality and character development.

In other words, the clash between movement conservatives such as Brooks and the political correctness police can be understood in Riesman's terminology as the clash between predominantly inner-directed persons and predominantly other-directed persons.

However, in Riesman's three-fold taxonomy of the changing American character, he also describes tradition-directed persons, persons he also describes as outer-directed. No doubt certain Americans in contemporary American culture today can be described as tradition-directed persons.

In his book THE ROAD TO CHARACTER (2015) and in his column "What Is Your Purpose?" (May 5, 2015), Brooks emerges as the voice of and the spokesman for the inner-directed person. In effect, like Riesman at an earlier time, Brooks worries about the other-directed persons who emerged in prominence in American culture after World War II.

WALTER ONG'S ACCOUNT OF WESTERN CULTURAL HISTORY

Now, I would like to align Riesman's terminology about the three character patterns in American culture with Ong's sweeping account of Western culture.

Like all other human cultures around the world historically, Western culture originated in primary oral culture. In all forms of primary oral cultures around the world, aural-oral cognitive processing dominated the cultural conditioning, producing the world-as-event sense of life. The world-as-event sense of life is involved in the cultural conditioning of tradition-directed persons (also known as outer-directed persons).

Concerning the world-as-event sense of life, see David Abram's book THE SPELL OF THE SENSUOUS: PERCEPTION AND LANGUAGE IN A MORE-THAN-HUMAN WORLD (1996).

However, in ancient Greek culture, visual cognitive processing emerged historically, producing the world-as-view sense of life in those persons who had been initiated into philosophic thought and expression. The world-as-view sense of life is involved in the cultural conditioning of inner-directed persons.

Concerning the emerging world-as-view sense of life, see Andrea Wilson Nightingale's book SPECTACLES OF TRUTH IN CLASSICAL GREEK PHILOSOPHY: THEORIA IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT (2004).

But after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in the 1450s, educated people in Western culture emerged in unprecedented numbers, producing a certain critical mass of inner-directed persons -- in colonial American culture, for example.

Ong's perceptive book about the cultural constellation of infrastructures involved in print culture is RAMUS, METHOD, AND THE DECAY OF DIALOGUE: FROM THE ART OF DISCOURSE TO THE ART OF REASON (2nd ed., 2004; 1st ed., 1958). Also see McLuhan's book THE GUTENBERG GALAXY: THE MAKING OF TYPOGRAPHIC MAN (1962).

However, in the 20th century, communication media that accentuated sound emerged, which over time contributed to an emerging new sensory mix in American cultural conditioning. Out of this emerging new mix in American cultural conditioning emerged the other-directed persons who worried Riesman (and Fromm).

No doubt Ong, like Riesman and Fromm, was an inner-directed person. Ong, like Pope Francis, was a Jesuit. Jesuit training involves inner-directedness on steroids. But Ong was not worried about the emerging other-directed persons who worried Riesman and Fromm.

In the meantime, the inner-directed Jesuits have recently taken to saying that they are men for others -- and to saying that Jesuit education today helps students to become persons for others.

No doubt Shakespeare stood astride the cultural juncture of his time.

Of Shakespeare's well-known characters, Julius Caesar, King Lear, and Othello symbolically represent tradition-directed persons (also known as outer-directed).

Prince Hamlet and Falstaff, especially in his speech deconstructing honor, and Prospero symbolically represent the kind of inner-directed persons emerging in print culture.

In effect, the 20th-century Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe stood astride basically the same cultural juncture in his native country that Shakespeare in his day stood astride in England, as Achebe's novel THINGS FALL APART (1958) and its sequel NO LONGER AT EASE (1960) sensitively show.

Harold Bloom's hyperbolic book SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN (1998) is a hymn of praise of inner-directed persons. Unfortunately, his subtitle seems to imply that the human had not been invented before Shakespeare. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, but the implication of his subtitle is a bit unsettling.

Besides, many Nazi's in Hitler's Germany were well-educated inner-directed persons.

But both Ong and McLuhan, each in his own way of course, pointed out that we in contemporary Western culture are undergoing a new cultural conditioning deep in our psyches that involves a breakdown in the cultural conditioning of print culture and an emerging breakthrough to something new.

In any event, by, say, 1960, communication media that accentuate sound reached a certain critical mass and influence on our American cultural conditioning.

More recently, our American cultural conditioning by communication media that accentuate sight has undergone further constellation as the result of photocopiers and printers attached to personal computer and the emergence of the Internet.

PUBLIC MORALITY AND RESPECTABILITY

Next, I want to address one of Brooks' favorite arguments about the cultural breakdown from approximately the 1960s onward and its apparent disproportionately negative moral impact on poor Americans.

Historically, well-educated inner-directed white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) dominated the prestige culture in American culture. WASPSs established the broad cultural moral norms regarding respectability and public appearances pertaining to marriage and certain other matters of public morality.

For all practical purposes, virtually all Christian and Jewish Americans publicly conformed to the same public norms that the WASP establishment established.

No doubt that broad public consensus about public norms pertaining to marriage and certain other matters of public respectability and morality impacted and influenced almost all people in American culture, including tradition-directed persons (also known as outer-directed). Perhaps we could say that the dominant cultural juggernaut had a trickle-down impact.

Now, when we turn our attention to the aspects of cultural breakdown that Brooks sees as following the upheavals of the 1960s, we should concede his point to a certain extent. The cultural breakdown did have a seemingly disproportionate impact on pockets of tradition-directed persons (also known as outer-directed) in terms of their conformity to earlier established norms pertaining to marriage and public respectability. Put differently, the earlier dominant cultural juggernaut's trickle-down influence apparently receded, or stopped.

But Brooks and other movement conservatives today nostalgically continue to celebrate the inner-directed persons who dominated the prestige culture in American culture from colonial times down to at least 1960, just as well-educated inner-directed Germans had dominated the prestige culture in Germany down to the time when Adolf Hitler was democratically elected to public office in Germany.

CONCLUSION

No doubt the emerging other-directed persons in American culture over the latter part of the 20th century continue to be works in progress to this day. Thus far, I am not especially impressed with the political-correctness police. My fond hope for them is that they will emerge into something more viable in the near future. In my estimate, as they have evolved thus far, their views are not sustainable.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview