|
Are
identity, belonging and tradition important? Consider the following
comments by Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, a prominent Australian
psychologist. Writing in support of the idea of national service for
young people (Herald Sun,
18/1/2006), he observes that,
"one of
the main developmental tasks of adolescents is to figure out who you
are. Once you’ve done that it’s much easier to set goals, develop
strategies to reach them and begin the journey"
He notes
further that,
"a
constant theme in youth policy over the past few years is the
desirability of building resilience, that capacity to face, overcome
and be strengthened by adversity ... A key component of resilience
is a sense of belonging..."
He then
discusses the advantages of young people being,
"actively mentored by older men and women who understand and can
demonstrate the value of tradition, ritual, teamwork and discipline"
So a
leading psychologist believes that identity, belonging and tradition
are important for the healthy development of young people. But how
do you best foster these qualities?
In most
societies gender and ethnicity are critical factors. Gender, for
example, not only contributes powerfully to a sense of who a person
is, but it helps to provide a purpose in action and a code of
behaviour. Ethnicity places us within a tradition with its own
ideals, to which the individual feels strongly connected.
Professor West of Suffolk College has described the effect of a
traditional ethnic nationalism on the sense of identity and
belonging of an individual as follows:
“... the
sense of identity is so strong that it is an inseparable part of the
personalities of most of the individuals in the group. People are
born and raised to conceive of themselves as being a part of the
nation, and rarely lose that self-conception in the course of their
lives. There is a feeling of pride and a deep sense of loyalty
associated with it.”
So if
you wanted, say, an English boy to develop healthily during
adolescence it would be helpful if you encouraged him to feel
connected to his own ethnic tradition and to a masculine identity.
But this is not, in fact, what Western societies tend to do. Western
societies generally encourage adolescents to abandon a loyalty to
the (mainstream) ethnic tradition and to traditional gender
identity.
To put
it bluntly, if the English boy were to show ethnic pride or a belief
in a distinctive masculine identity he would very likely be accused
of “racism” or “sexism”.
Why? The
answer has to do with the theory of liberalism, which is the
dominant form of belief amongst the Western political class.
Ironically, gender and ethnicity are unacceptable within the logic
of liberalism, precisely because they are so important to
self-identity.
Liberal
theory claims that our very humanity depends on the fact that we
have a freedom to choose who we are and what we do according to our
own individual will and reason. But this means that anything deeply
embedded in our nature will be seen negatively as an oppressive
limitation on our freedom to choose our own individual “self”.
Do we
get to choose whether we are male or female? No. Is being male or
female important to our self-identity? Yes. Therefore, traditional
gender identity constitutes a problem for liberalism in which we are
supposed to choose for ourselves the important things about our own
lives.
So
liberals have mostly claimed that gender identity is not in fact a
natural and hardwired part of human nature, but an oppressive social
construct to be overthrown. Just last year a Swedish minister, Jens
Orback, announced that,
"The
government considers female and male as social contructions, that
means gender patterns are created by upbringing, culture, economic
conditions, power structures and political ideologies."
So
Swedish boys will not grow up in a climate in which masculinity is
considered an essential part of their identity, but will instead be
taught something along the lines of masculinity being an outmoded
patriarchal construct which is oppressive to women.
Liberalism, then, cannot offer ethnic or gender identity to the
young because such forms of identity seem “unprincipled” within a
liberal ideology. What then can liberalism offer?
A
liberal society can certainly offer “voluntary associations”, such
as service clubs or sports clubs, because we individually consent,
as an act of our own will, to these commitments.
In his
article Dr Carr-Gregg limits himself to the liberal view when he
suggests “national voluntary service” as the way to “reconnect”
young people and spare them from a “psychological wasteland”.
It would
be better if we began to reject the underlying liberal theory which
artificially forbids us from enjoying the stronger, more traditional
forms of self-identity and connectedness. |