So what I want explore a little today is deeply indebted to Philip Rieff’s ideas about culture. He saw a culture as the system of links between a group of people that allow for trust and cooperation while also a release from deep conformity. This functions because each culture contains a symbolic system of control and a symbolic system of remission or release.
The notion of symbolic is important because the ways that these two systems work is not through some deeply propositional argument, but instead through deeply internalized cultural images and ideas. For instance in our present culture we have the idea of the person that abandons their oppressive environment in search of their dreams. This particular version of the hero’s journey is very powerful though perhaps a bit of a cliche.
This particular example would also be of interest to Rieff in that it is unclear if it is from the symbolic of release or control. Does it imply a mandate or a release. It is this sort of equivocity that he would say is a sign of an impending cultural revolution.
What I would like to look at today is certain cultural images that I have noticed in myself, that I have an inkling that might serve a strong contemporary cultural force. These what I call “the doormat” and the “dead end job”. These are two powerful symbols that I think serve to amplify our expressivist individualist culture.
I want to be clear though, that while I call these things symbols I in no way want to claim that they are not real. What I do want to claim is that these preexisting phenomena of the doormat and dead end job are now elevated to a special status. This special status is that of cautionary tale and perhaps a mirror image of the good life.
So to begin I would like to look at the doormat. The doormat is that person that has lost themselves in service of others. This is often portrayed in media in its most extreme from the female victim of domestic violence. Now I would not say that all portrayals of victims of domestic violence are motivated by expressive individualism, not at all. However, I would say that these expressions within media have in some cases been co-opted by a cultural impulse. This impulse is that the idea of a life lived for others is to be regarded with suspicion.
I have experienced this suspicion both internally and externally. I am a firm believer in the importance of a life of service, but always around every corner I find myself required to explain how the kind of service I think is important is not letting yourself be walked all over. This concern is right at the forefront of peoples minds. The result of this is not that rightly understood service in impossible in our cultural climate. It is instead that service takes more advocacy and as a result is often less valued. This in an indirect way contributes to more individualistic conceptions of flourishing.
The symbol of the dead end job has a similar function of individualizing people. However, instead of being focused on the social sphere it is operative in the sphere of work. Here we have the symbol of a person trapped in a job that offers them very little and from which they have to have the courage to liberate themselves. This is a real thing. However, where it ascends to the realm of the symbolic is in the way in which it serves as reinforcement of the narrative that where you will find fulfillment is not in an improved version of your current context but somewhere “out there”. This is significant because the dead-end job serves to interpret many other situations that can be seen as analogous. People for instance not planning to work jobs for very long. There is this kind of transfer of the worst-case scenario to the general experience. All of this serves to intensify the current culture of individualism.