The American Character (I)

by Bradford Smith

The following is part of an essay taken from Bradford Smith's book, Why We Behave Like Americans. Success as a goal and materialism, according to Smith, are among the underlying factors that make up the American characters.

When visitors from abroad undertake to describe the American Character, the results are frequently puzzling to Americans.

"All Americans are Puritans; that's what's wrong with them," says one.

"They're always thinking about enjoying themselves," says another.

"They spend too much time at work," a distinguished visitor tells us. "They don't know how to play."

"Americans don't know what work is, " retorts another." Their machines do it all."

"American women are shameless sirens."─"No, they're prudes."

"The children here are wonderful─outgoing and natural."─"Natural as little beasts. They have no manners, no respect for their elders."

There is, of course, no single pattern of American character any more than there is a single English or Turkish or Chinese character. Personality in America is further complicated by our diverse racial and cultural origins, by successive waves of immigration from all parts of the world, by our regional diversities. It is complicated by several hundred varieties of religious belief with their varying impact on the believers. It is further diversified by the generation to which the person belongs─first generation immigrant, second generation child of immigrants, and on down the line.

The temptation is strong to lump all Americans together. Yet those who look a little deeper are puzzled by the seeming contradictions in American life. It is true that Americans as a whole work hard. But they also play hard. They spend more time and money in traveling, camping, hunting, watching sports, drinking, smoking, going to movies, watching television and reading newspapers and magazines than any other people in the world. Yet they also spend more money on churches, social services, hospitals and all kinds of charities. They are always in a hurry, yet they spend more time relaxing. They are at the same time sensitive to the rights of the individual and habitual conformist. They worship bigness yet idealize the little man, whether he be the small business man as opposed to the big one or the plain citizen as opposed to the big wheel.

   Success as a Goal

One thing almost everyone is agreed on, including Americans, is that they place a very high valuation upon success. Success does not necessarily mean material rewards, but recognition of some sort─preferably measurable. If the boy turns out to be a preacher instead of a business man, that's all right. But the bigger his church and congregation, the more successful he is judged to be.

A good many things contributed to this accent on success. There was the Puritan belief in the virtue of work, both for its own sake and because the rewards it brought were regarded as signs of God's love. There was the richness of opportunity in a land waiting to be settled. There was the lack of a settled society with fixed ranks and classes, so that a man was certain to rise through achievement.

There was the determination of the immigrant to gain in the new world what had been denied to him in the old, and the part of his children an urge to throw off the immigrant onus by still more success and still more rise in a fluid, classless society. Brothers did not compete within the family for the favor of the parents as in Europe, but strove for success in the outer world, along paths of their own choosing.

The English anthropologist, Geoffrey Gorer, sees the whole situation in Freudian terms. Europe is the father rejected by every immigrant who turned his back on his own culture in order to make a new life in America. The immigrant's struggle for success never ends, because there is no limit to the possible goal. The second generation child, in turn, rejects the alien parents because they cannot measure up to American standards. The only way he can soften the blow is to achieve a still greater success. All over America the lawyers, doctors, professors and politicians with Italian, Irish, German or Polish names testify to the urgency of this drive.

Not to strive, not to take advantage of the opportunities in such a world, not to succeed where success was so available─these things naturally became a sort of crime against the state. To develop the resources of a new country required energetic people, bent upon using their energies─not only for the rewards that would result to themselves, but even more important, to the community. So material success in the United States is not looked upon as selfish. Its results are seen to have communal value.

Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller built great fortunes for themselves. But they also built an economy which has brought a great deal of material well-being, higher health standards and better educational opportunities to millions of Americans. This is how it looks to us, anyway, from inside.

A society which values competition so highly is inevitably an aggressive one, even though the laws carefully limit the forms aggression may take. It has a toughness about it which is good for the muscle tone of the economy but hard on some individuals. In our pioneering days this aggressiveness was essential to survival. Now it can be a menace to society. The factory worker who reaches a dead end and sees himself stuck in the same job year after year may take out his aggressive feelings in race hatred or fighting management, or he may even turn it against himself by way of alcoholism, proneness to accident, or neurotic behavior.

Since a high regard is felt for success, the rewards are high. Money is rarely cherished for itself in America; it is rather a symbol and a tool. As a man's status rises, the demands upon him also increase. He is expected to give liberally to the hundreds of voluntary associations which nourish and minister to the community. Look at the Who's Who entry for any prominent business man, and you are likely to find him involved in an amazing number of committees and associations organized for the public good.

This striving for success and prestige, according to psychologists, is a way of overcoming fears and a sense of inner emptiness. In a mobile society an energetic person can hardly help matching himself against others and seeing how far he can go.

Such a system is fine for those who have it in them to succeed. It is not so good for the mediocre. The fear of failure, the fear of competitors, the loss of self esteem─these arouse tensions that some people cannot handle. In their turn they produce an excessive craving for love. So love and success are linked. Gorer believes that most Americans by the time they are adolescents have confused two ideas: to be successful is to be loved, and to be loved is to be successful. Mothers help to impose the pattern by showing affection and admiration when their children do well at school and by withholding affection when they fail.

Since there are no limits of class, inherited occupation or education to hold a child back, there are, in theory, no limits to what he can achieve. Consequently there is no point at which he can say: " There, I've done it. From now on all I have to do is to hold on." Since any boy can, in theory, become President, striving is a moral obligation. Achievement, not class, is the standard by which men are judged. There is little or no glory attached to being born wealthy or privileged; the real test is how far you climb from where you started.

Americans love work. It is meat and drink to them. In recent years they have learned how to play, but they make work of that too. If it's skiing, they throw themselves at it with an effort that would kill a horse. If it's a vacation, they travel five or six hundred miles a day, take in the sights at sixty miles an hour, pause only long enough to snap pictures, and then discover what it was they went to see when they get home and look at the photographs.

Until very recently there has always been a great deal of work to do in this country, a great deal that needed doing. At the beginning men of all sorts and conditions had to pitch in. The preacher had to fell trees and plough fields. The teacher, the doctor and the magistrate had to shoulder guns for the common defense. The farmer made his own tools, harness, household equipment. He was blacksmith, carpenter, tinsmith, brewer and veterinary all rolled into one, as his wife was spinster, weaver and doctor.

Americans still like to be handy at all things. College professors go in for making furniture or remodeling an old house in the country. Bankers don aprons and become expert barbecue chefs. Nearly everyone knows how to use tools, make simple repairs to plumbing or electrical fixtures, refinish furniture or paint a wall. Far from being thought a disgrace if he performs these "menial" tasks, a man is thought ridiculous if he does not know how to perform them.

Along with this urge to be jack-of-all-trades goes a willingness to change from one occupation to another. It surprises no one in America when the banker's son becomes a farmer or vice versa. Or when a college professor shifts into industry, or a young man who starts out with a truck purchased on credit ends up running an enterprise with fleets of trucks spanning several states. President Truman was a farmer, an operator of a haberdashery and an army officer before he turned to law and politics. James Bryant Conant, first a chemist, then President of Harvard University, resigned this highest post in the academic world to become High Commissioner and then Ambassador to Germany.

"For a European," writes Andre Maurois, "life is a career; for an American, it is a succession of hazards."

A single individual can be at once an intellectual, a Boy Scout leader, a business man, a sportsman, a dabbler in music or painting, a nature-lover, and one who does many of his own household chores. An employer, he may go hunting with his own or someone else's employees. A shopkeeper, he may run for local office and be on familiar terms with professional men and government officials. He will live on several levels which in other countries might be separated by class distinctions.

The emphasis on success and achievement, coupled as it is with a desire to be loved and admired, leads to a critical dilemma of personality. To succeed one must be aggressive; to be liked, one must be easy-going and friendly.

One way out of the difficulty is to acquire groups of friends—lodge brothers, members of the same church, a veteran's organization—towards whom you are pledged in friendship. Having thus acquired assured friends, you can practice your aggression on those who don't belong. This pattern explains to some extent the suspicion or hostility towards those of other races or religions.

    Materialism

The men and women who staked everything on America were for the most part poor. They struggled hard, went without, and saved in order to build up a business or buy a farm of their own. The freedom to own rather than the freedom to vote was the magnet that drew the majority of them across oceans. Naturally enough they put a high value upon the land or the business they acquired through their own efforts.

In contrast with this natural acquisitiveness of the new arrivals, the American attitude toward money is quite different. As the German psychologist Hugo Munsterberg observed, the American "prizes the gold he gets primarily as an indication of his ability.... It is, therefore, fundamentally false to stigmatize the American as a materialist, and to deny his idealism.... The American merchant works for money in exactly the sense that a great painter works for money ─" as a mark of appreciation for his work.

The acquisition of money is important as the clearest proof of success, though there are other acceptable proofs—prominence, public notice, good works, fame. But the retention of money is not important at all. Indeed, it may be frowned upon if it keeps the owner from living well, subscribing generously to a long list of charities, and providing for members of the family who may have been less fortunate.

So the materialism that strikes a visitor to America is not that of loving and hoarding wealth; it is a love of making and consuming wealth. It is probably a middle-class rather than a distinctively American phenomenon, for most Americans are middle-class.

America has been blessed with a rich supply of raw materials. It learned during the depression that even a rich country can become impoverished if it fails to use its wealth to benefit the majority. And it does not propose to make that error again. A sizable portion of what it produces goes overseas, including agricultural and industrial machinery sent with the hope that standards of production and consumption can be raised in other parts of the world too.
    There is no denying the fact that the high level of production does lead to a high level of material comfort, and that Americans are mighty fond of having things that are new, shine, softly padded, conveniently arranged, efficient, and so far as may be, effortless. The bread comes already sliced so that the housewife need not exert herself to slice it. It used to be that when she put the bread in the toaster, she had to turn it once to toast both sides. Then came the toaster which did both sides at once, then the toaster which popped the toast out when it was done, so that she did not have to turn a handle to raise it. Soon, no doubt, there will be a toaster which butters the toast, cuts it in quarters, and puts it on a plate. Perhaps there is one even now.

Food comes ready-cooked and frozen, vegetables already washed. Floor wax must be self-polishing, pens write for years without having to be filled. Storm windows change to summer screens at a touch. Heat is thoroughly automatic, and air conditioning keeps the house equally comfortable in summer. Automation now promises to put a final end to all drudgery, even to building in the controls which will keep the machines from making mistakes.

Why is it that, having created a world in which he could live without raising a hand or taking a step, the American habitually seeks ways of letting off steam? His towns are full of bowling alleys, golf clubs, tennis courts, clubs, lodges, churches and associations into which he pours energy both physical and mental. The labor-saving gadgets, the love of comfort turn out to be ways of saving his time and energy for something else.

(2 476 words)

(From An American Grab Bag, United States Information Agency, 1986 )