Understanding the water we are swimming in- The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman

 

Imagine a deep-sea fish that never touches the bottom of the sea, nor does it reach the surface. This fish spends the entirety of its life surrounded by water. We could maybe imagine that fish not being aware of water, in one way. Without the ground or air to define the water against, it could be a difficult task to even notice the water.

I think that is what it is like living in a culture sometimes. It is all around us, but we don’t really notice it. It comes with a set of assumptions we are not aware of. If someone asked us why we hold to that assumption we would struggle to give an answer because we just assume it is true, as do the people around us. We often assume everyone holds these assumptions, and even feel free imposing these assumptions onto history, or other culture as "just right".

I just finished a book by Carl Trueman called “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self”. (I heard his book “Strange New World” is an easier to read and more condensed version of this book). Reading the book is a bit like being a deep-sea fish and having water described to you. If you want to know the philosophical and cultural roots of our present assumptions about what is good, beautiful, and true, then this is a helpful book to read.

Trueman is a Cambridge trained theologian, and professor of Historical Theology, and Church History. His main focus in this book is the rise of Expressive Individualism, which is 

“the idea that the unique you is the core of feelings within you, and in order to be truly and fully you, you should be able to express those outwardly. … The real me is my feelings, and the ability to express those feelings outwardly makes me an authentic person”. (This quote is taken from an interview with him, not the book).

 We have granted this reality an authority that it has never before had. I hope you can already recognize yourself here. We are all swimming in this water, though we rarely notice it. The reach of Expressive Individualism is vast. It seems to touch on every aspect of modern life.

There is a good side to this that he admits. It helps us to value individuals. The idea of a hypocrite is to be one way outwardly and another way inwardly- to pretend to be something you aren’t- an actor playing a role. The spirituality of the inner life has attended to inner feelings for a very long time. However, traditionally, we have also been taught the value of self-restraint, and self control. We have been taught to align our inner lives with an external standard. Not all thoughts that arise within us were considered good. Anger was warned against as it could lead to violence and murder. Lust was warned against as it could lead to adultery. Discerning the thoughts and feelings arising from inside us has been a very important part of traditional spiritual life. From a traditional Christian point of view, the inner life is important, but it is to be brought before the authority of God, who is outside of the individual. It is through God that we evaluate the inner reality.

While Trueman is a conservative Christian, I believe he is very reasonable at trying to describe the landscape. His goal isn’t pejorative, but descriptive. He wants to help understand the movements that have gotten us where we are. So this book is really a prelude for anyone wanting to engage modern Western culture.

Trueman uses the work of sociologist Philip Rieff (1922–2006), philosopher Charles Taylor (1931–), and ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre (1929–) to explain how modern people have turned inward, creating a morality that is defined by one’s sense of therapeutic fulfillment and “authentic” self-actualization.

Behind our modern assumptions lay a number of thinkers, artists, and others who have influenced the way we think and feel as modern people. He wants to describe how “the self was psychologized, then sexualized, then politicized.”

He shows how Rousseau’s thought defines the self apart from society. (This influences the Romantics. He thinks artists, poets, and narratives shape culture as much, or more than any philosopher).

Nietzsche challenges the people of his day who have rejected God to really take seriously the consequences of the act of “killing God”. The intellectuals of his day, who rejected God, continued to borrow a number of moral and cultural elements from Christianity. He didn’t think they were being consistent with their convictions. Now they had to find a new source of morality and truth. We need to be self created. Contra the Romantics, the inner life is not defined by altruism and kindness. So the morality we create might necessarily be very different.

Regarding Marx- “The prepolitical is no more. There is nothing in this world where human beings can relate to each other that is not a potential arena of political conflict, because all areas of life connect to the overall economic structure of society and thus to society’s inequalities and injustices; and Marx should be given much of the credit for laying the theoretical foundations of that.” After Marx we think in terms of oppressor and oppressed, and everyone falls into one of those camps.

Darwin presented human beings as merely another kind of ape. Humans are animals, rather than souls made in the image of God.

Freud sexualized the self and made it the center of human identity (even for children). If a good life is one where people are able to fulfil their authentic desires, then it is important to be able to express those sexual feelings outwardly and fulfil those desires to be able to live authentically.

Some academics fused Freudian ideas with Marxism’s ideas about class struggle. Economic elites maintained their power through psychological domination. These Marxists focused on how the oppressed felt psychologically. Sexual restrictions were considered a kind of class domination. So, the traditional patriarchal family is a source of oppression by teaching them to be submissive to economic and political elites as they would to their father. The overthrow of the traditional family became a part of the revolution.

Feminists separated sex from cultural gender. Sex is biological. Gender is the roles, expectations, and customs associated with male or female sex. They suggested that gender was a social construct and reliant on culture. A woman wearing a dress was a gender expression in certain Western cultures, but not for women from other places who would have different ways of expressing their gender. This was not imposed by nature, but culturally constructed. And so, could be constructed differently (This opens the door to later people constructing innumerable genders. For example, Facebook now allows users to select one of 58 genders). These imposed roles and expectations are at odds with the authentic self (see Rousseau’s ideas about the self opposed as to society).

These movements have led us to prioritize feelings in such a way that feeling oppressed is the same as being oppressed. Psychological discomfort is equated with oppression and even trauma. This creates problems when it comes to free speech.

Pornography has been normalized as the sexual expression and fulfillment of desires has been given prominence as being a part of living an authentic self. Sex starts to become detached from relationships, and especially from procreation.

The felt need to express oneself sexually to be an authentic self has also meant that the technology of abortion has to be made available, so that people can be protected from the consequences of these sexual expressions. "Consent to sex is not consent to pregnancy" as one protestor's sign read. The psychological wellbeing of the parents is paramount. Pregnancy is largely disconnected from sex theoretically, and now biologically thanks to technologies of contraception and abortion.

The rise of the modern self changes how we view marriage. It is now about emotional fulfilment of those involved. This requires no fault divorce for when a member of the marriage no longer feels emotionally fulfilled by the marriage.

The LGBTQ+ movement inherits this thinking that the self is determined by the individual, and sexuality is a core of identity, which is often at odds with traditional culture. Trueman has an interesting discussion regarding the history of the union of these letters. For example, at the beginning the L and the G were not naturally aligned. Many lesbians argued that they were not simply the equivalent of male homosexuals, and that they had a unique feminine expression. Also, the L and the G had a quite different understanding of biology and gender when compared to the T. To be gay or lesbian meant to be attracted to the same gender, but this means that gender had to be fairly stable and largely connected to biological sex. Transgenderism often requires the rejection of gender as a stable category, and is based on the feelings and self identification of the individual rather than biological sex. The union of LGBTQ+ was considered helpful as an alliance as each authentic self was felt to be in tension with society, and sexual expression was an essential part of identity.

Trueman points out an interesting tension within this community. He recalls a lesbian describing her partner becoming a trans man. This created a bit of an identity crisis for her. She identified as a lesbian but was now in a relationship with a man. If she maintains identifying as a lesbian, is she denying her partner’s identification as being a man? Or, if she then identifies as straight, is she denying her identity as a lesbian? This highlights the problem when our selves come into conflict with each other. 

He ends the book with some helpful advice for Christians swimming in these waters of expressive individualism, which I won’t go into except for the following quote- 

 “Every age has had its darkness and its dangers. The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them.”