A Nation of Like-Minded Americans? Perish the Thought

I had wanted to talk about ethics in the modern day (sample question: does it still exist?), but when you sit down in a room with a philosopher--even a professor of philosophy--you are going to hear about philosophy. So it was this week with Ermanno Bencivenga, 45-year-old UC Irvine professor recently refreshed by a summer hiatus in Europe but now looking inward once again at America, his home for the last 19 years.

He has been grappling, he said, with forming his philosophy over the years. More specifically, how to live one’s life, how to view the world, what expectations one can have about the future. Make no mistake, he told me, his philosophy is by no means a consensus opinion shared by the masses.

“It’s a point of view that’s interested in pursuing and exploring differences,” he began, likening it to the way a curious, malleable child sees the world.

That’s the way we all start out, he said, but seldom continue. “You could say that everyone is a philosopher, because everyone is a child, and being a child is precisely what I’m talking about. Being playful, open, eager to pursue matters for their own sake, with interest in diversity. Eventually, we become more rigid and devote ourselves to definite tasks. Playfulness, if it’s left at all, is confined to the margins of our lives. Diversity also is marginalized.”

Even though Americans have more free time than any generation in our history, we fall into predictable behavior and thought patterns. “This interest in diversity, in growing, in learning to cope with very diverse situations--I tend to identify that with what makes us human,” Bencivenga said.

Is America blowing it?

“Yes. I’m a foreigner, right? I was born and raised in Italy and came to this continent when I was 26. What’s amazing about America, coming from a European perspective, is its diversity in terms of cultures. In the Irvine school district, I was told when my kids started going, 81 languages were spoken in homes of the students.”

From there, he said, a mystery begins unfolding. “Out of this enormous potential, out of this enormous diversity, which might make America the most human of countries . . . out of this comes homogenization, with all the kids forgetting their original language, their cultures and traditions. They can’t even put their own country of origin on the map. They become interested in the same TV series, same rock groups, speak exactly the same language. My feeling is that there is very little feeling for diversity. This is indeed a melting pot with emphasis on the melting, and the melting occurs to the lowest common denominator.”

Surely you know, I said to him, that homogenization is exactly what many Americans say they want.

“This diversity comes with a risk,” he conceded. “When you face diversity, you’re going to be uncomfortable. When you talk across religious, cultural and linguistic lines, something’s going to get lost. Some of you is going to get lost in the process. You are going to have to make difficult negotiation with others, and it’s not going to be as easy as it is with people like yourself. On the other hand, this is precisely what education is. If you want to call it tough love--you need it. That difficulty, that effort . . . is precisely what enriches you.”

Many would reject that as mere theory, I suggested, with no practical application.

“Every major empire or powerful state has eventually collapsed after lasting for any number of years, not so much from external pressure, but its own internal degeneration,” Bencivenga replied. “They collapsed from within precisely when they were not able to offer themselves options, when everything had become so much under control, so much homogeneity, so much expected, that no flexibility was there anymore. Sort of a necrosis.

“The contribution of so many different people is where we’ve gotten our strength and power. These people [nativists] want to freeze a process that can only be in flux. They want to freeze it because they have found their own satisfying niche, or think they have.”

What about the contention that America is losing its cultural identity?

“Let me put it this way. National identities are a thing of the past. The real challenge for contemporary humans is to be global. There’s no question about it. You’re not going to keep people from coming, you’re not going to keep diversity from infecting you, if that’s the way to put it. The real problem is, should we deal with this with new tools, recognizing the novelty of the problem and try to develop new approaches, and should we try to make it into something we can get stronger by?”

What society needs to move toward this, he said, is education and leadership.

“What we need is to recognize that our society has to be a rainbow, it has to be very diverse. There has to be, in the interest of everybody, enough room and enough opportunity for each culture to develop itself. Because when it does, we all profit, we can all learn from it. The leaders of this community should devote themselves--because this is the problem of the age--to reassuring people that this is in their best interest. That’s why I insist on education, because when you educate someone, you reassure them.”

Friday: Ethics, both locally and globally.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.