Habits Heart Creating a Government

Habits Heart Creating a Government of Citizens In his book Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah makes an argument that the individualism embedded in modern American society and culture is having a detrimental effect on the government of the United States, and specifically on the relationship between the citizens and their government.

There are definitely benefits to the American sense of individualism, at least in a pragmatic (Bellah uses the term "utilitarian" or "economic") sense, but Bellah argues that the cynicism and suspicion with which people view their government is ultimately counterproductive and inefficient.

The argument that is built in Habits of the Heart is multi-faceted and quite complex, but and examination of certain of the key points Bellah makes regarding individualism and its conflict with the collective good in this country leads to some understanding of the issues facing our government as framed in this book. One very clear fact emerges from this examination: striving towards collectivism is fraught with too many disagreements and barriers to be accomplished in a way that still upholds the ideals of democracy.

A large part of the problem that Bellah notes in the citizens' relationship to their government in the United States comes down to the definition of success that is associated with individualism, at least in Bellah's view. Bellah contends that, "Americans define success in terms of the outcome of free competition among individuals in an open market" (198).

The concept of citizenship, then, has more to do with the way individuals can take advantage of the current system of government and business, rather than a sense of civic duty or a striving towards the common good. As this is how success is defined throughout society, it makes sense that the individuals who hold government offices would define success the same way, and it is precisely this striving towards individual gain by politicians that has created cynicism and mistrust amongst the "common" citizenry.

At the same time, however, citizens use this belief to attempt to get as much as they can from the "system," exhibiting the same qualities that lead them to distrust the government. There is also a deeper element to the problem, however, in what can most succinctly be described as the bastardization of the system of government and society envisioned by the revolutionaries like Madison, Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton (Bellah, 250-6).

The notion of democracy has come to be equated with individual freedom and truly rampant individualism, where the ability for each individual in society to protect their own interests is seen as the paramount effect of democracy. The framers of the Constitution and of American government and society as a whole, however, established a republic wherein the individual good was tied to the common good, and this was supposed to remain an explicit and conscious part of society (Bellah, 254).

Instead, "American culture has long been marked by an acute ambivalence about the meshing of self-reliance and community," and more and more this ambivalence.