Out of a living silence

From both of my parents and all four of my grandparents, I inherited a distaste for self-promotion—even the indirect forms such as being patriotic or proud of one’s school or place of residence or of other members of one’s own family. Early childhood conditioning tends to be persistent, so to this day I inwardly cringe upon witnessing displays of self-referential praise.

Years ago, I was on an academic committee considering a faculty member for promotion. I knew and admired the candidate, and there was little doubt in my mind about his being worthy of promotion. That notwithstanding, I found myself put off by his supporting documentation. Rather than simply submitting the required teaching evaluations, he supplied an accompanying document quoting selected phrases from comments that students had made; these selected words of praise were isolated from the surrounding narrative by being placed in text boxes and formatted in a large and bold font so that there would be no missing how highly his students thought of him. Offprints of his publications were accompanied by a similar document, featuring laudatory remarks that reviewers had made of his work, also placed in text boxes and set in boldface type in a larger font size. The presentation felt like an advertising brochure, as though the candidate somehow believed that the only way to get an academic promotion by others was to display a capacity for self-promotion.

I was not the only member of that committee to be put off by the presentation. An older colleague, nearing retirement age, commented that universities nowadays are almost forcing their employees to expunge all traces of modesty and humility from their behavior, if not from their mentality. Department chairs are expected to write annual reports assuring the university administration that their department is filled with world-class scholars and universally admired instructors. By the time of the early 1990s, candidates for promotion in the academic world could no longer submit a simple letter and a typed resumé. They had to write 10-page descriptions of their goals as teachers and scholars, accompanied by ample evidence that they were accomplishing those goals and that their accomplishments were being recognized by others living near and far. When I sought my first promotion, it was still possible to submit a brief letter and a typed resumé. By the time I was at the stage of my career to seek a promotion to the next level, all that had changed dramatically. I found the new process so unpleasant to contemplate that I never sought another promotion after that first one—and I was amply rewarded by never getting another one. Putting together the expected sort of dossier was not worth the time and effort, but more to the point it was not worth the violence to my sense of dignity. Ironically, my sense of self-worth would have been undermined by having to present myself as worthy.

It is not only the academic world that has steadily gravitated toward a culture of vainglory. Far from being an unpleasant feature of a bloated ego, fulsome self-congratulation now seems to be expected. Just as no commercial product can afford to be presented simply as adequate to the task but must be portrayed as better than all its competitors and indispensable to the discriminating consumer, no person can afford to be seen as merely competent. Pretty good is just not considered good enough anymore.

During an election year in the United States of America, voters are treated to a parade of candidates who not only toot their own horns sans cesse but also boast about their country as the greatest country in the world, even as the greatest country in the history of the world. Some of the candidates go so far as to disparage political leaders who do not participate in their jingoistic frenzy; those not caught up in nationalistic fervor are characterized as actually hating their country and wanting to drag it down to the same level as ordinary countries. An ordinary country is one that has affordable health insurance and reasonably-priced medical services and pharmaceutical products for everyone; reasonable tuition fees and generous food, housing and transportation subsidies for students pursuing a higher education; a modest-sized military of men and women trained mostly to help citizens cope with natural disasters such as floods, hurricanes and earthquakes; and a prison system designed to reform and educate miscreants rather than punish them. An ordinary country does not have a bloated military budget that is used to send personnel and materiel to countries all around the word and to build permanent military bases in more than a hundred other nations. Americans these days who long to live in an ordinary nation are advised to go live in Canada or Northern Europe, for the United States is a nation for those who wish to participate in excelsior.

In the 1950s, the psychologist Carl G. Jung said in an interview broadcast in English that the United States as a nation is “extraverted like hell.” The quiet reflection of the introvert is deprecated to such a degree that the system of public education is skewed in favor of gregarious doers whose energy is dedicated to making changes in the world rather than in one’s own attitudes and expectations. The thriving industry dedicated to selling products designed to help people realize their dreams of “self-improvement” tend to focus on how to be more self-confident, more assertive, more aggressive, more successful by external standards of assessment, more admired by the crowd. Jung chose his words carefully; an overly-extraverted country truly is like hell.

Although the United States could be described as “extraverted like hell” in the 1950s, it appears not to have always been that way. Neither the New England where some of my ancestors were born and lived, nor the Midwest in which other of my ancestors made their way from the cradle to the grave, according to what I heard from family elders, had much room for the braggadocio narcissism that has become so prevalent in today’s culture.

It is possible that my elders’ memories of the prevalent culture of their early days were faulty. Perhaps they were just getting old and slowing down, as I have managed to do a few decades after they passed on. Perhaps the world always seems too fast-paced, too forceful and too brash from the perspective of a rocking chair on the porch with a commanding view of an array of bird feeders. Or perhaps a culture of modesty and moderation really has been mostly replaced by a culture of excess and hubris.