Do you remember what happened back during the 2012 presidential campaign, when president Obama gave a speech in which he argued that entrepreneurs didn't deserve all of the credit for their accomplishments, since they hadn't created the infrastructure of roads, power lines, water lines, sewers, etc, which their businesses needed to operate? An immediate backlash came from people who seemed to feel that they had been personally insulted. 'Oh yes, I most certainly do deserve all of the credit for my achievements!' was the theme. Was that just the usual election year hysteria, or had the president touched a particularly sensitive nerve?
Where did the 'Culture War' that bitterly divides America come from? All the name-calling aside, what is the one basic point that conservatives and liberals disagree most sharply about? The quick answer would be to say that conservatives want to keep things as they are ('conserve' them) while liberals are in favor of reform, and while this characterization is essentially accurate, we seldom hear politicians declaring how much they love/hate change. The difference goes deeper than that, and I suspect that even the most fervent liberals and conservatives have seldom fully grasped what it is all about. What concept, exactly, does a conservative most want to conserve? When you get right down to it, I think the difference between a conservative and a liberal can be demonstrated by how they would answer the following question: Do you think that whether a person 'succeeds', and 'gets ahead' in life is decided entirely (or almost entirely) by the person's motivation, drive and willpower? Or do factors beyond a person's control—different forms of luck, basically, like inheritance, race, etc, play a major part? This may be an oversimplification, but I think a conservative would say that personal motivation is the key factor, while a liberal would say that luck plays too much of a part for motivation alone to guarantee anything. A conservative would feel that basically good things come to good people who have earned them, while a liberal would say that no, there is no such inherent justice to life.
Why is this difference in outlooks so important? Why would it trigger the sort of acrimonious arguments and mutual hatred that we often see? Because it is related to the single most important thing in life: happiness. Under what conditions are you happy? Very few people are happy 24/7. Like everyone else, you strive continually to be happy, yet have probably never given the matter much thought. But deep within your mind there exists a set of conditions (which have almost certainly never been put into words) which must be met in order for you to feel good. Everybody wants to be happy, and, like a computer, your subconscious mind is constantly looking for evidence that you have met the necessary conditions and are entitled to it. If you are an American, the main condition is likely to be that you must feel that you have achieved something. Americans, more than any other culture throughout recorded history, tend to believe that there is nothing which they cannot achieve or control if they try hard enough. Exactly what qualifies as an achievement varies from person to person, but in general a feeling of having excelled, of having stood out from the crowd, and of having been praised and approved of by others, is common. In other words, the sort of stuff which one would think enables you to get ahead and succeed. Americans feel that competition brings out the best in them; and that happiness doesn't just grow on trees, rather it is something which must be earned. This is arguably what makes Americans 'exceptional'--an unstated, yet very real, motivation to get things done, and to do them in a noteworthy manner. We have to, since our happiness itself depends on it.
How did this subconscious, usually unrecognized mental link between achievement and happiness come about? It is almost certainly based on yet another common American belief, namely The Protestant Work Ethic (PWE). The PWE is a Reformation-era belief that God prefers hardworking, industrious people over lazy, indolent ones. In its most extreme form, some believe that lazy persons are even predestined for damnation. The PWE was a major factor in the growth of capitalism and free enterprise. Whereas previously the general opinion had been that God frowned upon people using their time to make money, at a stroke the PWE turned the table upside down. Suddenly God endorsed the accumulation of wealth, so long as it wasn't used in a hedonistic manner. What was holy was 'delayed gratification', which could take the form of re-investing the profits in business over and over again. The world had never seen such a concept before, and was revolutionized by it.
If God himself approves of people engaging in business and money-making, it would be easy to conclude that wealth comes to those who truly deserve it. It would make sense that success in life isn't largely a matter of luck but instead is awarded by God to those who have pleased him. If nothing less than the difference between salvation and damnation is involved, it would be far too important to be left to chance. To people who are doing well, especially, the PWE seems to square with the evidence and is flattering. The idea is that God has given every person the potential to succeed, and whether they do so or not is entirely up to them. Otherwise, life would be inherently unfair. Since people have everything they need to get ahead within them, they shouldn't need help from others or be expected to give help themselves. And since God liked 'achievers' rather than idle people, achievement came to be a condition which had to be met in order to be happy. It could be argued that there is only one threat that is serious enough to be worth putting a condition on happiness, and that threat is damnation. Make achievement a precondition for happiness, the idea was, and you can both get rich and avoid burning in hell, since your achievements will please God. That's why there is a strong connection between conservatism and religion. The PWE would also explain why conservatives are often uncomfortable with science, which suggests that everything happens for identifiable reasons within the natural world, and there is no need for God to play a part.
Hardly anyone today is aware of the origins of the American attitude towards achievement, but that doesn't really matter, because it operates on a subconscious rather than a conscious level. Whether we were born with it or each of us picks it up from the various 'hints' we get as we grow up in America, it doesn't have to be put into words to operate. You don't say 'I think I have just achieved something notable, therefore I will be happy starting now'. No, it just happens without any conscious input. It operates by default unless we happen to be consciously thinking about achievement and happiness in some other way at the moment--and that seldom happens, because conscious thinking is difficult and demanding, whereas using the pre-programmed concepts that are already in our heads requires no effort at all. Also, the software of our brains is designed to discourage thinking about alternative explanations. The conditions under which we will be happy are far too important a thing for any questions or dissent to be allowed. The subconscious mind doesn't want to change; if it were to discover that it had gotten the formula for the attainment of happiness wrong, where would our happiness come from then? Some people are more 'achievement addicted' than others, but there's a good chance that you must achieve in order to be happy, even if you don't know why.
And that's why president Obama's comment that entrepreneurs weren't entitled to all of the credit for their achievements (“You didn't build that”) riled so many people. They didn't consciously realize why they felt angry all of a sudden; it just happened. It was because on a subconscious level they had just realized that their entitlement to happiness had been questioned. The less credit they got for their achievements, the less happiness they would be entitled to. Making that connection resulted in an emotional, angry, reactionary response. Their subconscious minds provoking anger at the president was supposed to discredit his comment, since it branded him as a hostile, untrustworthy person (just in case they didn't already feel that way about him). Otherwise, his argument might have to be taken seriously. The message that was being sent to the conscious mind was that surely this hostile person is out to get me, not state something which just might be true!
Why have the culture wars reached a sort of critical mass nowadays, which virtually paralyzes the federal government? I suspect that first the Great Depression and more recently the Great Recession have shaken the faith of many people in the idea that good things automatically come to good people who work for them. At one time the general belief of the average American was that opportunity within the USA was unlimited, and that progress and the standard of living would climb steadily higher to unlimited heights. But many aren't so sure anymore. It has dawned on a lot of people that they can in fact work themselves to death and still live in poverty. That change of mind has contributed to the parallel decline in the importance of religion to the average American—maybe God isn't awarding success to hardworking people after all. A loss of confidence in the fairness and opportunity of the American economy led to a demand for the creation of 'safety net' programs to care for the unemployed. Conservatives tend to dislike these programs and 'big government' in general; although they generalize the reason why as the possibility that they will encourage 'laziness' (God prefers industrious people, remember), the real reason is probably because the programs' very existence implies that people aren't to blame for economic failure since ours is not a completely fair system—and that would also imply that people deserved less credit for economic success. It is another threat to the happiness of conservative thinking people, much like the one in the President's 2012 speech but on a infinitely larger scale. Basically, a large swathe of the population is feeling an unstated, subconscious, existential assault on their assumptions regarding how happiness is attained. Nobody likes that, and it provokes an angry, emotional response, to which liberals respond in kind. The end result is that our society is undergoing an unprecedented challenge to one of it's traditional beliefs, and it's unclear how things will work out. And, while hardly anyone realizes it, it's all based on a disagreement about how happiness comes about. It is not a matter of good versus evil, it is simply a matter of what brand of software your brain operates by.
We humans like to believe that what sets us apart from animals is that we think in a logical and rational manner. The problem is that we are not nearly as rational and logical as we assume. We can think objectively in an unbiased manner, but seldom do—because, again, that is difficult. For the most part we think emotionally by default, because that requires no extra mental effort at all. As Thomas Edison put it, there is nothing the average man will not do to avoid having to think. If we were truly rational there would never have been any culture wars, since they are most certainly illogical. The irony and the tragedy is that the real question isn't how much credit and happiness we deserve for our achievements, it's whether we need to achieve in order to be happy in the first place. The idea that happiness could come about in any other manner than via achievement simply never occurs to many Americans. We assume that everybody, all over the world, thinks the same way about achievement and happiness as we do, when in fact our attitude is extreme and unusual. Most people would think it was daft to attach any conditions to happiness. Why make something so precious even more difficult to attain? This is arguably why depression and anxiety are so commonplace in modern-day America. Do there really have to be any conditions at all on happiness? Why did the Christian attitude towards wealth take a 180 degree turn during the Reformation? Had the Bible been misunderstood up until then? Does God really look down on those who don't make a 110% effort to achieve? Or had Western civilization simply dreamed up a convenient religious justification for wealth accumulation, to allow itself to make money without feeling guilty?
So, conservatives and liberals are basically arguing about the answer to the wrong question, because achievement isn't a prerequisite for happiness after all—not unless you let it be. A person doesn't have to 'succeed' or 'get ahead' in order to be happy. I know far more about how the conservative rationale for the attainment of happiness operates than the liberal equivalent, because the conservative one was the one I grew up with. Maybe liberals don't put conditions on happiness, or maybe they just put different ones. Or maybe the same ones, but to a less extreme extent. Whatever the case may be, for both liberals and conservatives the most trustworthy route out of this trap we are in and to our goal of happiness is via conscious, original thought, instead of simply assuming that whatever beliefs we already hold are somehow automatically the correct ones. If God truly prefers active, industrious people, wouldn't he prefer people who make use of the brains he has given them rather than those who avoid original thinking whenever possible? I can think of no better conclusion than a quote by the Dalai Lama of Tibet and co-author Howard C. Cutler, M.D, from their book 'The Art of Happiness': Once our basic needs are met, “We don't need more money, we don't need greater success or fame, we don't need the perfect body or even the perfect mate—right now, at this very moment, we have a mind, which is all the basic equipment we need to achieve complete happiness”.