What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society

by Paul Verhaeghe

  Is this wrong? What’s wrong with pleasure, other than that it is unequally distributed? And if those other people tried a bit harder, surely it would be within their reach, too? The Swedish social theorist Ellen Key designated the 20th century as the ‘century of the child’. We can already proclaim the 21st century as the century of the dangerous, or at least disturbed, child. Double diagnoses (such as combinations of ADHD, ODD, CD, ASD, self-mutilation, and eating disorders) are mushrooming. And just as serious disorders appear to be on the rise among adults, problems are increasingly being signalled among the young. Some are disturbed, some are dangerous, and some are both — with the emphasis on some. The young are often viewed with a combination of fear and rejection — fear of the perceived threat they represent, and rejection of the ideas and behaviour ascribed to their generation. Young people don’t want to work anymore, they just want to have fun, they want instant gratification, they take drugs, have sex too early, and so on. In short, they are presumed to be doing all those things that every adult dreams of, but from which he or she shrinks.

  The reassuring thing is that this criticism is made of every rising generation. The following may sound familiar:

  The counts of the indictment [against children] are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise [...] they contradicted their parents, chattered before company [...] They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters.

  The charges have a modern ring, don’t they? Actually, the quotation is a summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times, compiled by Cambridge scholar Kenneth John Freeman. It shows how the complaint is essentially always the same: the young people of today have no norms or values; the world is doomed. The underlying meaning is more poignant: I’m getting old; I can’t keep up; I can no longer relate to young people — they are different.

  This feeling of alienation between old and young is indicative of a changed identity resulting from cultural shifts — something that apparently has always sparked generational conflict. Each new generation is indeed different from the previous one. Three important questions immediately arise: why is the new generation different, how is it different, and what reactions does that prompt? The answer to the first question was given in the previous chapter: the new identity is a mirroring of the new, neo-liberal narrative. I shall now look at the second question: how is the younger generation different? And does this difference indeed have a threatening and disruptive effect — that is, is there more going on than just a generational conflict?

  Moral development

  The word ‘upbringing’ implies an upward movement, an elevation to a new level. In more prosaic terms, children are expected to adopt the rules of their culture, ranging from table manners, bodily hygiene, and sexual norms, to political awareness. To judge by the number of books published on upbringing, the number of experts pontificating on the subject in newspaper articles, and the number of families referred to parenting-support services, child rearing would seem to be extraordinarily difficult these days. The fact that my parents’ generation gave it comparatively little thought makes its current problematic status all the more strange.

  So it’s worth taking a look at how normal moral development takes place. A great many developmental psychologists and educational theorists have studied this question, and their findings will surprise no one. From our early infancy we learn norms and values from our parents and, increasingly, from our wider environment, based on what we are told (‘You must wait your turn’) and what we see others do, in a context of punishment and reward. Showing loving attention is the best reward; taking it away or socially excluding the child is the most effective punishment (‘Go and stand in the corner’). Material rewards (‘If you promise to go to bed now, you can have one last sweet’) and physical punishments should be exceptions, otherwise they create a sense of failure and powerlessness.

  Learning moral behaviour is a continuing process that requires continual repetition and can be extremely tiring, as every young parent soon discovers. Initially, authority and conscience are located outside the child, in the figure of the parent, who must accordingly take on the role of controller. All three-year-olds will challenge this authority and test its limits, a process that is repeated a decade later during a hormone-saturated puberty. As Peter Ustinov said, ‘Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.’ Often enough, children ensure that they are caught transgressing, in order to be given reassuring boundaries. The consequences — fits of tearful, stamping rage; little white lies; guilt and shame — are all part of the process. Parents have to be able to stand their ground.

  Around the age of five, children who have experienced a loving and secure environment will start to adopt and internalise those initially external rules, making them part of their identity. Such internalisation forms the basis of moral awareness, or conscience. In concrete terms, this means that even if Mummy and Daddy aren’t there, the child knows very well what is and isn’t allowed, and will feel some guilt when it breaks a rule. After this, school and the wider social surroundings start to exert their influence, further reinforcing the initially weak process of internalisation.

  A visible effect of this reinforcement is the increasing trust that can be placed in the growing child. By trial and error, he or she learns to take the right decisions, involving not only parental norms and values, but also those of others. This is the famous coming-of-age process that forms the central theme of a host of books and films. At the same time, these books and films provide a mirror for youngsters growing up: these are the difficulties, this is the fun stuff, these are the mistakes that you can make, this is black and this is white, but between them lies a whole rainbow of colours. This is the point at which upbringing seamlessly turns into Bildung, a process of education and maturation, in which an optimally rich culture guarantees a rich palette of potential for identification. Knowledge is central to this process, but crucially in the ancient Greek sense of phronesis, wisdom. It differs completely from scientific knowledge, for the simple reason that it involves moral and existential choices that allow no absolute answers. Generalised solutions are of no use; they mostly betray stupidity and fear. As Steinbeck puts it in East of Eden: ‘Aron’s training in worldliness was gained from a young man of no experience, which gave him the ability for generalisation only the inexperienced can have.’

  As confidence in the decision-making ability of a young adult grows, he or she gains more and more autonomy, and has less and less need of external control. This process culminates in legal majority, the threshold of which has declined in recent decades. Most countries now set it at 18. On reaching adulthood, individuals are held accountable for their behaviour, being deemed to have sufficiently internalised moral norms. They become citizens, full members of society, with the attendant rights and obligations. If they fail to do what is expected of them, society will intervene, either by condemning them for not following the rules or by declaring them to be disturbed, abnormal.

  Apparently, this is no longer plain sailing. A recent poll in the Netherlands revealed that three in four adults find children impertinent, antisocial, underhand, and disobedient. Official statistics show that 14 per cent of Dutch children (one in seven) are classified as having special needs or requiring special education, and that almost 7 per cent of 18-year-olds are eligible for benefits under the Invalidity Insurance (Young Disabled Persons) Act — and will in principle receive them for life, being deemed unfit to work.1 Figures for other Western European countries are presumably similar.

  It is impossible to investigate with any accuracy how this has come about; there are too many variables involved. But certain trends are noticeable. The influence of parents and family has shrunk to a fraction of what it once was; yet when children go off the rails, their parents are always the first to be blamed. The processes whereby children are moulded as they grow have come under serious pressure in our changing so
ciety.

  Because of the way in which work is organised, very few children enjoy a predictable and stable environment. Most infants experience at least one change of surroundings and caregivers per day, and in some cases even two. At the same time, the art of wielding authority has been virtually lost, and parents find it hard to forbid their children anything. Paradoxically, this makes infants more insecure, with the result that many children fail to bond normally or to develop normal self-confidence and confidence in others. On top of that, the advertisement-driven media constantly broadcast the message that every desire can be satisfied on condition that you buy the right product. The lack of authority and the focus on instant gratification means that children become unmanageable.

  Besides the processes that need to be in place for optimal identity development, the question of content is perhaps even more crucial. What mirror is being held up to a child? We can deduce that content from two apparently contradictory complaints about the young people of today. The first is that they are competitive hyperindividualists who are only interested in their careers and don’t care about anyone else. The second is that they aren’t prepared to make an effort; they’re lazy, work-shy, and parasitical. In fact, there is also a third category: young people who are labelled with a disorder. In turn, these three groups hold a mirror up to us: they are the product of the dominant narrative with which they grew up.

  The pacifier kids

  Despite current high levels of unemployment, there are thousands of vacancies for the unskilled, who account for a significant percentage of the jobless. These vacancies just can’t be filled. Every employer has tales to tell about youngsters who throw in the towel after their first week because they find the work too arduous and the wage too low. All things considered, they’d rather go back to benefits. No wonder that employers have grave doubts about a welfare system that allows such abuse. What they fail to realise, though, is that these young people are merely a subgroup. For the sake of simplicity, I shall call them ‘pacifier kids’.

  Along with youngsters categorised as successful or disturbed, pacifier kids are the product of the current dominant narrative and the way it was transmitted during their upbringing. All have been given the same message — namely, that every need can be fulfilled and every desire gratified, even in the short term, and that pleasure is life’s main goal, to be achieved through consumption. What distinguishes the pacifier kids from the other two groups is that they want this to be handed to them on a plate. That’s to say, they rely entirely on the other to provide that gratification. In itself, this isn’t so strange, because every child starts off life relying on others. What is odd is that this group has become stuck in this phase.

  To understand this process better, it’s necessary to return briefly to the idyllic years of infancy. You arrive in the world, a source of delight to your parents. As a helpless baby, your life is governed by reflex reactions. Inbuilt survival instincts prompt you to cry whenever you need something. So you wail when you’re hungry, thirsty, or cold, or when you have a wet nappy. And, hey-presto, someone appears at your cot to provide help and comfort. (Often this comfort takes the form of a dummy, or pacifier.) During the first few years of life this interaction is repeated literally thousands of times, leading to a conditioned conviction: if you have a problem, someone else will solve it for you. As you mature, that conviction is gradually set aside. You increasingly try to solve your own problems, though illness or trauma occasionally make you regress to that earlier stage, when Mummy or Daddy would make things better.

  That process of maturing is what this is all about. There’s a crucial stage in every child’s life when it has to learn to deal with what I will call ‘The Lack’. Mummy isn’t always there, Daddy doesn’t have superpowers, and even when they are there, they’re often preoccupied with other matters. However much parents succeed in giving their children a normal, loving upbringing, frustration is an inherent part of growing up. No reality, no product, can ever perfectly satisfy our needs and desires, or do so for long. The quality of an upbringing can to some extent be measured by how well a child has learned to handle these inevitable frustrations.

  The transition from that lost paradise, where all our wants were satisfied and the other was always there to help us, to a harsher reality in which we have to take responsibility for ourselves, find answers, and solve our own problems, is a crucial one — and the environment plays a decisive role in this process. Nearly every culture marks this transition by assigning growing youngsters new rights and obligations. They learn what they can expect from others, and what they themselves must do from now on. They are also told that some desires can only be satisfied under certain conditions, and that others are entirely taboo. This brings us back to the theme of chapter two: ethics and the rules that go with it, invariably in the form of restrictions. Sex, food, and drink are permitted, but only within set limits. We struggle even more when it comes to questions about birth, death, and the world in general. Why aren’t I able to have a child? Why am I mortal? When will the rains come? In such cases, The Lack truly deserves to be written with capital letters.

  Confrontation with big, existential questions reveals a typical characteristic, human creativity, that we use to devise all manner of answers. We even do this collectively, building on the greater symbolic structures with which we try to ward off The Lack. Religion and art are the two oldest; science, the most recent. Each represents a way of trying to keep our fears manageable. But none provides us with conclusive answers, so we continue our quest.

  To realise that there are no conclusive answers to The Lack, and at the same time to persist in seeking such answers, together with and on behalf of others, is evidence of a successful upbringing. It shows that our parents have taught us not only that there are material limits to what they can give, but also that human desires can never be fully satisfied. Whatever we get, whatever we give, we will never have all the answers. The most beautiful definition of love, conceived by Jacques Lacan, is ‘L’amour, c’est donner ce qu’on n’a pas.’ — ‘Love is giving what one does not possess.’

  By way of experiment, we can ask ourselves what life would be like in a society whose chief motto was that everything can be had. Imagine a society which taught that pain is exceptional and avoidable, and pleasure the normal state of being — that everything can be monitored and predicted, and that if, very occasionally, something goes wrong, it must always be someone’s fault. In this society, to forbid a child something is almost tantamount to abusing him or her, because children are perfect beings who are entitled to everything that money can buy.

  Of course, there’s no need to set up this experiment, as it’s already in full swing. Every flat screen, every billboard, is constantly sending us the following messages: all your wants can be met, there’s a product for everything, and you really don’t need to wait until the afterlife for eternal bliss. Life is one big party, although there is one very important condition: you must ‘make it’.

  The pacifier kids aren’t aware of that last clause, largely because their parents make every effort to shield them from the slightest frustration, the slightest pain, and the slightest want, even though the infants in question are now in their twenties. When the examination season rolls around, every professor gets a few telephone calls from concerned mothers keen to explain that their darling simply couldn’t make that nine o’clock exam, and asking for an exception to be made just this once …

  These youngsters are not the product of the welfare state. They are the waste product of a consumer society that is well on its way to finishing off the welfare state.

  Make it or break it

  A second group of youngsters is aware of that clause. That’s to say, their parents are aware of it, and have brought up their children accordingly — the background message being that there’s no such thing as chance, everything can be controlled, and every want can be met. These youngsters are making it, but that’s just about all they are doing. Hence
all the complaints about their hyperindividualism and lack of public-spiritedness. Their main concern is their own success. Taking a back seat and helping others isn’t part of what is now called ‘core competencies’. Quite a few self-styled experts attribute this behaviour to typical human egotism. Our ‘selfish genes’, remember? Forget about Ecce homo and all that kind of thing. That selfishness also explains the competitiveness of these young adults, who are ready to sacrifice just about anything for their career, as witness the title of the popular TV series Make It or Break It.

  I have a different explanation. This egocentric take on life is also due to the ideal that has dominated society for 30 years now, and has taken homes and classrooms by force. Its effects on education are particularly devastating, especially given that it all started with the best of intentions. Just like healthcare, education used to be seen as a vocation. People became teachers just as they became doctors, for idealistic reasons. That’s why both these sectors have always been a bone of contention between political and religious authorities. Each camp wanted its own ideal vision of humanity to be reflected in them. As I indicated earlier, the quest for the ideal individual and the ideal society is a thing of the past. A new view of society has been forced upon us. The magic word ‘competencies’ now dominates education, and schools are gradually acquiring a related task — namely, early detection of pupils who are disturbed, or unfit for work.