How will an Obama Administration justify a comprehensive return
to Big Government? For starters it may bring up the controversial
new theory that man is evolutionarily incapable of looking after
himself and needs bureaucrats to tie his metaphorical shoelaces.
The theory is the brainchild of Peter Whybrow, head of the Semel
Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior at UCLA, and author of
American Mania: When More Is Not Enough. Our behavioral
infantilism goes back to a time when primitive man stalked the
African savanna, Whybrow says, when the need for instant
gratification was a survival mechanism hardwired into our brains.
Prehistoric man, it seems, suffered from poor impulse control,
and adapted to a scarcity of food by instantly gratifying his
every need. “We were designed to run for our supper,” he says,
“and if you caught it you ate it.” We’re still designed that way.
In other words, you can take the man out of the savanna, but not
the savanna out of the man.
Though he is neither anthropologist nor archaeologist, Whybrow
believes his theory is key to understanding how we got into the
current financial mess, and once we accept his idea that we are
addicted to abundance, that we are on a “runaway train of self
interest,” you can see how the subprime mortgage fiasco was all
but inevitable.
Our inability to resist the impulse for instant gratification,
coupled with too easy credit and the loss of social restraints
(the old Protestant ethic), proved our undoing. True, credit
allows many of us to purchase homes and automobiles and attend
college and enjoy the good life. But too many of us lack
individual responsibility and buy lots of junk and then cannot
pay our bills (sometimes have no intention of paying our bills).
Such people are denied the American Dream, therefore the system
is rotten and needs a government fix. Basically, Whybrow wants
government to take over the role the church and the family once
fulfilled, that of imposing “social restraints,” otherwise known
as “regulations.”
THERE SEEMS TO BE at least one major flaw in this theory. A
little research into Pre-Columbian Indian cultures would have
shown that — far from never thinking about the morrow —
hunter-gatherers stored foods to see them through the lean, hard
times. If anything, the tribes that practiced instant
gratification would have become quickly extinct.
Contrary to Whybrow’s thesis, the desire for instant
gratification is a relatively new development. Today’s profligate
lifestyle — building up massive debt and a reliance on charity
— is a result of the recent growth of the middle class and its
abandonment of Protestant values, coupled with the expectation
that government will always be there to bail us out when we
behave imprudently. In my own lifetime, charity and massive debt
were still frowned upon. Post-World War II generations, however,
have been overly pampered and spoiled, and failed to learn the
culture of thrift from their Depression-era parents. Their
superficial guilt-feelings made charity acceptable, first for
other people, then for all. Shame was okay if it was caused by
the remote actions of distant ancestors or ancient regimes, but
there was no need to feel ashamed of anything you yourself did no
matter how reckless, stupid, or immoral. Government feeds (and
grows) on such impulsive behavior. As Kenneth Minogue writes:
“low morals amount to giving in to impulse, and impulsiveness
soon lands one in the arms of the bureaucracy.” We all pay in
lost liberty for the reckless behavior of a few “impulsives.”
Americans, Whybrow concludes, are genetically indisposed to
responsible behavior and thus evolutionarily unsuited for The
American Dream. He may be right if your definition of the
American Dream is perfect equality or owning three television
sets. But for the rest of us, The American Dream is about having
the opportunity to succeed, with each generation doing better
than the previous one, if it is willing to work for it. If
anything, the past 200 years are proof that we are capable of
deferring our own happiness for the sake of our children and our
children’s children.
There does seem to be a weird, old-fashioned morality at play not
only in society but in the free market. When we get too far
removed from the traditional, Calvinist ethos, when economic man
chooses to live recklessly, impulsively, and without personal
responsibility, some correction inevitably comes along to set us
back on the straight and narrow. It’s all part of the learning
process. Centuries ago, Genevans decided they would no longer
accept the social restraints imposed on them by Calvin’s
theocracy, and that enlightened men were capable of restraining
themselves. I wonder if today’s American will consider Obama’s
bureaucracy and have a similar reaction?
