Six years ago (this very time of year, in fact), Kathy and I settled into our home, here in Bryan, Texas. It’s the longest we’ve lived anywhere in our 42 years of married life. Coupled with a saner pace of living and working, it had (and has) me musing about what it would mean to put down roots in an area. It gave rise to one of my first posts in this Zoe-Life blog, The Mr. Rogers’ Project—in which I spoke of my desire and hope to be about a more intentional neighboring.
The project is ongoing. We’ve had friends on three sides of us move away, in fact. (A new dynamic for us – as we’ve always been the ones to pack up and relocate.) Saying goodbye to old friends, welcoming new, maintaining ties with the “old-timers”: it all demands a certain vigilance and diligence.
Coming across a September 2023 Atlantic article by David Brooks, entitled “How America Got Mean,” serves to rekindle my resolve to be a Mr. Rogers—a qualitative presence in my immediate neighborhood, yes… but, also, beyond.
It’s a lengthy and meaningful article—too much and too full to process here. (Clicking on the link embedded in the title, above, will take you to a downloadable version.) Here, I can only provide a very high-level survey.
In a few, opening paragraphs, Brooks…
- isolates two [interrelated] questions which have haunted him the last decade: “why are Americans so sad?” and “why have American become so mean?”
- invites us to look beyond the immediate explanations to which folks resort (e.g., the rise of social media, a decline in community action and involvement, a diversification of America that feels threatening to many, growing economic insecurities)
- isolates a more fundamental or primal condition that underlies our American condition
On this latter point, he writes: “The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration.”
- isolates two [interrelated] questions which have haunted him the last decade: “why are Americans so sad?” and “why have American become so mean?”
It’s a malady which Brooks attributes to a collapse (somewhere in the middle of the last century) of “moral formation” in our country—a formal and informal process whereby individuals and communities learned to restrain selfish instincts, to cultivate basic social and ethical skills, and to discern deeper purposes in life and living.
I choose to think of it in simpler, clearer terms: “We have forgotten Mr. Rogers… and the simple rules of life and living he taught and personified. We’ve forgotten what it is and means to be ‘good neighbors.’”
Two things strike me as I consider Brooks’ closing discussion on how we might recover “morally formative institutions that are right for the 21st Century,… that help people become the best versions of themselves.” (Both of these are my impressions, by the way. I will leave you to your own processing of Brooks’ fuller and deeper prescription.)
First, we ought to be very careful in automatically assuming, as some will be inclined to do, that “moral formation” is a property and possession of religious institutions. We ought to remember that Jesus offered the “Parable of the Good Samaritan (or the Good Neighbor)” as a critique of many of the religious of his day. Yes, churches and “Christians” might be a part of the solution. But, we ought not forget the ways they can be a part of the problem.
I suspect that most of you have engaged it before. Still, like Mr. Rogers himself, it’s worth sitting down and visiting with, on a regular basis…
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school. These are the things I learned.
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life.
Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why but we are like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seeds in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.
And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK!
Everything you need to know is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and sane living. Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
(Fulgham,
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,
pp. 6-7.)
