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Individuality
By Matt Newcamp
11/10/02
Reading #1:
He “said the trouble with me was that I didn’t go to church
or anything. He was right about that, in a way. I don’t. In the first
place, my parents are different religions, and all the children in our
family are atheists. If you want to know the truth, I can’t even
stand ministers. The ones they’ve had at every school I’ve gone
to, they all have these Holy Joe voices when they start giving their sermons.
God, I hate that. I don’t see why the hell they can’t talk in
their natural voice. They sound so phony when they talk” (J.D. Salinger,
The Catcher in the Rye, 100).
Reading #2:
“Never have I witnessed such sincere hospitality and the overwhelming
spirit of true brotherhood as is practiced by people of all colors and
races here in this Ancient Holy Land. . . . . For the past week, I have
been utterly speechless and spellbound by the graciousness I see displayed
all around me by people of all colors.
. . .
“There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world.
They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans.
But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit
of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to
believe never could exist between the white and the non-white. . . .
“You may be shocked
by these words coming from me. But on this pilgrimage, what I have seen,
and experienced, has forced me to re-arrange much of my thought-patterns
previously held, and to toss aside some of my previous conclusions.
This was not too difficult for me. Despite my firm convictions, I have
always been a man who tries to face the facts, and to accept the reality
of life as new experiences and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always
kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go
hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth” (Malcolm
X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 346-347)
This sermon is dedicated to my mother, Susan Newcamp, and to the professor
with whom I most clashed and from whom I learned the most, William Coles.
“Individuality”
Imagine you’re
a teenager.
Now, imagine you’re in a library.
Someone, maybe a friend, maybe a teacher, or something, maybe a book or
a magazine article, has planted a title in your mind: The Catcher in
the Rye.
As if searching for the Holy Grail of adolescent literature, you move
silently through the fiction shelves. As you locate the “S”
section, you notice you’re holding your breath. Sabatini, Safire,
Sagan, Saki, ah!, Salinger. You’re in luck! The only available copy
sits silently on the shelf. (Later, you learn the other copy was stolen
long ago, in the ‘60s.)
You spirit the book to a table in the far back corner, where no one ever
goes, behind the album collection, and you begin to read, quote:
IF YOU REALLY want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably
want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like,
and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that
David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into
it, if you want to know the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores
me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages
apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them (endquote).
(Salinger 1)
You don’t need to know anything about Charles Dickens’ particular
brand of Victorian fiction to get it. You don’t even need to know,
more generally, about the confession genre of autobiography to get it.
All you need to know, really, is how good it feels to withhold
information. It is empowering. It is intriguing. It is annoying. It is
the adolescent’s primary pleasure.
Consider the following authority-to-adolescent dialogue:
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
“Who are you going with?”
“No one.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Nothing.”
Holden Caulfield, the fictional narrator of The Catcher in the Rye,
epitomizes adolescent antiauthoritarian surliness. If you [red]
read this book at the right age, and under the proper circumstances (for
example, it was slipped into your hands, cover mysteriously missing, the
giver of this gift whispering something like, “The truth will set
you free!”), if you read this book at the right age and under the
proper circumstances, not only did you marvel at how Salinger, via Holden
Caulfield, put his finger on how you thought, you also sighed admiringly
at how he expressed what you felt, in your heart, so much more
precisely than you could have ever hoped to do yourself. “Yes! Authority
figures make my skin crawl,” you realized, but you could never say
why. Holden Caulfield gave you the perfect word to describe them: ‘phony.’”
Like some of us, perhaps, Holden spends a great deal of time telling us
what he is not. He spends a great deal of time telling us how he
is not phony. This is his preferred way of asserting his distinctness,
his individuality.
For example:
“Phonies care only about the beautiful people. (I, in contrast, do
not.)”
“Phonies have dirty secrets. (I, in contrast, do not.)”
“Phonies speak in an affected way. (I, in contrast, don’t.)”
Phoniness is not limited to those in authority. Holden is also quick to
point out and deride its presence in most of his peers’ mannerisms
and behaviors. I don’t know about you, but I can relate.
I spent most of my adolescence telling people what and who I was not.
I was no posturing poseur. I was a true, guts-and-glory skateboarder.
I was no hoity-toity, clean-cut prep. I proudly bought my clothes
fifteen sizes too big and second-hand and wore my hair distressingly long.
If the alternative musical groups I listened to became too popular, I
accused them of being sell-outs and turned to more extreme alternative
musical groups. I was no Republican, and no Democrat either. I was not
even a Libertarian. I was an Anarchist.
I was distinct, an individual, and I was blind to the fact that I looked
like every other supposed individual in my particular peer group. I was
just as media-manipulated as my mainstream foils. To be slightly anachronistic,
the major difference was that my media was underground, and instead of
asserting my individuality via a unique cell-phone ring, I did so with
a unique earring. My peers ignored the fact that they all had cell
phones, and we ignored the fact that we all had piercings.
Since we always had each other, we also overlooked how distressingly alone
Holden Caulfield’s behavior and attitude make him. True, he is a
rebel, a loner. True, he is a rugged individualist. He is so self-reliant
he has no friends and no role models. He is so cut-off he has no feelings,
other than angst. In fact, he is lucky to end up in a mental hospital
and not in jail at the end of The Catcher in the Rye because there
is a dark side to Holden Caulfield.
In many ways, he is like Robert De Niro’s character in Martin Scorsese’s
film, Taxi Driver. He is also like Mark David Chapman, the man
who killed John Lennon. He is like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He is
like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the two teens who killed thirteen
of their classmates and then themselves at Columbine High School in Colorado.
He is like John Walker Lindh, the young American who joined the Taliban.
He is like all of these people who committed heinous acts in order to
stand out or to be distinct, in order to prove their individuality.
And you know, any one of these people, including Holden Caulfield, could
have been raised in one of our homes, and in this our congregation.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not insinuating that Unitarian Universalists
pervert young minds, or that Unitarian Universalists are to blame for
America’s problems. However, at the risk of sounding slightly like
one of our fundamentalist brothers or sisters, I would like to
offer that Unitarian Universalism, like Holden Caulfield, represents modernism
par excellence. Modernism, in case you haven’t noticed, is far from
perfect. There is a dark side to modernism. True, we have thrown off the
shackles of tradition, but only to replace them with the shackles of power
and influence. True, we have thrown off the shackles of orthodox religion,
but only to replace them with the shackles of shortsighted science. True,
we have thrown off the shackles of family and clan, but only to replace
them with the shackles of anonymity and self-reliant stress.
Don’t get me wrong. I love being a Unitarian Universalist. And, unlike
our fundamentalist brothers and sisters, I don’t want to go back
to being pre-modern. That’s as impossible an illusion as Marxist
Communism (or the day when we are all equal) and the Anarchist state of
nature (or let’s destroy industry and go back to good ol’ hunting
and gathering). I don’t even want to go back to this country’s
childhood, to try to reclaim Jeffersonian, little “r,” republicanism,
or to try to rescue it from its current state of two-party degradation.
Holden Caulfield couldn’t let go of his childhood, and he wound up
broken-down and disillusioned. An adolescent country can go the same way
as an adolescent boy or girl. We want to grow; we are growing; we must
continue to grow, but how?
I have already said that Unitarian Universalism represents modernism par
excellence. Along with its inevitable flaws, modernism has some valuable
advantages over that which has come before it. Chief among these is the
ability to self-critique. Every time I am critical of these modern times,
I am thankful that I can be so honest. However, as many post-modernists
(and, perhaps, a few Unitarian Universalists and even some of us) have
yet to learn, constant self-critique is meaningless if it doesn’t
lead to something greater, something creative, something transcendent.
It is not enough to say, “Since there is no objective truth, since
the mapper is always a part of the map, there is no true morality, no
right, no wrong. Power is all, and whoever holds power controls language,
which in turn determines ethics. It is a vicious, inescapable circle.”
As I have noted in the Davies on-line chat room, this was the philosopher
Nietzsche’s lament. It led him to quit, to give up. He died paralyzed
and insane.
However, to move forward, I must borrow one of Neitzsche’s favorite
techniques, philology, or historical linguistics: the study of the ancient
meanings of common words.
You don’t have to do too much digging to discover the Latin roots
of the word “individual.” In means, “not,”
and dividuus means “divided.” Thus an individual is one
who is not divided. What, then, if the distinctness implied
by individuality is one of authenticity, one of integrity, rather than
one of reactivity or one of oppositional defiance? What if Holden Caulfield’s
adolescent individuality is the opposite of true individuality?
What if Holden Caulfield’s individuality is in actuality the opposite
of individuality, a projecting onto others and the world of his own phoniness,
rather than true individuality, or a search for the person behind the
mask?
Imagine you’re back in the library again. You’re a little older
now, a little wiser now. You’ve just watched Spike Lee’s masterpiece,
Do The Right Thing. You couldn’t help but notice the full-screen
quotation of Malcolm X. You want to know more about this man who inspired
such a profound work of art.
You’re excited as you look for X’s autobiography, but you’re
not holding your breath. You’ve been disappointed too many times
to waste your air. You find the book sitting silently on the shelf, collecting
dust.
Your favorite back corner is no longer so isolated. (It seems that, somehow,
albums have been rediscovered.) It doesn’t matter to you anymore
anyway. You no longer want to hide. You no longer want to keep things
to yourself. Now you want to talk, to share. As you settle in to read,
you find yourself hoping, wishing, that someone would approach you and
start a conversation.
If anyone was divided, you soon learn, it was Malcolm Little. He was born
black at a time when this country automatically and unashamedly labeled
African Americans “second-class citizens.” He grew up into a
fine hustler, or, should we say, an entrepreneur? His actions landed him
in jail, where he was introduced to and eventually converted to a specific
brand of Islam, Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam. He entered prison
a product of the system. He left it a minister, and eventually a prophet.
As is usually the case with prophets, Minister X’s outspokenness
soon got him into trouble. After a few misplaced comments about the Kennedy
assassination and other assorted personality conflicts with Elijah Muhammad
and his sons, X was silenced.
At the urging of his sister and his wife, he took advantage of this forced
time off to make the required Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the holy city
of Islam. He lacked the proper verification of his Muslim status, which
left him stranded in the city of Jedda, alone, for three days. Imagine
being stuck, alone, in a strange land, a land where you don’t know
the customs or the language. X’s was no self-imposed isolation, no
simple choice not to fit in. This was the real thing. Listen again,
though, to X’s reflection on his trip:
[Read Reading #2]
I am struck by the last sentence, quote: “I have always kept
an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand
in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.” Endquote.
Unlike Holden Caulfield, who thought he had everything figured out ahead
of time, Malcolm X went to Mecca with few, if any, preconceived notions.
X had strong opinions, but he was aware that they were opinions, and he
held them in tension with the reality he was able to observe. His identity
came from more than his rational mind. His identity was about more than
simple belief. It was deeper than that, more complete than that. This,
my brothers and sisters, is a post-adolescent identity. It is self-definition
by careful inclusion rather than by guarded exclusion. It is a self-definition
that owns its illusions and seeks to replace obsolete ones with ever better
illusions, ever more resonant ones. This is individuality. This
is not-dividedness. This is hard to attain.
Fortunately, we don’t have to go it alone. Unlike Holden Caulfield,
who pushed everyone away, Malcolm X accepted help and guidance when it
was offered. He may have disappointed many of his teachers and role models,
but this was only because he had the vision to take their teachings one
step further than they had ever realized possible. While this is a painful
thing, it is not a bad thing. It may be dangerous (it got Malcolm X killed),
but it is the only way societies change. It is also the only way churches
change.
I’m glad we can come together like this, in community, and think
and talk and feel about things together. I’m glad we’re not
alone. I’m glad we keep a watchful eye on one another. I’m glad
we have traditions to learn and then to rewrite. I’m glad we have
role models from which to learn and then to let down when we go our own,
individual, not-divided ways. I’m glad that adolescence, even
cultural adolescence, even spiritual adolescence, is only a phase
from which to go forward. I’m glad for the open mind and the
open heart. I’m glad that we’re always seeking to grow, in knowledge
and in love. This process is painful, even dangerous, but it is also beautiful
and revolutionary.
Let it be so.
Works
cited, consulted or influential
Carroll, Jackson W.
Mainline to the Future: Congregations For the 21st Century.
Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.
Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development
and the Quest for
Meaning. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1981.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human
Nature. New York:
Penguin Books, 1985 (1902).
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1951.
Whissen, Thomas R. Classic Cult Fiction: A Companion to Popular Cult
Literature. New
York: Greenwood Press, 1992.
Wilber, Ken. A Brief History of Everything. Boston: Shambhala,
1996.
X, Malcolm. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley.
New York: Ballantine
Books, 1999 (1964).
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