Circumstancial ignorance

As an American, I must admit that overcoming circumstances is an incredibly American tradition.

Communist Cuba struggles with the need to stimulate the constant proletarian revolution. Bulletin boards remind citizens of the struggle that is, allegedly, going on all around them. In the USA, we have, among other signposts, Hollywood films to remind us that individual self-definition is constantly under assault from external circumstances.

Robert Reich explains the general circumstances of the US individual in four myths that make context a very iffy operation. There are the "mobs at the gate", (first myth) the assembled external forces that deprive individuals of their independence and personal perspective. These mobs promote various corrupt circumstances that trap the individual. As a result of these fears, American individuals are constantly at war--against the drug dealers, authority, the cops, the radical terrorists, etc., all of which (in popular culture) seek to cage us in defining circumstances that would rob us of our personal liberty. This first myth is combined with the "rot at the top", (second myth). Individuals are made aware of the inevitably corrupting official systems. We are taught to regard our leaders in law and commerce with great skepticism. Individuals in US society accuse the current administration of promoting fear, caging the individual as much as any drug dealer and inhibiting individual realisation.

So the US individual is taught to trust neither the official nor the unofficial context that seeks to define him or her. The truly triumphant individual (Reich’s third myth) is able to take control of his or her personal context. The most successful individual redefines society with the help of the benevolent community (fourth myth), made up of equally self-defined/self-defining individuals.

Escaping the context of such a contradictory set of cultural and social instructions is not by any means simple, nor even, I would argue, necessary. But the study of these defining contexts, the need for constant self-awareness and to be aware of the circumstances structuring the interactions of others is, I think, important. This is what is required in order to "overcome" context.

Consider Gang Leader for a Day, a recent book by the American sociologist Suhir Vanketesh. Vanketesh studied the Chicago underworld by living for seven years in the Chicago projects. He wrote about the lack of interaction between the official city of Chicago municipality and the Chicago project community that he came to know. The two structures co-existed and to a large extent recognised the interactions that governed the parallel community. Vanketesh, in his book, explores how this recognition is expressed and what this recognition and its expression mean to the community members that he interviews.

This is the form of awareness that alters context effectively; both for the individuals that choose to explain themselves and their social structures to Vanketesh and for the audience that can read his book. In writing or talking about personal context and reading or discussing the personal accounts of others, we achieve at least some recognition of how context can influence individual identity. In doing so, we overcome the ignorance of our circumstances.