The Primal Scream for Identity

Family policy matters in engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston presidency family and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fall better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation.

Now, here is our host family policy matters tracing event brings thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. Many of us are struggling to provide some kind of explanation about the fever pitch of divisiveness in our culture today. Many cannot remember a time when our nation was so divided. Of course, there have been many times like this in our nations history the Vietnam War are the struggle for civil rights in the 60s, especially right after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, and when we read about politics during the era of Abraham Lincoln.

You see much the same rancor.

Of course that's not meant to minimize the importance or the danger of this division in our country and perhaps provide hope that we have survived this before, will I guess today is author Mary Eberstadt, a senior research fellow at the faith and reason Institute in Washington DC. She's just released a new book in which he talks about this divisiveness and offers a possible explanation and some hope for the future book entitled primal screams. She explains that a loss of identity that plagues many today may be a culprit. Mary Eberstadt welcome to family policy matters. Thank you for having me Tracy.

So first of all mean primal scream well underneath the divisiveness that we see in our politics and our culture today is something really primordial and that's why I say primal screams.

I think that people have lost a sense of their self. I think that questions of identity are the obsession of the age and in my book. I try to get at why there is this feeling of having lost ourselves and I think Tracy the answer is that the two main ways that identity was constructed for humanity that is your reference to religion and reference to family are both ways that are harder to navigate after the sexual revolution so we have secularization, which makes it harder to say I am a child of God, and we have changing family patterns that make it harder to say my identity is I'm a mother I'm a sister I'm a cousin, etc. and that's what the book is about is trying to understand what the emotional state is behind this obsession with identity interesting to see is actually written a book about how difficult it is to be an outspoken religious person these days. Well I think that difficult because so many things in the culture. Of course conspire against it, but what we have to understand is that the loss of religion for many people, has also meant the loss of the community and in these increasingly panicked flights to collective identities, you know, gender identity, ethnic identity, all of identity politics, I think in this impassioned flight. What we are seeing is that people don't feel firmly rooted in other more traditional communities like the traditional family, community, and the traditional religious community. So our world has changed a pretty radical way to make things better. Until we understand the root cause of our divisions. Let's talk about those two and unpack those a little bit in a second, but tell me why you think this now contributes to the rancor in the division that's happening so much in our national conversation. It's something new in politics called identity politics and this is not like anything that came before because it in for you can't understand me unless you are a member of the same victim group that I belong to and this is a very new claim. This idea that men can't understand women or people of one ethnicity can't understand people of another ethnicity, identity politics puts the wall up to keep other people outside and I think we need to break down those walls and remind ourselves that we are all members of humanity with the reason why people cling to these groups is fundamental. It's that they're not deriving their identities from other communities. So talk a little bit more about the family, community, and how that has broken down over the years 1960s and the sexual revolution we've seen a number of friends that we now take for granted.

For example, widespread abortion, fatherlessness, broken homes and shrinking families, which I think is very important and under under attended. So regardless of the moral content of those decisions or how people feel about them. Every one of those trends has the effect of subtracting the number of people in one's life who has your back.

Basically, in other words, the family has weakened each of these forces has chipped away at it. So what religion I know you. These are intertwined, so what's in the assaults. The primary assault on religion. Do you believe, well, I think the assault on the family and the assault on the churches amount to the same thing. I don't think they can be understood apart from each other and when we see these statistics about the increase in the number of people who belong to no religion at all.

I think this too is a consequence of the weakening of the family because it's in the family typically is that religion is learned in the first place. And when we have weak families, we have in effect interrupted the transmission of religious belief and religious practice. So that's the connection was also a weekly radio show and podcast of the north Carolina family policy Council.

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This current but you talk about the importance of community to human beings from a scientific perspective so discuss that with us a little bit interesting Tracy because we are social creatures. We are made to live in community and I think part of the problem that we're having is a society is in trying not to live that way. That's why, in the book. I look at examples from the animal kingdom which I think are fascinating and what they've learned in the last 10 years or so about two things one is that animals are not born knowing how to do what they do, they learn it. They learned in community and in particular they learned it from siblings and parents.

That's the second thing that scientists have learned that animals are intensely relational and familial creatures.

This is not something that was understood well before you know the method.

The lone wolf is an example won't don't actually live by themselves. They live and they thrive in the community of the family and so to all other animals, so my point is to take some of this research and apply it to ourselves because I think when we see how the family has weakened, we can understand that we are not learning the way we use to learn, we don't have as many siblings and cousins, and parents to learn from.

For example, that's what I mean about disrupting the transmission of society itself. That's what we've done and we in order to be able to fix this have to first understand the radical nature of what happened to us.

So before we get to the whole part is that, let me just ask you. There are a lot of very real crimes and injustices that have been perpetrated against various groups of minorities.

Because of this new way of looking at identity politics.

So how do we respond to that. Well I think it's very important to recognize that of course part of the reason that people flee to these collective groups is injustice. So in the book I give an example.

Some years ago, Victoria's Secret had a fashion show where they had a scantily clad model wearing Indian headdress that was sacred to a certain Native American tradition. Now, in a case like that where someone is mocking your religion in such a public flagrant way and being so disrespectful.

Of course it makes sense that people were injured by that the Native Americans and others thought that that was wrong and inappropriate, so I'm certainly not saying those cases don't exist. What I am saying is that there is an irrationality to identity politics that make it very hard to distinguish cases like that from cases where people are just sort of mindlessly banding together insisting their victims when their victimhood is not in evidence, and I would give the example of some of the demonstrations that we seen on college campuses.

For example, so in a more rational political order. We could have a conversation about the specific grievances and what to do about them. But my point in primal screams is that a lot of what is driving politics and especially identity politics is not rational and that's why were not having these conversations as adults might have them. What were having.

Instead, are these emotional tantrums coming from a lot of broken people who don't understand the source of their suffering point irrationality.

I think that certainly is a keyword.

Many of us look at some of the arguments that are being made in code just doesn't even make sense.

So let's talk about hope. Now are you seeing that there are signs of hope and do you think we can turn this around, well short Tracy there always signs of hope because were also rational creatures and the reason I wrote primal screams was that I wanted to hold up the record of what we've done to ourselves so as to make some people hopefully think well let's change the way things are. Humanity response to a record of harm. We saw this in the example of tobacco smoking, for instance, where it took decades, but over time, a lot of people change their minds about whether it was a good idea to smoke and they change their minds because they were faced with evidence that greatly some people this substance cause harm, and so I would argue analogously about the sexual revolution that the record of harm that we've done to ourselves by living in this radical new non-familial way.

The record of that harm eventually is going to be recognized and behavioral change. Accordingly, so that we as humans find those answers to the fundamental questions of who am I and what am I here for well I think the old answers are the best answers. If you ask a religious person who am I the response. There will be. I'm a child of God.

And that's the most important thing about me.

It's not my skin color. It's not my sex is not anything else about me. What's the most important thing is that I am a child of God that gives you a very firm answer to the question of identity and similarly so does the familial answer. I am a mother.

I am a father, I am a cousin. I am a brother.

These are the ways in which we have conventionally constructed our identity and it's very interesting that there's so much sociology about happiness. All of it pointing in the same direction which is that people who are well grounded in family are happier people. I think part of the reason for that. Tracy is that they know the answer to that question.

Who am I and they don't have to go looking for it in these bands of aggrieved political groups. So I think those original ways of answering that big question who am I are ways to which we need to return. I will thank you so much. So were just about time for this week. But before we go Mary Eberstadt where listeners go to get more information on this and perhaps get a copy of your new book primal screams will thank you Tracy.

I have a new website Mary Eberstadt.com that CBE RSP ADT and listeners can find information about the new book and also other related works and that's Mary Eberstadt.com Mary thank you so much for joining us on family policy matters.

Also, we hope you join the program to do it again next to listen to the show all lawn insulin more about NC families worked encourage and inspire families across a lot of our website it NC family.ward that's NC family.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your friend