American Mythology - The Way We Never Were: Family Life in America

Amazon link, October 1993

The Way We Never Were:

American Families and the Nostalgia Trap

"I'm increasingly thinking of the need for quality child care and limits on the work week as the new health and safety regulations we need in this society." - Stephanie Coontz

"Providing children with good care, and families with decent health insurance,

are in the public interest." - Stephanie Coontz

About The Way We Never Were

October 1993

This myth-shattering examination of two centuries of American family life banishes the misconceptions about the past that cloud current debate about "family values." "Leave It to Beaver" was not a documentary, Stephanie Coontz points out; neither the 1950s nor any other moment from our past presents workable models of how to conduct our personal lives today.

Without minimizing the serious new problems in American families, Coontz warns that a consoling nostalgia for a largely mythical past of "traditional values" is a trap that can only cripple our capacity to solve today's problems.

From "a man's home was his castle" to "traditional families never asked for a handout," this provocative book explodes cherished illusions about the past. Organized around a series of myths and half-truths that burden modern families, the book sheds new light on such contemporary concerns as parenting, privacy, love, the division of labor along gender lines, the black family, feminism, and sexual practice.

Fascinating facts abound:

• In the nineteenth century, the age of sexual consent in some states was nine or ten, and alcoholism and drug abuse were more rampant than today
• Teenage childbearing peaked in the fabulous family-oriented 1950s
• Marriages in pioneer days lasted a shorter time than they do now

Placing current family dilemmas in the context of far-reaching economic, political, and demographic changes, The Way We Never Were shows that people have not suddenly and inexplicably "gone bad" and points to ways that we can help families do better.

"Seeing our own family pains as part of a larger social predicament means that we can stop the cycle of guilt or blame and face the real issues constructively," Coontz writes. "The historical evidence reveals that families have always been in flux and often in crisis, and that families have been most successful wherever they have built meaningful networks beyond their own boundaries."

--The Publisher.

Family Studies historian, author, and speaker Stephanie Coontz

Wikipedia Bio

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Coontz

Stephanie Coontz (born August 31, 1944) is an author, historian,[1][2] and faculty member at Evergreen State College. She teaches history and family studies and is Director of Research and Public Education for the Council on Contemporary Families, which she chaired from 2001-2004. Coontz has authored and co-edited several books about the history of the family and marriage.

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Official Stephanie Coontz Blog Site - Archieve Articles

http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/



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Reviews of The Way We Never Were

http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/books/thewayweneverwere/

Review of: The Way We Never Were

Kirkus Reviews, 8/15/92

Placing the American family in its historical, cultural, economic, and philosophic context Coontz (co-ed., Women's Work, Men's Property, 1986) identifies the myths and their sources, functions, and fallacies that Americans generate around family life, as well as the terrible burden these illusions create.

Violence, abuse, poverty, ignorance, alcoholism, dependence on government support -- in brief, all the social ills attributed to the breakdown of the family -- have in fact been a part of American social life since Colonial times, Coontz says. She further argues that our ideal of family life is primarily an invention of the 50's, projected in TV sitcoms such as Leave It to Beaver, and is an ideal as pernicious as are the social problems it supposedly prevents.

Families always have been diverse and fragile, shaped by a community of interdependencies and reciprocities easily lost. Even the division of labor between the nurturing, altruistic female and the aggressive, competitive male -- to whom she is supposedly connected by a bond of love -- is an illusion and a source of great unhappiness. Indeed, many of the problems in family life, Coontz says, are caused by the unfounded belief that the family should be a symbol of strength, a model of self-sufficiency, a center of values in which people find refuge and raise children who will be good citizens.

Today, the survival of the family depends on realistically assessing its diversity and what it can and can't do, on its overcoming the fantasies of what it is supposed to be and how it is supposed to function; and on recovering its civic commitments.

Clear, incisive, and distinguished by Coontz¹s personal conviction and by its vast range of cogent examples, including capsule histories of women in the labor force and of black families. Fascinating, persuasive, politically relevant.

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Ozzie and Hariet Lied

The New York Times Book Review, November 4, 1992, By Donald Katz

Two models of the American family have been on view in this political season. The family Clinton has presented itself as an up-to-date survivor model, replete with storytelling about family trouble - the beaming young couple who have worked past their problems, the working mother of the candidate, the once drug-addicted and imprisoned brother. The family Bush has appeared as a more traditional survivor family with a similar persistence of love and loyalty in the face of loss and pain, and yet, being "traditional," accoutered with all sorts of Little-League and car-pool nostalgia.

The purpose of the nostalgia, of course, has been to create a morally superior memento of a better family part. And it is what remains of this idealized, once-upon-a-time American family that the historian Stephanie Coontz shreds into tiny pieces in the first half of her often brilliant and invariably provocative new book, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

Pick a favorite presumption about American families during better times -- the "notion that traditional families fostered intense intimacy between husbands and wives while creating mothers who were totally available to their children," for instance -- and Ms. Coontz proceeds to unravel the mythical conceit. She says it is a 1950's vintage amalgam of the mid-19th century, middle-class obsession with the "mother-child axis" and the contradictory view of married life prevalent during the 1920's, which eroticized the adult relationship and called on mothers to curb their "over-investment" in their children.

No wonder that the pressure to abide by the hydraheaded, myth, as Ms. Coontz documents, drove so many women to therapy and substance abuse in the 1950's. Pick an era when you think a more decent American family was in ascendancy, and, Ms. Coontz, who teaches at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., offers dozens of facts in support of her contention that pain has always been a part of family life. The fabled colonial household was fragmented by early death, and children frequently heard explicit talk of sex. The idealized Victorian home hid a rate of marital dissolution, albeit without divorce, that would easily rival current divorce rates.

Contrary to popular opinion, Ms. Coontz writes, "Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary." In the Beaver's 1950's; before food stamps and public housing programs, one in four Americans was poor. There were Federal programs - G.I. benefits, housing loans, highway construction and job-creating research and development. But she argues that such programs rendered the 1950's suburban family "far more dependent on government handouts than any so-called 'underclass' in recent U. S. history." Incidents of family violence and abuse remained buried under the idealized images of the times, "Wife battering was not even considered a 'real' crime by most people," and "by 1960 ... experts described, incest as a 'one-in-a-million occurrence.'" Following a fascinating recapitulation of the development of modern gender roles, Ms. Coontz addresses contemporary myths about the American family. Here she begins to break less interesting historical news and clutters her effort to clear away the mist of myth. Her analysis is almost exclusively centered, on the economic and political genesis of domestic problems and the economic and political solution to them. Her discussions of heavily freighted cultural issues such as childbearing and maternal employment, latchkey children and the impact of day care on infants are terse; each subject is dealt with in a bit over a page, the boomers' penchant for "nesting" is written off as manufactured, romanticization.

But a change in focus has occurred, and Americans are leaving behind the habits of an era in which money-getting and what some commentators have called expressive individualism -- a phrase applied, depending on your point of view, to privileged self-involvement or Promethean liberation -- were idealized in a way that marked and even injured innumerable Americans. The current "turn toward home" that Ms. Coontz says is historically unproductive is precisely the cultural change that has allowed the warts-and-all family storytelling of the Clintons to appear just as all-American, value-laden and "pro-family" as the "nostalgia traps" laid out by the Bushes.

The last half of The Way We Never Were nevertheless complements the historical research contained in the first. Ms. Coontz tries to turn the focus of a tedious public debate away from an idealized image of individual roles and domestic life by using economic and social data to describe an America in which people are struggling every day to make ends meet, and raise their children.

Once we have shed all the unhelpful myths, our understanding of the American family must come to include the schools in which family members learn, the houses and communities in which families live, the medical system upon which families depend, and the economy that ultimately dictates the relative ability of each family to thrive. Perhaps at that point, somewhere in the future, we will finally create the Golden Age of the, American family.

Donald Katz is the author of "Home Fires: An Intimate Portrait of One Middle-Class Family in Postwar America."

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Whole Truth Behind Dream '50s

Newsday, by Vickie Erv

Oh, we families had a jolly time in the '50s, living and breathing family values, whatever those are. Such happy, moral days: babies booming, divorce and illegitimacy half of what they are today, home ownership skyrocketing, daddy venturing out to win bread, and mommy staying home to express her femininity through intricate housework maneuvers. This was not just Leave It To Beaver. This was the real thing. Of course, in order to play this American Family Dream Game, you really did have to be white and middle class.

On the other side of the tracks, according to family historian Stephanie Coontz, 25 percent of Americans were poor in the mid-'50s, a time before food stamps and housing programs. Forty percent of black women with small children worked outside their homes. African-Americans, whose labor sustained the economic expansion of the time, were restricted from living in white neighborhoods.

To tell the whole truth, postwar middle-class happiness was achieved through an enormous public investment. If there was indeed a brief moment of prosperity for the many working-class people who entered the middle class, it wasn't because individuals suddenly became more ambitious and self-reliant.

Fifties-style upward mobility arrived courtesy of the federal government, which subsidized college education through GI benefits, boosted house buying and home building through federal housing loans and built highways out to the suburbs through publicly financed projects.

And while we're telling the truth, middle-class life could be psychologically harrowing. According to a study of San Francisco Bay area women hospitalized as "schizophrenic" in the 1950s, some wives, unhappy with enforced domesticity, were labeled schizophrenic, institutionalized and sometimes given shock treatments "to accept their domestic roles and their husbands' dictates." For some women who sought abortion, shock treatments were also recommended, because the failure to want a baby was considered to signify dangerous emotional disturbance. And as for the myth of '50s-style deferred sexual gratification, in 1957, more than 97 out of every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 gave birth. (By the by, sexual morality wasn't so pristine at other times in American history either. In the 20 years prior to the revolution, one-third of all children born were conceived out of wedlock.)

If the '50s weren't picture perfect, surely we could hitch our nostalgic yearning for family values to some other eras in American history! Perhaps the gentle Victorian family. Not so gentle for Victorian families who weren't middle class. In The Way We Never Were, Coontz presents fascinating facts and figures that explode the cherished myths about self-sufficient, happy, moral families. This book will convince you that the good old days for families can -- and should -- never be ours once again. You may come to doubt political candidates who promise to return us to a golden age.

Coontz successfully proves that we are not going to solve any current social crises by trying to recreate models of family bliss that were realized only in the haze of nostalgia.

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Facts of Life for a Whole Nation

The News Tribune, Wednesday May 28, 1997. By Kathleen Merryman

Those who say "Here's what's wrong with families" in front of Stephanie Coontz had better be able to pull out the numbers.

Stephanie Coontz can't thank Dan Quayle enough. She had just published The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap when [Vice-President] Quayle blasted television character Murphy Brown for choosing to become a single mother. There was Quayle, conjuring up a nostalgic vision of "traditional" American values sustained by "traditional" families that looked very much like 1950s sitcom icons. And there was Coontz, the Evergreen State College professor of history and family studies, using history to demonstrate that Quayle's vision was a seductive myth.

Radio and television producers from I-5 to the Washington Beltway booked her.

Pat Buchanan debated her.

The National Enquirer misquoted her.

And thousands of ordinary people - precisely the kinds of ordinary people that college professors rarely get to meet - called her on talk shows and wrote to her.

Over and over they told her they were sure they were failing as families. Money was tight. Jobs were insecure. They were stressed and isolated. They blamed themselves, and they got lots of help. The airwaves and opinion columns are stuffed with pundits, politicians and preachers blaming the nation's problems on the collapse of family values. If only Americans would return to the traditions of the past - when men brought home the bacon and women cooked it and the kids washed their hands and said please before they ate it - everything would be fine again.

Politicos from the left offered no comfort to folks who aren't as affluent or educated as policy makers and futurecasters, she said. Society is changing, deal with it or get left behind, they said - and did nothing to help.

The people Coontz heard from had been buying the blame argument - it was so simple when everything else in their life was so complex - and blaming themselves.

Coontz stopped them right there.

Families aren't failing and pulling America down with them, she told them. The situation is far more complex, and the solution does not lie in imaginary visions of the past or predictions of -an affluent techno-future.

She believes it lies in accepting change and enlisting government and business and individuals to deal with it creatively. When Coontz didn't hear creative, practical solutions from the left or the right, she stepped in with a sequel to The Way We Never Were.

The Way We Really Are: Corning to Terms with America's Changing Families, ($23, Basic Books, HarperCollins) musters the tools of social science to explain what's going on in real homes and communities. For starters, what's going on right now is not the Apocalypse of American Society. It is intense economic and social change, and - with the possible exception of winning Lotto - change is always tough. For most people things are changing in very complicated ways.

They experience their anxiety as a loss," Coontz said on a sunny afternoon in the cozy bungalow she shares with her son and husband in Olympia. Outside, lilacs planted 40 years ago scented the air. Inside, the phone rang with more talk show producers and the graduation ceremony coordinator at the high school where her son is a sophomore. She married two years ago, but for much of her son's life, Coontz; has been a single mom with a full-time job.

Coontz's home life was the American situation in miniature - Everything looked the same on the surface, but there has been a huge shift in how people are supporting and living within it. All the time, when she debates proponents, of the family values argument, she explains that it's not enough to point to the past and lead the troops backward toward a cozy memory.

For starters, the realities of the past and the way it is being remembered are very different things, she said. Coontz reminds readers of The Way We Really Are that in the 1950s government supported families to a much greater extent than it does today, with low-interest home loans, college educations for veterans and massive public works projects. Business re-invested its profits and unions negotiated living wages. A dependable worker could expect employment security. The minimum wage of $1.48 in 1968 was enough to keep a full-time worker's family of three above the poverty line, she wrote in the fact-stuffed book bolstered by 46 pages of footnotes.

Life for some people - especially white people - was full of hope. But segregation was still the law in large chunks of the nation, and violence against minorities is part of almost every major city's history. "At the end of the 1950s, despite 10 years of economic growth, 27.3 percent of the nation's children were poor, including those in white 'underclass' communities such as Appalachia," Coontz wrote. "Almost 50 percent of married-couple African American families were impoverished - a figure far higher than today."

Even if families could choose to return to the shape they held in the 1950s, it's unlikely that business and government would follow, Coontz said. Government has shifted its economic benefits away from workers and toward businesses and the wealthy, she argued, and she can produce figures to back it up. "Corporate subsidies and tax breaks cost the Treasury $1,388 per person per year - more than three times what we spend on all child nutrition, food stamp and welfare programs," she wrote.

As the people who called and wrote kept telling her, jobs are a gamble. Layoffs are a constant threat. They see benefits eroding. They can't take care of their families with one salary. More than a third of all two-parent families with children would be poor unless both parents worked, Coontz said.

It's absurd and pointless to blame mothers for working, she said. Many are working to keep their children out of poverty. Sometimes, that one salary is all that protects a family from economic and emotional disaster. She cited studies that show that when a breadwinner loses a job, the stress manifests itself in the family. There are arguments, poor parenting decisions, and a disproportionately high number of divorces. While some family-values proponents want to make divorce more difficult - and to penalize single mothers socially and economically - Coontz argued that punishments or a mandated return to past roles won't save or encourage marriages - especially in the face of overwhelming economic pressures. She suggested that government and business should try a little tenderness.

"Employers aren't catching up. Schools aren't catching up. Government isn't making any of the policy changes that are needed, though there's certainly public support for them. People want quality child care, parental leave and insurance," she said. "There is absolutely no evidence that working parents - or decent child care - are bad for kids," she said, anticipating the argument she's often heard: that if mothers stayed home, their children wouldn't need child care.

"I'm increasingly thinking of the need for quality child care and limits on the work week as the new health and safety regulations we need in this society," she said. She's debated conservatives who say that's not government's role, and it would be intrusive for government to require business to meet those needs for its workers. She disagrees.

Providing children with good care, and families with decent health insurance, are in the public interest - as are the federal health and safety regulations the meat-packing industry fought as intrusive earlier in the century, she maintained. Already, she said, businesses that don't recognize that employees have lives are paying. Employers who are demanding more are getting less as employees who can't settle family issues at home are increasingly getting it done on work time. "The more employers make family life harder, the more they get the worst of both worlds. Employees who are not renewed in the family make up that renewal on work time," Coontz said.

She suggested measuring the work day in some businesses by what's Produced and not by time spent. That would cut down on time wasted on the phone, on e-mail or in pointless meetings. Flextime could help some employees who want to be home for their children - especially their teens.

"Kids get in trouble between 3 and 6 p.m.," she said, pulling out studies that document the times of day when kids have sex, get hit by cars and commit crimes. Moms or dads who could go to work early and get off in time to monitor their kids could have a stabilizing influence on whole neighborhoods.

Schools could rework schedules to match kids' needs. Research has shown that teens especially have a tough time waking up early. High schools that begin at 9:30 a.m. and let out at 4:30 p.m. would fit kids' body clocks - as well as the schedules of parents who could be home around 5 p.m. "Let's kick the notion around," Coontz said. If parents had more free-time, Coontz predicted, the community would benefit. Parents would find it easier to volunteer -especially in activities that benefit children.

"The track records for certain programs are exemplary," she said. Young people who volunteer can benefit from the experience, too, provided they're doing meaningful work. Her own son volunteered several years at Camp Easter Seal, she said. This summer, that experience helped him earn a meaningful summer job at the camp. And that, she said, will help set him on a straight course into the future.

Stephanie Coontz -
Families Studies of America





Couples Study of Sleeping Apart





On Divorced and Single Families





On Marital Roles

Family Studies historian, author, and speaker Stephanie Coontz

Just For the Fun of It - Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert, "We Were Us"

Miranda Lamberts and Keith Urban performing 2014 Fuse Song, "We Were Us"

Keith Urban - We Were Us ft. Miranda Lambert

We Were Us Lyrics

http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-were-us-lyrics-keith-urban.html

Wikipedia - About the Song - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Were_Us

from Fuse

"We Were Us" is track #6 on the album Fuse. It was written by Galyon, Nicholle Anne / Robbins, Jimmy / Nite, Jon.

Songwriters - Galyon, Nicholle, Anne ? Robbins, Jimmy / Nite, Jon

Published by - Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., EMI Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group

Rearview crosses

Railroad ties
Oh, Hail Marys
Friday nights
Heartbeat baby
Low-beam lights
God, I miss when you were mine

[Chorus]

Back when that song was a song
I could sing along without thinkin bout you every time it came on
Every beat, every line, every word, every time
When a road was a road
I could roll on through without wishin that empty seat was you
Money was gas, dreams were dust
Love was fast and we were us

Shotgun sunset
A cool mint kiss
Backseat promise
Breaking it
Floorboard feeling
County lines
God, I miss when you were mine

[Chorus]

In a sleepy town, just jumping in
Far too young to know that summers end
We were us, we can't go back
It's what it is, but God I miss

[Chorus]

Every beat, every line, every word, every single time
I just close my eyes and you're ridin shotgun
You and me, baby, on the run
I can feel your heartbeat, baby

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Miranda Lamberts and Keith Urban performing 2014 Fuse Song, "We Were Us"

Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert: Behind the Scenes of Their New Song

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20756523,00.html

Only a few years ago, reigning CMA female vocalist of the year Miranda Lambert was opening for Keith Urban. 

Both stars now headline their own tours, but the two pair back up on Urban's latest single, "We Were Us," debuting Friday at 7:30 p.m. on his Facebook page, followed by a chat with the musician. 

"Getting to work with Keith in the studio was awesome," Lambert, 30, says. "He's been someone that's inspired me along the way."

That admiration and respect goes both ways, PEOPLE Country's latest cover star says.

"She's the real deal," Urban, 46, says. "I just love her artistry."

Recording a duet together was a given, but only "if the right song ever came along." Luckily, it did.

"When I heard 'We Were Us,' it was instant. I had two thoughts. The first [was] ''This is that song' and the second – 'Man, I sure hope she says yes!' " Urban jokes.

Thankfully, Lambert did.

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Behind the Song: Keith Urban’s ‘We Were Us’ | Courtesy of Capitol Nashville

Behind the Song: Keith Urban’s ‘We Were Us’

http://radio.com/2014/03/18/keith-urban-miranda-lambert-we-were-us-behind-the-song/

By Annie Reuter and Kurt Wolff

March 18, 2014

Urban's duet with Miranda Lambert is nominated for an ACM Award this year.

“We didn’t mean for it to become a duet,” Jimmy Robbins told Radio.com about “We Were Us,” thesong of his that Keith Urban recorded last year withMiranda Lambert. “That didn’t happen until we got to the second verse, and thought, ‘maybe a guy could say this, too.’ That’s when we all got pretty excited about it.”

Robbins wrote “We Were Us” with two of his regular writing partners, Jon Nite and Nicolle Galyon, and last November the song became Urban’s 16th No. 1 hit. Now it’s also been nominated for Vocal Event of the Year at the 49th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, which take place April 6 in Las Vegas. (Update: “We Were Us” won the ACM Award for VocalEvent of the Year.)

“It almost didn’t happen,” Robbins said of the song in a phone interview Monday (March 17) with Radio.com. As he recalled, he’d been in a session at his home studio with Nite, and the song idea they had wasn’t going in the right direction, so they put it aside. Then “that afternoon, our friend Nicole was coming over. We pulled that idea out, and she loved it.”

The chorus was their starting point. “Back when that song was a song I could sing along without thinkin’ ’bout you every time it came on,” Urban and Lambert sing.

“The front half of the chorus we were just singing, and the words phonetically sounded like something,” he explained. “A lot of times when you write a song, you have a hook or a title, and you write from there. This was one of those times where we didn’t have anything. We didn’t know what the hook was until we got there.”

Robbins credits Galyon with coming up with what he calls the “disconnected images” that mark the verses of the song.

“I remember Nicole got really into it,” Robbins said. “She’s from a small town in Kansas, and so I think we were really channeling her home town in this song.”

“Rearview crosses

Railroad ties

Oh, Hail Marys

Friday nights

Heartbeat baby

Low-beam lights

God, I miss when you were mine.”

— “We Were Us”

“It’s easy to listen to and kinda hard to write, to tell a story without really telling a story,” Robbins said. One thing he loves, though, about the result is that it’s not a literal narrative. “It leaves it up to the individual to piece [the story] together and make it their own.”

One of the striking characteristics of “We Were Us” that it’s an upbeat duet. “There are a lot of duets out there,” Robbins said, “but there aren’t a lot that are uptempo with a feel like that. They tend to be super ballads.”

Maybe that characteristic, then, is what helped propel the song to the top of the charts. It was the first male/female duet, in fact, to do so since Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood‘s “Remind Me” in 2011.

“I think that Keith had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that,” Robbins said. As soon as they finished the song, “it was on hold with Keith I think that night. He loved it and put it on hold right then.”

Urban, said Robbins, “had been toying with the idea of a duet, and my publisher knew that.”

And Lambert was on Urban’s mind already as a duet partner. “He toyed with the idea of a few different people, but she was always his first choice,” Robbins explained.

Urban agreed. “I just love Miranda’s voice,” he told Radio.com in a conversation last September, when he was preparing to release his album Fuse. “I love her artistry. We did some shows together many years ago. She got up and did a song with me each night, and I loved our voices together.”

Urban explained that in the back of his mind, he has always hoped that he would find a song that they could duet on together.

“‘We Were Us’ came along, and it’s not the kind of song Miranda would normally do, but her voice is the first one I heard in my head,” he said. “I called her up and sent her the song and she loved it and came to the studio. Blake came along as well and hung out for the day. Miranda and I went in and sang the song and I’m just so happy at the way it turned out.”

“We Were Us” tells the story of two former flames looking back on their lost love.

As for Lambert, she had only praises for her duet partner, as she explained last fall in a behind-the-scenes video.

“He’s been someone that’s inspired me along the way,” she said. “He’s really intense and takes what he does seriously.”

Lambert may have been Urban’s first choice — and she may have loved the song when he played it for her — but getting the two of them onto Urban’s record wasn’t easy.

“It was really down to the wire,” Robbins said. “She’s on a different record label, so there’s a whole other world of red tape — [there are] so many people that have to approve of it for him to be able to use it.” Robbins said he, Nite and Galyon wrote the song last March, and so by the time Urban and Lambert agreed to cut the song, “it was right before [Fuse] was done, and we didn’t know if it was going to be on it or not.”

Ultimately, “We Were Us” made it onto Fuse. And that was a relief for Robbins and his fellow songwriters in more ways than one.

“Songs get cut, and don’t make records, and get cut again,” he explained. “But once we heard Keith and Miranda sing ['We Were Us'], it would have been hard to hear anybody else sing it, because it sounds like it was made for them.”

The 49th ACM Awards will be broadcast live from Las Vegas on Sunday, April 6, 2014 at 8pm ET on CBS.

Social Psychology and Terror Management Theory

Still Life with Skull by Philippe de Champagne (1602-1674). (Wikimedia Commons)

To Feel Meaningful Is to Feel Immortal

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/2014/11/03/to-feel-meaningful-is-to-feel-immortal/

by Clay Routledge

November 3, 2014

The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Imagine when our ancestors first started to look up at the stars and question their place in the universe. Why are we here? Are we alone? What happens to us when we die? It is difficult to know for sure at what point in time we became a species obsessed with existential questions. We can roughly date when humans first started to paint magical beings on cave walls or carefully and ornamentally bury the dead. But precisely when our ancestors started to truly behave like us is a matter of considerable debate. What we do know, however, is that at some point tens or maybe even a hundred or more thousand years ago, people started to look beyond the basic day-to-day concerns of the body to focus on matters of the soul.

A lot has changed since our species first began to contemplate such heavy issues. We can now send rockets into outer space, map the human genome and transmit information around the globe nearly instantaneously (we still need those flying cars we were promised though). And yet despite how technologically advanced our world has become, we are still burdened by the basic existential queries that early humans grappled with. We want to know our place in the universe. We strive to maintain the belief that we are living meaningful lives. And we cling to the hope that we are more than the sum of our biological parts, that we will make contributions to the world that transcend our mortality. In short, humans have long been and probably always will be existential animals – a species on a quest for enduring meaning.

Our existential lives have always fascinated philosophers and theologians. But now scientists are jumping into the fray, using empirical methods to ask questions that were once considered off limits to them. Specifically, empirical psychologists are exploring questions such as: Why do people seek meaning? What is it that makes life meaningful? And what are the mental and physical health consequences of finding (or not finding) meaning?

Why Does Meaning Matter?

My dog does not appear to be contemplating his purpose in life and he seems relatively well adjusted. Why then do humans desire to perceive their lives as meaningful?

One explanation that has received a significant amount of scientific attention relates to the human awareness of self and death. According to terror management theory, a prominent theory in social psychology, humans are like all other animals in that we strive to survive. Our bodies consist of systems that work to keep us alive. And as conscious beings, we deliberately engage in efforts to avoid death. We are motivated to live. However, unlike other animals, humans are intelligent enough to realize that death is certain. That is, we are uniquely aware of our mortal nature. We understand that despite our best efforts to stay alive, death is inevitable.

Terror management theory asserts that this juxtaposition of a desire to live and an awareness of death has the potential to cause a significant amount of anxiety or terror and that humans need to manage this terror in some way. We would not be a very productive species if we lived our lives in constant fear of death. Thus, according to the theory, people seek out a sense of enduring meaning that makes them feel more than mortal.

In other words, people know their lives are brief and so we endeavor to be part of something that transcends biological existence. This sense of death-transcendence can come from having children, creating works that will leave a lasting legacy, investing in a group or organization that outlasts the lives of any individual member, and so on. Of course, religion is a particularly powerful meaning-making tool as most religious beliefs explicitly afford humans a means of transcending death.

St. Jerome by Caravaggio (1573-1610). (Wikimedia Commons)

Research supports terror management theory. Specifically, studies find that when people are exposed to stimuli that remind them of their mortality, they exhibit increased investment in the social and cultural identities that provide meaning and perceptions of death-transcendence. For example, having people contemplate mortality increases their desire to have children, level of patriotism, religious faith and commitment to romantic partners. In short, heightening the awareness of death heightens efforts to find and preserve transcendent meaning.

Similarly, meaning mitigates the threat of death awareness. For example, studies show that having people think about death increases fear of death. However, this effect is only observed among those who do not perceive their lives as meaningful. People who have meaning are not as terrified about the fact that they are mortal.

There may actually be a number of reasons that people need meaning. However, alarge body of research demonstrates that the realization that life is finite is a potent driving force for people’s efforts to feel that their lives are purposeful and meaningful. People want to be more than mere mortal beings who die and disappear forever. To feel meaningful is to feel like you made a lasting mark, a contribution that will endure beyond your death. To feel meaningful is to feel immortal.

And there are many practical benefits to existential security as studies have identified a number of ways that meaning contributes to mental and physical health. Consider the following examples.

Meaning Helps People Cope with Life Challenges: Becoming ill or having to face a major life challenge such as job loss or the death of a loved one is difficult for everyone. However, research indicates that people who report having a strong sense of meaning in life are better able to cope with these mentally and physically taxing experiences. Meaning can give people the inner strength they need to overcome many of life’s hurdles. Meaning motivates. It makes people want to productively move forward in life.

Meaning Reduces the Risk of Mental Illness: Many studies indicate that people who believe their lives are full of meaning and purpose are less likely to suffer from mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders and less inclined to engage in problematic behavior such as excessive drinking. And studies show that when people do struggle from mental illness, finding meaning can improve the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Meaning not only helps people cope with difficulties in life, it also promotes psychological health.

Meaning Contributes to Successful Aging: A number of studies have established a strong link between meaning in life and quality of life among older adults. Older adults who perceive their lives as meaningful are physically and mentally healthier than those who perceive their lives as having little or no meaning. Meaning in life is also associated with decreased fear of death among older adults.

Meaning Reduces the Risk of Mortality: Emerging research further highlights the importance of meaning by revealing that people who report having a strong sense of purpose in life live longer. In fact, across all adult age groups, purpose is associated with mortality. Even among young adults, the greater your sense of purpose, the less likely you are to die.

A Growing Field

This is just a small sample of the ever-growing scientific literature on the psychology of meaning. Historically, existential psychology was considered a topic that “serious” empirical psychologists should avoid. It was too warm and fuzzy. This view was prominent, in part, because the field of psychology was desperately striving to earn its place as a legitimate science and shed its lay reputation as a discipline more about interpreting dreams and decrypting the hidden meaning of people’s thoughts than systematic scientific research and empirically-derived therapeutic interventions. But as the field continues to evolve and thrive as a science-based enterprise, researchers are beginning to feel more comfortable using the tools of science to explore fundamental questions about our existential nature. Humans are meaning-making animals and scientists are just now beginning to fully understand just how important the meaning motive is for adaptive functioning.

About the Author: Dr. Clay Routledge is a social psychologist and associate professor of Psychology at North Dakota State University. His research focuses on how the need to perceive life as meaningful impacts mental and physical health, close relationships, and intergroup relations. He is a leading expert in the area of experimental existential psychology. He regularly publishes his work in the top psychology journals, recently co-edited a book on the scientific study of meaning in life, and is currently writing a book on the psychology of nostalgia. His work has been featured by The New York Times, The New Yorker, NPR, BBC, CNN, CBC, ABC News, Men's Health, Women's Health and Cosmopolitan. He also regularly serves as an expert guest on national and international radio programs.

For Further Reference re: TMT - See Wikipedia

BAS - Asherah and the Asherim: Goddess or Cult Symbol?

A modern depiction of "Lady Asherah of the Sea"

Stele of Qadesh | upper frame2

Asherah and the Asherim: Goddess or Cult Symbol?
http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-cultures/ancient-israel/asherah-and-the-asherim-goddess-or-cult-symbol/

by Ellen White

November 4, 2014

Exploring the Biblical and archaeological evidence

This four-tiered cult stand found at Tanaach is thought to represent Yahweh and Asherah, with each deity being depicted on alternating tiers. Note that on tier two, which is dedicated to Asherah, is the image of a living tree, often thought to be how the asherim as a cult symbol was expressed. Photo: © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem/Israel Antiquities Authority (photograph by Avraham Hay).

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Who is Asherah? Or perhaps, what is asherah?1 The Hebrew means “happy” or “upright” and some suggest “(sacred) place.” The term appears 40 times in the Hebrew Bible, usually in conjunction with the definite article “the.” The definite article in Hebrew is similar to English in that personal names do not take an article. For example, I am Ellen, not the Ellen. Thus it is clear that when the definite article is present that it is not a personal name, but this does not eliminate the possibility of it being a category of being (i.e., a type of goddess). There are only eight cases where the term appears without an article or a suffix—suffixes in Hebrew can be used to express possession, e.g., “his,” “their,” etc. Interestingly, the plural of the term, asherim, occurs in both masculine and feminine forms.

This diversity of grammar leads to the two questions at the beginning of this article: Who is Asherah? What is asherah? The reference may be to a particular goddess, a class of goddess or a cult symbol used to represent the goddess. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish what meaning is intended (cf. Judges 3:7).

This goddess is known from several other Ancient Near Eastern cultures.2 Sometimes she is known as “Lady Asherah of the Sea” but could be taken as “She who walks on the sea.” As Athirat, a cognate name for Asherah, she is mother of 70 children (this relates to the Jewish idea of the 70 guardian angels of the nations). Arguments have been made that Asherah is a figure in Egyptian, Hittite, Philistine and Arabic texts. Egyptian representations of “Qudshu” (potentially the Egyptian name for Asherah) show her naked with snakes and flowers, sometimes standing on a lion. Whether this should be interpreted as Asherah is contested and thus should be viewed with caution. Another suggestion is Asherah is also the Hittite goddess Asertu, who is married to Elkunirsa, the storm god (she is often viewed in connection with the regional storm god).

As Athirat in Arabian inscriptions there is a possibility that she is seen as a sun goddess (this is perhaps a connection in Ugaritic literature as well). In Phoenician, she is the mother goddess, which is different from Astarte, the fertility goddess; there is some debate regarding a confusion of the two relating to 1 Kings 18:19. In Akkadian, she might be Asratum, the consort of Amurru (chief deity of early Babylon). The connection is made because the Akkadian kingship (early 14th century B.C.E.) takes the title “servant of Asherah.”

The Ugaritic texts provide the most insight into the goddess. Ras Shamra (located on the Syrian coast) texts, discovered in 1929, portray her as Athirat, the wife of El. Their sexual encounter produces dusk (Shalim) and dawn (Shahar), among others. Her relationship with Baal is complicated, and it is suggested that Baal has killed large numbers of her children.3 In these texts, she intercedes with El to get Baal a palace, after Anat’s (his “sister” and her “daughter”) request is refused. She supplies a son to reign after Baal descends into the netherworld. The relationship is further complicated by debates as to whether she is the mother of Baal or his consort or both. The idea of her being a consort comes from later Phoenician sources, where scholars have associated Asherah with Tinnit. Yet, the connections are tentative, and many scholars question the association. A hypothesis also suggests that Baal usurped El’s position and also took his consort, Asherah, which would make the relationship very oedipal.

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This inscription found on a pithos at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (similar to an inscription found at Khirbet el-Qom) refers to “Yahweh and his Asherah.” This has led some scholars to believe that in popular religion Asherah was understood to be the wife of Yahweh, much the same as she under her cognate Athirat was considered to be the wife of El. Photo: Courtesy Dr. Ze’ev Meshel and Avraham Hai/Tel Aviv University Institute of Archaeology. Asherah or asherim refer to more than just the person of the deity. These terms are often, especially in the Biblical texts, used for consecrated poles. These poles represent living trees, with which the goddess is associated. Some scholars believe that asherim were not poles, but living trees (like the one depicted on the Tanaach Cult Stand). The poles were either carved to look like trees or to resemble the goddess (this could also be reflected in the numerous pillar figurines found throughout Israel). Remains of these poles are determined by postholes and rotted timber, which resulted in differently hued soil. There is great debate as to whether the cult symbol lost its ties to Asherah (and became a religious symbol on its own without the worshippers knowing anything about the goddess who originated it) or is seen as a representation of Asherah herself (similar to the way the cross is a representation of Jesus to Christians).

Jar A drawing. Kuntillet 'Ajrud, Israel. Early 8th century BCE
S. Beaulieu, after Keel and Uelinger 1998: 213, figure 220. | source link here

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The relationship between Asherah and Israel is a complicated one.4 Does the text refer to the goddess or her symbol?5 Jeroboam and Rehoboam fostered Asherah worship (1 Kings 14:15, 23). Worship of Asherah was highly encouraged by Jezebel, with the presence of 400 prophets who held a place in the court of her husband King Ahab (1 Kings 18:19). Worship of Asherah is given as a reason for deportation (2 Kings 17:10,16). Attempts to eradicate the worship were made by Asa, Josiah, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah and Gideon (Exodus 34:13-14; Deuteronomy 7:5; Judges 6:25-30; 1 Kings 15:13/2 Chronicles 15:16; 2 Kings 23:4,7/2 Chronicles 34:3,7; 2 Kings 21:7/2 Chronicles 33:3,19; 2 Chronicles 19:3; 2 Kings 18:4). However, devotion to the cult symbol remained (Isaiah 27:9; Jeremiah 17:1; Micah 5:14). It is particularly interesting that objections to Asherah are found mostly in Deuteronomistic literature, rather than in the prophets. In both cases, the authors are much more concerned about the worship of Baal rather than Asherah.

This apparent lack of concern might be due to a popular connection between Yahweh and his Asherah. Inscriptions from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (on a pithos; see image above) and Khirbet el-Qom (on walls) contain the phrase “Yahweh and his Asherah.”6 Some take this to mean it was believed that she was seen as the wife of Yahweh and represents the goddess herself. Yet, the presence of the suffix could suggest that it is not a personal name. This has led others to believe it is a reference to the cult symbol. A more obscure opinion claims it means a cella or chapel; this meaning is found in other Semitic languages, but not Hebrew. Because of the similarities between El and Yahweh, it is understandable that Asherah could have been linked to Yahweh. While some readers might find the idea that Yahweh had a wife disturbing, it was common in the ancient world to believe that gods married and even bore children. This popular connection between Yahweh and Asherah, and the eventual purging of Asherah from the Israelite cult, is likely a reflection of the emergence of monotheism from the Israelites’ previous polytheistic worldview.

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Ellen White, Ph.D. (Hebrew Bible, University of St. Michael’s College), is the senior editor at the Biblical Archaeology Society. She has taught at five universities across the U.S. and Canada and spent research leaves in Germany and Romania. She has also been actively involved in digs at various sites in Israel.

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Notes:

1. One of the most influential studies on Asherah is Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel, Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988). Olyan’s study provides background for this piece.

2. For a detailed study of Asherah outside of the Biblical texts, see Walter A. Maier, Asherah: Extrabiblical Evidence, Harvard Semitic Monographs (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).

3. Olyan, Asherah, pp. 38–61.

4. For one of the best treatment of Asherah and Israel, see Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess, University of Cambridge Oriental Publications (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

5. For a really good analysis of the Biblical passages involving Asherah, see C. Frevel, Aschera und der Ausschliesslichkeitsanspruch YHWHs, Bonner biblische Beitrage (Weinheim: Belz Athenaum Verlag, 1995).

6. For more details, see William Dever, Did God Have a Wife? Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 176–251.

Visit the BAS Library for more on Asherah:

As the point where three of the world’s major religions converge, Israel’s history is one of the richest and most complex in the world. Sift through the archaeology and history of this ancient land in the free eBook Israel: An Archaeological Journey, and get a view of these significant Biblical sites through an archaeologist’s lens.

Shmuel Ahituv, “Did God Have a Wife?” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 2006.

Ephraim Stern, “Pagan Yahwism: The Folk Religion of Ancient Israel,” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 2001.

William G. Dever, “Folk Religion in Early Israel: Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” in Hershel Shanks and Jack Meinhardt, eds., Aspects of Monotheism (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1996), pp. 27–56, 127–129.

J. Glen Taylor, “Was Yahweh Worshiped as the Sun?” Biblical Archaeology Review, May/June 1994.

Ruth Hestrin, “Understanding Asherah—Exploring Semitic Iconography,” Biblical Archaeology Review, September/October 1991.

André Lemaire, “Who or What Was Yahweh’s Asherah?” Biblical Archaeology Review, November/December 1984.

Ze’ev Meshel, “Did Yahweh Have a Consort?” Biblical Archaeology Review, March/April 1979.

Why Jesus Wouldn't Cut It as a Pastor in Today's Evangelical Megachurches

Why Jesus Wouldn't Cut It as a Pastor in Today's Evangelical Megachurches

http://www.alternet.org/belief/why-jesus-wouldnt-cut-it-pastor-todays-evangelical-megachurches

by Frank Schaeffer

October 29, 2014

Jesus promoted empathy for everyone, while the actions

of today's religious establishment undermine it.

Jesus never could have been the pastor of a contemporary evangelical church nor a conservative Roman Catholic bishop. Evangelicals and conservative Roman Catholics thrive on drawing distinctions between their "truth" and other people's failings. Jesus by contrast, set off an empathy time bomb that obliterates difference.

Jesus' empathy bomb explodes every time a former evangelical puts love ahead of what the "Bible says." It goes off every time Pope Francis puts inclusion ahead of dogma. It goes off every time a gay couple are welcomed into a church. Jesus' time bomb explodes whenever atheists follow Jesus better than most Christians.

Put it this way: Godless non-church-going Denmark mandates four weeks of maternity leave before childbirth and fourteen weeks afterward for mothers. Parents of newborn children are assisted with well-baby nurse-practitioner visits in their homes.

In the “pro-life” and allegedly “family friendly” American Bible belt, conservative political leaders slash programs designed to help women and children while creating a justifying mythology about handouts versus empowerment.

In "God-fearing America" the poor are now the “takers,” no longer the “least of these,” and many conservative evangelicals side with today’s Pharisees, attacking the poor in the name of following the Bible.

So who is following Jesus?

Confronted by the Bible cult called evangelicalism we have a choice: follow Jesus or follow a book cult. If Jesus is God as evangelicals and Roman Catholics claim he is, then the choice is clear. We have to read the book--including the New Testament--as he did, and Jesus didn't like the "Bible" of his day.

Confronted by bishops protecting dogma and tradition against Pope Francis' embrace of empathy for the "other" we have a choice: follow Jesus or protect the institution.

Every time Jesus mentioned the equivalent of a church tradition, the Torah, he qualified it with something like this: “The scriptures say thus and so, but I say…” Jesus undermined the scriptures and religious tradition in favor of empathy. Every time Jesus undermined the scriptures (Jewish "church tradition") it was to err on the side of co-suffering love. Every time a former evangelical becomes an "atheist" in favor of empathy she draws closer to Jesus. Every time Pope Francis sides with those the Church casts out he is closer to Jesus. Every time conservative Roman Catholics try to stop the Pope from bringing change to the Church they are on the side to those who killed Jesus.

A leper came to Jesus and said, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.” If Jesus had been a good religious Jew, he would have said, “Be healed,” and just walked away. Instead, he stretched out his hand and touched the leper, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean,” even though he was breaking the specific rules of Leviticus (two chapters teach that anyone touching a person with leprosy is contaminated!).

In evangelical and Roman Catholic fundamentalist terms, Jesus was a rule-breaking humanist who wasn't “saved.” A conservative bishop would have refused Jesus the sacraments. Christianity Today magazine would have editorialized against him, called for his firing, banning and branded him a traitor to the cause of Christianity.

The Evolution of Empathy

The message of Jesus’ life is an intervention in - and an acceleration of - the evolution of empathy. Consider this story from the book of Matthew: “A woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, ‘If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.’ Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed at that moment.”

Jesus recognized a bleeding woman touching him as a sign of faith. By complimenting rather than rebuking her, Jesus ignored another of his scripture’s rules:

“If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time her [period], or if she has a discharge beyond the time, all the days of her discharge she shall continue in uncleanness... Every bed on which she lies during all the days of her discharge shall be treated as [unclean]… Everything on which she sits shall be unclean … Whoever touches these things shall be unclean” (Leviticus 15:25).

Jesus’ un-first-century antics went beyond coddling lepers and welcoming the touch of a bleeding woman. Jesus’ embrace of a woman from an enemy tribe in a culture where tribal belonging was paramount distressed both his followers and enemies. His attitude to the “other” was as incomprehensible as if he’d blurted “ E=mc2 is the equation of mass–energy equivalence.” Even the Samaritan woman at the well knew that his actions were shocking. When Jesus stopped to talk to her, she said, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? For Jews do not associate with Samaritans” (John 4:9).

Jesus responded by attacking the preeminence of religion, tradition, dogma and group identity, offering an entirely new way of looking at spirituality by emphasizing basic human dignity above nation, state, gender or religion:

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth” (John 4:19–24).

True Worship

"Worship in the Spirit and in truth," is not about a book, let alone "salvation" through correct ideas or tradition. For people who call Jesus "the Son of God" you'd think they would also reject the veneration of the book he's trapped in and church dogma that has crucified him again each time a gay man or divorced couple are refused the sacraments.

Evangelicals struggle to conform Jesus to a book, not the other way around. And the conservative bishops have aligned themselves with the American neoconservative wing of their church against not just the Pope Francis but against the emancipating logic of Jesus' empathy time bomb. If Jesus isn't the "lens" evangelicals and Roman Catholics read the Bible and their traditions through then whatever they say to the contrary they do not really believe Jesus is the son of God.

This article is largely excerpted from WHY I AM AN ATHEIST WHO BELIEVES IN GOD: How to give love, create beauty and find peace