A Lesson on Civics: "How Not to Tear Your Country in Two"

If communities can no longer live in peace with one another than

sadly its time to move away and begin again. - R.E. Slater

As an introduction to today's article I would like to express the deep responsibility we should feel in helping our Muslim neighbors to resolve their religious differences rather than compounding their misery, loss, and discord by heaping our dark satisfactions to their civil wars with one another.

America was founded as a country searching for religious tolerance and the freedom to worship as an individual or community saw fit. The toll this mere idea took upon the centuries and generations of Christianity was infinitely sad as parish fought against parish for its ideals and principles.

No less are the Sunnis and Shias doing to one another as we had done earlier as Protestants and Catholics (or even as Protestants to other Protestants). Factually, it may be better for whole communities in the Mid-East to remove themselves from one another in an attempt to live in regional enclaves more conducive to the majority's sentiments and passions.

Perhaps a time of amnesty and moratorium be set aside so that the lives and possessions of families might re-constitute themselves across sectarian borders over a space of six to 12 months. And in the re-settling process determine to live in toleration with one another's Muslim brother or sister's religious differences regardless of persuasion.

If communities can no longer live in peace with one another than sadly its time to move away and begin again.

Here in America we have blindly traded our religious pride for civil nationalism, which is an order of factor higher in horror and effort than sectarian warfare can provide in terms of human bodies, effort, and financing. Instead of the might and power of a regional parish to inflict personal harm and injustice upon others, now an entire nation's efforts is pitted against a region of dislike, disinterest, and fostered stereotypes. Which, in this case, is America's view of the Muslim Mid-East, even as it is the Mid-East's view of Christian America.

This is no way to live. Life is precious and the differences amongst us is an important difference to maintain. If we all thought alike, ate alike, prayed alike, and worked alike, there would be a life of continual blandness and unending emptiness (existentially speaking).

To love and appreciate the differences that divide us is to love our fellow man and share in the larger idea of community that I think our Lord and our God had in mind for us. It is the crookedness of the devil who has set us against ourselves and it is the devil we fight, not ourselves. It is not enough to sit back and wait for the killing and injustice to end. It is important that we learn to become peacemakers in a world set aflame on the sins of our own vengeance and hatred.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

November 12, 2014

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How Will the Mideast War End?

Christian History May Provide a Clue
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-miles/mideast-war-christian-history_b_6091160.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051&ir=Religion

Jack Miles, General Editor, The Norton Anthology of World Religions

Posted: 11/10/2014 11:34 am EST Updated: 11/11/2014 12:59 am EST

A war within Islam, among radical Islamists and Muslim sects Sunni and Shia, isleaving thousands dead and millions displaced.

The spectacle of so many Muslims prepared to make bloody, protracted war over their slight religious differences strikes Americans as not merely horrifying but also simply baffling. Why do they do that?, we find ourselves asking, and, perhaps more urgently,Where will this end?

One good way to engage these questions is to ask why we don't do that. That we do not ought rightfully to surprise us because as a people we care intensely about religion, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, we do not in the least shrink from violence. The U.S. is both the most religious of highly developed states, given our high rate of religious affiliation and participation, and the most violent, given our astronomicallyhigh rate of death by armed violence. Why is it then that we, who are statistically so ready to gun each other down for other reasons, do not do so for religious reasons?

THEN: CATHOLIC VS. PROTESTANT. NOW: SUNNI VS. SHIA

The answer is rooted in our origin as a state descended from a group of Christian colonies founded when the Protestants and Catholics of Western Europe, emphatically including the British Isles, were tearing themselves apart over religion and wrecking the infrastructures of their own countries in the process, just as the Sunni and Shia are doing in Iraq and Syria today.

We are appalled at the spectacle of a beheaded American reporter. Imagine how appalled we would be at the spectacle of a beheaded American president. But just that was the spectacle that the Calvinists (Puritans) of Britain mounted for the edification of their country when they beheaded the Anglican King Charles I in 1649. That execution came midway in a religious civil war that lasted fully nine years (1642-1651) and cost Ireland (which suffered a reign of terror comparable to that of ISIS) and Britain more lives, proportionately, than the two islands would lose in World War I.

Devastating as the English Civil War was, its violence is dwarfed by that of the contemporary Thirty Years War (1618-1648) on the European continent. That war began as a regional struggle in Bohemia, quite like the localized Sunni-Alawite conflict in Syria, but it ended with Europe in flames from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean. If Turkey and Iran are both drawn into the current Middle East conflict, that conflict will have spread similarly from the Aegean Sea to the Persian Gulf. The near-total collapse of civil society in the worst-affected parts of Europe during the early seventeenth century led to plague as well as famine, just as the spreading conflict in the Middle East and Pakistan has brought about a recurrence of polio.

"Just as Catholics and Protestants concluded in their Wars of Religion,

Sunni and Shia have to exhaust one another before concluding that

neither side can determine what their religion is to be."

Today, the confusing official and unofficial Sunni and Shia alliances of the U.S. leave many in the Middle East asking, "Which side are you on?"

Because Shia Iraq supports semi-Shia Syria, which the U.S. opposes, many Iraqi Shia believe that the U.S. has created the Sunni "Islamic State" (ISIS) so as to undo semi-Shia rule in Syria, even at the price of undermining Shia dominance in Iraq. Meanwhile, many Sunni -- observing that in Iraq the U.S. has installed and still supports the first Shia Arab regime in centuries and has been actively seeking to improve relations with Shia Iran -- conclude that the Americans have declared war on "Islam" itself inasmuch as the only true Islam for them is the Sunni version. At cross-purposes like these, the U.S. is, to say the least, ill positioned to rally a nonsectarian, Sunni-Shia coalition against ISIS. And yet President Obama's core assumption -- that only Sunni and Shia can resolve their own war with one another -- is surely correct.

But will they? Intra-Christian violence was no less bewildering than intra-Muslim violence is today. Catholic monarchs sometimes ended up supporting Protestants against other Catholics, and vice versa, as the originating religious issues disappeared in the melee of attack and counter-attack and the standard agendas of power politics surged to the fore. When Catholic France turned against Catholic Austria, the tie-breaking outsider -- corresponding to the tie-breaking U.S. in the Mideast conflict -- was the Ottoman Empire.

Perhaps most important, just as Sunni and Shia today refuse to recognize one another as equally Muslim, so Protestants and Catholics back then refused to honor one another as equally Christian. Then as now, polemical rhetoric was blood curdling, and public executions were a theatrical part of the mutually intimidating propaganda. Then as now, each side saw its own killers as saints, and its own casualties as martyrs, while denying any such dignity to the pagans or heretics of the other side. Just as Sunni flee Shia-held areas in today's Iraq and Syria while Shia flee Sunni-held areas, so did Catholics and Protestant civilians flee one another en masse during (and after) the Thirty Years War.

Before it was all over, the population of Greater Germany -- then a central European region substantially larger than the relatively compact Germany of today -- had declined by more than one third. Other regions suffered only somewhat smaller losses. Not until the twentieth century would Western Europe experience violence greater than that inflicted by what later historians have called Europe's Wars of Religion.

HOW EUROPE'S WARS OF RELIGION ENDED

How did it all end? It ended when the major European powers realized that their conflicting dreams of an all-Protestant or an all-Catholic Europe had merged into a single nightmare from which the continent had either to awaken or die. The awakening began with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia whose famous formula for religious peace in Europe was, in Latin, Cuius regio, eius religio: "Whose the rule, his the religion." The sovereign in any state, whether the sovereign was a king or a parliament, would have the right to determine the religion of that country, and he or it would not have the right to determine the religion of any other country.

The formula of the Peace of Westphalia was by no means a proclamation of full, individual religious freedom. The subjects or citizens of any given state were religiously under the authority of that state's government, and it was assumed that no state would fail to establish a state religion. By no means did each subject or citizen have the right to his (much less her) own religion. Yet limited as it was, the Peace of Westphalia did mark the end of religious warfare in Europe. Moreover, it brought into existence what political scientists still call the "Westphalian System" by which states -- and even alliances or entities like the United Nations -- generally abstain from intervening in any of the internal affairs of a duly recognized fellow state. On that occasion, an argument about religion had massive and long-lasting consequences.

"The Peace of Westphalia" re-drew parts of the map of Europe. Peace in the Middle East may yet do the same."

The profoundly cautionary experience of the Christian Wars of Religion and the instructive example of the Peace of Westphalia deeply marked Britain's American colonies, some of which were founded in explicit fealty to some form of Christianity, yet none of which ever attempted to impose its form on a neighboring colony by military force. When the colonies declared and successively defended their independence from Britain, the framers of the Constitution dealt with religion in a manner closely analogous to that of the drafters of the Peace of Westphalia.

Just as the Peace of Westphalia did not seek religious peace in Europe by imposing some sort of compromise generic Christianity upon the continent, the U.S. Constitution framers did not establish a state religion. Instead, they allowed states to continue their respective religious establishments if they had them and so chose. Over time, the states progressively disestablished their established forms of Christianity, and thus the once-unprecedented phenomenon of a Western, culturally European state without an established state religion came into being in the U.S.

This happened in part because of the prestige of the Constitution but in part because, as a mood of "never again" took hold in Europe and the dawning Enlightenment explicitly fostered religious toleration, nationalism began to replace religion as that for which one might still sacrifice life itself. The patriot began to replace the saint. Dying for one's country began to replace dying for one's religion. Killing for one's country began to become excusable, even virtuous, just as killing for one's religion had been.

And it may be at just this point that Americans can begin to answer the question, Why do they do it? Americans have been appalled at the matter-of-fact manner in which ISIS beheadings have been conducted, and at the lighthearted manner observed online among ISIS bystanders. But we are accustomed to hear our armed forces characterize even their most violent war making in matter-of-fact statements like, "We had a job to do, and we did it." Humor or light-heartedness is, you might say, as American as M.A.S.H.

This is not, I hasten to add, to make any simple equation of ISIS with the American armed forces. Far from it! But it is to note that violence and Muslim piety are linked in ISIS the way that violence and American patriotism are linked in the U.S.

And, finally, it is to note -- very sadly indeed -- that an intra-Muslim conflict with roots in the seventh century may have come to a belated climax and may have to run its course slowly and brutally. Between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, Sunni and Shia numbers are so nearly equal that neither is in a position to establish a quick, clear total victory over the other. Just as Protestants and Catholics concluded in their Wars of Religion, Sunni and Shia have to exhaust one another before concluding that neither side can determine what their religion is to be in the future. And they must come to this conclusion on their own -- not through any American intervention or clever coalition-formation.

SHIA-SUNNI SORTING MAY BE NECESSARY

The past fifty years have been a period of enormous demographic diversification in the West. A Pakistan-born Muslim friend of mine recently noted happily that in 1970, there were just 35,000 Muslims in Canada and one mosque in Toronto, while today there are over one million Muslims in Canada and 35 mosques in Toronto. Yet in the Middle East, this half-century (and earlier) has been one of progressive demographic simplification. Before World War I, Jews accounted for one third of the population of Baghdad, and as late as 1948 there were still 150,000 Jews in Iraq. Today, there are effectively none.

True, the founding of the State of Israel led to a vast evacuation/expulsion of Jews from all the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East. But no such single crisis explains the fact that at the start of the twentieth century, Christians constituted twenty percent of the population of the region, while today they constitute just four percent, and emigration is steadily accelerating. The Copts are leaving Egypt. The Greeks and Armenians are gone from Turkey. Christianity may soon be virtually extinct even in Bethlehem. Demographic simplification in the Middle East is undeniable.

"Traumatic mass migration seems already under way and may be

the only practically available formula for peace."

But there is no guarantee that this process of religious and ethnic simplification should stop at Jews and Christians and not engulf Shia and Sunni as well. The Peace of Westphalia re-drew parts of the map of Europe. Peace in the Middle East may yet do the same. After the Peace of Westphalia, continuing intra-Christian religious discrimination within states where either Protestantism or Catholicism was established led to the expulsion or motivated migration of thousands of Catholics and Protestants to states where their respective forms of Christianity suffered no discrimination. The result was a Europe divided into virtually homogeneous religious enclaves, some large, others quite small. Division of the Mideast into religiously and ethnically homogeneous states would be impossible without traumatic mass migration -- but it seems already under way and may be the only practically available formula for peace.

ISIS has slaughtered or expelled Shia and Christians from Mosul, but official Iraq has countenanced a progressive, often violent expulsion of Sunni from much larger Baghdad. A process of mutual expulsion thus begun may have to continue until combustible human elements are almost entirely separated and the fire finally goes out. Partition has been a last-resort path to peace before (consider India and Pakistan). It may be so again.

If the European model offers any clue, diversity and tolerance may slowly return to the religiously and ethnically "purified" states that emerge -- but slowly may mean very slowly indeed. Sweden, to name one signatory to the Peace of Westphalia, did not finally disestablish the Lutheran Church as the state religion of Sweden until the year 2000.

"If the European model offers any clue, diversity and tolerance may slowly

return to the religiously and ethnically 'purified' states that emerge."

Terrorism expert Jessica Matthews recently envisioned a peace plan in which the Bashar al-Assad regime (plus backer Iran) and the non-ISIS Sunni opposition (plus backer Saudi Arabia) join forces to defeat ISIS. Perhaps some such revised coalition recipe might work. A rapprochement between the major Sunni and the major Shia power in the Middle East (counting Turkey, for the moment, as a secular power) might even portend a Middle East version of the Peace of Westphalia. I submit, however, that such a rapprochement can only succeed if those two powers and their clients truly impose this rapprochement upon themselves and do not merely temporize with an American diplomatic effort to make them do it for American reasons.

Lasting peace will ultimately follow on the defeat of ISIS only if that defeat proves the prelude to something much deeper -- a peace between Sunni and Shia whose true implementation might not be possible without something like the painful sorting of populations that seems already to be under way. Meanwhile, a chastened American diplomacy must finally recognize that there are conflicts for which, with even the best of intentions, there is no American solution.

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Jack Miles is general editor of the just-published The Norton Anthology of World Religions, a magisterial reference work of seven years of work by a team of seven internationally-recognized scholars. Miles won the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his bookGod: A Biography and is a former MacArthur "Genius" Fellow (2003-2007).

Huff Post - 10 Ways Introverts Interact Differently With The World

10 Ways Introverts Interact Differently With The World

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/07/physical-behavior-of-introverts_n_6069438.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000051&ir=Religion

The Huffington Post | By Alena Hall

Posted: 11/07/2014 8:06 am EST Updated: 11/07/2014 11:59 am EST

Introverts and extraverts may seem the same on the surface, but if you look at the way they respond to life's everyday occurrences, differences begin to emerge.

Last month, for example, Science of Us writer Melissa Dahl reported on findings from psychologist Brian Little's latest book on personality science, Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being, which showed that introverts are better off avoiding caffeine before a big meeting or important event.

Little cites the theory of extraversion by Hans Eysenck and research by William Revelle of Northwestern University, explaining that introverts and extraverts naturally differ when it comes to their alertness and responsiveness to a given environment. A substance or scene that overstimulates the central nervous system of an introvert (which doesn't take much) might cause him or her to feel overwhelmed and exhausted, rather than excited and engaged.

In her 2012 TED Talk titled "The Power of Introverts," author Susan Cain reiterated this point in her definition of introversion, explaining that the trait is "different from being shy."

"Shyness is about fear of social judgment," Cain said. "Introversion is more about how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation. So extraverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive - and their most switched on - and their most capable - when they are in quieter, more low-key environments."

Now it goes without saying that most of our societal constructs cater to the former -- from open office spaces to loud bars to the structure of our educational system -- despite the fact that anywhere from one-third to half of the population has an introverted temperament.

While a person's introverted or extraverted tendencies fall within a spectrum -- there is no such thing as a pure introvert or pure extravert, according to famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung -- an introvert is most obvious and vulnerable when he or she is in an overstimulating environment.

Coffee jitters aside, here are 10 ways introverts physically interact with the world around them differently than extraverts.

They withdraw in crowds.

"We hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality," said Cain in her TED Talk. "We had evolved from an agricultural economy to a world of big business, and so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities, and instead of working alongside people they've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers."

The resulting crowd, which is often loud, noisy and congested, easily overstimulates introverts and drains them of their physical energy. They end up feeling more physically isolated than supported by their surroundings, and would rather be anywhere but that sea of people.

Small talk stresses them out, while deeper conversations make them feel alive.

While most extraverts are energized by such interactions, introverts often feel intimidated, bored or exhausted by them. It's not uncommon in large conversations for introverts to take on the role of the quiet listener and then take time alone once it's complete.

As Sophia Dembling, the author of The Introvert's Way: Living A Quiet Life In A Noisy World, explains in her book, it ultimately comes down to how a person receives (or doesn't receive) energy from his or her surroundings. Instead, introverts prefer deeper conversations, oftentimes about philosophical ideas.

They succeed on stage -- just not in the chit-chat afterwards.

“At least half of people who speak for a living are introverted in nature,” according to Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, Ph.D, a certified speaking professional, executive coach and author of Quiet Influence: The Introvert’s Guide to Making a Difference. They simply play to their strengths, and prepare extensively. In fact, some of the most successful performers are introverts. Remaining on a stage, removed from a massive audience, proves far easier than the small talk-filled conversations that follow.

They get distracted easily, but rarely feel bored.

If you're looking to destroy an introverted person's attention span, just put them in a situation where they feel overstimulated. Due to increased sensitivity to their surroundings, introverts struggle with feeling distracted and sometimes overwhelmed in large crowds and open office spaces.

However, when they are in peace and quiet, they have no issue tending to a favorite hobby or delving into a new book for hours. Having that time to take care of their inner selves helps them recharge while enjoying an activity they already enjoy.

They are naturally drawn to more creative, detail-oriented and solitary careers.

Introverts naturally prefer spending time alone or in a small group, delving deeply into one task at a time and taking their time when it comes to making decisions and solving problems. Therefore, they fare better in work environments that allow them to do all of these things. Certain professions -- including writers, in-the-field natural scientists and behind-the-scenes tech workers -- can give introverts the intellectual stimulation they crave without the distracting environment they dislike.

When surrounded by people, they locate themselves close to an exit.

Introverts not only feel physically uncomfortable in crowded places, but also do their best to mediate that discomfort by hanging as close to the periphery as possible. Whether it be by an exit, at the back of a concert hall, or an aisle row on an airplane, they avoid being surrounded by people on all sides, according to Dembling.

"We're likely to sit in places where we can get away when we're ready to -- easily," Dembling previously told HuffPost.

They think before they speak.

This habit of introverts is often what earns them their reputations as listeners. It is second nature to them to take their time before opening their mouths, reflecting internally, instead of thinking out loud (which is more common among extraverts). They may seem more quiet and shy because of this behavior, but it just means that when they do speak, the words they share have that much more thought -- and sometimes power -- behind them.

They don't take on the mood of their environment like extraverts do.

A 2013 study published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that extraverts and introverts process experiences through the brain's "reward" centers quite differently. While extraverts often sense a feel-good rush of dopamine related to their surroundings, introverts tend to not experience such a shift. In fact, people who are naturally introverted do not process rewards from external factors as strongly as extraverts do.

They physically can't stand talking on the phone.

Most introverts screen their phone calls -- even from their friends -- for several reasons. The intrusive ringing forces them to abandon focus on a current project or thought and reassign it to something unexpected. Plus, most phone conversations require a certain level of small talk that introverts avoid. Instead, introverts may let calls go to voicemail so they can return them when they have the proper energy and attention to dedicate to the conversation.

They literally shut down when it's time to be alone.

"Solitude matters, and for some people, it is the air that they breathe." - Susan Cain

Every introvert has a limit when it comes to stimulation. HuffPost blogger Kate Bartolotta explains it well when she writes, "Think of each of us as having a cup of energy available. For introverts, most social interactions take a little out of that cup instead of filling it the way it does for extroverts. Most of us like it. We're happy to give, and love to see you. When the cup is empty though, we need some time to refuel."

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

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

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

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.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

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