The Perfect Wave Project: Human Flourishing and the Problem of the Ideal

To some degree, we're all attracted to the ideal – as we see in the movies, for example – and we live with a cultural ideal. But there's a problem when a cultural ideal lends itself to the suppression of the spirit, or demoralization, and the occlusion of sympathetic love in our society.

Being socialized into the consumer culture there's an inclination to feel -- the key word -- something like as follows: I want this ideal life, I want to be this ideal person and attract an ideal mate. Needless to say, the individual will have to come to terms with the real, though such feelings can remain, in the dubious pursuit of happiness. Part of our national obsession with celebrities, I think, at least in part, is that they appear to either have attained this ideal or be in a position to.

We can attain a sense of self through two means, though usually through some variation of both: comparison to others, or to a cultural ideal; or, through contribution to a greater collective. The former is problematic while the latter often fails to receive recognition and monetary compensation; consequently, our society is susceptible to a certain degree of demoralization.

The problem of attaining a sense of self through comparison, to others or too a cultural ideal, manifests itself in a variety ways but notably here is it's simply a weak foundation. Comparing ourselves to others, we lack the vision to pass such a judgment; consequently we can set ourselves to be humbled.

Comparing ourselves to an ideal contributes to a problem of promoting an image of our selves rather than confronting or opening up to the truth about ourselves. This can cause distance in our relationships; worse, it can cause a deep sense of shame for not being able to up to an ideal. The mind can have a way of not confronting the shameful truth. As the ideal can impair our ability to confront the truth about ourselves and our human nature in general, it impedes our progress in creating a society that promotes the best of our nature while minimizing the worst.

Recognizing how a cultural ideal can lend itself to demoralization, we subsequently can turn to the moral culture and determine what aspects can be promoted to alleviate that demoralization. Part of the reason Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life became and remains a best-seller, I believe, is that it addressed and provided some alleviation from this demoralization, that is, in the Christian context. But in a pluralistic country founded on the tenets of the enlightenment, a broader approach is needed because a country’s moral culture is more than religion, also encompassing, for example, its history, traditions, ideals, and its art.

In another time of division in this country, Walt Whitman, perhaps the country’s greatest poet, took on these issues in the prelude to the Civil War. Expanding on Whitman's approach and other influences, I believe there's a poetic path towards cultural transformation to better enable an imaginative framework that affirms one’s sense of self derived from contribution as the appropriate foundation toward human flourishing for both the individual and society.