It’s been interesting for me to bear witness to even the small changes in thinking that have happened with high school students over the last thirteen years.  Every spring, I get to spend a quarter with seniors talking about issues like genetic engineering, abortion, and euthanasia at the intersection of ethical systems and logical fallacies, particularly as it relates to the role of the self in the decision-making process.  At its best, I love the conversation and the possibilities of understanding things of great implication for society.  At its worst, I am totally bewildered at the realization that I don’t necessarily share the same presuppositions as some of my students about some pretty significant issues.  Perhaps Yuval Levin has something to say about that in The Fractured Republic?

The ethic of our age has been aptly called expressive individualism.  That term suggests not only a desire to pursue one’s own path but also a yearning for fulfillment through the definition and articulation of one’s own identity. . .

The solipsism of our age of individualism is uniquely dangerous to the institutions of moral formation.  Because much of the good they do is a function of their ability to shape and structure our desires rather than serve them, to form our habits rather than reflect them, and to direct our longings rather than simply satisfy them, these institutions stand in particular tension with the ethic of our time.

Expressive individualism.  A great and sobering phrase.  At its best, it is articulated as a kind of libertarianism, which I get.  But it’s not easy to talk ethics and issues when a hard libertarianism (or a hard moral subjectivism) steps up to the microphone.

Levin brings up a great point concerning “the solipsism of our age,” which is the question of when does someone actually become him or herself and how do “institutions of moral formation” interact with people in that mindset.  From a particularly evangelical perspective, how does the intervention of and regeneration by the Holy Spirit come into play when the particularities of personhood trump the possibility of an outside “force” who wants to make us other than what we are (because who we are is broken at the core) ?

What’s also interesting is how expressive individualism has seeped into religious language.  I have to confess some complicity here.  “Be all that God made you to be” can be one way of inadvertently buying into “the ethic of our age.”  Even the greatly lauded “it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship” ideology can end in expressive individualism.  I imagine a good bit of this can be traced back to some aspects of the Protestant Reformation.

(image from advancedlifeskills.com)