The Age of Grievance Gluttony

I have long appreciated Frank Bruni’s columns in the New York Times, so I looked forward to reading his newest book, The Age of Grievance. Bruni is a great writer who has come across to me as both wise and fair. And this book exhibits those qualities. It is also, I regret to say, disappointing.

Why disappointing? There is a lot of description of our culture of grievance and its manifold expressions on both the right and the left. I had hoped for something different. Namely, an explanation of how we had arrived at this point.

How had a nation that so prized self-reliance, personal responsibility, and optimism flipped so thoroughly, and in a relatively brief time, to a nation where blame, complaint, and assertions of victimization seem the song, or perhaps dirge, that most everybody is now singing?

It was only fifteen years ago, in 2009, that another best-selling cultural commentator, Barbara Ehrenreich, published her book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Fifteen years ago our problem was that we are all way too upbeat, too hopeful, too “bright,” and optimistic, and now we’re all dystopian, whiney, pessimistic and very, very “dark.” How — I wanted to know — had this happened?

Was I asking too much of Bruni? Maybe there’s no answer? Or maybe the answer, one Bruni likes as a general life-posture, is, “It’s complicated.” But still, to go from a nation where “Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” to “America: The Culture of Complaint,” in a decade and a half is remarkable.

Is it the ubiquity of social media? Or the envy-inciting gap between the super-rich and everyone else? Maybe Covid? Was it “The Coddling of the American Mind” (Jonathan Haidt) on campuses or the rise of identity politics? Maybe Fox and MSNBC and their derivatives, sucking Americans into our chosen angry echo chambers?

Or possibly the whole “self-reliance,” rugged individual, and optimism thing was all window dressing? Whatever it is, the shift from can-do to can’t-do, from “I can do it” to “They made me do it,” from striving to whining has — at least to my mind — been both significant and abrupt.

Explain it to me. This was what I was looking for. And what I didn’t find.

My own (non book-length) explanation is this: The twentieth century ended with America ascendent and democracy triumphant, which led us to think the twenty-first would be smooth-sailing. We expected heaven on earth, “the new world order.”

What we got has been a fair bit of hell on earth. The twenty-first century has been one trauma after another from 9/11 and global terrorism, failed foreign wars to the Great Recession, the loss of manufacturing jobs, the rise of nationalism, police killings of black men, a devastating opioid epidemic, protests and riots, more mass shootings, Covid, and war in Europe. And hanging over it all, the foretold climate apocalypse.

It has been nothing if not “a time of testing,” and so far, we aren’t getting a passing grade.

To his credit, Bruni devotes his last 60 pages to good ideas about what can and should be done to change course. The proposals are practical. Things like open primaries and rank-choice voting, job training for people in mid-life and regulation of social media.

But his major solution was a surprise to me, albeit an agreeable one. If grievance gluttony is your problem, then you might think the solution is gratitude. Count your blessings, be thankful, look on the bright side, etc.

But, says Bruni, the antidote to grievance is different. It is “humility.” Taking yourself a little less seriously. Being less inclined to be sure you are right or that you know it all. Imagining you have much to learn. Getting the facts before moving to DEFCON-12 and full cancellation mode.

As an exemplar of what he has in mind, Bruni cites the popular Republican governor of blue-state Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, who is fond of quoting a verse from the New Testament, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather, in humility, value others above yourself.” (Phil 2:3)

Which allows me to suggest — perhaps no surprise to readers — that the rise of grievance culture has everything to do with a fundamental loss of Christian humility. Call it the decline of Christian values, if you will, but the spiritual tradition that taught humility as a core principle fails to hold sway, regardless of whether you sit on the left or right side of the aisle.

The knowledge that there is a God and it isn’t us is the kind that tethers us to something beyond our grievances. It places an asterisk on every human judgment, marking them as provisional at best, and outright false at worst. The existence of a God who is not us — and better, a God who is gracious with his demanding and often misguided people — creates the kind of humility Bruni wishes there was more of. A humility that doesn’t see other people has enemies, but potential friends you don’t know yet.