nry must take responsibility for our institutions if we are to create a more effective and morally conscious society.12) The initial language in which those interviewed appear to express their moral ideas is strongly individualistic: everyone places himself or herself at the center, takes personal responsibility for whatever is achieved or whatever goes wrong, and considers moral, aesthetic and religious values to be a matter of personal choice. Those interviewed also speak a `second' language, however, which expresses their membership in one or more shifting groups, but this second language is easily reduced to the principles of the first language. Bellah and his collaborators criticize this individualistic use of language for not allowing those involved to form an adequate picture of the way in which they actually participate in their community. The individualistic use of language blinds Americans to the social character of various institutions such as marriage, politics or religion. The language of freedom and emancipation - most explicitly employed by therapists who, without being judgmental, try to bring their clients closer to their personal feelings - creates grave misunderstandings and deadlocks in politics, in family life, at work and within the religious communities. This language sees ethics, religion and politics as strategies for individual expression and personal power, instead of as institutions that, each in their own way, give form and depth to interpersonal existence. Along the same lines, Bellah and his co-authors published. No one seems to realize that social institutions structure the existence of every citizen and give it meaning. It is this resistance to social institutions that has led to the moral crisis currently affecting American life. 12) Growing social inequality and the breakdown of public facilities13) The idea that our emphasis on individualism has tended to separate us from our social context and from o...
