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The Tikvah Podcast

Jenna and Benjamin Storey on Why Americans Are So Restless

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6620 Ratings

🗓️ 6 August 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Two liberal arts professors were intrigued by a habit of mind they detected in their students, especially their high-achieving ones. Despite material abundance and the freedom to pursue a profession or passion of their choosing, their students were unsettled. Even after making a decision about what to pursue, they remain plagued by the thought that perhaps they should have done something else. This habit of mind, not unique to democracy in America but perhaps especially common in democratic conditions, is what today’s podcast guests call “restlessness.” 

In their new book Why We Are Restless, Jenna and Benjamin Storey, both professors at Furman University, explain the cultural force that characterizes modern restlessness by looking back at an earlier tradition of French philosophy. In their interpretations of Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Alexis de Tocqueville, the Storeys reveal how restlessness was variously aimed at and criticized by earlier thinkers. And in conversation with Jonathan Silver, they speculate about what modern Americans, and modern American Jews, can do to understand it.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Today's episode is not about a specifically Jewish concern, or a matter of Israeli security,

0:14.7

or the geopolitics of the Middle East, or anything like that.

0:18.8

Today's episode looks at a social and cultural phenomenon

0:22.4

that two college professors first detected as a state of mind in their students,

0:28.9

and not just any students, but especially in their very best students. You could characterize

0:35.3

the state of mind as a kind of discontent that plagues

0:39.5

high-achieving, intelligent, hard-working students. In fact, it's more present the higher

0:45.0

achieving they are. And that's why it's sort of puzzling. You see, perhaps this A student

0:50.6

could apply to law school and get into a top program and do really well there?

0:55.9

Well, that's a pretty appealing way forward.

0:58.7

But what if those same grades would allow the student instead to earn a PhD,

1:04.2

or enter into the military's officer candidate school, or pursue a calling in the clergy?

1:13.9

It's precisely because all of those options remain open that the student is plagued by indecision, and then, having made a provisional

1:20.6

decision about what to do, remains plagued by the thought that perhaps they could be doing

1:26.4

something else.

1:28.3

Now, this habit of mind is not unique to democratic citizens of America, but we democratic

1:34.3

citizens of America seem to be especially prone to it.

1:39.3

So much so, in fact, that here's what the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville, in our tradition fondly

1:45.8

called Tockville Rabenu, wrote back in the 1830s. An American will build a house in which to

1:53.0

pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on. He will plant a garden and rent it just

2:00.5

as the trees are coming into bearing. He'll clear a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing.

2:03.2

He'll clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest.

...

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