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in check a decline of individualism into egocentrism, the recent dualism
places very different barriers against self-orientation: a contribution to
community improvement, let alone an overcoming of evil on behalf of
God's greater glory, now fails to pull and direct individualism. Instead,
there are subtle and intense pressures to conform to "the fashionable," "the
hot," and "the trendy." Whereas the earlier individualism/ civic dualism
invoked a mutually sustaining dynamism that invigorated
both,
the indi–
vidualism/consumer-entertainment dualism pursues a different agenda:
rather than erecting obstacles against the individual's orientation to mate–
rial prosperity, the consumer-entertainment cultures are aligned with it. In
the long-term, this is bound to weaken individualism and the civic sphere,
as well as societal dynamism and openness, and to strengthen an unequiv–
ocal drift toward massive social conformism.
Weber would not have been surprised at this paradoxical turn in which
a single factor originating from an orientation
to
transcendent command–
ments and religious values-a self-reliant and world mastery
individualism-in a later historical epoch subverted its indispensable sus–
taining counterpart: substantial and demarcated civic sphere ideals. He had
discovered such ironic twists and unforeseen consequences of historical
magnitude throughout the histories of the East and West. They stand at
the very foundation of his comparative-historical sociology.
However,
this depiction of the new American poli tical cul ture, which
assumes the near disappearance of civic ideals, stands· opposed to two fur–
ther basic conclusions at the center of Weber's sociological investigations.
Both cast a different light upon this monumental transformation. He
argued repeatedly that significant developments, once firmly anchored, do
not precipitously fade from a nation's social landscape, and not as a conse–
quence of short-term challenges. Rather, and even if dormant for longer
periods, they live on, awaiting altered contextual constellations to become
strongly infl uential once again. Furthermore, Weber unders tood societies
as only rarely avoiding continuous, unavoidable, and significant conflict and
struggle. Elites and "aristocracies" are formed and soon thereafter new
ones appear. Domination is never abolished, as utopian thinkers argued, yet
rulership is not permanent either; through conflict and struggle new rul–
ing groups arise continuously.
Cognizance of these two further major tenets of Weber's sociology
forces revision of the above scenario. The individualism/consumer-enter–
tainment dualism must be acknowledged as incompletely capturing the
new American political culture. Rather, a triumvirate of forces must be
recognized: world mastery individualism, the con umer-entertainment
industries, and civic sphere ideals. Though threatened, civic ideals live on.
At times, amidst the cascading fluctuations of the present, these three
spheres, in varying degrees, oppose one another; at other times each of
