Universality and its Discontents

How to be particular and why

I listened to a discussion of The Feminine Mystique the other day that mentioned a criticism of the book is that it’s not intersectional. Betty Friedan thinks of her experiences as universal, but they’re mostly just about women who went to college.

This seems fine to me. Many popular ideas are people talking about what is important to them and insisting that it is universal. They attract people with similar outlooks or experiences; sometimes they form a movement.

What I’m curious about is whether it’s important that they be convinced the thing is universal.

If you discover something universal, you get to be part of the club “I have discovered something about the conditions we are all living under” rather than part of the club “I’ve found my people.” You can talk about what you’ve discovered with the language of objectivity and science, which gives it more value in mainstream culture.

This seems too bad. Finding your people is fun! And thinking things are universal when they’re not is a form of delusion that hurts people. In the worst case it leads to people trying to control others.

Let’s make this personal. I was convinced for a while that everyone should feel their feelings somatically. That is, they should literally be able to feel feelings in their bodies. Then I dropped the universality piece of this and became more ecumenical. People have different ways or relating to the world; not everybody needs to do everything I do.

Then recently a relatively straightlaced friend of mine started seeing a therapist who taught him to feel his feelings somatically, and it’s been a beautifully enriching experience for him. I wouldn’t have thought this would be accessible to him.

So I’m a little caught in the tension here. I want to talk more about ideas I think are important, so they’re available to people when they’re ready for them. I can see the appeal of being a universality, but I want to resist trying to control people.

I see many folks being pulled into ingroups where they spend a lot of time judging outgroups.

Non-apology for this post: I thought it would be fun to have some sleepy writing time, where I write on my Substack before the caffeine and Sudafed kick in. I know people talk about writing being hard, but they just put a lot of pressure on themselves. Doing bad writing is easy.