First Parish Bedford UU

Reflections on the importance of peers

by Rev. John E. Gibbons

delivered on Sunday, October 16, 2011

at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts

It was a restaurant for confused tourists and local residents who had pawned their taste buds. The waitress took the parents’ order, and then turned to their small son.

“What will you have?” she asked.

“I want a hot dog! . . .” the boy began.

“No hot dog!” the mother interrupted. “Give him what we ordered!”

But the waitress ignored her.

“Do you want anything on your hot dog?” she asked.

“Ketchup!” the boy replied with a happy smile.

“Coming up!” she said, as she walked to the kitchen.

There was silence at the table.

Then the youngster said to his mother: “Mom, she thinks I’m real!”

The odor of thick and greasy food permeated the room—but his was a hunger beyond all power to suppress.

 

What makes people happy? Researchers have studied the issue, polling people worldwide on the question of how happy they are—from villagers in Bangladesh to burghers in Scarsdale. The answers are surprising. Most people on the planet report that they are reasonably happy—even the very poor. As long as people have enough to eat and basic physical security, their income level does not directly correlate with happiness. From 1947 to 1970, per-capita income in the United States tripled but levels of happiness stayed about the same. Lottery winners are no happier than people who are confined to wheelchairs after an accident, and the lottery winners take less pleasure than the accident victims in the events of their daily lives. A lot of what we aspire to because we think it will increase our happiness has no such effect.

What does increase people’s happiness, readers of this book will not be surprised to learn, is joining a club. Literally: joining a group that meets once a month will increase your happiness as much as doubling your income. Marriage is helpful—a good marriage is much, much more important to happiness than professional success. In terms of daily life, a British study concluded that people find the greatest happiness in socializing after work, having dinner, and especially having sex. If you want to decrease your happiness, arrange your life so you have a long commute. A study in Germany found that the longer the commute, the lower people’s satisfaction with life. The short answer to the question of what makes people happy is this: other people.

 

 

My mother also told me to “Stand up straight!” and I hear her voice every time I stand here.

This is a sermon about the voices we all hear, the voices that affirm or diminish us, the voices that beckon us to heed the better angels of our nature or, alternately, convince us that what we do matters not.

For now I don’t want to consider whether hot dogs constitute a good meal, nor do I want to consider whether going around with one’s shirt untucked constitutes good grooming. I do want us to consider the vital importance – not just when we’re growing up but throughout all our lives – of treating one another as if we are indeed real, of accepting one another as we are. 

I came of age in the 1960’s and was profoundly influenced by the civil rights, anti-war, women’s and gay liberation and human potential movements, as well of course by sex, drugs and rock-and-roll. Through it all, I have sought answers to questions of how and why people change: How can I be a better person? How can you be a better person? How can we make our world a better place? I have explored means educational, political, chemical and spiritual; and, while I have learned some things, the answers to my questions remain elusive.

What I share with you this morning, however, is my growing conviction that the short answer to questions of how and why people change is the same as the short answer to the question of what makes people happy, and it is this: other people.

Nothing is as influential to human behavior as other people: the people we spend our time with, the ones we hang around with, the people who regard us as real and those whom we regard as real, those whom we accept as they are and those who accept us as we are, the families, the associations, the parties, the networks, the congregations, the groups to which we belong. 

Tweaking the biblical injunction, it was theologian James Luther Adams who said, “By their groups you shall know them.”

Peer groups and peer pressure are principal human motivations. 

Why are people the way they are? Conventional wisdom is that our character is formed by the way we were raised. We praise or, likely, blame our parents, as in the profane Philip Larkin poem:

 

The other side of this is that parents like to think that what we do significantly shapes our children’s character. But this notion is increasingly challenged and destroyed by psychologists like Judith Rich Harris who, in her book The Nurture Assumption, persuasively argues that “once parents have passed along their genes, they have very little influence over their children – except to choose their child’s peer group.” It is that peer group that shapes us. This is a simple but radical idea.

 

We are, of course, accustomed to thinking of the negative effects of peer pressure. We teach children to resist peer pressure, “If your friends told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that too?” Unitarian Universalists have very nearly built a religion of resistance to peer pressure, a religion of individualism, worshipping (well that’s too passive a word) arguing at the temple of Free Thought, sanctifying – as did Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance.

 

And that’s all well and good, but by exaggerating the benefits of individualism, we diminish the salubrious transformative power of other people, our peers. I read to you from Tina Rosenberg’s book, Join The Club. Examining incredibly diverse social movements around the world, she shows how peer pressure has

 

·        persuaded American teenagers to reject cigarettes and

·        young people in South Africa to use condoms;

·        how democratic activists in Serbia overthrew their dictatorship – using tools of humor, solidarity and some very cool T-shirts;

·        how millions of people have faced their addictions – by way of 12-Step, Smart Recovery and other such social-cure groups;

·        how urban black and Latino students have come to excel in college math;

·        and how lonely, isolated and rather well-to do suburbanites outside Chicago deepened their spirituality, created community and found new purpose in their lives. In each of these circumstances, the key to positive change was peer pressure, joining the club.

 

The analysis of anti-smoking campaigns for teenagers is revealing. First of all, plain and simple, all cigarette advertising is aimed at teenagers. Absolutely no one else says, “Gee, I think I’ll take up smoking!” Cigarette advertising, therefore, does one and only one thing: it makes smoking look cool. Anti-smoking campaigns have relied on horrific images of emaciated smokers on oxygen and SMOKING KILLS and other slogans emblazoned on packages – none of which diminishes teen interest in smoking whatsoever. So do such tactics NOT work that the smoking industry LOVES to spend money on them. Every time you see those images or slogans you are, in fact, seeing the power of big tobacco. What big tobacco will NOT pay for is the only kind of anti-smoking campaign that does work, that which exposes the lies of the industry and binds teens together in groups with names like Rage Against the Haze and REBEL, Reaching Everyone by Exposing Lies, and makes smoking appear uncool, often with the help of, again, some very cool T-shirts.

 

The foremost example of the motivating power of peer pressure is military: that which enables a soldier to risk his or her life, not for politicians, certainly, or ideology or even glory but only for their comrades, their band of brothers. Recall the St. Crispin Day speech of Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt. This is the prototype of all motivational speeches:

 

 

These are among Shakespeare’s most famous words, and they appeal to peer pressure. Now I am not encouraging us to military sacrifice, and Shakespeare made no mention of T-shirts (Though, researching the Battle of Agincourt, I discovered that it was there that the fingered V-sign originated, nearly as cool and viral as any t-shirt: a gesture used by the English, saying to the French that they still had fingers with which to use their longbows! You never know what you’ll learn here at First Parish!)

 

In a course he teaches in human rights change at NYU, our community minister and UUSC president Bill Schulz brings into class each year a pair of turquoise paisley pants:

 

“They are the most god-awful pants you ever saw,” Bill says,  “but I wore them every day for four years in theological school in the 1970’s and I was the coolest cat on the University of Chicago campus. I ask my students…‘Why would not a one of you be caught dead in these pants today? How do fashions change?’ And the answer that we eventually get to is that first a small group of people change their minds about a particular fashion, led by elites like fashion designers but including grassroots people in key places like New York or LA; then those new fashions get adopted by the popular media – new fashion ‘laws,’ if you will, are passed – and finally, larger numbers of people who don’t want to be regarded as out of step with the ‘laws,’ whose self-image is ‘I am not a geek,’ start adopting those new fashions and finally turquoise paisley pants are relegated to my closet.”

 

Bill uses his god-awful pants as an example of the way that social change movements – by means of peer pressure - have persuaded people to stop smoking, wear seat belts, sit next to people of differing races, report to women bosses, demand democratic reforms and adhere ever-so-slowly but inexorably to global norms of human rights.

 

You see that, in addition to Adams, I gave myself a biblical text for this sermon, from the Book of Hebrews 10:24: "And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds...."

 

I would provoke and encourage us to reach out and bring into our lives what seems so obvious and yet so neglected: other people. There is an epidemic of loneliness in this country. It is, therefore, a counter-cultural act of rebellion to see other people and be seen by them. 

 

Recently a teacher of pre-school told me that, so pre-occupied is her granddaughter with hand-held individual devices and solitary playthings that it is difficult to persuade her to group finger-painting or group game-playing. 

 

You would probably prefer that I not devote a sermon to it but many people are starved for sex, for touch, for physical displays of affection; but thanks to the Internet these needs can be met without the muss and fuss of other people!

 

What a radical sermon I’m preaching: I am in favor of other people! I favor seeing other people and allowing ourselves to be seen.  

 

There is the Zulu greeting, “Sawubona” which means “I see you,” to which the response is “Ngikhona,” which means “I am here.” “Good to see you,” one says to our parishioner Nancy Daugherty. Typically, Nancy responds, “Good to be seen.” Indeed.

   

Unitarian Universalist minister Kate Braestrup tells a story of seeing and being seen or, rather, hearing and being heard. She writes that her young daughter “Woolie and her friend Madeline kindly kept me company on a working weekend in Bar Harbor. While I gave a speech about law enforcement and religion to a convention of municipal administrators, the girls explored the town's shopping district, where lobster-themed T-shirts, humorous refrigerator magnets, and other essential tourist items could be found in staggering abundance. We met back up for supper.

 

The waiter flirted with then, bringing them complimentary seconds on their Shirley Temples. Woolie tied the stem of her maraschino cherry into a knot with her tongue. That night, we slept in a hotel. Or at least I did.

 

Loud whispers and scufflings roused me at two in the morning.  

"Woooooolie..." I whined. "Jeez, are you girls still awake?"

  

"We're writing letters to the people down the hall," said my daughter importantly.

 

"You're writing...?"

  

"They're having a lovers' spat!" said Madeline. "The lady's name is Angela and the man's name is Jason," Woolie confirmed.

  

"You can hear every single word they say!" She doesn't like it that he wore running shoes with his nice pants, and he thinks she should admit that the bartender in the hotel bar used to be her boyfriend."

  

"We're giving them advice. I'm writing my letter to Jason," said Madeline. Her tongue protruded from the corner of her mouth.

  

"I'm telling him it isn't helpful to use obscenities."

  

"Angela needs to let Jason finish his sentences," said Woolie.

  

"How do you spell harangue?"

 

I pulled the pillow over my head and went back to sleep. Woolie and Madeline finished their letters, decorated the margins of the paper with drawings of flowers and birds, and, strenuously shushing each other, tiptoed down the hall to slide them under the combatants' door. This charitable deed accomplished, they crept out the back door, climbed over the barrier fence, and took an illicit swim in the hotel pool. The next morning I found their underpants, soggy and reeking of chlorine, on the carpet next to my bed.

 

"I wonder if it stopped the fight?" (my friend) Monica said when I told her about Woolie and Madeline's impromptu marital intervention.

 

"I would imagine they quieted down anyway," I said. "People generally behave better when they know there are witnesses."

 

“In fact,” Braestrup concludes,  “it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Woolie and Madeline made a real difference in how Jason and Angela interacted with each other, at least for that day or even longer. Misbehavior and abuse thrive on isolation and anonymity. This is true for wife-beaters, but it is also true for the rest of us who succumb to the distressingly common temptation to treat our loved ones as punching bags, figuratively if not literally.”

 

Braestrup’s story reminds me of a time years ago when Sue and I visited London with Eric, then a young teenager. Apparently, Sue and I also had a spat for, when we visited a cathedral that had a place to write and publicly post one’s intercessory prayers, Eric wrote and posted his prayer “that his parents would stop fighting with one another.” Being seen by our son, the witness, indeed quieted us down.

 

Finally, I would be remiss were I not to say that this church, this congregation, this community is a prime place to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, a place where you may come as you are, tucked, untucked or even turquoise. 

 

A recently-retired minister visited our congregation not long ago. It was not easy for him to leave his ministry. “I do not miss the job at all,” he freely admitted to me. “But I really miss the people.” 

 

By our groups we are known. May we provoke one another to love and good deeds....

 

It is good to see you. And it is good to be seen.