National myths and narratives

This language raises self reliant citizens and upholds individual freedom over organizational belonging. As a result, social relationships are perceived as useful transactions based on ethics of fair exchange (Beyerlein and Stephen, 384-406). Community language, on the other hand, emphasizes on communitarian philosophies that regard the moral formation of the self as dependent on good communal relations. Americans cannot anymore be united by a shared sense of a more substantial reality than the self and the contradictions of the dream as indicated by Bellah’s two languages. At the outset, American culture is over-dominated by individualism which means that there is no moral language left in which confrontation of the community problems of justice, caring for others and authentically religious can be done.

In contrast, individualism promotes disunity and social disintegration resulting in lack of compassion and love towards community members. Societal integration is achieved by cordial interrelationships, group associations, and aligning community values with institutional structures and cultural patterns of meaning. Restructuring the issue of public good and the purpose of the government will by far restore unity in the American society. Myths and narratives attract attention to a nation’s language and positive values as constructs of meanings and symbols of a country. National myths and tales set a nation as a compelling historical idea characterized by cultural compulsion embedded in the impossible unity of the country. Peters, Michael, and James Marshall.  Individualism and community: Education and social policy in the postmodern condition.