The Character Building Issue

14 Steps to a Better You

By CHO

I imagine that in the mid 1930s most Americans were busy trying to see out of a fever of a depression for which there seemed no cure. Mired in economic angst, people had likely forgotten, or put aside, notions that were once important to them: discussions of values, civic responsibility, what it takes to lead a moral life. Something was needed—solutions to this collective victimhood had to be found. The enterprising salesman Dale Carnegie no doubt perceived this, and in 1937 he fashioned his own attempt at a solution: what is now the non-fiction classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. A good deal can be said, and has been said, about how this book panders to an ailing capitalist mentality that Carnegie wanted to sharpen back to ruthless perfection. Yet what is easiest to brush aside about this book may be its most important function: offering emancipation to people who needed a way out. Remember, this is a man who exhorted his readers to "learn to love, respect, and enjoy other people." Capitalism, bah. Carnegie's book can be seen as just one of a line of character building books—which in the United States date all the way back to those proclaiming the Puritan ethic—that helped people when they needed them most.

  1. Step 1: If you have a party, invite all your
    friends. Don't leave anyone out.
  2. Step 2: Don't be aggressive
    about how entitled you are
  3. Step 3: Be surbersive. Papier-mache helps.
  4. Step 4: Maintain a distinct identity; merging
    with someone else is bad for both of you.
  5. Step 5: Make sure to underscore
    your postmodernism with
    a firm foundaiton in the real.
  6. Step 6: If your ethnicity is ambiguous,
    graciously defer to stereotypes.
  7. Step 7: Talk about books all the time,
    but don't acually read them.
  8. Step 8: Speak softly, sing loudly.
  9. Step 9: Create a library.
  10. Step 10: Open yourself to the Unseen.
  11. Step 11: Cultivate a group of friends
    who will sustain and nourish you.
    Then undermine their authority.
  12. Step 12: Listen. Try to eliminate
    nasty preconceptions.
  13. Step 13: Embrace your ancestry,
    for all its awkwardness.
  14. Step 14: Remember that poker
    can save your soul

In this issue, our first themed issue of the semester, we look at character building across the scope of its many manifestations. Just as responses to Carnegie's spin on character building can range from enthusiasm to ironic distance, so our writers took the theme in equally diverse and variegated directions. Some are whimsical and impressionistic, as in a section where people describe the songs that have shaped them. Others, like the essay that looks at image construction in academia, are more critical. And still others take character building, in true Indy form, with an ironical grain of salt: I should read Pynchon, I should tolerate my family, but what if I really like puppets?

Whatever it is these articles are, they are necessary. Carnegie's book, and most all writings on character building, were written during times of national distress and upheaval, when old ways of doing things weren't working. Now is such a time. The Indy may not be the character building tome of the future, but it can at least make a small contribution to an essential conversation. A conversation that has at its core the question: In a time of crisis, how can we be good people?

—CHO spacer spacer spacer spacer spacer

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