What does Hillbilly Elegy tell us about J.D. Vance’s daimon?

 

J.D. Vance, Vice President of the United States, identifies himself as a post-liberal conservative. Since he is only a heartbeat away from becoming president, I have been thinking that I should read his latest book, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, to see if it sheds any light on how he would be likely to use the powers of the presidency.

However, I decided that I should read Hillbilly Elegy first - and am glad that I eventually managed to read it, a decade after its publication.  I didn’t manage to get past the Introduction when I first attempted to read it a few years ago, but I now think it deserves its status as a best seller.

In this essay I will discuss the problem I saw in the Introduction before outlining what I see as the book’s strongest point. I will conclude that the book shows us Vance’s values and aspirations clearly, but offers only a glimpse of what David L. Norton would call a daimon.

The Introduction

In the Introduction, Vance discusses social problems of people who identify as hillbillies - working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish (Ulster) descent whose ancestors settled in the Appalachian Mountains. At one point he writes:

“When I mention the plight of my community, I am often met with an explanation that goes something like this: “Of course the prospects for working-class whites have worsened, J.D., but you’re putting the chicken before the egg. They’re divorcing more, marrying less, and experiencing less happiness because their economic opportunities have declined. If they only had better access to jobs, other parts of their lives would improve as well.”

Vance goes on to say that he held that opinion himself during his youth. He acknowledges that the opinion makes sense in terms of stresses associated with loss of security of employment in the industrial Midwest. However, he then goes on to claim that experience has taught him that “this story of economic security is, at best, incomplete”.

In support of that claim, Vance only cites one example. He mentions his personal experience of working alongside a young man “with every reason to work – a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way – carelessly tossing aside a good job …”. He suggests that the young man displayed a lack of agency – a feeling that he had little control over his life and a willingness to blame everyone but himself.

Vance seems to be suggesting that such attitudes are a characteristic of hillbillies and “distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America”. Perhaps hillbillies are particularly prone to this kind of learned helplessness, but Vance doesn’t make a strong case in support of that view.  

In Vance’s defence, however, he does acknowledge that his book does not pretend to be an academic study of the problem of declining upward social mobility. He states his primary aim is “to tell a true story of what that problem feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck”.

 That is where the value of the book lies.

The strongest point

The point that comes through strongly in the book is that the messages that individual children receive from influential family members can help them to avoid adopting low aspirations, even when they are born into dysfunctional families and live in communities where most children grow up to perceive that the deck is stacked against them.

The story of Vance’s childhood is largely about the negative influence of his mother, whom he watched repeatedly succumb to addiction, being more than offset by the positive influence of his maternal grandmother and grandfather (Mamaw and Papaw) his elder sister, Lindsay, his natural father, and his Uncle Jimmy. To his credit, Vance doesn’t attempt to present himself as being particularly smart.

The picture that Vance paints of Middletown Ohio, where he grew up, is complex. He contrasts the mores of his grandparents – “old fashioned, quietly faithful, self-reliant, hardworking” - with those of his mother, which he describes as “consumerist, isolated, angry, distrustful”. He suggests that “increasingly, the entire neighborhood” has been adopting his mother’s mores. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that there were many intact families and peaceful homes in Middletown and that many of his childhood friends have been able to build successful lives there.

This story does not fit easily into either the cultural decline or economic decline explanations in the passage quoted above. Mamaw and Papaw’s mores were presumably reinforced by the stability offered by Papaw’s Armco steel job. And Vance’s mother’s addiction problem is not obviously attributable to either lack of economic opportunity or cultural factors. Towards the end of the book, Vance suggests that his mother’s problems were largely personal: “She tried to find happiness in love and work, but she listened too much to the wrong voice in her head”.

Mamaw nurtured in J.D. an aspiration to better himself, combined with a degree of optimism about his own potential. That is a valuable gift, but it is not the same thing as a daimon. An aspiration to get ahead is generic. Almost anyone can hold it, and it doesn’t say what one is to become. Norton’s daimon, by contrast, is unique and individual. The question for the rest of the book is whether Vance’s aspiration ever acquires that specificity.

Vance achieved well enough at high school to be admitted to Ohio State University but was terrified by the prospect of having to cope with “the unstructured college experience”. He joined the Marine Corps at the suggestion of his cousin Rachael, a Marine Corps veteran.

According to Vance, the Marine Corps taught him to live like an adult. He suggests that by the time he commenced study at Ohio State, the Marine Corps had also “instilled in me an incredible sense of invincibility”. It certainly instilled work habits that enabled him to graduate from college with grades high enough to gain admittance to Yale Law.

Yale Law doesn’t seem to have presented Vance with huge academic challenges. He portrays his experience there as akin to a kind of finishing school where he learned to network and had the good fortune to meet Usha, who became his wife. He credits Amy Chua, one of his professors, with providing sound advice on how to pursue career goals without destroying his relationship with Usha.

The daimon question

As explained by David L. Norton, your daimon is your innate potentiality – a unique “ideal of perfection”. Self-actualization is the process of discovering your daimon and living in harmony with it. Norton describes that as the feeling of  “being where one wants to be, doing what one wants to do”, as well as the feeling of being where one must be, and wholeheartedly doing what one must do. I have previously discussed David L. Norton’s explanation of daimon in an essay entitled, “Do you live in harmony with your daimon?”  The concept of daimon has been further discussed by Ed Younkins in his review essay on Norton’s books.

 Many of the things that are important to J.D. Vance are evident from a reading of Hillbilly Elegy. It is obvious that he considers it important to identify as a hillbilly as well as a Yale graduate. The importance to him of family and close personal relationships comes through strongly. It is clear that he regards personal agency, self-reliance and hard work as important values. He views his development of self-confidence as an important achievement.

However, I don’t think any of those things could be said to constitute a supreme aim or guiding principle. As noted above, Norton describes living in harmony with one’s daimon as a feeling of being where one wants to be and doing what one wants to do, as well as being where one must be and wholeheartedly doing what one must do. Does Vance describe anything like that? The closest he comes in the middle of the book is the Marine Corps, but what he reports there is a new confidence, an “incredible sense of invincibility”, rather than a calling. His account of Yale is dominated by networking, credentials and careerism.

A memoir is only indirect evidence, of course. Norton’s daimon is neither the actual person nor a product of the actual person, so Vance may have a daimon the book doesn’t reveal. I can only report what the book shows.

Perhaps we see a glimpse of Vance’s daimon in the final pages of the book. At that point he introduces us to Brian, a kid from Appalachian Kentucky who reminded J.D. of himself when he was fifteen years old. Brian had experienced many instances of childhood trauma and his hope of a normal life had evaporated. Vance writes:

“We do need to create a space for the J.D.s and Brians of the world to have a chance. I don’t know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

If J.D.’s daimon is to give people like Brian a better chance in life, the book can’t tell us whether his political career serves it. Vance writes that “there is no government that can fix these problems for us”, but he also says that public policy can help. The test is therefore what he does with the power he holds, not what he wrote a decade ago.

So what does Hillbilly Elegy tell us about J.D. Vance’s daimon? It tells us a good deal about his values: family, agency, self-reliance and hard work. It shows the aspiration Mamaw nurtured in him. It offers little that could be called a vocation until the final pages, where his concern for children like Brian hints at an aim that may be more than personal ambition.

I’m not sure Hillbilly Elegy sheds much light on how J.D. Vance would use the powers of the presidency. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it. Perhaps Communion will tell me more.