Habits of the Heart: Introductory
We're sharing our 2025 slow read series with everyone
As our team takes time off for the holidays, we are sharing the conversations Sarah and Beth had this year about Habits of the Heart. This first episode originally aired in February for our premium members on Substack.
Whether you’re also taking a well-deserved break, spending time with family, or just looking for something meaningful to listen to, we hope you’ll join us to revisit (or enjoy for the first time!) this thoughtful exploration from Sarah and Beth of this powerful, prescient book.
In this episode, they discuss the introductory, and imagine where the authors would push them, and investigate what the meaning of “the pursuit of happiness” was to the founders in comparison to how we define it now.
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Episode Transcript
Maggie Penton [00:00:07] This is Maggie Penton. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Our team is taking some time off to enjoy the holidays. So today we’re sharing the first episode from our 2025 Slow Read on Habits of the Heart. You may remember that in 2024 Sarah and Beth read Democracy in America with our community. Democracy in America was written in the 1830s by the French social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville and talked about the relationship between character and society in America. Tocqueville traveled our young country and talked with citizens from the urban centers in the North, rural farmers on the frontier and slave labor farms in the South. Tocqueville described the social customs that he called habits of the heart that formed the American character. Habits of the Heart was published in 1985 as a sociological check-in on our civic life that was modeled after Tocqueville’s work with sections on our family lives, religious observance, and local leaders. The authors asked regular people across America, what does happiness mean to you? What’s your life like? What kind of role do you play in your community? Over the next four episodes, which Sarah and Beth recorded throughout this year, we’re diving into a deeper question that has hovered over our countries since founding. Can we balance our individual pursuit of freedom with our duty to our communities and govern ourselves? Or to put it more plainly, can the American experiment actually work? The answer for the last 250 years has been some version of let’s see if we can hold it together until the next election. Habits of the Heart digs into the way that our American identity supports or could support making our democratic systems work. And points to some solutions for bringing people together in these divided times. In these discussions you’ll hear Sarah and Beth talk about the way this book resonates still, how the speed and development of new technologies have exacerbated issues that were taking root in the 80s and what our citizenship asks of us today. Today’s introductory episode is about what we mean when we say the pursuit of happiness. Let’s get started.
Beth [00:02:35] Living well is a challenge, says the first sentence of Habits of the Heart, but that we are going to be slow reading together this year. I loved it. Sarah and I are here to discuss with all of you, part one, the introductory section. Sarah, why are you excited about reading Habits of the Heart?
Sarah [00:02:58] It came up a lot when we were reading Democracy in America. The one, the only Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that we read Habits of the Heart when we told her we were doing this slow read of Democracy in America. It’s been around a long time. It was published in 1985.
Beth [00:03:14] It’s not that long.
Sarah [00:03:16] Beth, it is.
Beth [00:03:17] It’s as long as Mitch McConnell’s been in the Senate in most of our lives.
Sarah [00:03:21] That’s too long. So it’s going to be crazy, I think, how relevant some of this feels considering how long ago it was written. And I think the reason the book comes up over and over again is because they’ve done such a good job. It’s quite the team. So we’re just going to have to say like authors at multiple points because there’s just too many people. It’s like five people wrote this book because it’s basically a sociological research study more than anything. But they really hit on some stuff that is still true just like Alexis de Tocqueville, but it’s eminently more readable because as long as 1985 was in the past, 18, whatever, when Alexis de Tocqueville wrote Democracy in America is much longer. So I think picking up the threads, this one guy from hundreds of years ago, laid down and putting them together more scientifically, more coherently, asking bigger questions in a more modern way, it’s very beautiful.
Beth [00:04:22] It’s really grounding to me to be reminded that our sociological progress is always slower than our technological progress. Because I think I have talked myself into this space of believing that everything is changing all the time, and it is, but we’re behind it in our relationships with one another. Like the big picture ‘we’ how we develop, how we act as a culture, as a society evolves more slowly than the things that we’re using and the way that we are doing things. And I think that’s why in some ways 1985 was a long time ago and in many ways it wasn’t at all. And it gives me a frame for where we are as people right now that I don’t know settles me down a little bit. Because while so much of what we’re dealing with feels brand new, it was here in 1985 too. So in the first chapter, we meet four characters who are going to be sort of avatars for how we talk about our lives and what matters in them. And I was just really hooked in by these four people and the way that they show that it’s hard to articulate like what you think a good life is about and how to say I feel successful because of these things or I’m striving for these things because of X, Y, Z values.
Sarah [00:05:46] This introductory, which why are we calling it an introductory instead of an introduction?
Beth [00:05:50] I don’t know.
Sarah [00:05:51] I have questions for the authors. The characters are real people, we should clarify. They are real they found during the course of this sociological study. We have Brian, a Californian who pursued career success before deciding the real answer was prioritizing his family. We have Joe, who lives in Massachusetts and is really tied in with his local community. That’s where he finds a lot of purpose. We have Margaret, who’s a therapist in a Southern city, I’m guessing Atlanta, who really cares a great deal about individual fulfillment. And then we have Wayne, an activist in California, who’s been shaped by radical politics and his life and activism. And so they’re using the life stories of these three people. The chapter is called The Pursuit of Happiness. So they’re asking, okay, this is a founding direction for America. So what does that pursuit of happiness look like across the country? How do people define happiness? And how do they go after it? Either through career or family or social obligations or politics or whatever the case may be.
Beth [00:07:07] And as they push on all four of these people, they find that everybody is a little adrift from other people in figuring out how to define happiness and success. They push Brian on what are values that everybody should live by? And he’s kind of like, no, I trust my values and other people have to trust their values. And here we all are defining our values for ourselves. Joe looks to the past for his values, and as they push on that, they find that his town, as it exists in his mind, is not the town that exists in reality today. And with Margaret, she keeps focusing on how people have to take responsibility for themselves. And that if you live under Margaret’s rubric, you can never really ask anybody else for help. There’s no obligation that we have to each other. And for Wayne, he’s really clear on what he’s against, but as they push him on what’s he’s for, specifically on what a better society means, Wayne doesn’t know. And so I kept trying to imagine, Sarah, like what would a Beth blurb in this book look like? Where would they push on me and find that same untethering from anything bigger than my present context?
Sarah [00:08:25] I know I’ve talked about this before. I read a book by a meditation teacher a long time ago where he said a value is a value because it’s universal. Everybody supports the value. That’s how you know it’s a value. And they’re really playing around with that question. How do we define our values? We all live by our “values” but what does that mean? What does that really mean? Because it does feel like if you have a nation founded on certain principles, and particularly the value of happiness and the free pursuit of it, that that needs to be universally defined in some objective way. And when you push on people-- because every person, I thought, yeah, Brian, you’re right, it is about family. And then they pushed Brian a little bit further, and I was like, oh, no, Brian. I don’t agree with you at all. And the same with every person. I’d be like, yep, that’s right. And then they’d push them a little further, I’d be like, nope, you lost the plot. Just because it’s too amorphous to say like, well, everybody-- you know I hate you do you. It’s not my jam. Because I just don’t think it works. I think you got a real tragedy of the common problems when everybody’s like you do you, everybody. Find your own values. There’s nothing to tie us together, which I think is really what they’re starting to scratch at.
Beth [00:09:44] So I kept thinking about if I had to be pushed by them around my life and my choices, I might end up somewhere in a quote that the disciples of Christ use a lot, which I think has deeper and older roots even, but it’s like in essentials unity, in non-essentials diversity, and all things love. I think that’s a really good and helpful framework. Then I think they would push me on, okay, well, what are the essentials and how do you get to the places where unity is necessary in a country like this one? And I don’t know because as they got into what freedom means to most Americans, I thought it was really valuable to hear we define freedom as basically being left alone, and we don’t talk about what to do with freedom once we have it.
Sarah [00:10:33] Yeah, I thought they were really uncovering some of the pieces of this pursuit of happiness that the founding fathers left a little unfilled. I was finishing up Paradise Lost at the same time I was reading this introductory. And Milton’s argument towards the end is a very Christian argument that ultimately the partaking of the fruit of good and evil led to death, but it also led to a certain type of freedom. This ability to reason, this ability to choose. There is a through line here where everybody’s like it is not happiness, but it is the pursuit of happiness. It is the ability to choose your own values, to choose your own path, to find this path of individual fulfillment. But what Alexis de Tocqueville names and what they pick up as well is that individualism while a great unifying principle and a great, unifying dream, that’s this American dream, this American vision, it’s a great selling point. But when things get hard, it’s hard to find a path to connect us together to protect that. I think that’s probably the pieces in American history where you find it. It’s not that we’re pursuing happiness towards a goal. It’s that we are protecting our right to pursue happiness. That’s what draws us together. But I think that, for me, particularly reading Paradise Lost or talking about heaven and hell, and I thought, is it just this limitation of the present life? Are our lives too small and short to get us to somewhere deeper and connective? Are our lives just small and short enough to really pursue happiness, and that’s about it? Do you need an afterlife, which I’m not even sure I believe in, even though I do believe in God and something greater and a spark of that divine in all of us. But I’m like I don’t know if we can get there. That’s why people are like, meh, whatever, let’s just get through tomorrow and not worry about what happens next. Is that the connective tissue we’re missing? We’ll get into that in the history with the Christian aspect of pieces of American history, or religious aspects of pieces of America history. But I thought that the way they just kept pushing on that and saying what then?
Beth [00:13:11] Yeah, because I think what I’m reading, and this is very influenced by our reading of Democracy in America, but I think we’ve decided that the pursuit of happiness is more like the pursuit of comfort, like material comfort, financial comfort, security. Because we kind of say the pursuit of happiness as we individually define it. We don’t have a collective definition of happiness. And that’s why I think I loved the quote about all four of these people, Brian, Joe, Margaret, and Wayne, the author said they have difficulty articulating the richness of their commitments in the language they use. Their lives sound more isolated and arbitrary than as we have observed them they actually are. And I think that has to be true for most of us because you can say, well, I’m pursuing happiness, but man, my long-term happiness, my short-term happiness, my personal happiness, my familial happiness, like what context do I bring to that pursuit?
Sarah [00:14:07] If I was to offer a rewrite, I would say the pursuit of purpose might have been a better choice of word. Happiness is, well, in particularly our 21st century understanding of it has become quite shallow. I don’t know how Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin or John Adams thought of the word happiness. I know it was probably quite different than how I think of it. I think happiness to them was almost a stand-in for a type of freedom. They were articulating a vision, but they were articulating a vision mostly in contrast to what had existed up until that point, which is there was no pursuit of anything. You were defined by how you were born and that was it. And so I think that articulating of freedom to pursue a purpose as not defined by how you were born is what they were trying to revolutionize and they did, but that was not the final piece of the road. Like that was just the first step. And I don’t know if we’ve decided or best articulated once we are free to pursue that purpose what we want to come next.
Beth [00:15:16] And that’s where culture comes in. So chapter two is called Culture and Character, the Historical Conversation. And I really liked how they set the table by saying culture is an argument that society is having. And they talk about how American culture will keep developing as long as we are having that argument in passionate ways. I thought that was a really beautiful foundation to take us into those Christian traditions, some Christian traditions as you were speaking about, versus more secular and individualistic traditions.
Sarah [00:15:51] Because we had four people in the first chapter, and we have four people in the second chapter as we examine the history. So they go through John Winthrop as this version of very biblical or religious traditions inside American history and as an answer to what does freedom mean, what does justice mean, what does the true pursuit of happiness mean. We have Thomas Jefferson as the republican version of that tradition. Very focused on the small farmer and this pursuit of land and development. Then we have marching through American history. And I have to say this tracks very closely with the storm before the calm. And as he lays out these historical cycles in America, he goes through the small farmers to the small town to the big city just like these authors do. So then we go from Jefferson to Benjamin Franklin, which is not advanced in history, but Benjamin Franklin’s pursuit of this bootstrap American dream, you come from nothing, you build a fortune, was really the argument that won and became (particularly as you see these small towns come up over the American geography as we expand across the continent) this version of pursuit of economic freedom. Then you have last Walt Whitman, this pursuit of self-fulfillment. So it’s not a pursuit of economic freedom, of economic dominance, capitalism through the lens of like the robber baron. You have Walt Whitmen, they talk about Thoreau, this answer to my individual feelings, my self-fulfillment, my pursuit of artistic endeavors and creative thought and philosophy. That is the pursuit of happiness. Having the freedom to just pursue these questions as an individual is really what matters. And so they use these four historical figures to chart these different approaches.
Beth [00:18:04] As they do that, they arrive on this framework of expressive individualism, which would be more the Walt Whitman model and utilitarian individualism. The Franklin model, entrepreneurship, economic self-interest, building your life. And that central tension seems to be where they’re going to take us next. We have settled on individualism as our mode in America. We are not in the communal mode of liberty is the freedom to do what is morally right, to live out God’s destiny for us. We are going the individualistic path. And some of us are doing that in a more utilitarian way and some in a expressive way.
Sarah [00:18:59] One of the most fascinating points of this historical reflection to me, I thought, they don’t talk a lot about the traditional identitarian critiques or approaches to American history. Obviously, they talk about Thomas Jefferson and his awareness that slavery was a massive gaping hole in this whole all men are created equal situation. But one of the most interesting parts to me was when they talked about men and women. They said the focus on the new democratic culture was on male roles, but the ethic of achievement articulated by men was sustained by moral ecology shaped by women. Among artisans and farmers, the household unit played a vital economic role within which men’s and women’s positions, though unequal in power and prestige, were largely complimentary. In the larger towns and cities however, and particularly among the professional and business classes, women were more and more deprived of an economic role and were expected to specialize in the expressive and nurturing roles of mother and beautifier of the home itself viewed more as a retreat from the everyday world than as a part of it. As women reacted differently to these new pressures, the first consciousness of and opposition to the inequality of women came to be expressed in America. By the end of the 19th century, the fact that women were not independent citizens was experienced as a major social strain. And I had never heard anyone articulate that historical moment where you went from small towns, particularly farms, where women had a very active, honestly, economic role. They weren’t maybe tilling the fields, but the processing, the running of the family farm, or even the running a small business. You read those novels or stories like Little House on the Prairie or like My Antonia by Willa Cather and you see that the roles were tied up together. And then as people moved to the city in these roles of Industrialization then it became well you stay home, but that doesn’t really contribute anything economically or community wise. And I thought that was such an interesting thing because that’s the moment where you start to see suffrage and women’s rights come into the forefront and I never heard somebody articulate that historical moment, I thought it was really, really interesting.
Beth [00:21:17] Yeah, and it definitely builds on Tocqueville. He told us throughout Democracy in America that American women were shaping the character of our society. And I think that’s still true in so many ways and across cultures. I think about the course I took with one of your favorite professors, Kim Miller, about African burial art and how we discussed in that class that in almost every culture, women are really the keepers of birth and death and really define these questions of what matters in life. But as industrialization took hold and America became more and more defined by corporate life, we have this separation and everything starts to be divided into functional spheres. I thought this was such an incredible insight from these authors that the most distinctive aspect of 20th century American society is the division of life into separate functional spheres, home and workplace, work and leisure, white collar and blue collar, public and private. And I think to your point, rural and urban. Like every place we have that kind of dividing line, it’s become easy for us to understand because corporate life is all about compartmentalization.
Sarah [00:22:34] We start with the independent citizen. We really are prioritizing your identity as a citizen. Also fun fact, this was the part that got me in this section of the novel where they talk about that Thomas Jefferson and John Winthrop, these first two models left public office poorer than they had begun public office. That serving in public office was a quick and easy way to bankrupt yourself. And I thought, well, how things have changed. So we move from the independent citizen to the entrepreneur as we move into industrialization and then when we get into really we’re cooking in the 20th century and then our two central roles are manager, compartmentalizing, making sure all the processes and the departments and the inputs, outputs, and the therapist. Those are our two key roles. We went from independent citizen, to manager, and therapist. I love the therapy part they say, “Indeed, the very term therapeutic suggests a life focused on the need for cure. But cure of what?”
Beth [00:23:39] Yeah, I’d say so. I highlighted that too. And I also liked how they said the therapist like the manager takes the ends as they are given. The focus is upon the effectiveness of the means. And because of that, these two roles that loom large over all of us, even if we’ve never seen a therapist, we talk about therapy culture a lot now and it’s tentacles are everywhere. So you have this definition of what is good that is so individualistic and so morally ambiguous, like so untethered from anything that really connects you to something deeper or larger than yourself.
Sarah [00:24:21] Yeah, and I think that’s where I hope we’re getting because the pursuit of individual happiness too often can become what you articulated, which is comfort. We need something. We need some tension. We need friction. We will take the path of least resistance so often in life because of the way our brains and psychology function. It’s not moral judgment. But I think the morality, the pursuit of moral ends, the question of what is moral, what isn’t, provided a lot of that friction. And if we don’t want it to come from religion, which is fine, we have to find other places. We have to find a place of friction, of duty, of responsibility, of right and wrong. It seems to be what they’re pressing up because that’s what pulls us out of ourselves. That’s what says, wait, don’t just take the path of least resistance to your own happiness, but ask how that works in a society, in a culture, in a nation.
Beth [00:25:31] So I haven’t made it all the way through this episode of the Ezra Klein show, but I started listening to his discussion with Martin Gury, who is a CIA media analyst. And part of what they got to that is certainly a theme in Habits of the Heart is that political rhetoric is really about storytelling. And I think that’s coming through clearly in the conversation. They also were discussing how we might be entering a more mythic age, where people are really looking for something bigger. I think that tracks in a lot. I mean, the White Lotus this season is about spirituality.
Sarah [00:26:09] Astrology. Anyone?
Beth [00:26:10] Yes, astrology. You and I have talked about influencers bringing in a lot more overtly religious content. And the part of the conversation that is not going to leave me for a long time, Martin Gury, the guest, is describing why he voted for Trump the second time for the first time. And he says that at some point, Trump became pretty mythological to people. And for him, it was the assassination attempt. And he is describing and getting more animated than we’ve heard him in the conversation about how he grew up in Cuba and had experienced bullets flying around him and that we all think we’ll be a hero until the bullets actually fly. And that’s the moment when most of us become kind of a pancake. And for Trump to get up immediately, unsure about the extent of his own injuries, unsure if it was over yet, and to be so defiant in the face of that. And you can just hear that that connected for this man in like a very profound way to something that he senses is missing in society. And I think that that’s some of what Habits of the Heart is provoking in me to ask, what are those things that connect for me in that deep, visceral way? Because I do feel like we’re all searching for that depth of connection to a politician, to a movement, to an idea, to a community. And everything is feeling a little bit hollow. And just listening to this conversation, it put pieces together for me about why Trump so captivates certain people through a lens that I hadn’t heard before. Because I always, I’m sure because of my own bias, dismissed it as pretty shallow, but I also felt that people weren’t connecting to Trump one-to-one. They were connecting through someone they trust. I think about all of the ministers who have plugged their congregations directly to Trump in a way that I don’t know that people would have gotten to on their own. So, anyway, that sense that we might be arriving at a more mythic place where we are maybe going back in time in some ways to pick up some of that like biblical Republican sense of things, but in a new era form is interesting to me.
Sarah [00:28:41] Yeah, at that moment with the assassination attempt, I’m a pretty gut driven person. My brain is powerful though and it can talk me out of it, but I think if you’d asked me that day will he win? I would have said, absolutely. Because to your point at the beginning that we think everything is changing, but some things are universal. That photo was incredibly powerful and impactful. And the idea that he got this firing-- and the way you can tell is how quickly people started on the left to turn to conspiracy theories. Because they knew how powerful it was and that’s why they were like, well, they staged it. Or it was glass, it wasn’t the bullet. That’s how you know. And so I think I knew at that moment like, oh, that’s not something you can overcome and a moment like that, an event like that, a story like that, a photo like that. And I let myself be convinced by my 15-year-old that the news cycle moves so fast and everybody will move on, but we’re still humans and we’re impacted tremendously by myths, by stories. And I think there was a part of me that knew when that happened that that would be the outcome. And I think that he plays to so much of what they’re naming, too. Not just the successful businessman under the Benjamin Franklin model, but the individual pursuit, the strength, because I think that’s something that maybe just through the lens of the Trump era that I keep thinking about that they don’t articulate. Is that there are some values there, which is that you pursue that individual happiness at all costs. The people we hold up are the ones that go after that, even if they have to ignore things, neglect things, make some bad choices. We do really hold up myths like that even if it’s not playing out in the lives of people like Brian who say I don’t want to pursue my career at all cost So that’ll be interesting to think about as we move forward as well.
Beth [00:30:45] I think the hero’s journey has so much to tell us because it really does endure throughout all of our stories. And I feel like that’s a point in the hero journey where that separation. But we always look for the coming back together. And I don’t know what the coming-back-together vision is on the other side of Trump or through Trump. I hear people who support him say, no, he’s going to bring everybody together. He’ll say that, right? We’re going to be unified like we’ve never been unified before. And I just wonder what that would really mean to them. The more I talk with people or listen to people after reading about these four, Brian and Joe and Margaret and Wayne, I keep trying to think for myself and for them, like, well, what would they be pushing on with you and uncovering and how would you answer these questions about like why you’ve organized your life as you have? And I really have that question for Trump, honestly, big picture. Like what is his definition of success here? What is his pursuit of happiness? Because I know what his pursuit of power looks like. But I think that’s a really different question than the one the authors are trying to get to.
Maggie Penton [00:32:02] Thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. We’ll be back in your ears with part two on Friday. And if you haven’t had a chance, we’d appreciate it if you left a review for the show on your podcast player. It’s a lovely Christmas gift to our team and a great way to bring more people into the conversation. We’ll back on Friday with the next episode in this series. Until then, keep it nuanced y’all.
Show Credits
Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.
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