A time for deep thinking
For those of us who are Americans, we have now arrived at a time for thinking deeply about who we are. At the forefront of all our minds is November 4th, when we will elect a new president in an election cycle where there is no incumbent. At this particular moment in history, who we vote for seems to be far less important than why we vote for them. We have become too focused on our individual needs and desires and we have lost sight of the underlying concepts that tie us together as Americans.
As we take the time to pause and consider our lives and our identities as Americans, the problems we share seem to be more apparent than those concepts that tie us together. Partisan bitterness sours our political debates with each other; a variety of unsustainable lifestyles sour our economy; political strife in faraway places highlights our isolation; distrust highlights how disconnected we have become from the values and the environment that define us, and for many, the first world suddenly seems to be on the brink of a dark and forbidding future.
But there is another way to look at the situation we find ourselves in. We can look at the current crisis as the end of a particularly long chapter in American history, of which the last eight years have been but a page or two. We can look at this as a time for renewal of the American dream; far from spelling out doom, the problems we share might just shed light on those elusive underlying concepts that tie us together.
Think for a moment: what is the idea that defines our times, what do we call the era of history in which we live? In the opinion of this author, we can say that we live in the post-Cold War era, or the post-9/11 era, or the post-industrialist era, or the post-modern era, and in at the heart of these descriptions, we can see that elusive underlying concept that unites them all, the basic idea that has defined the final pages of the 20th Century is this: we have been living in a time defined primarily by what it has ceased to be.
Dreams within Dreams
The question that now faces us is this: given that the 20th Century is over, what will the 21st Century be like? To be sure, it’s a difficult question to answer, and we are 8 years late in beginning our attempt, but we have to at least try to answer that question. We cannot be complacent and worry only about our own well being. We need to imagine the future, however difficult that might be.
Now, I tend to think that the future is so difficult to imagine because, like people who think they are saving good money even as their credit card debt skyrockets, there is a strong motivation to think only of the here and now. We don’t want to look at the broader world because it is changing, and it is changing rapidly. We have come to loathe change because for some, life is filled with the semblance of the American dream, and for these people, change has lost its power to bring good things; for others, life is lived on the brink of disaster, and for these people, so long as everything remains the same, it will be possible to make the monthly payments on a debt that would destroy life as we know it if it were to suddenly come due in full.
However we live individually as Americans, one thing that is for sure is that we, as a nation, owe a debt we don’t wish to describe. Nevertheless, I will describe it: our nation owes a debt to the local environments of faraway places, where life has become near impossible for the sake of our convenience. We owe our debt to the underpaid workers who support us in unnecessary luxury. We owe our debt to foreign countries who let us use money we have never earned. We owe our debt to the countries we bomb in order to preserve economic stability so that oil doesn’t cease to flow into the refineries. We don’t like to describe these debts because we want to enjoy the delusion that we are ahead of the game. Unfortunately, it is just a delusion, and it is a delusion that departs from reality with ever increasing speed.
The argument has been made that the last presidency was like a bad dream, and that sentiment carried with it the connotation that we could awaken to a world that filled with bright light of the morning sunshine. If we have dreamed, it is the fitful dream of a nation with unfulfilled obligations in the waking world. However fitful our dream, waking life is likely to be more difficult.
If we live in a delusion, it is a delusion we can no longer afford. If we live in a dream, it is a dream that has departed far enough from the laws of nature that our slumbering minds can no longer comprehend it. And perhaps, we are a nation of delusional dreamers, dreaming that we dream.
After all, the end of the 20th Century has been defined by a multiplicity of Americans achieving the American Dream, regardless of the cost; suburbia has sprawled even as mortgages have become unstable and the environment has ceased to play a meaningful role in our lives.
We are beginning to learn that achieving the American Dream leads to a life much like the life we led before we achieved the American Dream, the only real difference being that we now lack something to dream about.When life is lived in pursuit of dreams that may come true someday, change is a welcome friend. Sometimes it will bring hardship, but hardship is always tempered with the optimism that change might also help us to realize our dream. By contrast, in a life in which dreams have been achieved prematurely, change only fills our hearts with the dread that we will lose what we have not earned.
The closing sentence of the 20th Century is this: it is no longer even possible to discuss rationally the path that has led us to where we stand now.
A New Chapter
Imagining for a moment that a new chapter of American history begins with this sentence, think one more time about the ideas that defined the last century. In retrospect, the most basic idea of the last century seems to have been war, a legacy left by the dwindling frontiers of 19th century colonialism.
Just as frontiers had dwindled at the end of the 19th century, war began to dwindle near the end of the 20th century and with the dwindling of war, the goals that had accompanied that idea also began to vanish until, left with little else, the leaders of the latter days of the 20th century began to declare war on ideas. As a result, our culture became more and more brittle and shallow.
But even as war dwindled into asymmetrical conflict, the basic concept of the 20th century left the world its own legacy; the activities of the last century inspired the rise of the world economy. In the legacy of war, the world became interdependent, and so long as the world economy doesn’t collapse, it is my belief that war will not be the idea that defines the 21st Century. I believe that the opportunities available to us in the 21st Century will no longer be quite so much correlated to the size of our nation’s stockpile of missiles.
The 21st Century
Instead, the 21st Century will be defined by economic competition and frontiers will no longer exist in either the first or the third world. If the current story of the human race doesn’t collapse under its own weight, the 21st century might even see aysmmetrical conflict dwindle into nothingness, though this depends largely on whether we choose to lesson the distance between the first and third worlds or increase it.
Should we choose to lessen than distance, the path to success in the 21st Century will be paved by understanding instead of exploitation of the third world. Of course, the future won’t be entirely rosy and bright in contrast to a past that was dark and brutal. Exploitation of the third world will still exist, the difference will be that such exploitation will lead more and more directly towards failure and failure will be an uglier condition than ever before.
Here in the first world, we will lose something beautiful as the idea of the frontier dissapears from this world. In the third world, war is likely to intensify before it dwindles and if war in the third world dwindles, the legacy that dwindling will leave is something we cannot yet imagine.
If we choose to lessen the distance between the first and third worlds, the military connection we now have with many third world countries will be submerged in understanding. Two things worth mentioning are that first, the military connection we have with other countries, first and third alike, will never disappear completely, no matter how submerged in understanding those connections become, and second, the understanding in which these military connections become submerged will not be the difficult sort of understanding. While it is easy to understand those that are like us, and the easy sort of understanding is nearly synonymous with feelings of love, it is difficult to understand those who are different; and in this author’s experience, understanding of differences seems to inspire contempt and loathing more often than it does love and harmony.
Perhaps escaping from that contempt and loathing is what makes the idea of a frontier so beautiful. In any case, in a world without frontiers, where the distance between the first and third worlds has become small, there will be no possibility of escaping the difficulties and disappointments of understanding differences.
Perhaps what I have just written seems overly pessimistic, but it is my belief that the lowest lows of a world defined by understanding will probably prove uglier and less noble than those of a world defined by war, frontiers and exploitation.
The New Road To Success…
For all that I have just written however, I do not believe the 21st Century will be an ugly time to live. Even while the lowest lows may be lower than those we know today, the highest highs of a world defined by understanding will also probably prove more beautiful and better than what we know tody. The 21st Century will usher in an era where the good life approaches a monopoly on beauty, and hell on earth is defined by rampant meaningless drudgery.
In a world without frontiers, I think practicality will play a much larger role in the art of being successful and happiness will be more closely tied to living in accord with the environment. Where once the environment ruled the lives of human beings like a tyrant, the 21st Century will be a time where a good relationship between a group of humans and their environment will be all that stands between us and the spiritual poverty of meaninglessness; human beings will suddenly become aware of the fine line that separates practicality from drudgery.
But for all that the environment will be important, the 21st Century will not be defined by sustainable lifestyles nor by neutral environmental impacts. Instead, it will be defined by change. The environment changes, it always has, and it always will. This is a fact that modern technology has allowed us to ignore for a time, but in the 21st Century, as we reenter into a dialogue with the environment in which we live, success will require practical and adaptable lifestyles far more so than it will require idealistic sustainable ones.
…And Four Civic Virtues That Will Let Us Travel That Road
The four civic virtues that will be important in the future will be awareness, understanding, connectedness, and adaptability. These civic virtues will reemphasize the importance of the human beings in their own lives and where the trend in the last century was greater mobility of jobs, the trend in the 21st century will probably be greater mobility of workers.
As such, as we choose regulations for the 21st Century economy, it will be important to solidify the borders of regional markets in the world economy and it will also be important to make those borders nationally porous. As we choose immigration policies, it will be important to create a system of visas that allow for international exchanges of labor and of ideas, while balancing the need to retain a sense of national loyalty amongst citizens, wherever they choose to live. It will be important to revitalize the idea of citizenship as a responsibility to one’s own country even while contributing to the success of regional market. We will need to rethink national identity in terms of the opportunities afforded by the environment of each particular nation as opposed to our desires as consumers. Whereas now demand defines our markets, the 21st century markets will be more defined by supply.
In light of these needs, as we choose governance for 21st Century nations, it will be important to reject opportunities afforded by military strength. As we choose the new structure of the military and civil services, we need to do so with an eye towards maintaining the infrastructure of the world economy. it will be important to organize these services with more of an eye towards protecting existing freedoms as opposed to providing revolutions from above. Democracy needs to be spread by human beings, instead of by the power of guns, and freedom must be claimed by those who possess the power to claim it. It will also be important to remember those who do not have the power to claim freedom and to constantly push at the economic boundaries of the free world. In general, though, the role of governments along with their military and civil services will be to support what exists rather than create what does not.
A time for prudent choices
Along these lines, as we choose our next president, we need to remember that it is not the President or the government who defines whatever new direction of the United States of America might embark upon, instead, it is the American people. This is as true in the future, as it has been in the past. Of course, in our particular predicament, it is much easier to identify with Main Street and blame Wall Street, but the fact is that our lives aren’t currently defined by Main Street or Wall Street, but rather by Easy Street. As Easy Street dead ends, we can blame corruption in Washington, we can blame greed on Wall Street, we can blame the powerlessness of Main Street, but, in the this author’s opinion, it would be more constructive to blame ourselves.
In democracy, the responsibility ultimately lies with us as citizens to use our freedom constructively and innovatively. Perhaps we have become lazy and selfish. Perhaps we have forgotten that freedom is the starting point of goodness instead of the definition. But now that we find ourselves in a time of deep thinking, we can choose to change. One chapter of American history has ended and a new chapter is beginning. The important thing on November 4th, will not be who wins the election, the important thing will be that Americans came together and voted. The important thing after November 4th will be that we, as American citizens, take onto our own shoulders the responsibility of making our nation the hero of the next chapter of American history.
