Tuesday May 10, 2022; 2:18 PM EDT
- In the early 1960s, James Baldwin said this country is trapped in a labyrinth of attitudes, unable to look at the truth of things, unable to learn from experience, leaving us unable to renew ourselves at the fountain of our own lives. For this trait of national character, opportunities are certainly missed, but most dearly, some of our fellow citizens suffer and suffer, pay and pay.#
- In the late 1930s, John Dewey said that the country in some ways had had a very good run, but it was based on the happy accidental of the early political innovators being well adapted to less complex times and the bountiful resources that the settlers found and took, energizing layers of economic and social development with little regard for moral and ecological costs. Now, Dewey said, in the 1930s, those resources, those newly capitalized soils and landscapes and veins of ore are no longer there to freshly supercharge the economy. Now, said Dewey, one great undeveloped resource remains, if only we could be wise enough to look around us and see with our eyes and learn. There were at that time millions of people longing and even dying for opportunity to participate and contribute. #
- In the early 1700s, Jonathan Swift complained that there was too much being published, that the society was awash in undigestible language, books and booklets and broadsides, a chaos of fragmentary meaning and longing and conflict. Well, now.#
- I'd say Baldwin's criticism of a society that can't learn still applies. And Dewey's hint about where the unused resource fields are to be found is still true. And Swift's observation about the chaotic noise that threatens society still holds.#
- Can't hear each other in all the noise, can't see each other because we don't like looking, don't mind if our neighbors scrape by, or maybe they don't. It's a proud history.#
- Sad thing is: there are significant elements of the country's history that we can be proud of. But we're in trouble because all we seem to be able to do is recite a list of those ad nauseum. Repetition is not thought.#