A lot of people are angry with government today, but I think there are some things to consider, mull over and understand about the nature of life in America before we become too quick to judge.
As a favorite political analyst of mine always says, "Democracy was meant to be loud", and that is one of the greatest things about our country. Imagine not having the freedom from fear and of speech and imagine for a second what that would look like. Case in point: The Middle East. I think it's always been easy to be critical, and exude the modern day definition of "cynical," but it takes some extra effort to be a grateful person. Certainly our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (formerly property) doesn't implicitly mean that these facets of life should not be earned, for they should be seen to have limitless potential, but which belongs to the results of the actions which we employ upon them. The alternative to our system of government and mode of life, is much worse, when you think about it. Relativism is not my aim here, rather, it's more than fair to say that we are extremely blessed people.
Human Potential and Inspiration - Far From Lost, But We Must Make The Effort
I am convinced that life exists and is most beautifully known in our potentiality and in what remains of our potential. I am reminded of the prose President Obama used in Tucson - that we must strive to seek out the "moral limits of our imaginations." Einstein also spoke of the limitless power of the imagination. So what are we waiting for? I'm thankful for the artists and musicians in our communities that continually feed us and inspire us with their imaginations and progressive thoughts on visions of how the world should be. For one, I don't know what I would do without music. John Lennon also spoke of the power of the imagination and was committed to the belief in its transformational powers.
So yes, Americans have a right to be angry and frustrated, and they have a right to opine and to question the way our government conducts business. There is much dysfunction in our state legislatures, evident minutiae in Congress, and taxpayer dollars need to be more heavily scrutinized. But I honestly cannot place such an enormous amount of blame with our government (as much as we've been hearing lately) when I know that much of our problem stems from a lack of willingness and effort on behalf of the electorate and ordinary citizens to make things better. I see a society that is quick to place blame, quick to create a scapegoat and quick to want their cake and to eat it too.
What's true is that many people desire change, but don't actively take the steps toward participating to bring about that change they wish to see. Without placing blame too quickly on any one thing that's attributed to a general lack of awareness that's taken shape in recent years leading up to the financial meltdown in 2007-08 and the last presidential election, a few factors can be mentioned.
For one, it is fair to say that we have become too busy with our own lives, involving time well spent to support our families, as well as the time commitments involved in building businesses. On the flipside, we perhaps mismanage our time when we have become under-involved in participating in our home communities. Certainly when you turn back the clock 50 years, and you listen to stories of elders, and older family members, you get the sense that something has been lost. We are currently breeding a culture that shows signs of social malfunction with overwhelming evidence that we are too involved with various media outlets, you tube, Facebook, and iPods. Less impressive aspects of our consumer culture suggests that we we further our disconnect when we begin to place material gain in front of making people, friends and family more of a priority. Certainly we all cannot lead perfect lives, for we are human, but I think we can heed the call to live more balanced lives as a result of these apparent inequities.
Prepare the Way for Our Youth
When it comes to preparing the way for our youth, we should be cognizant of these inequities if we want to be good teachers and role models. Today along with vast advancements in science and technology, and the global shift in the job market towards more technical and technology driven employment, we are impressing less value on the social sciences, i.e. history, than in the past. Teachers constantly get a bad rap and are underpaid for what they do, when you cross compare their salaries to what individuals make in the private sector. Republican Governors have begun the war against unions and are speaking out about taking away collective bargaining rights. Wake up America. These vital issues are being tied along with an unsustainable pension system, to heated rhetoric about the dire financial situation in our country. The younger generations must understand what caused our crisis in the first place. My question to you is, what are the implications of this rhetoric? A quote sticks in my mind from an article in last week's Economist and reminds me of the importance of creating well rounded individuals in our country. The article was titled "Don't know much about history." The quote reads "'Twenty-first century skills' may help pupils become better workers; learning history makes them better citizens."
The World Has The Power To Teach You Something If You Are Willing To Listen
My first lesson in "real life," post college life if you will, came in 2002, the same year I graduated from Holy Cross. I chose to enter the Jesuit Volunteer Corps in Phoenix, Arizona to work with a Refugee Resettlement Community at a local branch of Catholic Social Services. If you wanted to understand the meaning of grateful, all you needed to do was sit down and talk to a refugee family from Rwanda, or the Congo, Serbia or Afghanistan for an hour, listen and learn their story. Most of my co-workers at the agency were formally refugees that had joined the agency and program years later in order to help their fellow brothers and sisters acclimate to their new environment. There's nothing like a familiar face when you get off a plane from the other side of the world, knowing no one. Many are scared, separated from their families, some having had very little education, some previously nuclear physicists that had to assume a job as a dishwasher, some half deaf from an exploding grenade, some heavily traumatized. This was real life, far and away different from any of the realities you (or most people reading this blog) have had.
One morning after I had grabbed a cup of coffee at the gas station next door, my co-worker, Peter Sebit, a rather tall and very dark man who hailed from Sudan (the same country that Manute Bol came from, who was in case you forgot, the tallest and darkest basketball player to ever play in the NBA) approached me. Something was troubling him. He was questioning what he had determined, in the few short years he had lived in the United States, as an experience of apathy and malaise when it came to Americans. He explained to me his experience of Americans when it came to politics, their lack of awareness of current events, and what he also observed to be a lack of community involvement. His question came with profound sincerity and honesty, that it touched me very deeply. One day he simply said "Matt, why is it that so many Americans, in my conversations with them, don't seem to care or know what is going on around them and with their own government?"
Granted, Peter came from Southern Sudan, where there were many tribes, political involvement amongst tribe leaders and followers, but also in a place with rich traditions, that was very sacred to him. He came from a place where communities and families frequently gathered to share food, tell stories, be in communion with one another, and just enjoy the simple things in life. Life was very simple in Sudan. Things were also very complex. Southern Sudan, at the same time, had become a battlefield where millions of Christians had been persecuted in a country overwhelmingly Muslim, in a country ruled by a Muslim government. In the previous decade, upwards of 10 million people had been killed in the war torn southern Sudan.
There was evidently a sharp contrast of Peter's experience in Sudan, to the life he now lead in the United States. Despite this, his wealth of knowledge about our government, society and our history was somehow shocking to me, while at the same time, enlightening and very refreshing. At the time and even years later, the weight of his question, considering the stark contrast of his life experience to mine, gave birth to a pattern of thought that resonated on what Americans take for granted. In the midst of a life that I had experienced that could be easily qualified as a "life in abundance", my own inner struggle over how much I took for granted took hold. What would I do with this realization. Would it become a passing thought or experience? What followed in the proceeding years, was a growing interest in politics, government, and the forces and people that have worked to shape our world.
For more ideas on democracy, and the state of government, check out: http://www.democracyjournal.org
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