- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Can this change? Of course it can; it merely takes a considerable amount of time and consistent effort.
Ah, Iokannan in the Well, that's true, but here's the rub.
We Americans are not a particularly patient people. We love to delegate as many of our responsibilities as we can afford to others; the gardener, the dog walker, the child-minder, the housekeeper/cleaning lady - note; that doesn't mean I deny comparative advantage or am opposed to elements of the service industry. We are always on the lookout for the next silver bullet afforded us from science and technology, which we're quite sure will relieve us of the mundane (eg, weight loss) and deliver us from the next evil (eg, climate change). That predisposition tends to make us suckers for the governmental hucksters we've 'enjoyed' as political leaders who sold us Morning in America, go shopping, supply-side economics, and the efficacy of a well placed bomb or two as opposed to troops on the ground (eg; lean, mean, and outsourced military). The handmaidens of the hucksters only help sell the product to a populace predisposed to purchase it.
As a group we exhibit an array of positive attributes, to be sure. Still, if a considerable amount of time and consistent effort is the essential ingredient for a collective solution, based on what I've observed, I'm not sure any of the generations in existence are any better endowed than the one which immediately preceded it. Any solution we imagine will have to play to our collective strength rather than our weakness if it is to be successful.
As a rule of thumb, in many years of working with people, the most useful tool I have is the recognition, for any individual, regardless of circumstance, their life clock ticks now.
