American culture is undergoing deep structural and foundational changes right before our eyes. It’s hard to believe. But little good can come of it unless we do.
It’s dawning on some of us that the abrupt appearance of a lethal, climate-stimulated pandemic, along with the public health restraints and lockdowns that make surviving it a possibility, is likely a phenomenon of a greater turmoil advancing toward us.
The more than 63,000 COVID-19 deaths in America so far account for a quarter of all the deaths worldwide. Many parts of our country are showing wisdom and fortitude in meeting the COVID challenge, but some are in a skull-and-crossbones state of denial. This essential schism in our culture comes with an increased sense of grim foreboding.
The changes we are facing will impact our habits and routines in very personal ways. But they are not only about us as individuals, but about each of us as sustainers and creators of culture.
Can we adapt to a world turned upside down and inside out? Can we morph it to our advantage, or will it sink us?
I have to believe we can adapt, that it is within our powers. But it could be a brutal slog with many troubling upheavals along the way. And it will require a speeded-up, goals-driven process of cultural evolution.
The foundations that support the American way of life are either crumbling of their own dead weight or are under insidious attack. They are energy, climate, clean water, food, livelihood, democratic government, a free press and the rule of law.
A radical change in one of these could undermine all the rest. If all are destabilized at once, there’s no telling what might happen.
When a culture changes its source of energy, a vast disruption in old routines can’t help but discombobulate everything. Our traditional sources of energy, fossil fuels, and the bastions of power and influence that accompany them, are in a death spiral now, partly because of oversupply but also because their byproducts are killing us by radically destabilizing the global climate. They will have to be replaced by non-polluting sources of energy, and the power and investment structures that support them. And if they aren’t, do we stand a chance?
The world has built its civilizations on reliable climate patterns and expectations. They are now undergoing radical change. And everything — literally everything — will have to be retooled and reconceived if we’re to adapt — from cities and agricultural systems to private homes and ways of making a living.
The unquestioned reliability of plentiful clean water and plentiful food is beginning to evaporate. There can’t be a reliable food supply without reliable water. Those two foundations of our culture are drying up. When less than two months of a pandemic can start to threaten our food supply, we’re in for interesting times. And being in the midst of a 20-year megadrought in the Southwest, including Southern California, doesn’t help at all. The Imperial Valley and Central Valley of California supply the majority of winter food for the nation. This isn’t only a matter of big cities drying up, but of our tables going empty.
Our economy is rigid. It’s taking a terrible beating from the pandemic. Big companies and little businesses are falling apart after only sixty days or so of a disruption in consumer routines. The false demands created by advertising cannot be supplied unless everything follows established patterns exactly. A luxury, entertainment, service and distraction economy — an economy dominated by whims and non-essentials like ours — apparently folds up at the slightest sign of change. What will a sustainable, resilient new economy look like? What should we aim for? Is decentralization of energy and food supply a part of the picture?
Of all the troubling signs for our culture, though, it’s shrill politics, ditzy governance, the decay of democracy and political propaganda that trouble me the most. We can’t take too many more changes and upheavals like the COVID cyclone with the kind of national leadership we have. The decentralization of governance through the states has produced some startlingly positive results, but some political and public health catastrophes seem just down the road. What happens when we get a bad flu season along with a new coronavirus, a series of floods and hurricanes, or crop failures that affect the national food chain? You can’t have a Clown-in-Chief running the show. Will resilience and a requirement for rapid adaptation to sudden and violent change truly stimulate decentralized governance in America, and can a nation as complex and regionally inconsistent as ours stand 50 state solutions to a national problem? Will we have to create, through careful voting, a national government that actually works? Can it be done with the party structure we currently have?
Without a free flow of reliable information and conscientious editorial oversight, the culture of our politics can’t work as well as it must. A free press can’t be replaced by yammering social media and bald propaganda. Many of us have already, though, started to re-educate ourselves as consumers of information, to raise our standards and refine our bullshit meters. Many more of us have to do this, and fast.
Everything depends, in the long run and for the short haul, on Americans’ deepest and most positive social habit — our respect for the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights and the promise of equal justice under law for everyone. Once that expectation is dulled, we are open to being run by juntas, death squads and executioners. If there is one single thing we must cling to and insist on, with every power we can summon, is respect for the rule of law. Without that we have no chance to adapt humanely to the foundational changes that confront us.
I still think the odds are even that we can prevail, stumblingly perhaps, but adequately, during a major rearrangement of American culture. It has to happen, as the coronavirus is showing us. The old habits, routines, formulae and customs just won’t see us through the dark and perilous passage ahead.
But American philosopher William James, quoting Goethe, was right, I think: “Boldness makes magic.”
Somehow, someway, we have to energize ourselves, stop the partisan idiocy, banish our cynicism, put a check on pessimism and think and invent our way out of this fix together to create a new sustainable world for ourselves, while honoring the still-reliable forms of the past — equal justice under law, the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights and a true federalism where localities thrive, innovate and unite to create a viable national government.
Boldness does make magic. And it’s in our national character to act boldly when we must.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Yes, boldness does make magic. Especially when it is practiced by those who value humanity. This column, brilliant and poignant at the same time, should be required reading for every person. To varying degrees and in line with the many different cultures in our world, it is relevant everywhere. This pandemic has pushed us to a pivotal moment, when the analyses we make and decisions we take will determine whether our civilization survives or sinks. V.B., you do so much to nurture the former. Thank you.
I’m usually not a very cynical person but I don’t think we as a country currently have it in us to change all that much. This is especially true when it comes to old rich white men who sell fear like a great salesman can sell an icebox to an eskimo.
I would also argue that we are too dumb due to an underfunded and mis-aligned educational system to make significant change. Until we educate EVERYONE and stop using fear as a weapon, we are not going to change and will continue to be insane… Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome…
Brilliant article.
Alas but I tend to agree with Jody on this. Perhaps it’s the affect of watching what is happening right now in our politics that has brought me to this lack of faith in the American government and Spirit. I sorely hope that Jody and I are wrong. For the sake of my kids.