The future: Party on my lawn, kids...
When I was in primary school and junior high, I would occasionally do the math and reflect on how very, very OLD I would be when the year 2000 rolled around.
And I would wonder what it would be like then. Would we have a "Jetsons" world, with flying cars? Would there be colonies on other real estate in the solar system? Would we have picture phones where we'd watch the person we were talking with in a teevee-type monitor and see their faces while we talked? We would certainly have solved the problem of poverty, right? And probably cured cancer, too.
As I got a little older I wondered if my doddering sunset years would be spent in a "Star Trek" world where doors get out of your way, and the doctor waves a little device over you and tells you what's wrong, and then you lay yourself down under a big weird-looking machine with pulsing lights and get up cured. And would there be a "Prime Directive" we all believed in, that would institutionalize values like respecting differences and balancing values among individuals and groups with the well-being of the whole society?
We have some doors that get out of the way. We have video calling that no one bothers to use because no one talks on phones anymore- they just send texts.
And I wish, oh how I wish, that we could put certain things from the past in a time machine and bring them here, now.
Don't get me wrong. I know that a lot of the things I'm nostalgic for were only possible because our society accepted appalling levels of racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. I don't want to bring back little suburban crackerbox castles with white picket fences, or assumptions about which side of the tracks people should stay on, or ignorant ideas about how 'playing by the rules' will work for anyone.
And I know that an awful lot of "do the right thing" acculturation was pushed by the religious authorities representing a patriarchal judeo-christian worldview, and the whole 'do as you would be done by' notion really only applied to People Like Us. (See: "Church of Latter Day Saints", philosophies of commerce, among a myriad of examples.) And the quaint idea that it's better to be a good person than a rich person was misused to keep the proles in their places (didn't make it a bad idea, though).
All the same, I'm nostalgic for my memories of a society that tried to teach children that sportsmanship was more important than winning. I have fond and probably illusory reminiscences of learning that all humans are part of the same family and we are all one another's keepers. And that we all do better when everyone does well. I definitely remember being taught that sacrificing stuff I "want" so that others can have what they NEED isn't particularly meritorious, it's just an expected part of being a decent person.
And I remember when the people who wanted my parents' vote didn't promise that people like me would be rewarded and people who were different were bad and responsible for everything we didn't like and should be denied the benefits we enjoy. Don't get me wrong, the people who wanted my parents' (and, for a short while, my) vote pandered plenty, but not in that particular way.
I remember thinking that all the boringness and timidity of politicians trying to show responsibility, respect the legal aspects of government, achieve a sense of gravitas, work within a flawed system and exercise what seemed like endless caution even when I urgently wanted the government to change BIG THINGS RIGHT NOW was a terrible, terrible thing. Boy, am I nostalgic for what I disliked back then.
But I'm coming to terms with the reality that even were my memories and perception of those good things of the past one hundred percent accurate, we cannot... and SHOULD NOT... restore some mythical 'better time' of the past.
We are living through a terrible geopolitical cataclysm that has upended the moral, economic, and cultural assumptions of the past. It hurts. It feels awful. It feels like the end of everything.
It isn't, though. Humanity has survived such cataclysms multiple times. Humanity has even survived, in pre-historic eras, apocalyptic climate changes. How, we can only theorize, because the historical record lies only in silent witnesses like archaeological relics and DNA revealing migration patterns.
We can't go back.
But we can go on.
The past has value in respect to what we have learned. Those who have studied history understand that "learning" is not an unmediated process. We interpret, we tell stories, we attach associations, we share our experiences and analysis with one another.
One person might learn from an experience "Someone Not Like Me was present when something bad happened to me. People Not Like Me are not to be trusted."
Another person might learn from the same experience "Someone Not Like Me was present when something bad happened to me. Bad things happen to all of us. We should strive to keep bad things from happening to each other."
The differences in who learns what are affected by mediators, trusted voices who help us analyze and process our experiences. Parents, teachers, leaders, friends, media.
I don't know what kind of world my daughter and my grandson will live in when I'm gone. It will be different. I have faith that it remains possible to make those differences good ones. To build on what we are learning now, and avoid the mistakes that brought us such collective pain.
And I believe that the way forward is more important than the way back. That when we have finished debriding the wounds wrought by the structural flaws in our shared community, we will have a chance to heal and grow in new and better directions.
But to do so, we must respect the qualitative difference between learning from the past and trying to restore the past. Demanding responsibility and holding those who fail us accountable, that is learning from the past. Trying to recreate models of accountability and responsibility that may have functioned in the past isn't learning. Learning must reveal new directions as conditions and values change.
That's your task, kids. I'll help if I can, but my solutions are necessarily Old Thinking. There's probably some good stuff there, but it'll only be useful if it can inform and improve New Thinking. You're welcome to it, but I don't demand you use it. Just... do your best. Build for tomorrow. Build for a tomorrow where YOU have the things YOU value for YOUR children and grandchildren.
It won't look familiar to me. I probably won't like it. I'll still talk about the Good Old Days.
But it's my lawn, and I want y'all to party there, anyway. Because it'll be your lawn soon enough.
hopefully,
Bright
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The path of hope and goodness is forging forward in parallel, such as the Business Roundtable’s recent consensus that shareholder value is no longer the main goal for corporations, but that broader social benefit should drive corporate policy and actions. And the growing mindfulness movement creeping into the business world and schools. And the awesome crowdsource power of metoo, BLM, and kids against guns and for climate action. We are not in the main seats of power but it’s still possible that our light will prevail. Forward, as you say.
