RUTHFULLY YOURS

We are also an American society. That is, we share characteristics with other countries in the Americas like Mexico and Brazil that set the countries of our hemisphere apart from countries in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Like many other American countries, the United States has more ethnic, cultural, social, and religious diversity than most European countries. The turbulent history of the hemisphere has left its mark on many American societies, where levels of crime, inequality, and violence are extraordinarily high by world standards. At the same time, our cultural roots are more Anglo and Protestant than most of our fellow American states, giving us much in common with countries like Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and of course Canada. As is the case throughout the Western Hemisphere, our intellectual classes and social elites have historically looked to Europe for aesthetic and intellectual values, while much of our population has had little knowledge of or interest in European history and culture. Serial waves of immigration, the latest and largest of which is taking place now, have reshaped American politics and culture, while leaving many of the essential elements of the national character largely unchanged.

Most of the time, however, our national conversation fails to do justice to the rich complexity of our national life. There are some outstanding exceptions both on the left and the right of American political discourse, but the quality of too much of our national conversation, mediated as it often is by cable news and social media, is too superficial, too one-sided, and too polarized to address the real issues in American life. That would be dangerous enough in ordinary times, but we live in demanding times. The disruptive economic and social consequences of the information revolution combine with the decadence and decay of the midcentury American model of regulated industrial democracy to plunge American society into a maelstrom of interconnected economic, social, racial, political, cultural, and ideological crises.

Between the domestic upheavals in American society, the international turmoil at a time of renewed great power competition, and global threats ranging from nuclear war to climate change, many Americans feel angry, frustrated, and afraid. To make matters worse, America’s leadership class has lost its way, and too many of the politicians, intellectuals, artists, educators, and religious leaders who ought to be pointing the way forward are locked into stale ideologies and failed institutional models, lacking the vision required to move up to the next stage of American life.

Our country is rocked by a set of related but distinct waves of destabilizing change. The first centers around the decadence and decay of what I’ve called “blue model society,” the set of institutions, ideas, and practices built on the foundations of the American economy of the mid 20th century. Once widely admired and emulated as the highest form of social organization, and still the object of widespread political nostalgia, blue model society suffers today both from the ways the emerging information economy disrupts the economic assumptions on which it depends and, crucially, from the increasing consequences of the flaws and shortcomings analyzed over the years by observers like Daniel Bell, Jane Jacobs, and Christopher Lasch. The toxic long-term social and environmental consequences of a mass-production and mass-consumption society based on the technologies of the Industrial Revolution are unfolding around us today in ways that pollute both the natural and social environment.

The hyperindividualism and hedonism that characterize declining blue model society intersect with the massive consequences of the sexual revolution in ways that challenge some of the most deeply rooted institutions and values in American (and indeed in human) life. The 20th century brought three extraordinary changes. The development of antibiotics brought most STDs under control, turning syphilis from a major scourge into a nuisance. Oral contraception and the somewhat later development of a “morning-after pill” reduced the likelihood of unwanted pregnancy, and the easy availability of abortion made pregnancy optional. And a combination of increased educational opportunity for women with the decline in the importance of physical strength for most jobs led to a revolution in gender roles and the mass entry of American women into all levels of the labor force. These changes would have been profoundly disruptive under any circumstances and at any time. That they came as blue model hedonic individualism was creating a new kind of impulse-friendly social climate (“If it feels good, do it” was a slogan popular among boomers in their youth) magnified their impact on social life. The social and political impact of these unprecedented changes will continue to unfold for some time.

Even as these changes roiled American society, the information revolution was getting underway. Like the Industrial Revolution before it (and the Neolithic revolution thousands of years before), the information revolution involves massive changes in every dimension of human life. It will drive every human institution from the family to the state into a series of far-reaching and, from where we now stand, bewildering and unsettling transformations. We’ve witnessed declines in manufacturing and clerical jobs as rapid as the declines in agricultural jobs during the Industrial Revolution, even as giant corporations rise and fall with breathtaking speed. Just as the Industrial Revolution produced new and powerful business corporations, and a new class of “Titans of Industry” with previously unimaginable wealth and power, so the information revolution is generating new kinds of corporate and individual power—even as thorny problems of governing the new economy test the wisdom and competence of government. The recent acceleration in the development and deployment of artificial intelligence reminds us, if we needed the reminder, that the information revolution is still in its early stages, and the coming decades are likely to see more change, and faster change, than anything we’ve experienced to date.

America also faces what must be called a spiritual crisis. Here again we can speak of a confluence of forces contributing to a crisis that, unless coolly and carefully analyzed, can seem overwhelming. Part of the crisis stems from the nature of the times that we live in. Human life has never been this rich, and the potential to solve problems ranging from hunger to cancer has never been greater, but human civilization has also never been under this kind of severe, ongoing threat. Polls reveal that a large majority of younger Americans fear that climate change will materially harm them during their lives. The return of great power competition and Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war revived Cold War-era fears of nuclear annihilation. The COVID pandemic served as a vivid reminder of the dangers of global outbreaks of disease. These fears reinforce concerns based in the social and economic stresses flowing from the information revolution as whole job categories and industries disappear in the face of technological change to create a public mood of anxiety and unease that naturally and inevitably spills over into politics.

Unfortunately, the religious institutions and belief systems that traditionally helped people manage their fears have been hollowed out in many American communities and faith traditions. In the absence of formal religious affiliation, or the weakness of a particular set of religious institutions, the human needs that religion meets do not disappear. Politics sometimes becomes a new religion for people losing touch with the old kind. For those concerned, for example, that irreversible climate change is only decades away from destroying human civilization, political events like elections become plot points in an unfolding apocalypse. If the other side wins the next election, humanity may die! The collapse of politics into wars of religion and ideology exacerbates polarization and creates fanatics on all sides.

We must also speak of a crisis of the American public square, as the inherited cultural and religious traditions that once enriched American homes and communities yield to the power of a corporatized synthetic national culture that is often less tolerant, and less rich, than the older traditions it seeks to displace. As the old ethnic and regional subcultures fade away, we are left with an ersatz national “tradition” informed by superficial pop culture, pop psychology, and the logic of consumerism.

Finally, there is the crisis of the chattering classes. Academics and journalists, two groups of people whose business it is to make sense of events and help the rest of the country understand what is going on, have been particularly hard hit by the economic and social changes of recent decades. The overproduction of Ph.D.s mixed with the declining growth in student enrollments means that fewer and fewer young academics can hope to attain the status and security of reasonably paid, tenured jobs in their fields. And even for those who get tenure, college professors (it pains me to acknowledge) are often not as well-respected or as relatively well-off as they used to be.

Journalism, too, is not what it was. Print journalism is a shadow of its former self, and by and large internet publications do not pay the kinds of salaries and freelance fees that magazines like GQ, Newsweek, and Life used to offer. Compared to professions like law, banking, and medicine, many journalists—including, tragically, pundits—are less well paid and less professionally secure than they used to be. To make matters worse, given both the proliferation of internet publications and the decline in public confidence in the media, journalism is a less prestigious occupation than it once was. Anchors and prominent columnists can no longer count on the kind of authority their exclusive and prestigious platforms formerly gave them.

It is small wonder that under the circumstances, many academics and journalists take a dim view of the American reality, see more perils than opportunity in the new economy, and communicate their gloom and disenchantment to their readers and students. It is never good policy to starve the poets; the gloomy tone of so much of today’s academic and journalistic commentary reflects the diminished circumstances in which so many of the chattering classes now live.

Given all this upheaval we should not be surprised that American politics and public discourse reflect the emotions of fear, suspicion, and rage that are natural human responses to the stress so many of us are living with. The problems facing American society are real, they are serious, and they appear to be getting steadily more severe. I’ll do my best in these essays to analyze and explore them.

But if our problems are troubling, our opportunities are astounding. Never in human history has a society had the resources we have today in the United States. Never have new scientific discoveries offered so many ways to improve human lives. Never have there been so many ways for so many people to enjoy levels of affluence and ease that their parents and grandparents never knew. Never has it been possible for human beings to live as well as we can today while reducing the impact of human civilization on the natural order and preserving the environment on which we all depend.

The most important event of our time is not the decadence and decay of the old social order. It is the opening of an extraordinary and unprecedented opportunity to build a new and better way of life.

America was once the country of the future. Too many of us lately have lost our sense of the possible. But America’s time does not have to be over. We can renew our youth like the eagle. We can run and not be weary. The most extraordinary chapters in the American story have yet to be written.

That at least is the conviction that has grown on me through many years of observation and study. It’s my fondest hope and my fervent prayer that the readers who choose to follow me in this series of essays will come to share that conviction and rise up from their tablets to build an America better, wiser, richer, greener, happier, and more just than any society anybody in this long-suffering world has ever seen.