People need a way to deal with the global changes suddenly surrounding us. As often happens, second-hand opinions are gaining the most power. The vocabulary on the left speaks of positive change, a new order, rising prosperity in what used to be the third world, and creative possibilities. The right employs a darker, more pessimistic vocabulary of turmoil in the credit markets, military threat from China, the need to seize on traditional values and exclude immigrants. The basic difference comes down to embracing the emerging global community or holding tight to isolated nationalism backed up with military threats.
Yet both attitudes are second-hand, and as people take sides, passing around the same few slogans and attitudes, something important is being missed. To deal successfully with turbulent change, you have to envision a new life for yourself. Despite the instinct to contract and defend, the real need is to expand and create. Unless each of us can see a new life for ourselves personally, there can’t be a new world — or if one arises, we will be left behind. The basics of existence are up for renewal at this moment, and people are asking themselves some very basic questions:
–Can I find a new way to be happy? Americans have long been addicted to over-consumption and wastefulness — with only 6% of the world’s population, we use 30% of its resources — and yet we consider waste to be a negligible byproduct of pursuing happiness. Is there a better way that doesn’t lead to ecological contamination? Can we prosper without earning the resentment of the whole world?
–Can I find a new way to be healthy? This society leads the world in developing new drugs and surgery because we don’t want to sacrifice the fantasy that a magic pill equals health. Is there a way to nurture well-being that avoids the medical system almost entirely?
–Can I live as long as possible with real quality of life? The outworn concept of old age as a time of decrepitude and inactivity gave way to “the new old age” twenty years ago, and now aging is gradually being absorbed into the human life cycle as a positive contribution, not a depressing decline. What will my place be in this new vision?
–Can I find a new way to grow spiritually? The rear-guard action in defense of organized religion mounted by fundamentalists, although loudly voiced by the right wing, is at odds with reality — organized religion has been fading for decades in the developed world. Yet instead of seeing this as a loss, new avenues of faith have opened. How will you fulfill your spiritual yearning ten or twenty years from now?
In all these cases, the individual is far ahead of society as a whole. Every society is essentially a conservative institution. It forms a framework for personal freedom, but it cannot be expected to dictate how that freedom is best used. The new world that is being born contains as much strife and uncertainty as the old, its great advantage being newness, ferment, and clearing the stage of outmoded behavior and beliefs. In this clearing process lies enormous possibilities, but these will be defeated if you cling instead to the fixed attitudes of any faction, right or left. You are the great possibility, something worth remembering every day.
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