We are Better than This

Flash: UN climate scientists warn of dire consequences as average temperatures rise.

Flash: unemployment declines but the number of working poor increases as does income  inequality.

Flash: 10’s of millions to be unemployed as they are replaced by smart machines in the next few decades.

Flash: increasing numbers of refugees are on the move and permenantly displaced by war, famine, gang violence, and job loss. 

Any more? Just read your local newsfeed.

But you know what? We Americans are capable of solving these problems, especially those which harm those most at risk and most afflicted. As a friend of mine noted, there are no natural disasters, only natural events paired with human folly, incapacity, or inaction. And we are better than folly, incapacity, and inaction.

The the effects of climate change are within our capacity to address, as is limiting the human contribution to it, so only folly or inaction will turn them into disasters. Humans have dealt for centuries with rising water, strong fluctuations in rain and drought (it goes back to Jospeh and the Pharaoh), and rising and falling temperatures. Good heavens, we colonized every inch of the planet before we had modern engineering. Are we now so helpless? 

Income inequality is also within our capacity to change. We don’t need to have a growing group of the working poor, or for that matter vast unemployment as machines take human jobs. We have the intelligence to construct social and economic institutions that are smarter than market forces in distributing our vast wealth in accordance with the human value of work and humane social values. 

The causes of increasing numbers of refugees and waves of human migration are well known. Equally well known is the fact that refugees always move from places with no resources to those with resources, from places full of violence to places that are secure.  We are capable of finding ways to increase security on a global scale and insure that basic human needs can be met everywhere.

Now just because we are capable doesn’t mean that these are easy problems. Solving them will require bringing to bear all our human resources. And that is our problem.

While other nations address these issues with the best that they’ve got, which is usually far less than what we in the United States have got, we’re busy shutting each other out of the discussion, dismissing the capacity of our neighbors to offer anything of value, and retreating into our self-congratulating ideological cul-de-sacs. 

So let me state a truth, a truth that we’ll either accept or slowly destroy ourselves: engineers and entrepreneurs, and Neo-liberal economists, and conservative political scientists, and left-wing political activists, and conservative Christians, and progressive theologians, and feminists, and traditionalists, and artists, and artisans, and people of all cultures have something positive to offer to our search for solutions to the most pressing problems of our times. And to the extent that we dismiss any of them because we have an ideological ax to grind or believe that because we disagree on some pressing issue we can’t work together on the things we agree on then we are indeed, contra the Indigo Girls, gluttons for our doom. 

In my church I see daily people who are on the opposite side of our political fences working to help prisoners, the poor, widows, orphans, and the homeless. 

In my university I see consortia of those in business, and engineering, and political science, and even theology working together to create education programs that will create both leaders and solutions. 

In my neighborhood, as politically divided as any there is, people still greet each other on the street, keep their yards clean, return lost items, look for lost pets and children and generally have one another’s backs. 

At least here in Texas businesses gather in chamber of commerces not to cut each other’s throats but to create a climate that is good for business. And oh yes, that means that they often embrace progressive stances on issues like LGBTQ rights and public education. Because both are good for business. 

The place we don’t see this kind of cooperation is in political settings like state and federal legislatures. Because these institutions have ceased being dedicated to the common good, and have become dedicated to the distribution and protection of power. Instead of fostering cooperation they seek to control lest they be controlled. 

We are better than this. We are better than the governments we have put in place. But only if we ourselves recognize that the purpose of government isn’t to distribute power, but to do what we do so naturally in other setting: work for the common good.

In the last election a majority of Americans didn’t vote. A big majority of Texans didn’t vote. And we are better than this as well. Go to the polls and elect real representatives who serve not an ideology or self-interest, or the desire for power but a desire to serve the common good. Then we’ll find that our nation has become better than what it is now, and the vast challenges we face are within our grasp to solve.