The Origins of Change

It occurred to me to say this: I am not writing this blog because I know anything about what the New World will look like. Just asking questions. Maybe building a framework that will help me mange information and events as time goes on.

One option, of course, is no change. New cases and deaths are reduced to very manageable levels; the virus falls from the front page, little by little, and we look around and realize that the whole world is just like it was before. Institutions rebuilt or unchanged; health systems unimproved; financial markets rebounded; climate change chugging along. No real change in the way the world works.

I forgot who said “Don't let a good disaster go to waste,” meaning that when a crisis upends everything, you've got a chance to put it back together differently. It would be a shame if, say, December of 2020 was indistinguishable from December of 2019.

It seems there are two ways the New World can come about – one is the result of changes which are unavoidable (greater national debt; some disruption in public school and higher education; some small businesses dying), and the other way is to plan and execute change in a purposeful way.

I can think of a whole lot of the latter. For instance, we can expand and incorporate many of the changes already in place: guaranteed income; online learning; extension of sick leave to employees who have never had it; less unnecessary travel; reduction in consumerism; widely expanding the opportunity to work from home. Make these temporary measures permanent, to the extent it is in the best interests of the most people.

Most, if not all, of these changes will be phased out when the virus fades away if no one makes the effort to make them a permanent part of our culture and our economy. It will be interesting to see who rises to the challenge.

America Will Be Different

But we come on a ship they called Mayflower

We come on a ship that sailed the moon

We come in the ages' most uncertain hours and sing an American tune...

But it's alright, it's alright, for we live so well, so long

Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on

I wonder what's gone wrong, I can't help it I wonder what's gone wrong.*

                                                           - Paul Simon "American Tune"

My wife has ancestors who came to America on the Mayflower, which means that our sons and granddaughter do too.  My mother was, and our daughter-in-law is, a Daughter of the American Revolution.  And on July 20, 1969, the day after my 19th birthday, along with a messhall full of Boy Scouts at the camp where I worked, we listened while Neil Armstrong set foot on another new world.  We stayed up all night after that, drinking coffee and talking about what it meant.  We decided they should turn and face Earth, and tell us that they weren't coming home until we ended the war in Vietnam.

I also have an undergraduate degree that allows me to teach American history, although I never did that.  I'm and Eagle Scout.  For twenty years, I've listened to the NPR commentators recite the Declaration of Independence every July 4th.  I've marched in countless protest marches, and I've served as a County legislator.  Which is to say, I am an American, immersed in America and all it means.  I get America.

In the new world, America will be different.  Not simply because of the pandemic; changes were coming before it started.  Are we an empire in decline, like so many others before us?  So much of the news seems to be about the US being left behind.  

"America's story is in trouble," the New York Times tells us.  “To a historian it’s nothing new, that’s what happens. It’s a very familiar story in world history that after a certain amount of time a power declines... You accumulate problems, and because you’re such a strong player, you can carry these dysfunctionalities for a long time... Until something happens and you can’t anymore.”

I think there is much of value in America, the great experiment.  I don't mean the easy patriotism of flags and fireworks, but the hard work of democracy - a republic, if we can keep it.  

So – a new America in the new world. What will it begin to look like?  

The New New World

The new world.

Not really new, back when Europeans invaded the Western Hemisphere, but it certainly was never the same again.  Flourishing civilizations of stunning diversity disappeared - in historical terms - overnight.  So - it was new to the Europeans, but also old: cultured, fertile, prosperous and beautiful.  And violent and terrifying as well.

Right now, I feel like the third mate on the Santa Maria, halfway across the Atlantic.  Heading for that new world or - a non-trivial chance, depending on how superstitious I was - for a sudden, lurching leap off the edge of the world.

As it turned out, things ended up working in the "new" world pretty much the same as they had worked in the old world.  Rich white men controlled all the choices, and the choices were usually bad news for anyone not rich, white and male.

Today, when the world is very much the same in many ways, we have taken almost everything apart and have no idea how, or whether, it will be put back together. 

So - a new world?  No one knows.  But we must assume that there are a lot of rich white males planning for the post-virus world right now.  What will we see when we see the rising sun reflected on the coast of San Salvador?  How will we know how to see it, or even to know that the dawn is breaking and there is something to see?

I like to read, listen, think and write.  So here we go.