All the labor of man is for his mouth,
And yet the soul is not satisfied.
For what more has the wise man than the fool?
What does the poor man have,
Who knows how to walk before the living?
Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of desire.
This also is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Whatever one is, he has been named already,
For it is known that he is man;
And he cannot contend with Him who is mightier than he.
Since there are many things that increase vanity,
How is man the better?
For who knows what is good for man in life, all the days of his vain life which he passes like a shadow? Who can tell a man what will happen after him under the sun?
But, I may have read the most disgusting reminder of American consumerism today in the online journal Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6892.html
Indeed, the need to consume, and to possess material goods is so strong that an iPod touch or some college tuition would buy a college student's vote. For a million dollars, most of them would even permanently forfeit their right to vote. Although these hypothetical scenarios are somewhat disconcerting, they are a reminder of the broader reality: that most Americans will give their votes in exchange for a portion of the government largess in the form of entitlement spending and pork. The rest of the country doesn't care, and doesn't vote.
I have a thought on this particular problem, one that came to me as I was walking to Starbucks (ironic, eh?) this morning. There is much talk about decadent nations meeting their doom. Individually, we are told in the Proverbs that "pride goeth before the fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction." I would assume the same is true of nations, but why?
Well let's go back to our example of college students exchanging their votes for an iPod Touch (which, by the way, is the most ridiculous product ever sold by Apple--why in the world would I want to buy an iPhone without the phone?). Things are pretty good in America. Left and Right seem to forget it, but the vast majority of Americans don't care about politics primarily because nothing is wrong enough (yet) to make them care. Consequently, they'd rather have an iPod Touch (even if it doesn't have phone capabilities) than a vote. Decadent societies, therefore, it would seem, decline precisely because when people have something to eat and drink, it makes it easier for them to "eat drink and be merry." Culturally, we have a nation of trust fund children, in the socio-economic and political sense. Trust fund children do not have to work, and usually turn out to be pretty miserable human beings. Our trust fund culture doesn't have to be diligent when it comes to the art of government and politics and so they aren't.
John Adams once famously said "I must study politics and war so that my children might have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." Unfortunately the generation of mathematics and philosophy students gave way to a generation of business students, who produced a generation of people who now have little incentive to do much of anything where government & civics are concerned. The few people who are interested in politics are right-wing and left-wing ideological zealots seeking to impose some form of greater order on their fellow man.
More or less, we have taken the easy road and "outsourced" our government to a handful of incompetent yokels (i.e. Congress), an Emperor without Clothes (i.e. President Bush), and a massive, inert bureaucracy that could not possibly be more disconnected from society. With the power of the Internet, and especially the re-birth of the Internet in Web 2.0, we have the unprecedented ability to impact national policy and indeed the future and fate of our country.
We will not use these tools for their highest possible calling, however, until we see a change in culture. That is going to be the toughest sell of all. We need our college students to be willing to trade in their iPods for a bit of their attention to important matters of national policy, and not just concerning the things that make the headlines, but the millions of devilish details imposed on Americans every day. I'm not saying they are all bad--I'm just saying we should think about them, and give them our assent or dissent.
In our legal system there exists the concept of a "fiduciary." A fiduciary is a person to whom property or power is entrusted for the benefit of another." Every generation, in a sense, is the fiduciary for the next generation. We are all entrusted both property and power that we will one day hand over to a new generation. We have an ethical duty to preserve and improve both before our reign comes to an end. In business, the Director of a Corporation has a "fiduciary duty" to protect the interests of the Corporation, and the business laws that govern all of our states make it a crime for a Director to be negligent in his duties--"sins of omission" are punished, just as "sins of commission" are.
I hope Generation Y will wake up from its decadence and take the responsibility we have seriously. It isn't too late to do that in 2008.
2 comments:
Great post, Skinner. A good reminder and a challenge to all of us. I think I know where you're coming from when you say that nothing is too wrong in/with America (yet), but I would liken our current sociopolitical state to that of the late-Carter Presidency. We are at a turning point. Granted, this is always the case (each choice we make is a decision to turn your back on another), but I think our situation is precipitously dire.
The next election is so crucial (regardless of what the folks at NYU may say) to our future. The dominoes are teetering.
The title of that article, "Most at NYU say their vote has a price," is misleading. It implies that some wouldn't sell their vote. My understanding is that the survey asked not if the students would sell their vote at any price, but instead asked if the students would sell their vote for an Ipod. BIG difference. This survey has only shown us that more than 50% of NYU students’ “price” for their vote is a touch screen mp3 player. I don't find the results one bit surprising. Everything has a price, even U.S. rights. For instance, you would sacrifice your own [marriage] rights for a presidential candidate that saved you a million in taxes, wouldn’t you?
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