Dec 17 2008
New World Order
The planets are shifting, the stock markets plummeting, the ice caps melting, world leaders and organizations are playing musical chairs - is it time for the next phase of humanity? Are we moving on from the modern, capitalist, commercial world order? And if so, to what? Right now, only those who kept up with the arts of astrology and maybe the Quiche day-keepers will have any insight into the far future, but the pivotal question for now is, what will America do?
Can the old red, white, and blue re-invent itself? Or will it fade into the sea of, well, everybody else. When you’re in you’re in, but when you’re out, you’re out. That’s how we do things here isn’t it, with fifteen minutes.
With our present financial situation, America’s only hold on superpower status is its military, and even that only counts for so much. We aren’t at the forefront of innovation, the gap between the rich and poor is looking more and more like the third-world, we haven’t been investing in our future (ahem, that’s a cry for help Arne Duncan).
But what exactly would be the legacy of American culture? Is there one? Could it be apple pie and baseball? Democrafakism? Please don’t say McDondald’s. And I beg you even more don’t stay Starbuck’s or Wal-Mart.
We don’t have one cohesive spiritual or cultural movement to pass on. We have Evangelists and Atheist pseudo-intellectuals, Burning Man and the Log Cabin Club. And from the view-point of the all-embracing, I’m glad for all of it, variety, spice, multi-everything. But I’m still left wondering about the legacy, and America’s ability to transform. I don’t know what it is we have to hold onto. I know, I know, freedom, and all the other abstract ideals, but where are our awe-striking pyramids, or entire family of languages, or new world religion?
And here we are now, at the close of 2008, so much wiser and more refined than the peoples and cultures that came before us, right? With our own president, the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, attacked by a pair of size 10 shoes. Even President Bush laughed when confronted about the flying shoes. Why? Because it wasn’t a dramatic, inspiring, or even maddening event. It was a joke.
2008-12-17
