Meditations on America

I believe there to be one unified force, or concept, of immeasurable power, that has served throughout the centuries as the fountainhead for all things good, representing the driving force behind all of mankind’s advancements. Science serves it’s role, as the bureaucratic instrument of logic, used to check and harness this wild Godly force…but make no mistake, it is science which is dependent on it, not the other way around. I am referring, indirectly, to art, though art itself is merely a product of this energy’s true nature. Creative inspiration, innovation, and adaptation, are other symptoms of this intangible ailment, but there is not one word I can think to borrow which would surmise it. Except perhaps Zen. Or God.

I grow more and more concerned with America as the years sneak by, and my parents generation hands the country over to the uninspired Me generation. A selfless lack of pride in one’s own inventions seems to spread among my fellow men like a plague, as they forsake dignity and independence for comfort, safety, and acceptance. Imagine a plane going down with the bulk of the passengers clustering together in the center of it, holding hands, reading the emergency procedures, reassuring one another that the captain has everything under control– and willingly believing this out of fear and helplessness. Though the captain is obviously dead and hanging out of the cockpit door, they go on as though the problem is utterly out of their hands. Though a few individuals fight and clamor to get past the crowd of sheepish passengers to get to the cockpit and do something (anything), the crowd does nothing but attempt to hold and discourage them, defending their false idea that the pilot is still in control of the plane.

A better and more pertinent example, though petty, would be a simple look at the social networking trend. It’s no secret that people have been abandoning myspace in droves, for facebook…leaving behind the vehicle for artistic sharing and discovery for snobby friend hording and ass rubbing. But I only joined because all of my friends use it. If you enjoy the crowd in the middle of the plane, by all means. I only joined because myspace was too popular, and I’m a non-conformist. Welcome to hypocrisy. I only joined because I’m a college student looking for study partners in my area. The only faction that gets a free pass from me…as it’s what the original creator of the site intended and envisioned; all else is greed and ironically blind conformity.

Ok, I’m busted for having a small chip on my shoulder for facebook. But like the Windows vs Macintosh computers debate, I hate things that come after, offer less, and seem to gain massive popularity despite their lack of quality or creative innovation– it’s thoroughly convinced me that popularity is essentially the enemy of quality.

With the destruction of the middle class came the end of the original american dream, in it’s purest and most noble form; freedom, and independence. Since then it’s been twisted into defeat all, and get rich, which someone along the way must have thought was synonymous with the original. Americans are no longer conditioned to take pride in simple things, or jobs that offer less than 100k a year, and I think this discontent has thrown us into an all or nothing mentality. We build a bridge to the sky with credit, and either make it there, or fall face first into poverty, with pieces of the bridge trailing right behind to bury us when we get there. As a divided nation, no one seems to unconditionally love this country anymore either. Instead we adapt a love-hate relationship with it, loving our half, and hating the other. I hazard to say that reconciliation is both necessary, and impossible.

This aircraft that was built by our grandfathers and maintained by our parents is now being put in the hands of ignorant attention-spanless children, who haven’t the slightest idea what a screw is, but know how to work the radio and radar no problem. The knowledge of the crumbling scaffold under which our nation was built is dying off with our elders, and the shallow distractions of modern times are causing us to forget, as a race, the great questions of value and happiness..