In our anxiety-obsessed nation, the latest big panic is around AI. If you believe the fringe, AI will soon match or exceed the intelligence of humans, will be exploited by the black hats to overwhelm us with disinformation, and be used by students to answer questions and write term papers. And that’s just for openers.
But there’s no winding back evolution’s clock. We’ve opened industrialization’s Pandora’s box and it’s taking us on an exhilarating, scary, and totally unpredictable ride. Just in my lifetime, I’ve watched television emerge — which would vegetableize us all, computers – which would lead to shorter work weeks and greater leisure, cell phones — which will undermine the young, climate change — destroying the known planet, and now AI — with soon-to-be human-eliminating robots. Not!
Me, I’m looking forward to the wonderfully creative ways we use this latest addition to our technological toolkit of wonders. Change continues accelerating.
America is certainly the world leader in technological innovation, but that’s not enough. We fall far behind the world’s leaders in the life satisfaction of our citizens. Here’s a story of my wake-up call about national responsibility this last October when visiting Australia.
Volunteering
My partner Penni is a member of an organization of women who contribute $1,000 per person per year to a kitty that annually awards around $160,000 to three socially beneficial nonprofits. It’s an interesting giving model that I thought I’d use with my high school buddies (yes, I stay in touch with several) building an ongoing scholarship for underprivileged students at my Sydney school. But the concept of volunteering for nonprofits hardly exists in Australia because, unlike the United States, Australia built an adequate social support system.
My proposal drew blank stares of incomprehension. Non-profits, volunteering, donating, what’s that all about? Here at home in the US, it’s easy to forget, as I did, that we are the developed world’s outlier. We’ve handed the nation’s keys to unregulated corporations that bankroll elected officials to maintain deregulation, lower already low taxes, and maintain stunning inequity and inequality. Corporations cheer as the right-wing further undermines our trust in government and the Supreme Court. Corporations extol freedom, their freedom to exploit and dump
Australians love complaining about their government, but they trust it, accepting a tax structure ensuring excellent social services across incomes.
Who Benefits
We don’t bring this anxiety and social inequality onto ourselves. We can’t just “Vote the scoundrels out.” Powerful forces maintain social anxiety, distrust, and inequity. As my economist friends preach, “Follow the money trail. Who benefits from the system as is.”
You don’t have to visit a country like Australia, or the number one in happiness Denmark, to reflect that our domestic worldview is elitist, Imperial, and almost medieval in its centralization of power and control. Now, with a large slice of the nation actively undermining democracy, the media blasting us with anxiety producing all-that-is-wrong, and corporations gifting billions to congressmen in the name of “free enterprise”, it’s easy to feel gloomy about our species and its long-term survival. We are skilled at shooting ourselves in the foot and happily do it.
Here in the US we are world leaders in military and industrial power but trail the field in caring for our citizens. As individuals, we might care, but our national policies show we don’t.
Saying this makes me sad. How did we arrive at a point where we advance the powerful few ahead of national caring? The word society comes from the Latin, socius meaning companion. Our society drifted from companionship to privilege.
Overhaul Overdue
Maybe the pandemic’s isolation has me excessively navel-gazing. Perhaps as we resume travel (for two weeks in June I’ll go to England with my teenage grandson), we’ll remember that the American way isn’t the only way. Our culture needs a serious overhaul.
That’s where my head is these days. Personally, I am an extremely happy camper. My life is rich and full, but I believe our current national path is unsustainable. Ignoring decent human values is a doomsday scenario.
The love I feel for those close to me is a love I might feel for all. Can you imagine that?
I’m trying.
Thank you for reading.
Barry
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