Glory Days
When I was growing up, America was great. That’s what I was told in school, from my elders. We were the most powerful nation on earth. In my early years America was still glowing from the after affects of a victory in Europe, from the can-do spirit and the anything goes mindset of the sixties.
My, how things change: I grew up believing America had the best health care in the world. Today France has that. I learned America made the best TV’s and stuff. Now, microelectronic devices are made in Asia. In my youth, I was certain that America had the best and brightest scientific minds. Now, Medical advances are made in Europe and elsewhere, Software engineering – a field Americans pioneered – is advancing in India faster than in America.
A quote from today’s Washington Post:
Technology development happens in India. Technology consumption happens in the U.S
That’s right: the thing we have become best at as a nation is consumption. If human global society were an organism, America would serve the function of the gastro-intestinal system. From gaping maw to anal orifice, we have it all, designed for the purpose of ingesting the world’s goods and resources, and squirting out waste products.
Recently a long-standing trend to come to America to seek riches is reversing. The best-and-brightest are leaving our shores to follow the money outward back to the once depressed and now burgeoning economies of Asia and the Middle East. Europeans were the first to stop looking to America for advancement, and now the rest of the world is following suit.
Our nation is in decline. We’ve reached our peak last century in our fight against fascism, and now all we have become is a fading memory, like the proverbial old-timer boring the young ones with tales of his glory days. America’s glory days are over.
Unless and until we as a nation realize this, and take action to correct this situation, we may soon become the next Etruscan Empire. Remember them?
February 28th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
I’ve just got a really stupid question for you, actually, two– 1) the Kindred Spirits: how did you add those to your template?
2) How’s the buddhism thing going? I’m a relative newbie and having a tough time of it. I was born in Thailand, but no longer speak the language, don’t remember all that much, etc. . . and finding other newbies who I can share my confusion with seems really difficult here in the midwest (MICH.)
March 1st, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Thank you so much for leaving a comment. I don’t get many…
As for my various links, they’re hand coded in blogger template editing section. I come across a group I join, or that I like, and sometimes there’s a graphic to grab and link to. All affilliations are an attempt to build traffic, but my efforts are spotty.
As for the Buddhism, it is difficult. America is, as I state, hostile to the whole concept, and may take generations to become more than a quiet revolution. If it ever grows enough here. Personal experience bears fruit slowly, enough to keep me meditating semi-steadily. I am more aware, for example, how behaviors in others now serve to reinforce the dharma (especially those behaviors I have used before.) That is good…
How about you? Feel free to drop me a line. I’d love to hear from you!
August 11th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
[…] A while back I bemoaned America’s lost Glory Days and the hype I was force fed about our "Great Nation." Today, atop the Reddit.com list, is confirmation from the Twin Cities of my negative perspective on the sad state of our country. […]