The Hyphen Nation

An idea has emerged over the past several weeks. It stems in part from the collapse, beneath megatons of misinformation and fear-mongering from the Right, of the Federal health care initiative. That sad but predictable result is only part of the genesis of the idea.

Here are a few - a very few - items that also fit into the model:

• Local people grown complain about taxes to fund schools. Their kids are grown.
• "Religious Leaders" push political agendas while their organizations retain tax-exempt status.
• Unions threaten important legislation unless said legislation includes provisions that guarantee work be done by union labor.
• Free market idealogues combat any and all efforts to protect workers.
• Those most able to contribute to the support the society as a whole are focused on shirking their responsibility.
• And now the US Supreme Court has enshrined Big Money as the driver of all things electorial.

I fear we have become the Hyphen-Nation.

We used to be Americans. Now we are -Americans. Most of us fall into the trap. We've identified ourselves with a profession, a religion, a political movement, a race or culture first and then, as a secondary characteristic, we say that we are Americans.

This leads us to promote the goals or ideals of our primary association over those of our society. We focus on what we might get out of any situation and gloss over its wider implications. Our town, our block, our church, our ethnic group, our profession. This mental model seems rampant, and mainstream media promotes this thinking.

And of course this means that our children will have to deal with an ever more fragmented and dysfunctional society. It means that honest people at all levels of government - and I remain convinced that most people in government are indeed trying to do their best - will be less and less able to cope with the strident, conflicting, unyielding demands of their constituents. We see already that the brigands of Wall Street buy-buy-buy when it appears that political events have paralyzed the Federal Government.

Putting the needs of the many at the forefront has been eclipsed by "What's in it for me?" thinking. This is the concept of the Tragedy of the Commons writ large. The Right Wing-nuts will answer this by saying something like "Privatization - private ownership of the commons - is the solution." The Left Wing-nuts will answer this by saying something like "Centralization - Federal stewardship, central planning - is the solution."

So I ask: how do we step back from this? My thought is that any solution must come from individuals thinking constructively rather than exploitively about the larger society. We call this "Systems Thinking". No political philosophy (including that political philosophy which denies the validity of any form of government) will fix this for us. It is up to us to figure it out.

Interesting times.