Preserving American Values

Throughout all of man’s development, there have always been frontiers, places either geographic or intellectual, where an individual could go to grow, to make a new person of himself, to make his fortune – places where anything was possible because it was an open book, man had not been there or done that before

For most of man’s history, however, it was only exceptional individuals who had that opportunity. For the vast majority of mankind, the present was their only reality and there was no knowledge of and therefore no longing for something different. They were grounded in the knowledge of their place in their society.

There was no significant change in this societal dynamic until the enlightenment, when the masses came to realize that a better life was their due, resulting in revolutions occurring throughout the western world. Later, the industrial revolution provided significantly expanded frontiers.

As recently as 100 years ago, the United States still had ample geographic frontiers and untold intellectual ones. Even big cities like New York were frontiers because they were evolving and growing at such a rate that so much was possible, the opportunities were endless.

After WWII, the geographic frontier shrank to almost nothing. Not that there weren’t still vast areas in the country that were wild or semi-wild, but there were no areas where man had not left his footprint, where he had not made his claims. The days of homesteading were long gone.

But intellectual frontiers were expanding at an incredible rate. Especially in the sciences and technology, the questions to be explored were endless.

Fast forward to the present. There are no more frontiers really. Not that there aren’t still scientific questions to be answered, but the questions have gotten either smaller and smaller with the payback or reward less and less, or they are so large and basic that even the questions are beyond the grasp of most.

But aren’t the frontiers of technology endless? In one sense that may be true, but one can see already that advances in technology are not improving our lives; it is not as we once thought it would be. Also, we’ve reached the point of diminishing returns, in that technological changes are mostly incremental.

In one sense, one could say that the only frontier left is making money. There seems to always be new ways to be found to make money. There are those who find that a driving force. But for many, that is not the holy grail, and for those that it is, it is a spiritually empty grail. There is nothing that enlarges man, enlarges his spirit, by making more money.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Much has been written about the phenomenon of millennial boys and young men having little ambition; that they lack the drive that people had in the past. They seem to be drifting 

Some have looked to the increased role of women in the formerly exclusive masculine world of business and science and the related increase in the aggressiveness of girls in school to explain this. But while I think that has had a definite impact, I think that hypothesis is too simplistic.  Working in schools, I actually see girls still being very deferential to boys.

Instead, I think that boys and young men have no drive because they don’t see possibilities open to them. There are no frontiers that excite their imagination. One might think that making lots of money would excite them, but as I stated above, making as much money as possible is not the holy grail for many.  They don’t see a way to be free of their past and present. Part of that may be a failure of their education – everything seems blah to them – but I think the real reason is the lack of frontiers, the lack of challenge. Instead they escape into the fantasy world of video games and seek refuge in technology. This does not bode well for America’s future in any sense – economically, politically, or socially.

So what are we as a society to do? The world is the way it is and there’s nothing to be done to change it. 

Perhaps the only frontier left is the spiritual one. True spirituality has been a non-issue for a long time; it has had no place in our society. Yet it is needed now more than ever.

If boys and young men came to have faith in themselves, to not look to outside things to make them feel that they are somebody, worthy. If they came to be open to the presence of God/Buddha inside them – not the Evangelical’s God full of vengeance and hatred towards all who don’t follow His lead but the Divine essence that we are born with and can be found in our heart – which is love, light, faith, trust, humility, gratitude, compassion, joy, contentment, strength, courage, and wisdom.

If boys and young men thus achieved the full potential of human beings, they would face the world and their future with energy, to do whatever it is that they decided was meant for them. This is my hope for the future.