Has America peaked?
This question is on the minds of many citizens. A standard question on opinion polls over the past 20
years has been some variation of: “Do you think the country is headed in the right or wrong direction?” The
answer to this question has been, for the most part, consistently and overwhelmingly
negative. Gallup has not gotten a
positive answer since January 2004 and the result for all major polls has been
about 75% negative going back to the early 1990s.
Why would Americans be so discouraged? Look at the messages we get every day from
the media and politicians. We are constantly confronted with news of failures, dangers and crises: our
education system, retirement insecurity, the disappearing middleclass,
childhood obesity, healthcare costs, gasoline prices, food contamination,
campus violence, climate change, epidemics, frivolous lawsuits, Internet scams,
teens not getting enough sleep and many more.
Meanwhile, advertisers play on our fears and insecurities to sell us stuff we don't really need.
This dissatisfaction goes beyond politics or which party is
in power. What is worse, discussion of
these issues often deteriorates into name-calling and accusations, because we
lack a model for resolving them in a calm, objective and civil manner.
The on-line essays found here arise from the fact that our contemporary
crises – what newscasters emphasize, what citizens worry about and what
politicians try to fix – are not the real problems. They are merely symptoms of an underlying
problem. The core problems can be traced
to common behaviors of ordinary citizens:
what they say, what they do, decisions they make and how they react to
news and advertising.
Behavior has consequences.
A good decision usually yields favorable outcomes. Problematic behavior yields the
opposite. True of individuals, this also
applies to the society as a whole. Most
of those issues and crises listed above can be traced to the cumulative effects
of problematic behavioral patterns in five key categories: Understanding the economic process, Discipline,
Responsibility, Critical thinking and Perspective.
To look at the many different choices and actions taken all
over America every day and classify them into these few dimensions takes some
skill and practice, but doing so shows definite patterns. Americans make poor personal choices about
their health and finances, encouraging others to do the same by spreading
unsubstantiated fears and bad medical advice on social media. They waste time and money and compromise
their stated values by succumbing to the lure of advertisers, the hype of pop
culture and the scare tactics of the media and politicians. They seem unaware of how financial decisions and
programs can be traced through society to anticipate and predict common unintended
consequences. More and more they refuse
to delay gratification and look to blame others for their failings.
By classifying behaviors into these five dimensions, it is
possible to pinpoint and address core problems and to make a persuasive case
that improvement in these dimensions will result in a stronger and healthier
society. Identifying and addressing only
the behavior, and requiring everyone else to do so, puts an end to the
bickering, accusations, name calling and insults that seem to dominate the
airwaves. It leads to a civil, more
specific discussion of solutions.
The bad news is that examples abound – almost 400 posts in
the last 4 years with some favorites listed below. They appear every Monday and Friday to clearly show some of the failings that lead to nearly all our societal
problems.
The good news is that we don’t have to wait for the
government or any other outside resource to come riding to the rescue. If the problems result from the accumulation
of poor individual behaviors, then the answers lie in changing those behaviors. Real American Solutions are in our hands.
Love it, Jim!
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