Weblogsky: What will America do next?

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What will America do next?

Alex Cavalli

Last night Alex Cavalli spoke to the Central Texas World Future Society. His subject: What Will America Do Next? His thesis: the US has followed an identifiable cycle where some conflagration will occur, followed by commitment to some great endeavor. This has happened three times so far:

The Revolutionary War, followed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition,
The Civil War, followed by construction of the transcontinental railroad, and
World War II, followed by the space program and the lunar voyages.

He augmented his presentation with readings from Stephen Ambrose's Undaunted Courage and Nothing Like It in the World, emphasizing the monumental effort and commitment required to complete these tasks, and how they emerged in a context set by a difficult and dangerous time just before. In each case, we'd been through a war that could potentially have destroyed the nation... and now we're in another conflagration, which we characterize as a "war on terror" though it's actually a war of world views. (In the Q&A, I noticed that everyone seemed to have a little different perspective on "the enemy," and the enemy's view of the US. Example: one person said that fundamentalist Muslims are disturbed by progress. (I think it's a much deeper religious issue, personally: when they call the US "the great Satan," they mean it. If you truly hold a belief like that and it actually means something to you, you'll go to any length to destroy the evil you perceive.)

Alex was thinking it was a response to globalization, and that seems likely: fundamentalists who are entrenched in their belief systems reacting violently to a postmodern global melt into a stew where no one belief system is paramount.

Alex said that it was never clear in any of those cycles that we would survive as a nation, and it's not clear now... but if we do, we can expect to take on some great enterprise when we're done. What would that be? A couple of folks suggested space travel, like a trip to Mars. My flip comment was that we could take on the search for intelligent life on earth, but I was actually thinking some inner exploration of human consciousness could make sense, and Alex said something similar. Global warming was another suggestion.

Someone said that the focus on the US as a nation is probably misplaced, that the nation-state may be a thing of the past, and that's a good point, resonant with the globalization issue.

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now....

jon posted this at 8:31 AM
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