Once a year on the 4th of July most citizens in the United States have a day off from work, and they gather in cities and towns to attend barbeques with friends and relatives and watch fireworks displays. Without giving much thought to the ideas our country was founded upon, or which direction we’re heading in the digital future, we enjoy a summer holiday and relax for a few hours, away from the stresses of what’s going on in the world.
And next day, it’s back to business as usual. Cultural and political divisions will occur, and the same enormous challenges will face us as individuals and as part of a community. We have huge problems, and it often seems name-calling is the order of the day in national politics. It seems like a lot of people get paid a lot of money to talk in circular logic and not get much accomplished. Unfortunately, we aren’t living in a time when incremental change will do. We’re living in an age when big ideas about making things better aren’t just important, but essential.
Historians like to point out that democracy is a messy process. It’s set up to be slow and cumbersome, but common sense tells us this approach won’t always work. Sometimes it seems like a single decision maker would be far more efficient. But everyone knows those types of leaders are called Kings and Queens (or Dictators), and our founding fathers sailed on leaky wooden boats across an ocean to escape them. Still, smart and effectual change is necessary. While our original social contracts held up as sturdy social and legal tools over the past few centuries, perhaps now we need an Acceptance of Interdependence, rather than a Declaration of Independence.
The infrastructure of our cities are crumbling, health care costs are skyrocketing and the system needs a complete overhaul, cyber war is looming, whole industries have been hollowed-out by the insidious practice of offshoring jobs, water wars are arriving soon, our national commons is being sold out from under us (to internal and external buyers), global climate change has arrived and is increasingly affecting everyone, a divisive political climate prevents forward momentum in Washington, and millions of people live in poverty or are unemployed or under-employed.
Why not begin at the source? Begin at the state level, or begin at the federal level, but begin. Start by forming a new governmental department: The Department of Reinvention. There are enough brilliant minds in our country to establish such a department and make it a reality. Who knows? Maybe it really can happen. Laying the groundwork for a kinder society that takes care of everyone’s health concerns is a good place to begin. Creating a smarter society where knowledge is used to create programs and possibilities for the benefit of everyone. Forming a society where people are helped during our most challenging times, rather than pushed out of the system and left to fend for themselves is a good culture to imagine, and a smart one to build. Envisioning a society where improving education isn’t fought over or debated, but reinvented by the best minds on a continual basis, is a culture shifting idea most people can agree upon. Is it possible we’re at a turning point, and those people who just spout vitriol and random nonsense are finally fading into the background? The reinvention of social, cultural, and political dialogue is already underway. These ideas can be cultivated and celebrated.
It’s time to stop pretending the same dead-end solutions will solve problems in the digital age, and time to begin creating a future built on smarter ideas, real cooperation and compassion, and using the brilliant vision of societal and cultural reinvention we are known for around the world. And maybe next year on Independence Day, there’ll be something new worth talking about, as well as some old ideas that began a country… out of a handful of colonies and some world-changing ideas written down with quill pens on a long ago hot summer day.
