Supporting change?

We have a new President: one who faces huge challenges yet brings a kind of energy for change we haven’t seen for some time. We’ll need it.

Change, the kind of change that will refocus our economy, is not going to be easy or free. No one has all the answers, but it will demand that we rethink what’s important and what we really mean by “American Values.” Right now, we still have some choices. Let it slide, and we will loose the chance to decide for ourselves.

One serious question is what’s to become of our passion for stuff – or do we have an almost messianic belief in a protective fortress of TV’s and IPods, electronic can openers and decorative toilet paper, window shades that match disposable sofas. When did we come to think that a living room in shades of moonlight blue or sea moss green is the American way of life? Worse, when did we come to believe that such a life is worth fighting for?

If we, like Europe, were surrounded by history – battlements from wars, streets echoing from past sounds of horses drawing carriages, paupers crying, slop thrown from upstairs windows – we might have a kind of perspective. Such cacophony might balance the constant reinvention of us: the new, newer, newest suburbs that provides the backdrop for a life of restless yearning for … insulation. Ear buds in place, traffic becomes the fabric of noise, worn like a monk’s robe. Heads bowed, the baby’s cries are a background beat of drums or the “Ah-Ah-Ah” of the back-up chick singers.

Worrisome. Is the current economic disaster the shock we need to reassess our relationship to stuff which can be used, used up, thrown away? Do we need the specter of cities with mountains of bottles and bags and cans and boxes filling up the streets flanked by shiny new glass buildings?

We have come to believe that the pursuit, use, and destruction of consumer goods IS a market economy. It’s time we thought about what the new models will look like. What does growth mean if it doesn’t come with waste? For years prescient voices have argued that an economy can be based on reuse, remanufacting and recycling. Others have worried about the loss of “real jobs” in manufacturing and industry. It’s time that we all think about what we want from the future and how we want a robust economy to work.