American society is certainly at an interesting point in its history. Over the last 225+ years, we established colonies, then states and a nation, then added more territory and more states. We expanded over a vast landscape, full of bounty, in the form of natural resources (trees, water, soil, minerals, animals, etc). Our ancestors had slaves, killed Native Americans (Indians), killed each other (pretty regularly, in the Old West), immigrated, uprooted families for better lives in other parts of the country, had land, lost land, got more land, harvested the timber, farmed the cleared land, move on in search of more productive land, utilized irrigation systems and controlled rivers, invented all sorts of things, pushed through the industrial revolution, into the agricultural "green revolution", polluted everything on this green earth, tried to clean it up, and continued polluting it, while also harvesting it more, and farming it more. We have preserved landscapes for their beauty, only to destroy countless other beautiful landscapes in the name of growth.
Ahhhh. Growth. A term with so many connotations. Economic growth, the term most important and all too familiar to Americans right now, is also one that may have been misguiding our American society all these last 225+ years, and even the civilizations before that. Economic growth implies an economic system that expands, rather than contracts, or stays flat.
Economic growth has been associated with increased quality of life, among other things, to the point that, a "1st World" country with a strong economic system is considered to have higher quality of life than "3rd World" countries, although they have entirely different cultural constructs and values. Quality of life has, in effect, been narrowed to the daily things that American (and European) society have come to experience over the past 150 years.
An expanding economic system also necessitates having the resources to continue to expand. In the past, this was not as much of an issue. A significant portion of the world, in the 19th century and even the early 20th century, had not been "pillaged" for it's resources. The global population was simply too small, and trade was only impacting certain regions of the globe that supplied specific goods.
Fast forward to the present. SEVEN BILLION people. Even as the association between quality of life and economic growth continues to persist, quality of life, measured in terms of happiness of the average citizen, has truly not gotten better in our industrialized, American society. Money has not made people happier. Stuff has not made people happier. We currently have significant disparities in the social income scale, problems with our health system, a significant lack of jobs, millions in debt, and so on. People work too much, have poor health, poor family lives, poor environments, and in this current economy, it's not getting better. Our resources, over the past century, and really, the past half-century, have seen a significant decline. The ever-expanding world economy ballooned at a rate that was furthered by the American way-of-life, full of stuff, greed, stuff, excess, money, "likes and preferences" before intelligent and rational thought. We took full advantage of a system that was giving us everything, for cheap, and allowed our environments, and other countries and continents to take the brunt of our decisions.
Now, everyone wants to be like us, which is ironic, because the current "US" is not in a very good state, primarily because of our decisions over the past half-century. Our urban infrastructure, from sanitary and storm sewers, to roads and highways, is in complete disrepair. Our health choices, of eating cheap and easy fast food for the last 50 years, and our living choices, in a suburban system that allows us to drive everywhere, have resulted in all sorts of health epidemics, from obesity in adults and children, to diabetes, higher cancer rates, etc., which all result in more health expenses, and more pressure on health insurers.
So, where do we go from here? Do we continue, in the name of economic growth, as a model to improve our conditions at present? Will economic growth truly help fix those problems, or will it just continue with the status quo? Will increased revenue allow governments to invest in infrastructure, or will populations voice displeasure with government spending? Will revenue be used to invest in infrastructure that takes US into the next century, or will we continue with the status quo of auto-centric infrastructure? Will it be "me, myself, and I" or will it be "for the greater good
These are the interesting (and challenging) questions we have to answer, preferably by American society, but likely by a small minority of individuals that are truly interested in sustaining America into this century and the next, and not simply interested in their own success.
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