Famed playwright Eugene O’Neill once wrote in the play “Moon for the Misbegotten” that “There is no present or future, only the past, happening over and over again, now.” It’s a bit of dreary philosophy on life, but not a philosophy for living.
We have an unstable political atmosphere that directly correlates to the unstable economy that’s slowly melting out from under our feet, but it’s not time to be squeamish. When certain politicians fret over bold initiatives to springboard our society forward, just remember that those politicians’ fears are based on nostalgia for a life that no longer exists.
Seeing the government flush our hard earned money down the toilet is enough to make anyone cringe. But we also have to come to terms with the reality of investing in our future. You would be hard pressed to find a published statistic that doesn’t reveal how the numbers of high school and college graduates are waning and how we are losing our footing compared to most other industrialized nations.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote that America is the only country where parents are more likely to graduate high school than their children.
He wrote that if we fold to the conservative way of thinking, we would be building bridges but ignoring education. What he was referring to was Florida Senator Mel Martinez calling additional funding for Headstart programs “pork,” and he stated that it had no place within the stimulus package. If Headstart and other educational programs have no place in a stimulus package, then whatever result that comes from the limited stimulus will have a short shelf life. There is no future development without developers. It’s a simple logic that’s apparently much too complex for conservative snipes.
The organization One Laptop per Child is a fantastic organization with the goal of bringing versatile and dependable computers to some of the poorest kids on earth. In the process, the organization has developed a philosophical model that should be widely adopted. The idea is that kids have access to learning tools that can be updated and they also have access to the Internet and a way of communicating with each other. One Laptop per Child is one simple idea. Our government needs to become the way forward and invest in lots of these simple ideas.
If we don’t invest in new technologies and education, then we might as well wave the white flag. Forget about stockpiling your weapons and worrying about government rule. If we fail to focus on a progressive future, then the slow downfall to our society won’t be some axis of evil or big brother government, it will be society itself. You can drive those nostalgic updated Mustangs and Thunderbirds off a cliff because that’s exactly where the lack imagination is taking us. The risk is getting far too great to not at least take a chance on a new way forward.
