"Here is the first question that must be asked: What have we done with America?" The incomparable Marilynne Robinson (1/x): nybooks.com/articles/2020/…
"Over the decades we have consented, passively for the most part, to a kind of change that has made this country a disappointment to itself, an imaginary prison with real prisoners in it."
"Now those imaginary walls have fallen, if we choose to notice. We can consider what kind of habitation, what kind of home, we want this country to be."
"No theoretical language I know of serves me in describing or interpreting this era of American unhappiness, the drift away from the purpose and optimism that generally led the development of the society from its beginnings."
"This can be oversimplified and overstated, but the United States did attract immigrants by the tens of millions. It did create great cities and institutions as well as a distinctive culture that has been highly influential throughout the world."
"Until recently it sustained a generally equitable, decent government that gave it plausible claims to answering to the ideals of democracy."
"This is a modest statement of the energies that moved the generations. Optimism is always the primary justification for its own existence. It can seem naive until it is gone." (Perhaps even more so after.)
"The assumption that things can get better, with the expectation that they should, creates the kind of social ferment that yields progress. If we want to avoid the word 'progress,' then call it the creative unrest that made 2019 an advance on 1919."
"In recent decades, which have been marked by continuous, disruptive change and by technological innovation that has reached assertively into every area of life, a particular economics has become a Theory of Everything, subordinating all other considerations."
"This kind of thinking has discredited ideals like selflessness and generosity as hypocritical or self-deceived, or in any case as inefficiencies that impede the natural economy of self-interest."
"This view of things is radically individualistic, indifferent to any narrative of identity or purpose. It takes a cynical view of people as such, since no one’s true motives are different from those of the consciously selfish."
"Because there is only one motive—to realize a maximum of benefit at a minimum of cost—those who do not flourish are losers in an invidious, Darwinian sense. Winners are exempt from moral or ethical scrutiny since advance of any sort is the good to be valued."
"Never mind. We are left with the certainty that a civilization can be wholly described by its economy, and that ours is exhaustively and triumphally capitalist—making anomalous the many well-established features of the culture to which the word 'public' might attach:..."
"Schools, lands, and, more generally, public works, public services, the public interest."
"If the furthest implications of the reign of “selfishness” are not yet fully actualized, no doubt custom, manners, image, shame, or the occasional laws are the obstacle..."
"...since the theory itself is so simple and natural in its operation that it should be as small an intrusion on the order of things as multiplying everything by one."
"It could be used to rationalize stealing the pennies from a dead man’s eyes, true, even considering the nugatory value of the contemporary penny."
"It has [already] scuppered the old habit of measuring wealth by standard of living. Averaging helicopters, yachts, and offshore accounts against imminent eviction would not yield a meaningful result."
"As Americans, we should consider our freedoms—of thought, press, and religion, among others—the basic constituents of our well-being, and accept the controversies that have always arisen around them as reflecting their vitality."
"Not so long ago they were something new under the sun, so if there is still a certain turbulence around them this should remind us that they are gifts of our brief history."
"We should step away from the habit of accepting competition as the basic model of our interactions with other countries... And we have to get beyond the habit of thinking in terms of scarcity."
"We can do this as individuals and as a nation. Someday we will walk out onto a crowded street and hear that joyful noise we must hope to do nothing to darken or still, having learned so recently that humankind is fragile, and wonderful." (x/x)
