The Culture of Becoming

On this anniversary of our nation's beginning we need to remember that change is what America has always been about: creating change, adapting to it, and resisting it. It's impossible to understand the American character without appreciating our complex attitude toward change.

Americans tend to believe both that change is possible, and that it can be beneficial. These were revolutionary ideas when our nation was formed. For most people throughout history change has been a negative experience. In an agrarian society, change means war, famine, flood, disease, and other calamities. But our nation was created by people who saw change, not as disaster, but as opportunity. Our society was created, and is continually being renewed, by people who thought uprooting themselves and moving to a new place would bring about a better life.

This is the most important single quality of Americans, from which all other traits derive: the belief that one can change one's life, one's community, and even the world. It breeds optimism, restlessness, and an impatience with obstacles.

Yet attached like an evil twin to our fervent belief in the benefits of change is a longing for roots -- for a stable home and community, a predictable environment, a simple identity. Even as we rush to create new changes we sometimes feel as if we're trapped on a speeding train, wishing there was a way to get off, longing for something immutable, permanent. This perhaps accounts for the strength--in our largely secular, ecumenical society -- of fundamentalist sects and Victorian values. Technological change seems uncontrollable and mysterious, for the advantages of a new invention, like the automobile or television, are immediately obvious while the social costs only show up later. But social change seems -- rightly or wrongly -- to be more subject to public control, so this is where people tend to dig in their heels.

On average, Americans pull up stakes every few years and move to a new home. A favorite American fantasy is to be "on the road" -- to just get into a car and drive away from everything. Yet at the same time we suffer, as a people, from a formless nostalgia for place -- a longing for some piece of the earth we can say we belong to. The average American will live in many different homes in his or her lifetime, but which one is really "home"? The one we grew up in, our "home town", which may have vanished or become unrecognizable to us? The home in which we were newly adults, possibly starting a family? The home we had at the peak of our earning power? Our retirement home?

My son once observed -- apropos the enduring popularity of films about imposters -- that trying to 'pass', in one way or another, is a quintessentially American preoccupation. Trying to be part of the 'mainstream'. The irony is that the 'mainstream' of our culture is in constant flux, continually being enriched by the incredible variety of what all the 'peripheral' people bring to it.

America is a culture of becoming, a culture of possibility. A work in progress. A nation whose potentiality is not limited by narrow tradition. Our uniqueness, our strength, and our staying power lie in our aptitude for change and our willingness to engage in continual self-creation. Chronic change is affecting the rest of the world, too, but Americans are veterans of change. We expect it. We live with it. It is our tradition.

Today we're at a point of special challenge. Our government has been unwilling to face the realities of a changing world -- a world in which national boundaries are becoming meaningless and all the challenges we face -- security threats, environmental threats, economic threats -- are global ones requiring international solutions through international cooperation. Domination politics is obsolete. Problems are multiplied, not solved, by bombing and invading other nations. Our current administration is stuck in an obsolete paradigm, reacting in knee-jerk fashion to every problem by violence. But bombs and tanks are useless against terrorists. We need to abandon our commitment to these antiquated macho tactics. We need to reaffirm our commitment to democracy in the face of the administration's retrogressive authoritarianism. We need to re-evaluate our individualistic values -- our worship of egoism and personal greed and recognize our need to make common cause with the rest of the world.