Are We Zombies Or Just Sleepwalking?

I had the pleasure to host social activist and environmentalist Van Jones as my guest yesterday for the Howard Thurman Forum Series. The format is similar to “Inside Actors Studio” which airs on the Bravo TV Network in which host James Lipton interviews a well-known actor with an audience of students at New York’s Actors Studio.

A sizable group of young people, mostly students, were in the audience to hear Van. Their presence definitely influenced the tone of the interview and the comments which followed. By the end of the Forum, it was fairly clear to most of us that we have been a disengaged citizenry for a couple of generations and that for any meaningful change to occur in the U.S., the new generation has to get more involved in the political process. Left to the people in Washington, even with the anticipated changes in the White House with the upcoming elections, things will only get worse. The systems is broken and no heroic figure is going to make much difference unless the system changes. It is also clear where this scale of change is going to come from: we the people.

We the people have abdicated our responsibility as citizens. Our forefathers and mothers made great sacrifices to create a country that could function effectively with checks and balances to maintain order and freedom. Many made huge sacrifices for their country. Nowadays, if we vote every few years we consider ourselves good citizens (the half of us who do vote). The rest is rhetoric – discussing candidates or issues along the way toward voting. Very few of us do any service for the nation such as Peace Corps or the military or even connecting with our elected officials. Most of us are disengaged, busying ourselves with relatively trivial matters like television reality shows, tabloid TV or radio, and fascination with our technologies. Regarding engaged citizenship we have essentially quit. We act as if we are asleep, impervious to the fact that we have the governments we deserve.

Van helped us see yesterday that many of us have been sleepwalking through our lives when it comes to our role as citizens in a democracy. He made an excellent point for the benefit of the younger audience members that they have a sacred responsibility to engage in the politics if anything new is going to occur, no matters who is elected to the White House in November.

The question we have to ask ourselves: can we wake up? Are we merely somnambulating (sleepwalking) or has something died inside us making us zombies, the “living dead” who are beyond recessitating?

These are questions we of the older generations need to ask ourselves now, while there is still hope for real change to occur with the upcoming elections. As Van so eloquently pointed our yesterday, any new President will fail at making real changes without an engaged electorate standing behind them – an electorate determined to fix the system, reform the way politics is done, even reinventing government if that is what it takes.

Whether you are an American or live elsewhere in the world, we are the change we’ve been hoping for. Like the U.S., our world has become too complex for any one person to be a hero and fix things. It will require many of us to get things working again, and that includes me, Van, those young students and you…yes, you the person who is reading this. Yes, you.

Comments

[Dougist]

Or is everyone just tired?

A remarkable phenomenon of modern American life, unique it seems to this country is the vast amount of time that our best minds spend working. We don't take vacations (when we do they tend to be company or industry sponsored conventions) We spend more hours at the office than ever. We tether ourselves with always on communication devices (blackberry, smart phone email...) linking us back to work round the clock. Add to that two to four hour daily commutes and there is little time left for sleep much less family or society.

As a senior executive I attended never ending task forces targeting the problems in our employee base from a 24/7 wired world. Burn out, fatigue, errors, anti-social behavior abounded. And as I talked with other executives I found that this was widespread across the country.

The positive result of all this is a global economy and living standard un-surpassed in human history. But is it a wonder that American's have no time for the Polis?

I wonder if this will change with the demographic shift occurring in America? There is no greater force in American politics than a gaggle of retirees, as people find that their youthful talents can be applied to public affairs given their newly empty calender. With more and more people coming into that post work situation will we see a traffic jam of activism? And what will that mean if policy is dominated by people in twilight of their years?

But enough of this, I've gota run. Its time to jump on a conference call....

Doug
www.dougist.com

[John Renesch]

Doug, I suppose that is the question...tired and distracted, like sleepwalking, suggests there's still life...that the self isn't dead yet...just entranced and capable of being revived. There's hope if we can reawaken, revive or come back to life. There's no hope if we have "died" spiritually - where the lifeforce has left us permanently. Thanks for your responses, Doug. Best, John