What is our collective goal

[TheMuse]

I wrote about this on my blog today and thought I would share. Probably a little cheesy, but anyway.

I think we have stagnated as a country. And I think it has to do with a lack of a common, overarching, goal. Some vision that we as a people come together to get accomplished.

If you look though history we have always risen to meet our challenges. Becoming our own nation. Sending a man to the moon. Big things that we achieved because we had to. We seem to now be focused on the small. Our politicians are more focused on winning todays news cycle than putting together a clear vision and leading America. Nobody (well maybe Candidate Obama...I miss that guy) tries to inspire us to reach for more. We aspire for only small, incremental changes.

So I ask DU. What should be our goals? Are there any leaders out there with the will, the charisma, and honestly the bullheadedness to get it done?

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. I think the problem is that the right half of the country thinks that NO is a solution -

and want to take it back to .....God knows what, some reality that only existed in their imagination.

It is difficult to achieve a collective goal if you are missing half of your collection! Don't forget - most of the great ideas for moving the country forward - most professors, most scientists - are left wing/liberal. With the current polarization in the country (abetted by a media that is using a false equivalence between the two sides), I don't think that anything that originated as a common goal would be supported by the no-idea half.

[TheMuse]

2. Yes that is part of the problem

But I believe we have been polarized like we are by our politicians for little more than short term political gain (not a relvelation, I know). Unfortunately in the long term this approach is leaving us listless and stagnate.

I believe we are at a tipping point, and greed and fear are winning.

[Terry in Austin]

3. I question the premise of "having a collective goal"

Big things done by a nation tend to be nationalistic. The moon landing, for example, was a proxy battle in the Cold War. We get the biggest consensus (aka collective goal) around nationalistic enterprises such as war.

I take the view that government is here to support my aspirations, not the other way around. Members of a society have their own diverse aspirations, and the advantage of grouping into a society is the mutual recognition and support of those aspirations.

So we have laws, institutions, customs and so forth that help us lead our daily lives in relative comfort and safety. When society is stable and functioning well, it allows us to realize the satisfactions that are important to each of us.

Some of us may wish to embark on projects that are worthy of history, and that's fine -- but it shouldn't be the norm; it shouldn't be imposed as a standard.

We should have the right to be ordinary. That's democratic; that's humanistic; and that, if anything, should be our collective goal.

[CrispyQ]

4. We're a hyper-individualistic culture that doesn't value community.

Jared Bernstein puts it like this: There are YOYOs & there are WITTs. The YOYOs believe that You're On Your Own & they resent paying into a social safety net for all. The WITTs believe that We're In This Together. We don't want members of our community to lose their house to a fire simply because they didn't have the money to pay for private fire protection. We think it makes more sense for everyone to contribute to a large social safety net, instead of each of us trying to provide our own. But in a culture that doesn't value community, or has, at best, a very exclusive view of community, the YOYO attitude prevails.

Bernstein says, "In a just society, one can climb as high as they want, but there is a limit to how far one can fall." That sounds more like Denmark than America.