Daydreaming today. Thinking of what it would have been like to live in the Soviet Union. Thinking of what it would have been like to live there and have it be successful – would human nature have to be different? That led me to think about life in the US today. The US won out, beating the Soviets.
Always going in the background there is the idea that we live in an imperfect place. This is an attitude that may manifest in countries – think about realpolitik – but has a root in our everyday life experience. Actions happen in the world, countries deal with each other, interact. And it is not always consensus. Immoveable objects and unstoppable forces and time ticking away. The strong may see things swayed in their way – and then write the history of it. This is on the world-scale but on the personal we encounter dilemmas and have to play the cards we are dealt.
Why not consensus? I link the personal and the world at large because I think they are linked, each affecting the other. Think how difficult it is even in families for concord to be reached. Hopefully parents provide guidance because they take on – should take on – the de facto power position. And so too in the workplace, most jobs, I think it is fair to say, being boss-run operations. Could it be another way?
Going back to my Soviet-US daydreams I think of Khrushchev Nixon’s Kitchen Debate. And an anecdote about (Khrushchev?) being flown over the (Los Angeles?) and seeing all the swimming pools in single household houses and saying that the USSR was finished. Can’t find a reference for that so maybe it was someone’s metaphor. Anyway, it was a time of competitive ideologies. Now who are we? Are we defining ourselves in relation to a common enemy or common competitor? Terrorists? A lot of negative comparisons to European socialism lately, come to think about it.
This all leads me to think that it was good to have a mega-competitor, like the USSR, insofar as it made us at least reflect on national identity and goals. It seems today that we are operating with an idea that we are all Americans: but what does that mean? Ron Paul people point to our union with respect to the Constitution. While I like their arguments it still seems to me that they are missing the point. Well, not missing the point: the whole idea during election time is to not only bring forth one’s policies, but also what informs those policies. We live in a country founded on the Constitution but . . . This is where Ron Paul people miss the point – and where my yeah-but’s are founded. The world has changed, the game has changed.
So what is the real state of things? What is behind the matrix? First I would say we like living the way we do. Whether this is inertia or thoughtlessness or lassitude or something else I’m not sure. Even though (I emphatically believe) it kind of sucks to work all the time we do it and want politicians to bring about full employment. Consumerism must be mentioned somewhere in this equation. In a sense we all like to be numbed all the time by diversions. Is that fair to say? “I just want to work and create a better life for my family,” people say. Got to pay for that important car/house/cable subscription.
When was the national conversation were we at least got a majority to pick a national path? It almost seems that we are living in set patterns, just going along thinking that this is just the way that it is and that things will never change. Implicit acceptance of the status quo. I suppose that elections are a form of such a national conversation. That is really their purpose, I guess. So I shouldn’t complain? Or question?
Living in the USSR would have been different. Undesirable to myself, I infer. That is why in my thoughts I wondered at living in an idealized Soviet realm. People happily supporting one another. The USSR or some 19th century Christian commune. Utopias – no wheres. Brinksmanship and realpolitik – if we don’t get those resources another country will and they will be more powerful: that defines our lives.
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