The bf and I were talking the other day about the challenges this country faces under our watch. Our grandparents lived through the Depression, some of the worst times in our country's history. Then, things got better. Our parents were born in the most populous generation yet, and with them came a huge cultural revolution. Their work during the Civil Rights movement, the Women's Rights movement, the Gay Rights movement, and an overall acceptance of all kinds of ideas and lifestyles has allowed the country to really grow and prosper. It has been a good thing, for sure, but now we're getting to big for our britches.
Many cities grew so much, so quickly, that they didn't stop to think about the impact that has on our aging infrastructure, as evidenced by recent dam failures, bursting steam pipes, and collapsing bridges. The threat of terrorism may scare us, but our own structural weaknesses may be the actual cause of our eventual demise. That, or our failing food production system. Factory farms produce mass quantities of tasteless junk, eroding and depleting the soils and polluting our water, air, and digestive systems. Obesity was once a "luxury" of the rich; now, it's cheaper to eat foods that make us fat, in large part because our crop subsidies reward soy and corn, the key ingredients in most of the unhealthiest (and cheapest) food out there.
Surely, we haven't seen the end of all this political and structural turmoil. Culturally, some things are better, but it seems we're more willing to accept wrongdoings, even though they make us queasy. Since Watergate, the political process has really been led astray and people have lost faith in their elected leaders. After all, look how screwed up our government is now, and every new scandal elicits little more emotion than "meh, what else is new?" Look at what the sports world has become: doping in baseball and cycling, dogfighting in football, gambling and cheating in football - things that we all know are wrong but have come to accept as par for the course. An interviewee on NPR mused that this is a generational thing, at least in cycling, and that we can only hope to stop future generations from such behavior because there's no hope for this one. The author of a new book about selling out to corporate America (read the interview on alternet.org) rings true for many of us idealistic twenty- and thirty-somethings who want to change the world but can't afford to support ourselves on the salaries of such jobs. Instead, we take the corporate job, promising ourselves that we'll only do it until we've made a good living and saved some money, and then we'll give back to the world. But by then, it might be too late. We'll have aging parents to support, without a Medicare or social security system to help out. And if we have kids, we'll have to support their increasingly expensive needs for schooling, food, health care, and whatever hot trends they just have to follow.
None of this is news to anyone at this point. Yes, I'm whining, because right now, I don't have it so bad. But I'm one of those idealistic twenty-somethings with an expensive education that I'll be paying for many years down the road. Here in North Carolina, a huge opportunity exists to make some real changes in the way agriculture, development, and conservation happen. All those people who no longer have open space in the Northeast are moving down here, grabbing up open space without any plan in sight. I could start a 1,000 Friends of North Carolina. I could lead a strong progressive campaign against the very vocal naysayers, working for smarter development planning, boosting political and economic support for sustainable agriculture, creating stronger environmental policies in the state. But I have student loans. I have hand-me-downs and oldies-but-goodies that will need replacing in a few years. I want to get married (green wedding!) and own a home (solar panels or sustainable building materials!). Maybe I want to have kids someday (although who wants to bring a child into this world as it is now?).
Looks like I have my work cut out for me.
