(RNS) Parents launching children into the world probably don’t make the best soothsayers.
We believe in our children. We want their futures to be as promising as commencement speakers said at my youngest son’s high school graduation, and as I said at my oldest son’s wedding the next day.
What, then, do we do with our glimmers of doubt? When the world we are handing them is a mess, do we address a depleted terrain and name the challenges facing them, or join the easier chorus of denial and letting ourselves off the hook?
I suggest honesty and accountability. And it starts by being honest about the mess we’ve made:
Dark forces will do everything possible to perpetuate American dependence on petroleum, even as oil drowns us in political nightmares and fouled coastlines.
Unstable nations will accelerate their nuclear-arms programs, testing our resolve and threatening life itself.
The overpaid few will do everything possible to perpetuate an unjust system for determining who prospers and who pays for that prosperity.
Those making vast fortunes in passive entertainment will insist that actual human creativity doesn’t matter.
Cynical politicians will accelerate their well-funded efforts to exploit fears — not to resolve them — and to turn Americans against each other, especially whites against what’s soon to be the non-white majority.
Employers will accelerate their self-defeating efforts to sell merchandize to people whom they refuse to employ.
The world’s most expensive and yet under-performing medical and public education systems will do everything possible to avoid accountability and course correction.
All young generations face terrain that has been depleted by their elders. Previous generations were launched into a world sullied by a Great Depression, world war, vicious racism, labor strife, assassinations, class conflict, gender conflict, conniving bankers, political bullies and vapid entertainment.
At some point, depleted soil becomes sterile. I doubt we have reached that desolate point just yet, but it is closer than ever.
Some will say older generations should just get out of the way and let today’s young clean up the mess we are leaving them. I can’t accept that. It’s our mess; we need to clean it up.
We are the ones running the corporations, schools and governments. We can’t just extract every last bit of profit from them before, like locusts, we move on to retirement. We must say “No” to the very practices we instituted. We must invest in actual progress and inventiveness. We must demand and accept accountability. We must oust feckless leaders and resist bullies who cheapen political discourse.
I have three fundamental suggestions:
First, we need to balance our budgets, starting at home. No more accumulation of debt. No more living beyond our means. No more pretending. Why should government exercise responsibility when citizens live recklessly?
Second, we need to stop blaming, whining and scape-goating. We are all the problem — not immigrants, not survivalists, not Republicans nor Democrats. We the People have made a host of self-defeating decisions. It’s time for us to unwind those decisions, starting perhaps in our own driveways.
Third, we need to stop rewarding ranters and bullies. We are a deeply divided populace. But we cannot follow ranters and bullies down their path of feel-good demagoguery. We must exercise discernment, make an effort to be informed, and engage in the public discourse that defines responsible citizenship.
The forces of darkness won’t stop on their own. We the People must insist on better, and we must start with ourselves.
(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)