A poor man’s Letter from America

Many years ago - I think in the 1940s - Alister Cook, an Englishman by origin, but an American by adopted home, began writing and delivering a series of weekly radio broadcasts called Letter From America. Cook was a remarkable journalist with an ability to find interest in the seemingly mundane and to show how mundane things that we had though were interesting really were. Remarkably, that capacity remained undiminished despite his having lived in the US for over 60 years.

I make no claims to have Cook's, wit, insight or eloquence, (or for that matter, his wonderfully calm, gravely and gravitas-laden radio voice that I still hear clearly in my head as I write, though it is probably 10 years since I heard one of his broadcasts). Nevertheless, the one thing we do share, is that like Cook, I came to this country in my 30s - well late 30s; 39 to be precise. Having grown up in England, with a different cultural heritage, the move has been a times slightly bewildering, but at the same time interestingly revealing. Culture, the set of symbols, myths and things that we take for granted, is obviously something to which one pays almost no attention as one grows up - it becomes an almost invisible and indivisible part of who one is. But when ones is transplanted, that terra firma disappears and the ability to fall back on almost instinctive understanding of “the way things are done around here” evaporates. That’s the hard part.

The interesting part comes because finding things are not what one is used to, brings into sharp relief questions about the way we organize ourselves and assumptions we make, for example about government, the rule of law, the political process, indeed institutions more generally.
In this present observation - I hesitate to say the first of many, since I have no illusions about my ability to be either disciplined or creative in the endeavor - I am struck by materialism. Some take the position, which I do not, that materialism is intrinsically evil; that lusting after the things money can buy is somehow bad in and of itself. A desire to earn money has its good points; it promotes effort and industry. In the right context, it fosters innovation and entrepreneurship. These are good things, things that have made America an exciting as well as wealthy country.

However, the downside of materialism, may come from our overwhelming preoccupation with both the acquisition of money and almost incessant bombardment of enticements for things that money allows us to buy. We are at once fascinated by the lives of those with extraordinary wealth, people who receive more in a week than I can realistically expect to in the rest of my working life. Potentially, a preoccupation with money, and the lives of those who have a lot of it, drives out of our thinking, for no other reason than we have a limited amount of time to think about things, the willingness and subsequently the ability to consider more abstract issues in a nuanced way. Issues such as justice, rights and equity. In turn we are enticed by easy, often overly simplistic solutions to complex problems. A simple solution means we need to spend less time worrying about a problem.

Compounding this, we increasingly delegate to others, usually our elected representatives, the task of considering these questions, but then fail to exercise serious oversight. This creates a fertile ground for corruption to set in. Perhaps this is what is meant by the phrase “a decadent society”.