Let me ask you to imagine a country. Imagine a country that is what it was but is also about to become more than that, something different, something other, something new.
Imagine that this country becoming more than it has been while still remaining itself is neither the youngest nor the oldest, neither the smallest nor the biggest, neither the healthiest nor the sickest, and, most importantly, neither the happiest nor the saddest of countries.
Imagine that the way it is about to change will not be imposed from without but driven from within; that it would make the change on its own terms—a sign, perhaps, that even if this country is somewhere in the middle of the scale in all the categories I just named, it is at the high end of the scale when it comes to power. It is, relative to other countries, very powerful. Imagine, then, that it would have to want the change it is on the cusp of making.
Why, you might ask, is this country, are its people, on the cusp of making some dramatic change? It turns out that many or even most of the people of this country, no matter where they live or what they do, have a simmering sense of unease. They are uneasy because they believe deep down that their country could be better, that it has so much of what a country needs in order to be better. And they also believe that they used to be better, that they have lost—that they have allowed themselves, and especially the country, to lose—something important. It’s mainly because of this pervasive double sense, the sense of potential and the sense of loss, that they want to try to make the country better.
So then let me ask you: What do these people do? What should they do in order to make this longed-for if uncertain change to the country they constitute? How does a country—or a person, or an organization, or a city, but especially a country—set out to become more and better than it is? How do we, as we are and from within the limits of our present being and our present sense of being less than we could be, step into some other kind of being, some better form?
We could study how our country has been and try, through careful analysis, judgment, and comparison with other countries, to set clear goals and design a wide range of policies and procedures. In other words, we could make a comprehensive plan. (This would not be quick or exciting.) We could outsource our hope of becoming better to a visionary individual, group, or set of tools and trust that the path they envision would improve upon ours. (This would be risky and undemocratic.) We could go further and put our faith in divine counsel and assistance. (This would be just as it sounds: a prayer.) We could look inward and try to change ourselves; if many of us were to dedicate ourselves to becoming better, this approach suggests, the country would become better. (This would be slow and diffuse.) We could try a radical overhaul, blow it up now and sort out later what might be better about the form that emerges after. (This would once again be risky, and another kind of prayer.)
Do you believe that any of these routes to dramatic improvement would respond adequately to the people’s pervasive sense of unease and radically change this imagined country for the better? Do you have the sense that planning or leadership or prayer or self-improvement or arson, or some beautiful combination of these, could decisively move this country to a newer, better form of itself?
There’s another, more insidious question underneath this question about method. The more insidious question is this: What gives you the confidence, the belief, that we can, from where we are, become something better? Especially in the case of an entity as large and complex as a country, what gives you the confidence that the very same people who have gotten us here (by which I mean we, ourselves) can also get us out of here, can take us to the better place we hope to be?
Maybe then there’s one last question about this imagined country, these people on the cusp of trying to dramatically change who they are: Should they do it? Thinking about all it would take and all it would risk, would you, as one of the people of this country, even try?
Adam Davis is executive director of Oregon Humanities.
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