The Collapse of the American Algorithm - Part 1
The anxiety swirling around the country is palpable. Home foreclosures, skyrocketing gas prices, a 28-year low in consumer confidence, a melting dollar, surging personal bankruptcies, and so on. Hard working families are feeling the American Dream slip away from them, and prospects for the next generation look grim. As we saw in earlier posts on the liberal and conservative narratives, this general sense of foreboding is what drives our politicians and pundits to craft stories of blame. Since things used to be so good, and yet are now so bad, someone must be at fault. Some party, some philosophy, some cultural strain must be held responsible for the evaporating prospects of our great nation. Who killed the American Dream?
As we all know, the American Dream mythology posits that as long as people are willing to work hard and fly straight, they can make a better future for themselves and/or their children. America is the Land of Opportunity, a huge treasure chest of riches that can be unlocked with the keys of toil, piety, and patriotism. Conservatives and liberals of course have different codicils for their respective versions of the American Dream. The Right emphasizes that hard work must always be backed by a strong commitment to God, country and family to reach fruition. And the Left will embed their version of the Dream in the supporting structures of education, tolerance of diversity, and an openness to new knowledge. But in any case, the core belief in the American Dream is robustly entrenched across the social and political spectrum. And as things continue to unravel, the finger-pointing will get bonier and pointier.
But as with many things, our conceptual model is crucial to understanding the many challenges we face in the years ahead. And the American Dream motif needs to be retired for something that better captures our predicament. The idea that hard work, with certain cultural support fins, would forever be the linchpin for success, no matter what the surrounding economic, social, and ecological conditions, is simply untenable. The American Dream idea can no longer do any heavy lifting, and likely never could.
The current state of our nation can be better understood as the unfolding of an algorithm. For those of us (myself included) who left all higher mathematical thinking back in the halls of high school, this is a refresher:
An algorithm is a finite list of well-defined instructions for accomplishing some task that, given an initial state, will proceed through a well-defined series of successive states, eventually terminating in an end-state.
OR
A set of rules or instructions that will result in the solution of a problem. An algorithm gives a decision procedure, or computable method for solving a problem. Although an algorithm will solve the problem, it may not do so efficiently.
In a wide interpretation of this idea, many phenomena in society and nature can be seen in terms of algorithms. Complex processes often operate according to well-defined rules and processes. Evolution itself can be seen as a series of algorithms, a slow unfolding of rules to solve the 'problem' of survival. In the context of what we're talking about, the current condition of America, the algorithm motif is highly useful. Let's consider the 'problem' or task that the American Algorithm is in place to solve. As in most democratic societies, the task is simply the flourishing of the people. How can the lives of American citizens be bettered? What will allow the people to live successfully? Not all states or cultures throughout history have existed with this as their primary task, or even as one of many. Many political entities have had the aggrandizement of their rulers as their main or only goal. But one of the geniuses of the Western democratic tradition is that the purpose of the state is to serve the people's well-being (or at least that is the theory).
So we have the task for our American Algorithm. What are the rules or instructions we have put in place to accomplish that goal? What procedures do we follow to allow the people to flourish? It is here that we begin to see the difficulties. This is the American rule set as I see it:
- The basic economic unit is the individual. One person, one job. Each person should have a well-defined suite of economic skills and economic desires.
- The basic social form is the nuclear family, at the very largest. Some people can function socially as individuals or in couples, which is fine (although somewhat deficient). But the optimal, "normal" condition of living is one family, one dwelling.
- The economic backbone of the nation is business-centered, free-market growth. All economic indicators of health are pegged to expansion: more money, more products, more technology, more jobs, more spending. More is better.
- The role of government is to foster economic growth. While different camps have alternate methods for accomplishing this (conservative laissez-faire vs. liberal, Keynesian pump-priming), the goal is the same: expansion of the money economy.
- The highest cultural value is freedom. Individuals should be free to believe, say and do what they like, provided that other people are not directly harmed. Families should be free to pursue their own dreams of success, without state interference or interdiction. And businesses should be free to maximize their productivity and profitability, without excessive government taxation and regulation.
That's essentially it. These are the pillars of the American Algorithm, as related to the goal of maximizing human flourishing. There are certainly many other cultural, philosophical, and economic things going on, and conservatives and liberals fight like wild dogs over the contours of these basic ideas. But at bottom, this is really all we have in place to both produce and explain the well-being of the American people. Thousands of other discussions are going on, as you would expect in a nation of close to 300 million people. But no discourse that challenges these tenets has been able to push into the mainstream spotlight. These ideas are establishment canon on the right and left.
Of course, it's not hard to see that this set of rules is absolutely incapable of dealing with current realities. These ideas have almost nothing to say about the most serious things that confront us in America today: global warming, collapsing ecosystems, gross economic inequality, epidemic abuse of legal and illegal drugs, a self-perpetuating crime/prison underclass, the disappearance of critical journalism, the trivialization, hyper-violence, and oversexualization of popular culture, etc. The ideas behind the American Algorithm just do not have the intellectual chops to address these problems. So when confronted with a panoply of continued failures, our leaders and pundits turn to two tactics: they blame someone else ("left wing haters" or "cuckoo conservatives") for interfering with the functioning of the algorithm, and then they propose more of the same algorithm, dressed up with the spin-du-jour. So every election cycle, we get endless promises that our new candidates finally have the correct recipe for unleashing true individual freedom, or true dynamic business growth, or whatever. Gas is too expensive? No matter -- we'll bring you biodiesel hyper-cars, or Strategic Reserve oil, or real energy independence. Household income is flat while the cost of living is surging? No problem -- we'll get you federal job programs, or tuition credits, or some sweet "tax relief." Just vote for us, and we'll sweep out the old guard, who are really enemies of freedom. We will be the ones to finally unleash the potency of the American Dream!
We know it's hogwash. We know it won't work. We know the next regime will bring more of the same. So many of us just tune out, don't vote at all, or base our electoral decisions on suit color, oral sex history, or beer-at-kitchen-table preference. We have nowhere to turn for true inspiration, for viably honest and new approaches to our situation. So we end up hoping for the political Trojan Horse, the candidate who must say the same old crap on the campaign trail, but who then might prove to have actually fresh ideas when taking office.
It won't happen. We're not going to get the Trojan Horse we're hoping for, as long as the tenets of the American Algorithm remain in place. We must confront the reality that this American equation for producing well-being has collapsed, and needs to be fundamentally rebuilt. Huge systemic and structural changes have to happen at the bottom of our society. Let me rephrase that: huge changes will happen, whether we like it or not -- the physical and economic conditions are certain, and inflexible. The question is, will these changes happen to us as unexpected, violent dislocations, or can we craft some kind of mechanism to deal with them in an orderly fashion?
As we'll hopefully see in the next post, there are two keystones for dealing with the wrenching times ahead . The individual economic unit and the nuclear family social form must and will go by the wayside. These two pillars, despite their enshrinement in the American imagination, are actually both the primary drivers behind our predicament, as well as the root impediments to actually envisioning a viable future.
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