"There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others."
Thanks for this wonderful essay! As far as I can tell, the underlying cause for our (humanity’s as a whole) malaise is that through economic prosperity we are digging our own graves — precisely because the added comfort creates an expectation of “no more hardship” (escaping struggle and death, as though that were possible). Reality (nature being the selection pressure valve that is it) will catch up with us soon enough.
Just noticed the great observations you attached to the restack. Might they be worth posting here too (for readers who don't use the app)? Thanks again anyway
Here is what I wrote — this is an essay that reminded me of a number of things: America, as a nation, has always shown a surprising resilience in the face of (human) folly. Even when people fall into traps of their own making — desiring comfort where grit is needed, or believing that all communication that is an expression of “freedom of speech” is a net positive where wisdom often suggests silence to be the needed gold — the spirit behind it all will, after walking smack into the dead end, hitting its head in the process, turn around and explore a more fruitful path. How long America still needs to bang its head against the wall of denial that we are on the wrong track with our hyper-individual accounting of reward, forgetting our neighbors (who we must rely on in times of need), remains to be seen. But a reminder of living in the country that has shown this resilience time and again is of great value!
What is "hyper" individual accounting of reward? It's either individual or it's not. Like pregnancy, it has been proven time and again at great cost, that you cannot be a little bit collectivist. Unless it's changed recently, Americans are per capita the most generous people on earth. NOTHING that is done by a government is charitable, nor is it efficiently focused. Think the Cajun Navy post Katrina. There are many other publicly documented instances but I'm getting old.
The "hyper" aspect I see is cultural (not technical, and not top-down instructed, but bottom-up lost). In the past, especially when the overall living conditions of the majority of people did have much more uncertainty baked in (my grandparents were born during or at the end of WW1, and lived through WW2, and my parents were born during or at the end of WW2, after which a lot of things were totally up in the air, and nothing was certain), people understood intuitively and implicitly that no-one is an island, and that everyone's success required their local community to be a a reliable safety net. We replaced the notion of family and neighborhood providing this safety with individualized entitlements (unemployment insurance, retirement accounts, etc.), and people no longer follow religious traditions to "love thigh neighbor as thyself." And this does not mean people aren't generous or charitable, but that the charity and basic camaraderie *within one's community* ("Bowling Alone" comes to mind) has dropped precipitously...
Our Sundays were never quite the same after Cooke died and, with him, his broadcast Letter from America. Many thanks for quoting that terrific extract from his Epilogue to “America” - what prescience.
The future is never what you imagine it might be (remember Tomorrow's World on TV?) and so that makes me optimistic. Something always turns up (divine intervention?) to change the course of history in an unexpected way. Meteors. Inventions. Revolutions. Something.....
A very interesting article. Thank you! The comparison with the Roman Empire especially strikes a chord: “The race is on between its (the USA’s) decadence and its vitality”. Of the two runners, Decadence has good stamina, and with Vitality carrying USD 38tn of debt and extreme cultural polarisation, it’s going to be a very close race.
Now that's a comment that feels like it ought to have an exclamation mark at the end of it! Yes I could bore people to death with my lifelong fascination with trains (and my large collection of heritage toy ones)....but I have to spare my 2000 subscribers who come for my reflections on the zeitgeist, not my train set.
If you enjoyed this essay Ashlei you would likely enjoy many of the others. STB is not a news blog; it's a collection of essays and - if that's your thing - I hope you will take a free subscription.
Letter From America immediately takes me back to Sunday dinner in the oven and the wireless by the window bringing imagery of somewhere almost impossibly exotic in comparison to the world of a working class lad in the East Midlands of the '60s and '70s. I even remember now another young lad in my primary school who had been given a Pan-Am lapel badge by a relative , and thinking how cool that was! And of course the popular culture of Man From Uncle, Streets of San Francisco and Hawaii Five-O and all the rest only cemented that impression of America being, just....blazing vibrant Kodachrome in every aspect. Thank you for the memories and writing.
Thank you for this...and for the restack. "takes me back".....we're both at an age, aren't we, when more and more of one's thoughts turn to 'take me back'!
Yes Dido and welcome onboard. Early on in this Substack collection of essays I explained the title as originating from Yeats' wonderful poem The Second Coming.....in this essay from 2023: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
"The race is on between its decadence and its vitality", the human species is an evolving organism forever engaged in this struggle. I agree with Graham that while in Europe the struggle has become more of a last gasp for air, in America the struggle is considerably more vigorous and violent, a sign of imperfect life. This is perfectly demonstrated by the contrast between a bombastic Trump and a senile Biden. Europe is culturally mature but senile if we are willing to be honest with ourselves. America is recovering from its romantic infectuation with a post cold-war idealism of global peace. Yes, the romanticism still lingers in 30-40% of Americans, especially among the intellectual elites and younger generations who were brain washed by the elites. Yet, the traditoinal American prgamatism and dynamism are alive and well, partially reflected in the election of Donald Trump that no one predicted. Will the Americans succeed in correcting the course and beat back the socialist impulse that historically always ends in authoritarianism? Only time will tell. I for one remain optimistic.
Very nice essay, Graham. I also fear the "ever greater bureaucratic strictures". I still don't quite understand where they come from.
I just finished writing an essay contrasting freedom of speech in America with Britain, not two hours ago. We probably disagree on this, but I spent half of my life living in America, and I am less optimistic about its future.
I think your comparison of wokeness in the two countries is too bleak on the UK, too. I don't think the dominance of DEI was nearly as severe over here, and we don't have their more extreme racial politics to deal with. We even had the Supreme Court declare the fixed nature of our sexes. Wokeness is on its way out of the back door, but the USA is not there yet.
Keep writing, Graham, and I'll keep reading.
PS. I don't know why I am so familiar with Alistair Cooke. I am too young to have watched him on TV, and I don't remember reading him. Perhaps he had a column in a newspaper?
Thanks Ragged....and good to hear from you again. For me the key difference is (as far as can be stuffed into a single sentence) this. Yes American politics has had more extremes of wokeness but - unlike Britain - conservatism has always also remained strong. Trump, Bush and Reagan all got around 50% of the vote there whereas in Britain they would have struggled to get 5%. THAT, in my view, is what has gone so badly wrong in Britain and Europe.... the Progressive/managerialist 'blob' has hold of almost the entire professional middle classes....whereas in America only ever HALF of them.
Alistair Cooke's BBC Home Service weekly 'Letter From America' was a very big deal for several decades and especially in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up.
I wasn't here during this period, but the Conservative Party were in office for 14 years. I'd agree that they were not as "conservative" as Tory governments of years past, and I was certainly astonished to learn that many of the policies that I find distasteful (on speech, on NCHIs, on diversity) came from the Tory government. Still, fourteen years. That's a long time.
I agree with you that the conservatives of the Republican Party have had more power in America than conservatives here, but I don't think we can reasonably think of the present government as conservative. And I think there is worse to come.
The Tory Party has - with the crucial exception of the Thatcher decade - not been conservative in any meaningful sense since WW2. It has - as one comentator put it - been 'Left liberal on a time delay'. Conservatism has always remained strong in the USA despite being on the back foot for those decades (even when nominally 'in power'.
There's lots of struggling, it's just struggling through phone-mazes and internet-mazes in order to sustain one's ability to pay rent and bills for a crappy little wifeless apartment that's sort of near a little park that one used to walk around but no longer does because it's full of immigrants' pitbull-shit.
Ah, very nice as always, and I remember that passage, "The past is a different country....they do things differently there" in a favorite movie of mine from the early 70's, "The Go-Between" with Julie Christie and Alan Bates........
I've been thinking about that phrase "The American Dream" lately since I hear it so much on US television and remembered a book by Norman Mailer of that name, which seemed to suggest the American Dream was a nightmare. And then Henry Miller wrote the air-conditioned nightmare, which might have been a woke tract before its time. The past is indeed another country and we seem to be unmoored from it these days. What remains? Yehuda Amichai said the sheets on the top of the closet, that's what remains. Maybe there are only catchphrases echoing in an empty closet of the mind.
"There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others."
- John Ruskin
Great quote there Gwyneth
Thanks for this wonderful essay! As far as I can tell, the underlying cause for our (humanity’s as a whole) malaise is that through economic prosperity we are digging our own graves — precisely because the added comfort creates an expectation of “no more hardship” (escaping struggle and death, as though that were possible). Reality (nature being the selection pressure valve that is it) will catch up with us soon enough.
Thank you Jochen
Also just restacked (after getting back to a regular keyboard)...
Just noticed the great observations you attached to the restack. Might they be worth posting here too (for readers who don't use the app)? Thanks again anyway
Here is what I wrote — this is an essay that reminded me of a number of things: America, as a nation, has always shown a surprising resilience in the face of (human) folly. Even when people fall into traps of their own making — desiring comfort where grit is needed, or believing that all communication that is an expression of “freedom of speech” is a net positive where wisdom often suggests silence to be the needed gold — the spirit behind it all will, after walking smack into the dead end, hitting its head in the process, turn around and explore a more fruitful path. How long America still needs to bang its head against the wall of denial that we are on the wrong track with our hyper-individual accounting of reward, forgetting our neighbors (who we must rely on in times of need), remains to be seen. But a reminder of living in the country that has shown this resilience time and again is of great value!
What is "hyper" individual accounting of reward? It's either individual or it's not. Like pregnancy, it has been proven time and again at great cost, that you cannot be a little bit collectivist. Unless it's changed recently, Americans are per capita the most generous people on earth. NOTHING that is done by a government is charitable, nor is it efficiently focused. Think the Cajun Navy post Katrina. There are many other publicly documented instances but I'm getting old.
The "hyper" aspect I see is cultural (not technical, and not top-down instructed, but bottom-up lost). In the past, especially when the overall living conditions of the majority of people did have much more uncertainty baked in (my grandparents were born during or at the end of WW1, and lived through WW2, and my parents were born during or at the end of WW2, after which a lot of things were totally up in the air, and nothing was certain), people understood intuitively and implicitly that no-one is an island, and that everyone's success required their local community to be a a reliable safety net. We replaced the notion of family and neighborhood providing this safety with individualized entitlements (unemployment insurance, retirement accounts, etc.), and people no longer follow religious traditions to "love thigh neighbor as thyself." And this does not mean people aren't generous or charitable, but that the charity and basic camaraderie *within one's community* ("Bowling Alone" comes to mind) has dropped precipitously...
Our Sundays were never quite the same after Cooke died and, with him, his broadcast Letter from America. Many thanks for quoting that terrific extract from his Epilogue to “America” - what prescience.
The future is never what you imagine it might be (remember Tomorrow's World on TV?) and so that makes me optimistic. Something always turns up (divine intervention?) to change the course of history in an unexpected way. Meteors. Inventions. Revolutions. Something.....
A very interesting article. Thank you! The comparison with the Roman Empire especially strikes a chord: “The race is on between its (the USA’s) decadence and its vitality”. Of the two runners, Decadence has good stamina, and with Vitality carrying USD 38tn of debt and extreme cultural polarisation, it’s going to be a very close race.
Thanks Richard for your kind comment
Thanks Graham. Wonderful essay. Just bought Alistair Cooke’s book on Audible. Looking forward to it. 🇺🇸
Thanks LSO....and for your helpful restack comment too. I'm sure you won't be disappointed in Cooke's America.
Material wealth devoid of spiritual wealth is absolute misery, and can only be such. Pascal noted that long before our time.
That's the Real issue.
I enjoyed this essay, but I expected it to feature more trains.
Now that's a comment that feels like it ought to have an exclamation mark at the end of it! Yes I could bore people to death with my lifelong fascination with trains (and my large collection of heritage toy ones)....but I have to spare my 2000 subscribers who come for my reflections on the zeitgeist, not my train set.
If you enjoyed this essay Ashlei you would likely enjoy many of the others. STB is not a news blog; it's a collection of essays and - if that's your thing - I hope you will take a free subscription.
Letter From America immediately takes me back to Sunday dinner in the oven and the wireless by the window bringing imagery of somewhere almost impossibly exotic in comparison to the world of a working class lad in the East Midlands of the '60s and '70s. I even remember now another young lad in my primary school who had been given a Pan-Am lapel badge by a relative , and thinking how cool that was! And of course the popular culture of Man From Uncle, Streets of San Francisco and Hawaii Five-O and all the rest only cemented that impression of America being, just....blazing vibrant Kodachrome in every aspect. Thank you for the memories and writing.
Thank you for this...and for the restack. "takes me back".....we're both at an age, aren't we, when more and more of one's thoughts turn to 'take me back'!
I am jumping in here - with still very little idea of the thrust of the site.
The comments in the thread, thus far, are very interesting.
The main thing that made me interested is the "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" title.
The phrase brings to mind Yeat's poem ... not Joan Didion's book.
In any case, I think I am now aboard for the ride. :)
Yes Dido and welcome onboard. Early on in this Substack collection of essays I explained the title as originating from Yeats' wonderful poem The Second Coming.....in this essay from 2023: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
"The race is on between its decadence and its vitality", the human species is an evolving organism forever engaged in this struggle. I agree with Graham that while in Europe the struggle has become more of a last gasp for air, in America the struggle is considerably more vigorous and violent, a sign of imperfect life. This is perfectly demonstrated by the contrast between a bombastic Trump and a senile Biden. Europe is culturally mature but senile if we are willing to be honest with ourselves. America is recovering from its romantic infectuation with a post cold-war idealism of global peace. Yes, the romanticism still lingers in 30-40% of Americans, especially among the intellectual elites and younger generations who were brain washed by the elites. Yet, the traditoinal American prgamatism and dynamism are alive and well, partially reflected in the election of Donald Trump that no one predicted. Will the Americans succeed in correcting the course and beat back the socialist impulse that historically always ends in authoritarianism? Only time will tell. I for one remain optimistic.
Very nice essay, Graham. I also fear the "ever greater bureaucratic strictures". I still don't quite understand where they come from.
I just finished writing an essay contrasting freedom of speech in America with Britain, not two hours ago. We probably disagree on this, but I spent half of my life living in America, and I am less optimistic about its future.
I think your comparison of wokeness in the two countries is too bleak on the UK, too. I don't think the dominance of DEI was nearly as severe over here, and we don't have their more extreme racial politics to deal with. We even had the Supreme Court declare the fixed nature of our sexes. Wokeness is on its way out of the back door, but the USA is not there yet.
Keep writing, Graham, and I'll keep reading.
PS. I don't know why I am so familiar with Alistair Cooke. I am too young to have watched him on TV, and I don't remember reading him. Perhaps he had a column in a newspaper?
https://raggedclown.substack.com/p/i-dont-want-your-freedom
Thanks Ragged....and good to hear from you again. For me the key difference is (as far as can be stuffed into a single sentence) this. Yes American politics has had more extremes of wokeness but - unlike Britain - conservatism has always also remained strong. Trump, Bush and Reagan all got around 50% of the vote there whereas in Britain they would have struggled to get 5%. THAT, in my view, is what has gone so badly wrong in Britain and Europe.... the Progressive/managerialist 'blob' has hold of almost the entire professional middle classes....whereas in America only ever HALF of them.
Alistair Cooke's BBC Home Service weekly 'Letter From America' was a very big deal for several decades and especially in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up.
I wasn't here during this period, but the Conservative Party were in office for 14 years. I'd agree that they were not as "conservative" as Tory governments of years past, and I was certainly astonished to learn that many of the policies that I find distasteful (on speech, on NCHIs, on diversity) came from the Tory government. Still, fourteen years. That's a long time.
I agree with you that the conservatives of the Republican Party have had more power in America than conservatives here, but I don't think we can reasonably think of the present government as conservative. And I think there is worse to come.
The Tory Party has - with the crucial exception of the Thatcher decade - not been conservative in any meaningful sense since WW2. It has - as one comentator put it - been 'Left liberal on a time delay'. Conservatism has always remained strong in the USA despite being on the back foot for those decades (even when nominally 'in power'.
There's lots of struggling, it's just struggling through phone-mazes and internet-mazes in order to sustain one's ability to pay rent and bills for a crappy little wifeless apartment that's sort of near a little park that one used to walk around but no longer does because it's full of immigrants' pitbull-shit.
Ah, very nice as always, and I remember that passage, "The past is a different country....they do things differently there" in a favorite movie of mine from the early 70's, "The Go-Between" with Julie Christie and Alan Bates........
I've been thinking about that phrase "The American Dream" lately since I hear it so much on US television and remembered a book by Norman Mailer of that name, which seemed to suggest the American Dream was a nightmare. And then Henry Miller wrote the air-conditioned nightmare, which might have been a woke tract before its time. The past is indeed another country and we seem to be unmoored from it these days. What remains? Yehuda Amichai said the sheets on the top of the closet, that's what remains. Maybe there are only catchphrases echoing in an empty closet of the mind.