4th of July

Renaissance Humans, #72

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory … will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” – Abraham Lincoln

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It’s 4^th of July weekend in America. Two hundred and forty nine years. A long time for our national experiment, the blink of an eye to many older cultures in the world. Hopefully everyone is taking the time to connect with friends and family. It’s hard to tell how everyone is doing, in our fragmented polity. According to Robert Putnam in “The Upswing”, this trend of disconnection and alienation began in the late 1960s. If we want it to end, we have to collectively decide to end it. That means interacting, relating, and talking. Coming into correspondence with one another. We don’t need to agree or compromise a sacred value to extend grace to others in our orbit.

I was in a plumbing supply store with my uncle a few years ago. As we stood in the checkout line, he shot the breeze with a guy his age (mid-60’s), complaining about the prices of plumbing materials. I wonder if the younger generations are losing this low-key conversational ability—to simply commiserate with a stranger for a moment, without sticking our noses in our phones or growing offended that someone dare attempt to connect with us. I hope I’m wrong.

I think about my friend Mark, who coaches a little league baseball team. It’s amazing how much you can teach kids through sports — so many life lessons. He’s building the foundations of their character and they don’t really notice. Kids from some challenging home situations and schools that may not be the best. One play at a time, he’s cultivating work ethic, perseverance, poise, and an ability to think of someone besides themselves.

My cousin is a local reporter out in California. It’s not sexy national news—it’s the day-to-day grind, the micro stories that directly impact residents of a community. Local news is undergoing a transformation, and I worry about when we lose these eyes and ears to hold local politicians and businesses accountable. We will miss this access to ground truth when it withers away.

And it’s this connective tissue, these bonds to one another that is under strain in this moment, driven by technology and political polarization. I hope July 4^th can serve as a reminder. A reminder we have a shared history. Together. It’s good and it’s bad, just like an individual human life. But it’s ours. It’s a collective, controlled hallucination, this idea of America. It will exist as long as we believe in it, as long as we put nation over party or tribe. My military career was devoted to this imagined community, putting twenty seven years of what Nassim Taleb calls Soul in the Game in service to it.

We can be both proud to be American and acknowledge where we fell short of our ideals (And continue to fall short). We can hold these two positions in tension while working to “form a more perfect union.”

There are groups working to mend the frays and tears of our civic rope, standing in the breach in a time of danger for our Republic. Braver Angels brings Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic ideals. As individuals, group members try to understand the other side’s point of view, even if they don’t agree with it. In our communities, they engage those they disagree with, looking for common ground and ways to work together. In politics, they support principles that bring us together rather than divide us.

At the end of the day, we’re not going to be saved by a great man or woman. Bending toward flourishing will come from the ground level—what the Navy calls the “deckplate.” It will come from all of us, from the slow accumulation of small acts that add to the pattern, to the warp and weft of our collective experience.

We have to decide to do it, together. I hope we do. Happy 4th of July.

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