Feeling a Lack of Aspirations for the Future?

I was talking with my wife this morning about something that feels like it might resonate with a lot of other people out there. We were discussing our careers and plans for starting a family— and it hit me that we struggle to have aspirations for the future.

Living in a broken society means it is painful to think about changing jobs (if you happen to be lucky enough to have stable work these days). It’s grueling to search job boards and think about how many other applicants you’ll be competing against for anything worth applying for.

It also means the thought of buying a house is off in La La land. Only the already-wealthy can afford to buy houses in most American cities. Where we live in Seattle, the cheap run-down homes can be condemned and still cost over $400,000. Bidding wars are now routine for home purchases in major cities across the country.

With inequality so chronic and severe, we are all deeply attuned to the fact that a tiny portion of our society lives like royalty while everyone else experiences a downward spiral of decreasing opportunities and greater hardship on the horizon.

Let’s face it. It’s hard to be aspirational when this is the reality most of us face on a daily basis.

So what can be done to revitalize the American Dream (or its equivalent in other parts of the world)? How do we cultivate the strength of spirit to hope and plan for a better future? The first thing we need to do is be realistic — which means we need to acknowledge a few basic truths about what is happening in the world today.

Reality Check #1 :: Wealth inequality is a feature not a bug.

In the jargon of software development, something is a “feature” if it is there by design. Something is a “bug” if the software was poorly written in a way that created errors by accident. We need to recognize that the extreme levels of inequality are here by design. They were created by wealth hoarding from very rich people who rigged the financial system (and routinely corrupt the political process) to accumulate money and power for themselves.

This is why wealth inequality has risen continuously between 1980 and today. Once the Reagan Administration began the process of deregulating the financial sector — a pattern continued by every Congress and president since — the garden was prepared by the wealth hoarders, for the wealth hoarders. And boy did they reap what they sowed.

Things like tax cuts for the rich combined with market regulations structured to benefit the largess of capital investors… a recipe for transferring wealth from working people to the top 0.1% for many years to come.

Reality Check #2 :: The population explosion matters.

It may be uncomfortable to talk about it, but having a human population grow from less than a billion people to the current level of 7.4 billion in the last century is going to have planetary-scale impacts.

We are now consuming more of nature’s bounty than can be replenished. The notion of scarcity in economic theories has gone from the status of flawed assumption to being an empirical fact for many natural resources that are rapidly being depleted. What this means is that we have to share what remains among a very large community of people. And the number of people is larger than it has ever been before in history.

Combine this with the fact that a global architecture of wealth extraction has been created to hoard wealth worldwide and we’ve really got a serious problem to deal with here!

Reality Check #3 :: Ecological decline means less economic opportunity.

A lot of dogmatic economists like to pretend that the economy is separate from the environment. They are either delusional or insane. In the real world, economies arise from (and are embedded within) the natural world.

This matters for us as we ponder the future because things like global warming, a planetary decline in topsoils for growing food, massive deforestation, and pillaging of ecosystems means human communities are at greater risk of hardship in the future. Our economies are suffering because the environments they depend on have become sick. Even worse, we are kicking these environments while they’re down by trying to grow our way out of a problem created by a previous period of explosive growth.

What this means for us everyday folks is that the spoils that have been so unfairly distributed in the past are not going to be there in the same amounts in the future. We have to become frugal and wise stewards of existing wealth if we don’t want our grandchildren to starve.

It can be pretty hard to aspire for better tomorrows when the real world is getting worse by so many measures.

A Silver Lining and Cause for (Cautious-Yet-Realistic) Hope

You might think, if you’ve read this far, that I am not hopeful about the future. The surprising thing is that I find comfort in being able to know these things and make sense of what is happening around me.

Just as humanity is in crisis on a planetary scale, we have at our fingertips all the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate through the hardships to come and create a truly better future on the other side.

Here’s how we can do it.

• Familiarize ourselves with the history of how things came to be this way. It turns out we know pretty much all of it. There are historians, policy researchers, cultural anthropologists, sociologists and more who have unpacked the mechanisms that gave rise to inequality, built up the now-antiquated systems of governance that are failing us now, and the processes through which we can replace them with something that works.
• Practice thinking systemically about how all the pieces work together. There are no silver bullets but plenty of great solutions to try out. Whether you start a community garden or join a food co-op, make purchases from social-impact companies or put your money in a credit union, there are time tested ways to increase resilience in your community locally and be part of a global movement to spread solutions at the same time. But only if you think in terms of systems and their interdependencies.
• Think big picture and long term. A great plague of short-termism has gotten far too many people thinking in minutes, hours, and days when they need to be thinking in years, decades, and centuries. Our ancestors have been hunting and gathering for nearly three million years (all the way back to the first tool users in eastern and southern Africa). They figured a lot out that we can relearn from them — but only if we take the long view.
• Don’t settle for the choices offered to you. If we only voted for establishment candidates and bought from multinational companies, the options would be limited indeed. Luckily, there are plenty more choices to be found by going out and looking for them. You can find (or create) meaningful work. Be part of a purposeful organization. Contribute to evolving your community. Start a new political party. Do new things and try something different that is appropriate to the times we are living in today.

I write these things to remind myself that it is still possible to dream. In fact, we need dreamers now more than ever! The only way to break free of dystopias — which is all that Hollywood seems to offer with its litany of apocalyptic films — is to be the change you are looking for.

Find inspiration among your peers. If you don’t see it there, become an inspiration FOR your peers. We need each other desperately.

From this day forth, I shall practice the diligent trade of being aspirational. When I see myself failing to look for positive healing options, I will remember that it is my duty to be an inspiration for others. And I will continually be on the lookout for other aspirational people who are on the same path.

We can do it, my fellow humans. I believe in us.

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