What Is Happening To Life In America?

In the twenty-first century, America is at its most advanced state of technological development. Economic surplus is at an all-time high, never in history had our people been more productive. But things are not entirely ok, there are numerous signs of worsening life conditions. Most alarmingly, misery is on the rise. Decent homes are becoming unaffordable for everyday folk. Job security is increasingly rare. Medical bills inspire as much terror as medical problems. Gun deaths are higher than ever and retirement is a growing ticking bomb for most. These are all big ticket items, it's misery with capital M.

Decline in American living standards is real and manifests in many ways, but the obvious signs of regression are masked by the otherwise improving quality of life, "hidden away" from perception by the many conveniences of the market economy and the advances in technology and entertainment. Making things even harder is the pace of modern life, which does not afford a pause to notice the symptoms, let alone do anything about them. Americans today are too busy, financially stressed, with no spare savings or time for leisure, much less the bandwidth to participate in any project of social improvement or transformation.

You may disagree with the above. You could say that this kind of dystopian rhetoric — of seeing something uniquely and unprecedentedly awful in the late modern condition — is wrong because it presupposes that human life and existence were not always complicated. After all, human history has been plagued by calamity... How is everyone today not poor, sick, and hungry? Was poverty not the "default" state of humanity? That is, after all, how it all started, isn't it?

There is little wisdom in denying that human life has improved. By all means, we should be thankful for the progress we have made. In many ways, modern life is a miracle. In the last two centuries, economic growth and technological progress have freed humankind of disease, hunger, and many other burdens. But it would be equally silly to deny that America today, with its current levels of output, can already provide a decent life for every family without exclusion.

And yet, in 2023, the number of people experiencing homelessness, hunger, and other forms of extreme misery hit a new high. American streets are lined with people living in unacceptable conditions, in vagrancy, undergoing exceptionally hard personal situations and at risk of falling further into addiction, trafficking, and other kinds of predation. At the same time, city downtowns sit empty, hollowed by market dynamics that prioritize profit above all else. Dozens of buildings holding acres of office space stand idly looking for a purpose. American prisons are beyond capacity, there are more people living imprisoned than ever before. Addiction to opioids and amphetamines is increasingly common and devastating. The tragedies go on... When did we allow our cities to become museums of social decay?

You would think that such sharp evidence, tangible to you and me through our shared experience of everyday life, would be enough to justify a serious examination of the problem. Surprisingly though, for too many people the worsening is completely invisible, severed from perception by choice, chance, or negligence. For many others, the decline is visible but not directly attributable to the causes of improvement in other areas of life, like new technologies becoming adopted or new laws becoming enacted. Most of the time, people simply do not have the energy to think about the topic because they are busy surviving and providing for their families. It is often the case that people learn about the symptoms on the news or the Internet but proceed to do nothing about it simply because the problem is outside their sphere of influence.

You could say it's a matter of leadership... Can't we just vote the right people into office to tackle the problem? Maybe, San Francisco just needs a different mayor (!) Sadly, it's not that kind of problem (if only it were that simple); leadership keeps changing but the problem keeps getting worse. Furthermore, the social troubles of San Francisco have parallels in most every major American city, just in different intensities. Is that not suggestive that the root causes of decay are common across the country? These are the so-called "intractable" problems of society. They belong in a special category of situations that get out of hand precisely because they fall out of perception or priority — they are authentic societal blindspots.

⚭ Topic Nexus

• What is Human Flourishing?

• What is Human Cooperation?

• What is America?