The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #9
Did you know understanding is the key to the future? Historical understanding, that is. Undeniably, the future cannot exclusively be about itself. Because the future hasn’t happened yet, it doesn’t exist. Consequently the future can’t be about nothing; it very likely will be about something.

Therefore, the future must be about the past. Whether as individuals or as a society, we will always engage the future in relation to the past. We might reasonably say that the future blends inevitably into the past, even as the past inescapably blends into the future.

The better we understand our yesterdays, the more capable we shall be at advantageously influencing our days to come. The converse must therefore be equally as true: the less we know about our yesterdays, the less capable we become at beneficially directing our tomorrows.

In a very real sense, we experience from our lack of historical understanding a form of blindness- both cultural and intellectual. We will, so to speak, be driving into the future with more blind spots than our favorite luxury SUV. We shall become increasingly blind to the historical solutions for tomorrow’s problems. Want some actual examples?

Did you know that the current financial/economic mess in America (and the rest of the industrialized world) is actually a symptom of a much larger- and more dangerous- social problem emanating from the early twentieth century? Thus, financial/economic solutions alone will not repair the mess, yet that’s exactly what we’re “banking” on.

Did you know that within the roughly thirty year period, from the early 1950’s to the end of the 1980’s, all of the tools and knowledge were developed to tap into an inexpensive and virtually limitless source of energy- possessing a relatively small processing cost? Yet the Federal government still is advancing the expensive and much less suitable ideas of wind farms, nuclear power and miles of solar panels.

Did you know that the theory of biological evolution can easily and quickly be disproved using knowledge available since the eighteenth century European Enlightenment, thereby preparing the way for the next giant stride in human intellectual progress? Yet the allegiance of the scientific community to evolution is so tenacious, they’ll engage in all sorts of monkey business to prevent you from hearing about it (view Ben Stein's movie, "Expelled"- a Must See on DVD).

And what can we reasonably speculate about America’s future? Perhaps, if we once again consult history…