Posts Tagged → William
The Mayans Were Wrong; William Penn Was Right
Today is both the 12-12-12 date that, according to the dyslexic Mayan Calendar, marks the end of the world, and it is also the anniversary of Pennsylvania’s official entry as a State into the United States.
Delaware beat Pennsylvania as the first state in the Union by a day or two, but nevertheless, the Keystone State is as old as America gets.
That day in 1787, who could have imagined that hand-held gadgets and computer screens would today dominate our materially wealthy society, not just injecting but wrapping citizens in their individual cocoon of fantasy and imagination as real as the reality around them? If personal accountability is at the heart of America’s political and entrepreneurial system, these little gaming gadgets are on the periphery, acting more like huge celestial bodies teasing apart the fabric of the universe through tremendous gravitational force than as some sort of glue holding it all together. Subterfuge and pretend have replaced face-to-face and voice contact between humans. Reality is nearly impossible to define.
When William Penn founded Penn’s Woods, Pennsylvania, he envisioned and then successfully implemented a society where individual liberty was the standard, not the rare exception. Hard work, risk taking, and some personal sacrifice could yield tremendous material benefits to those immigrants willing to undertake them. We proud Pennsylvanians now, his spiritual and physical heirs, try to carry on that tradition amidst a strange array of colliding beliefs, allegiances, and competing values. One such competitor are these little gadgets we all use. Yes, they add efficiency. No, they don’t necessarily add value or depth of understanding. It’s one of the reasons that I do not “friend” people who live near me on FaceBook; if you want to be my “friend,” call me, and let’s schedule some time together with a cold beer and some hot food. There is no substitute for face-to-face time with another person who you value.
Another competitor is the fractured belief system that many new Americans bring with them and that many young Americans now embrace. Young people tattooing their bodies with Japanese and Haida Indian religious symbols, to which they have no connection either ethnically or ideologically, is a substantive example. Another example is the actual widespread fear caused by the Mayan prediction that this day ends the world as we know it. If you are paying attention to the Mayans today, maybe you might consider that their cruel society died out long ago, victim to human sacrifice and poor ecological planning.
This casual rootlessness is not good for America, and it does not reflect the greatness we inherited from those brave founders who stood fast and strong in 1787, against a mighty international British empire that indeed could have ended the world as our founders knew it then and there.
Today, the world will not end. Rather, Pennsylvanians and other Americans will go about their business, quietly drawing on a ever diminishing bank account of sorts to carry us through to the next day, the next transaction, the next political race. Our traditional culture is a metaphorical bank account, a repository of the guiding values and achievements of our progenitors, the people who created the roads, bridges, schools, political infrastructure, and businesses which we now use and take for granted every day. Failing to make deposits into this bank account, and yet withdrawing from it daily, will lead the account to become overdrawn, to become empty, to go bankrupt, and to fail.
That, and not the Mayans, is the great threat staring us in the face now.