My personal take-away from the nearly-forgotten swine flu is that we Americans mostly have a really hard time dealing with anything that might be Bigger Than Us.
My first hunch was when Y2K hit and much to my surprise my otherwise rational neighbors began organizing to save water and stock food.
Then came 911 and Americans were running around dumbfounded that anyone would want to do this to us.
"Why do they hate us?" people wondered aloud somehow forgetting the fact that we've been manipulating smaller countries in unsavory ways for decades.
And of course the obvious bigger-than-us thing is the way we spend billions of dollars fleeing the grim reaper with facelifts, rejuvenation Ponzi schemes and fashions that are 30 years too young for us.
Perhaps I got used to living in a country which had been invaded by its nearest neighbor three times in under 75 years; a country where we all mechanically knew what to do when terrorist alerts were announced because we had been bombed before. There is after all something very humbling and challenging in recognizing that terrorists are on your very territory and could cause harm at any time.
Each time questions of porous borders, viruses, terrorism or invasive species come up we as a country have a VERY powerful fear reaction and start talking about fall-out shelters, military action, eradication schemes and quarantine islands.
I think the root cause is mostly historical - we are used to crossing the watery thresholds separating us from most of the world where we do things to others. We're not used to having things done to us on our own turf. We're impenetrable, that is, we do the penetrating thank you very much.
On a personal level the only way for me to overcome my own fears is to safely expose myself to whatever it is I'm frightened of - within reason of course.
I wondered what might be a safe, bigger-than-us thing America could expose itself to in order to get over her fear of anything bigger -- and the resulting paranoid illusion of needing to control everything.
It occurred to me we actually have a really good living example of how a country (actually several) decided to create something bigger than itself : the European Union.
I can already hear you chuckling: "Yea but they got their ass kicked in the war!" Of course. "They were dying empires living in a world dominated by the communist-capitalist spitting contest". Yes - I agree. "And it takes them forever to get anything done." Couldn't agree more.
But whatever their motivation, a group of sovereign countries really did willingly come together and create something they would all agree to pledge allegiance to. Unthinkable in North America. It hasn't been easy. And the outcome has been far from perfect but the process has been incredibly rewarding. (Imagine for just a moment trying to organize international elections to create a democratically elected body to oversee certain aspects of administering Canada, Mexico and the US).
Just recently the UK had to dump thousands of DNA records it had been calmly collecting on every person who'd ever been arrested in that country. The European Court of Human Rights, which they helped create, considered it unethical. Something similar happened for gay rights in otherwise homophobic Poland. Ireland wouldn't have had its economic boom if it hadn't been for the flow of European subsidies to help it build infrastructure (obviously the low corporate taxes helped a lot too).
We Americans have had our opportunity to act in similar ways. But here are just a few examples of how we have refused to submit ourselves to something bigger than us:
- when we don't like judicial decisions we discredit the judges by calling them "activists"
- we trash the Geneva Convention in a time of war
- we poo-poo the UN - created in San Francisco (and regularly default on paying the annual dues we've agreed to)
- we walk away from the global warming agreement
- we carefully offer some NAFTA privileges to Canada but not to Mexico
- we make treaties with sovereign nations then disregard them
- we support countries in organizing democratic elections then remotely organize a coup when we don't like the outcome.
Our Guantanamo Bay dilemma is just the most recent fumble: we believe in the rule of law yet don't organize proper trials on a proper sovereign soil for "outsiders".
The power of a system like the EU is that multiple partners actually help to keep one powermonger from serving him or herself an extra big piece of pie. Thus the bigger-than-us principles that become law mostly exclude corruption and hegemony and usually include such elements as parity, equality, social justice and heightened individual rights.
Of course this also means the participants willingly step into a system of which they are unsure of the outcome but instead learn to trust.
We're living in a world that is becoming more and more multi-polar with rising powerful economic players (Turkey, Brazil, China, India). At the same time we are realizing the cost of stretching our own monetary, scientific, military and humanitarian capacities beyond our capability.
I feel quite strongly that if we don't agree to step into those uncomfortable moments of relinquishing our illusion of control and agree to join Bigger Than Us systems, co-built on rigorous values, we will be left by the wayside by some and continue to be considered the Bastille that needs storming by others.
Erich Fromm said, "Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties."
Letting go of certainties is often a test of faith, surprisingly a notion this country was founded on and its people often tout.
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