Most of us have grown our entire lives learning about how America is the best country on Earth, democracy the best system of government, and capitalism the best economic system anyone has ever thought of. We learn in history classes about the high ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that America promises. Although many people of our generation have learned the hard way that the American Dream is not real, there is a persistent belief in American exceptionalism. We believe that America is the land of equality and freedom from tyranny; a special and sacred land of the free and home of the brave. In short, most of us are proud to be Americans.
Yet America has a long history of being so stubbornly prideful that our greatest strengths over time become our greatest weaknesses. This can be seen in the decline of the American automobile industry, where an unwillingness to innovate and modernize fuel inefficient SUVs led to the extreme decline and eventually bailout of the auto industry. The widespread anger and support for outsider candidates on both sides of the political spectrum during this election process are emblematic of this problem. Many of us have come to see Washington as broken. According to Gallup, Congressional approval ratings are currently at fourteen percent. Similarly, many Americans are fed up with the economic and social realities of stagnating wages, low social mobility, and continuing racism and discrimination. Yet despite all of this, most Americans still hold a deep pride for their country, American democracy, and capitalism in general.
Of all the seven deadly sins, pride is known as the most deadly, and the origin of all of the six other sins. The ancient Greek tragedy almost always focuses on the concept of hubris (extreme and exaggerated pride) and the catastrophes that result from it. Unfortunately, our American pride too often turns into hubris.
America, for all its glory and achievement, is only the latest in a long series of empires and civilizations claiming to represent the height of human achievement. Every society we have ever studied in history thought that they were the greatest that had ever lived. Whether it is the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, Romans, British, Chinese, Inca, or anybody else, every powerful society that has ever existed has thought that there must be no system better than their own. But every empire will one day fall. America’s power will surely wane someday. Someday, hundreds or thousands of years from now, people will study the results and consequences of American global power in their history books. They will also study our seemingly antiquated system of governance and economics, and ultimately examine how flawed and imperfect our society is.
But it is not just our pride in America, democracy, and capitalism that needs to be checked. As human beings, it is in our fundamental nature to think that we are somehow special, unique, and better than other animals and beings. For millennia, we convinced ourselves that humanity was specially endowed by God, above and unrelated to the other species of planet Earth. Then Darwin popularized evolution, and we expanded the theory to say that humans have superior genes, intellect, and/or ability compared to other species. But however hard it may be to admit, the truth is that there is really not that much at all that separates us from the other animals of planet earth. The human genome only differs from that of chimpanzees by about 1.5 to 5 percent. In the grand fourteen billion year history of the Universe, human civilization has only existed for about 10,000 years. It is nothing short of prideful ignorance to think that we, as humanity, America, democracy, or anything else, are the culmination of all of this history. We, as a society, often let our pride lead us into thinking that we are massively more important than we really are.
The failure to understand these truths is the cause of many of our problems in society. The reason so many people in my hometown believe that racism in America is dead is because they don’t see how twenty first century post-civil rights America could be anything but great and equal for all. It is the reason why so many people believe that our current broken political, healthcare, and economic systems do not need fundamental change. People have a status quo bias and believe that society does not need any large changes, since we have only gotten
Humanity and America have both achieved great things. We have built buildings hundreds of stories tall, can travel from California to Japan in the span of a few hours, and even put a man on the moon. Yet we have also led ourselves to the brink of nuclear annihilation, committed genocide on an unthinkably massive scale, and are in the process of changing the very climate of the Earth. We need to, as a society, better recognize these truths. We need to recognize the limits of our abilities and the systems of governance, economy, and social norms that we currently have in place. It is time to recognize that although we have achieved quite a lot, there is still much further to go.
We need to give up our hubris. We need to recognize that a great many things about America, democracy, capitalism, and society in general are insanely flawed. We need to recognize that truth, and we need to take action to start fixing our problems. We are fast approaching the time when we could kill ourselves off due to climate change, global warfare, artificial intelligence, or many other things. When we cannot even come together to recognize that racism still exists in America, how will we fare against those global scale issues that require the honesty and cooperation of not just America but also the entire planet? To overcome the obstacles of our time, we, Americans need to give up our original sin: Pride.
