Why is it that here in the United States we have such difficulty even imagining a different sort of society from the one whose dysfunctions and inequalities trouble us so?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We live in a very unequal society.
Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours.
I feel like sometimes that I was not meant for this society.
Even if one is interested only in one's own society, which is one's prerogative, one can understand that society much better by comparing it with others.
It felt to me like America was always wanting to resolve things too quickly, without thinking through what the costs and consequences would be and how that affects an individual living in that world. Then as I grew up and went about my life, I think I just got more and more interested in that gray area where things are not so easily quantified.
We're living in a whole new social and economic order with a whole new set of problems and challenges. Old assumptions and old programs don't work in this new society and the more we try to stretch them to make them fit, the more we will be seen as running away from what is reality.
People have an awful lot of problems that society has put on them and a lot to work through because of it.
In some ways, in the U.S. we don't know how to be. I think in a lot of ways America is about liberation and about change and progressive human relations. And because of that, I feel like that we're confused about who we're supposed to be and what it is that's supposed to satisfy us and make us feel fulfilled.
I think I just really understand what it is to feel like you don't fit in, within your society, within your world, within your family, within whatever. I've always felt like an odd duck so I really understood that.
No society lies nearer to the cyclonic path of the forces of world change than the United States, and few societies are more intellectually aware of the nature of the issues that have to be faced.