America’s Audacious Hope
We are still told that we are special, just as we are told that our individualism and self-actualization is the key to our national prosperity and, on top of that, that anything we want is to be ours. It is our entitlement, passed down from the shores of Iwo Jima and the buses of Birmingham. Yet the causes and subsequent responsibilities of generations past are no longer on the table. Hitler was defeated, communism fell, conscription was retired, and radical inequality acknowledged. This is not to say that there isn’t still great work to be done, but rather that our generation’s causes have become niched. We don’t have a war for everyone to fight, a draft to dodge, or a pervasive Jim Crow to oppose: our responsibility has become a matter of personal preference and choice.
Perhaps this is why I find The Myth of Sisyphus so compelling.
Great read. I often ponder my generation’s eventual legacy.
(via)
