October 09, 2009
AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
Just as California is being described as America's first failed state comes an aide-memoire of the Golden State's glory days: "Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950-1963." The most recent volume in historian Kevin Starr's eight-part series on the evolution of California, "Golden Dreams" covers what historically stands as the state's Golden Age.
"It was a time of growth and abundance," Starr writes in his preface, recalling a time when California was not only a part of America but also something more. Or as Joel Kotkin reminds in his book review on Truthdig.com, "To millions in America and around the world, California grew to mean opportunity, sunshine and innovation."
How the state went from being a symbol of in Starr's words "a better American life" to the butt of late-night talk show jokes is rooted in Californians' "conflicting visions," according to Kotkin: "In 1964, the first year after the era chronicled in 'Golden Dreams,' Watts blew up, shattering the comfortable assumptions of a progressive, post-racial state.
"The business elite and the middle class were financing the ever-expanding California state. They saw their money go to the poor, to minorities and state employees. Particularly annoying were the university students, many of whom were in open revolt against the state, in the mind of much of the public that had nurtured them.
"By the early 1960s many of these latter Californians also were angry, but their rage would express itself not in riots, but at the ballot box, ushering in the age of Ronald Reagan. The period that follows 'Golden Dreams' emerges as one of conflicting visions, between greens, students and minorities, on the one hand, and largely suburban middle-class workers and business owners on the other."
What lies ahead for the state, and by extension the country, given California's status as a bellwether of national trends? Kotkin concludes the jury is still out. "The question now is whether California, down on its luck, will find a way to rebound, much as imperial Rome did after the demise of the Julian dynasty, or fall, like Athens, into ever more squalid decline. Does the state have a bright 'destiny' ahead or only more ruin?"
Despite California's much-heralded budget crisis and legislative gridlock, there is plenty of reason for optimism. The state is rich in natural resources; it is blessed with agricultural abundance; it remains a magnet for the businesses of the future including high-tech, entertainment and green industries and, perhaps most important of all, its diverse population and flexible labor force overflowing with knowledge-based-, service- and manufacturing workers are valuable assets in this era of globalization.
To be sure, we Californians have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to set the state on a course of sustainable prosperity for all based on good government, responsible revenue and spending policies and cultural harmony.
The movement for a constitutional convention is an important first step in putting our political and fiscal houses in order.
Yet our most significant challenges are cultural. For once we overcome what novelist and sometime California resident Thomas Pynchon calls the "invisible class force fields in the way of communication" between progressives, students, minorities, middle-class workers and business owners, California's Golden Age will return for good.
"Yet our most significant challenges are cultural. For once we overcome what novelist and sometime California resident Thomas Pynchon calls the "invisible class force fields in the way of communication" between progressives, students, minorities, middle-class workers and business owners, California's Golden Age will return for good."
Overcoming cultural divides takes maturity. Society is still in that stage of adolescent dependence on the "big daddy's" of the world - government (those who protect us); corporations (those that feed us), and the media who give us our prompts and cues of what to think about, what to talk about. You can see that almost all communication is directed toward our surrogate parents. We write letters to politicians, we carry signs at demonstrations for the media to broadcast, under the illusion that these surrogates actually care enough about us to listen. We have yet to develop the skill of communicating with each other in any meaningful, robust way.
The divisions they've created in our minds will have to be overcome. I trust that at some point people are bound to realize the Internet isn't just a new toy. It is a tool to be used to connect with each other. (One of the early Internet gurus said, "The most important thing is to CONNECT"). Once that happens real power will finally be in the hands of the people -- at our very fingertips.
The technology exists, it's here. We're all just still learning how to grow and mature with it.
point well taken, diana.
effective communication is only possible when we by-pass the gatekeepers, the filters of truth who distort reality for their own ends.
i'm inclined to agree that the internet is "a tool to connect with each other." the question then becomes how to we reach out to the other side rather than simply "preach to the choir"?
Posted by: alias at October 13, 2009 09:06 AMI'm still taken by the idea of breaking the "invisible class force fields in the way of communication," and have been exploring the subject since I first logged on to the Internet back in 1993.
A blogger on Huffington touched on this subject in a post entitled "Is 'Social Media' Really Changing the World?" You might find it worth a read:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-cohen/is-social-media-really-ch_b_327164.html
To your question, "how do we reach out to the other side rather than simply "preach to the choir?" I think one possible answer is that there needs to be a different approach for developing a common sphere on the Internet, one that everyone, across all age, gender, socioeconomic, political, and physical boundaries can find useful (craigslist is an early model). The tendency has been to want to "preach to the choir," because most (with a site, a blog, a facebook or twitter page)are seeking to garner the numbers, the hits, the popularity with a "targeted" audience). Generally people are following "real world" marketing models that don't really translate well into the virtual sphere. Hence, led by venture capitalists who seek to monetize the web by drawing on the power of the larger numbers, social media is being developed top-down, rather than bottom-up. But as Jared Cohen points out in the above linked article, "the power of technology today will be determined not by web traffic and viewership, but by its ability to strengthen and more importantly facilitate connections in real time."
That, in a nutshell, is the ultimate challenge.