DiluzjDebate+Paper2

Debate Paper #2: Is American Culture a Sustainability Problem?

America was formed on the premise of a new world, a blank slate, exploration, and freedom to become what you want to become, without restrictions put into place by where you were born, who your parents are, or what your philosophical views are; or at least this is what American culture believes. This dream falls short when we realize that the dream was also built on the idea that there was always a new frontier for the entrepreneurial of us to surmount and utilize. The question then arises, is it that American Culture is unsustainable, or is it just the current state of affairs has led to the unfortunate problems that face the world today. Those that argue against American culture, argue that as a nation, we are built upon the idea of constant growth and expansion, in a finite world. However, those that argue for American culture would counter that although capitalism needs growth, that is not all American culture embodies. American culture is also the culture that allows for freedom of growth of new ideas, and the freedom of the people to devise new systems when the old one fails. This debate seems to be centralized upon those two points of American culture, and for the purpose of this paper, I will define American culture as the following; America is built upon giving people the freedoms they need to pursue whatever business model they can and through the competition of capitalism the strongest business model can arise to solve the situation. This culture was created in an environment of readily available fresh resources and a seemingly endless bounty which lead to increasingly ambitious ideas being fruitful and dominating the market. It is important to consider the core ideology of the American culture, which is based on the freedom of any individual to seek a higher status in life, and the environment that culture finds itself, which started as a resource rich environment, and is rapidly shrinking into a resource starved environment. The American culture is one which affords innovation and rewards successful ideas.

The main argument in Naomi Klein’s TED talk, //Addicted to Risk//, in January of 2011, is that the American business model and in fact, the very core of the American culture, is based on the need to take larger risks then the competition, and that the system that is currently in place rewards these risk takers without properly holding the system which made them responsible for the consequences of these risks when they occur. Her thoughts on the American mentality are summed up with the quote; “Dominating [Mother] Nature is our destiny… Mother Nature is so nurturing and so resilient we can never make a dent in her abundance… however much we mess up there will always be more.” This underlying narrative, as she calls it, defines what drives the American culture to take such large risks with the environment, and gamble with our precious resources. The main solution Naomi finds to this underlying problem in the way Americans think is to slow the rate of progress, and always consider the consequences of any new idea.

Naomi’s argument considers American culture as one of hungry, callous growth, which does not consider the consequences and pushes forward seeking constant growth. While this is true of the economic model that has arisen from American culture, this is not true of the American people as a whole, which is starting to wake up and realize that change needs to happen. The growing demand of the American public for change in the way things are, as demonstrated by the 2008 election of President Obama, as well as the growing desire for “green”, “organic”, “sustainable” products, even if just in name, shows that the American culture is changing to adapt to a world that is resource scarce, and not resource plentiful. American culture, therefore, cannot be summed up by the history of American growth, which happened in a time when the economic, ecological, and political system and environment in place afforded profit from applying the entrepreneurial spirit of American culture to the unconquered fresh frontiers, wherever they arose. Considering a culture in the context of the world around it, I believe helps to better understand what that culture is at its core. With the global environment that America finds itself in changing, the American culture is changing with it, and what holds steady in both environments is what should be considered the “American culture”. I believe that this culture is one that gives its citizens the freedoms and rights to change the current system, and adapt to new situations with new business models, new ideas, and new methods of innovation.

The provided counter argument to Naomi Klein’s talk was the official announcement of candidacy for president, made by Ronald Regan in November of 1979. This argument has the inherent weakness in that it has 31 years of history and context between itself and Naomi’s talk. As such, it is important to take out the core ideas from the argument, and try and put them into context with today’s situation.

The main points from this speech focus on the idea that America has always been a nation of achievers, that when trying hard enough and working together, could overcome any obstacle, and indeed would always overcome any obstacle, given that they were allowed to try to their full potential. In the context of 1979, the speech argues that America could get out of the energy crisis by pursuing additional reserves of oil and producing their way out of the crisis they got into. The article argues for an unrestricted business model to allow for the birth and boom of the American entrepreneur, which would create jobs and increase revenue, strengthening the dollar. Reagan’s speech focuses on the American Dream of continuous growth of business and unrestrained profits for business leaders. Reagan cites figures that show that the U.S. federal government has spent the money it taxes inefficiently, and has led to the economic problems of the time, saying “the federal government has proven to be the costliest and most inefficient provider of such help we could possibly have”, in reference to the civil services that taxes are supposed to pay for. Reagan’s argument is unfortunately a weak argument for the benefits of American culture, as history has shown us that the process of pursing oil reserves locally only momentarily spurred the American economy, and the end result was that the growth only lead to a deeper decline now, some 20-30 years later. During the 1980s and 1990s, America did hit a technological boom with the computer age, however due to the attitude that was adopted of not looking back, and taking larger and larger risks, the repercussions of that era are now hitting, in the forms of increased pollution and a growing dependency on technology, and with it, an even greater energy crisis.

A stronger argument for the American culture not being a sustainability problem was found in a more up to date article from //The Economist//, in March of 2009, entitled //The United States of Entrepreneurs: America still leads the world.// This article does a much better job at showing the true power of American culture, which is the entrepreneurial spirit which has led to an increase in the amount of businesses as a whole. The article sites Google, Apple, and Dell as entrepreneurial companies that were born from the American culture and have created jobs and increased revenue for the United States.

This article does a poor job of defining success however, as it cites only profit margins and acquisitions as the successes of a company. The article also does a poor job of discussing the cost of failure for an upstart company, which may include more than just a localized economic cost to the business owner, but could potentially lead to a ravished community, or a devastated ecosystem. Although this article argues for the strength in the American entrepreneur, it is perhaps a better representation of the issues with how American’s think of success. The system currently in place sees profits as the sign of success, and disregards the ecological costs that may be occurred by all the failures along the way.

My personal perspective of American culture is that as it is now, it does indeed pose a sustainability problem. The constant, unchecked growth of businesses, which seek only profits and gamble with ever diminishing resources leads to unsustainable business models and if we do not change, it will lead to our destruction in one form or another. However, I also believe that it is inherent in the American culture to best adapt to a changing world. While we are a nation that was born with seemingly infinite resources, we have become part of a global society that is starved on almost every base resource we know of. The American culture of entrepreneurial opportunity and an adapting system of government, offers a great chance at creating the much needed solutions that will be able to offer a workable solution to the global sustainability problem that does not involve massive setbacks in the levels of technology that we currently have.

//Sources:// //Addicted to Risk//, TED talk by Naomi Klein in January of 2011, [] //Official Announcement of Candidacy of President//, November 13, 1979, by Ronald Regan, [] //The United States of Entrepreneurs: America still leads the world//, March 12, 2009, from //The Economist//, []