If you are like me, you are exhausted by the nightly news and the stories that keep repeating with no real solutions offered by politicians, business leaders, or just ordinary people. All over the world, there are a multitude of problems and a dearth of solutions.
After listening to my concerns night after night, my wife finally said: “Get it down on paper.” Usually, a solution comes once I get my thoughts together. It is why I write so often and so much. It is cathartic.
The first thing that came to mind when I started organizing my thoughts about America was the famous quote by the Methodist Minister William Lonsdale Watkinson: “Yet it is far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.” But Watkinson’s full quote was longer and more telling than most people remember.
“The assumption that a legal or political remedy will extinguish a social malady is arrant quackery. A real evil can only be dealt with effectually through legislation when such legislation expresses the sincere conviction of a great body of righteous citizens.”
“But denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works and proves a popular temptation. Yet it is far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.”
William L. Watkinson, Methodist Minister
More than a century ago, Watkinson captured many of the problems we now experience in our electronic world, where denunciation is effortless, and solutions require work. Today, it is much easier and cheaper to spew “denunciatory rhetoric” through electronic channels than to give careful thought to solutions.
And so, I have thought long and hard about our issues, their root causes, and the solutions that might follow. What I discovered through these deliberations is that the solution is not where I thought it was, at least in my opinion. Over the next few articles, I will present my thoughts on “fixing America.” I have no delusions about the monumental nature of the task, nor the unlikelihood that one person considering this issue in a small town in North Georgia can do it alone. But everything starts somewhere, and perhaps we start by getting people thinking about diverse ways to approach their everyday lives.
For now, my ideas will be organized into four installments:
- Why America is Breaking at Scale
- Designing the Next America
- Governance and the New Civic Contract
- The Human Renewal
The big question for most Americans is “Do we want to continue walking deeper into the darkness, lighting ever more candles in search of a solution, or do we want to walk out of the darkness and into the light?”
In Watkinson’s Invincible Strategy, he urged people to reject the easy and popular temptation of verbal attacks and instead be champions for constructive thought and action. He believed that good work was a more effective and lasting response to evil. Watkinson believed that you must act to make change and avoid the temptation of criticism.
Resources and Further Reading
The Supreme Conquest and Other Sermons Preached in America, by William L. Watkinson, Google Books, Books.Google.com “The Invincible Strategy,” 1907, Pages 217-218.
