Humankind (generally speaking) is selfish. People are tribalistic by nature. We seek to protect our tribe and vie for status among it. Anyone outside our tribe is viewed as a threat and anyone who challenges our position is an enemy. Regardless of the relationships we have within our tribe, we all want to elevate ourselves in some fashion. There’s a basic human need to be accepted, and a secondary need to have people look at us with honor or respect. We just want to be special - often more special than those around us. This feeds our drive to succeed, be the best, climb corporate ladders, find popularity, accumulate wealth, and demonstrate power.
Institutions are not perfect either. Governments, religions, businesses, families, schools. In theory, all of them are wonderful and service essential purposes. On paper it should work flawlessly. However, as soon as people get involved, it veers off course. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes. Those imperfections infect every structure and system involving a person. I’ve never seen a family or a corporation or a government exist without people. Therefore, all of them are inherently flawed by human existence.
What does any of this have to do with the reason Americans are the way we are? Well … Everything.
Our founding fathers were human in every respect. They were selfish, arguing in favor or laws and systems that would benefit their home colony over others. They debated and haggled and bargained as best as they could. Despite their attempts to form a new nation, a collective of United States, they were also fiercely tribalistic looking to secure the prosperity of their tribes - their home-states. The people who founded the USA were also imperfect people. Several owned slaves and most held racist beliefs against both African and indigenous people. Yet despite their flaws and greed, they managed to compose and ratify our founding documents and declare independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Our nation is secured in laws codified by revolutionary rebels. It is filled with brilliant ideas and (what seemed at the time) radical methods for governance. Yet as much as it continues to direct the decisions of judicial courts and legislative bodies of our nation, we must understand our constitution isn’t perfect. It is simultaneously wonderful and terrible. Beautiful and ugly. Rational and unreasonable.
Even the people who authored it recognized this fact. They were aware of their own faults. They knew what they created was the best they could do with their circumstances and it would never be adequate forever and always. To remedy their shortcomings, they provided a method for future generations to fix their mistakes: constitutional amendments. It’s a process we’ve followed 27 times in the 232 years since the constitution was ratified.
With more than two centuries of history between then and now, We haven’t cured what ails the American spirit. Rather, we have amplified it. Rebellion has grown to defiance. Selfishness has transformed into arrogance. And brokenness has fractured even deeper than the founding fathers could have imagined.
They said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Modern America makes some subconscious revisions to this statement.
Many people see these words as if it says our unalienable rights are life, liberty, and happiness. We somehow believe we have the right to be happy and any person or law impeding our happiness is unjust and must be opposed. Other people add a word to the sentence, believing it guarantees the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of my happiness as if the emotional state of any singular person is more worthy than the well being of another. Our personal beliefs undermine the preceding statement: that we’re all created equal.
We interpret the first amendment through the same narcissistic filter. We want the ability to freely worship our God and follow our rituals while expecting the government to restrict the worship and rituals from other religions. We want the liberty to speak our minds and be offensive but get offended when other people speak their minds. Media confirming our biases are fair and balanced but media with opposing bias is agenda driven fake news. We want to invade other people’s space as long as they don’t invade ours. It’s patriotic to criticize opposing political parties yet it’s treasonous when anyone criticizes our political party.
Born with a rebellious spirit, given the freedoms to do and say and believe anything we want, in our right to pursue happiness, amplified by our egotistical philosophies. This is why we are the way we are.
American megalomania is not all bad. The liberty to dream big ideas without restriction spawned some of the greatest innovations in history: the assembly line, telephones, light bulbs, air conditioning, microwaveable popcorn. It attracted brilliant minds like Nickola Tesla and Albert Einstein, who left their homelands to bring their research and tinkering to American shores. It gifted us the beauty of national parks, the convenience of interstate highways, the entertainment of televisions, and the comfort of Snuggies.
Freedom of speech is a mixed blessing. Both Martin Luther King Jr and David Duke spread their ideas under the banner of liberty, both seeking to inspire for diametric ideals. America gave us both Sojourner Truth and Robert E Lee, Dr Seuss and Hugh Hefner, Rachel Held Evans and Tomi Lahren. All of these people preached different values, but through American philosophy, each of them are equally valid.
Our beliefs are also untamed. We glom onto any tenets which pique our curiosity. We embrace the craziest ideas because no one can tell us it’s wrong. It’s how the spiritualism movement attracted nearly eight million believers at the end of the 19th century. It’s why snake oil salesmen thrived at the dawn of the twentieth century. It’s how charismatic individuals like Rajneesh and Charles Manson attracted followers who would commit acts of violence in their names. It is why Heaven’s Gate and the Branch Davidians lured devotees to their deaths. It made room for the Tea Party, the alt-right, and antifa. It fuels ghost hunters and Bigfoot enthusiasts. It is the reason behind modern revivals of anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and QAnon.
When you grant a population the freedom to believe whatever they want, they will. Often at the cost of their own lives. The power of belief frequently trumps ideas of safety and health, especially when there’s a tantalizing promise of wealth, sex, power, status, or belonging.
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