Are we there yet?

Like a little kid, most of us are wondering...

There are many reasons we should be wary of cultural movements that tell us that they have all the answers.

First of all, they don’t.

But perhaps more importantly, they do their best to supplant, even erase, all others.

The most prominent threat and impending violation to each one of us is the continuing pressure, from every arena of life, to surrender, submit, conform and be absorbed.

And any thought or impulse, or action, to resist or step out of the enforced parade, is considered a threat to the system – the “received dogma” – the way it is “supposed to be” or even what is, by ever-shifting standards – “cool”.

We Americans – or almost all of us in the current world, in some sense, love and are defined by the “branding” of the “cool”.

The “cool” is, of course, the ultimate contradiction; is it what we do as individuals? Or is it, by necessity, what everyone else is doing -or approves of?

Or, is “cool” what we do? Or what everyone else does?

Does an action or statement become “uncool” when too many people do it? Or when some specific people do it?

Consider an obvious – and visible example. Are tattoos “cool”?

Are too many tattoos “uncool”?

Unlike most fashion choices, tattoos are a commitment. As one person put it, a tattoo is like wearing the same shirt for the rest of your life.

Is “cool” an inherent lack of commitment?

Is “cool” a forever “floating” concept? Or is it the ultimate example of “it is what I say it is”?

Some people, you may have noticed, can look good in almost any style or look. Others are only – and obviously “wearing” it. It is not them, it does not “fit”. They are doing it or wearing it only because everyone else is.

To some of us, that is the ultimate death knell of the “cool”.

When a look or a belief system has become an add-on, an accessory, it has become a clinging dead thing.

As I write this, in spring of 2026, humanity is at a crossroads. Multiple crises are converging on us. The term poly-crisis has emerged to capture this essence of perpetually emerging threats at every level.

From individual physical and mental health to cultural and national security and identity, everything, and every aspect of everything seems to be under threat.

Either our long-standing institutions have let us down – or we don’t trust them; even our weather, no matter where we live, is not what it was.

We can (and do) deny and blame, evade and attempt to escape, but our adversaries and threats (many of our own making) are everywhere.

The irony though, is that our survival depends on what it always depended on; the stakes are just higher now.

Previous eras had these concepts seamlessly and invisibly woven into relationships and neighborhoods – we, for a variety of reasons, are so far from the basics that we need to deliberately cultivate and practice them.

They are simple, difficult, essential, demanding, liberating and seemingly impossible and ineffectual. They are civility, responsibility, curiosity, skill, kindness and an overriding sense of belonging.

And they are, in our modern, digital, conforming world as essential as they are nonexistent.

One of the many ironies is that virtually every durable world faith tradition has a focus on precisely those things; and, a corresponding extruded, abstracted version currently practiced and promoted.

In short, if a faith tradition inverts the basics of civility, responsibility, curiosity, skill, kindness and belonging, it is false to its name and becomes corrosive instead of inspiring and healing.

And that hollowed out, brittle and accusatory expression of faith is what most of us see around us.

If a faith tradition loves the idea of others being tormented forever – or uses their theology to justify killing others to get them there, they have, at minimum, lost the plot.

On the other hand, if one’s faith informs one’s generosity, helpfulness and maybe even a shred of sacrifice, true and lasting “righteousness” may have been approached – whatever label it might carry.

In stable, enduring societies, ostracism – permanent exclusion from the home community, was seen as the ultimate, most extreme punishment.

In most modern societies, this departure, even quasi-permanent rejection, is something like a rite of passage.

Culturally speaking, we have repudiated belonging and, as you may have noticed, in the USA at least, we have trivialized, even demonized the rest of those foundations of both a stable society and solid and reliable individual members of any society.

Consider how a crowd, at a political rally, for example, would respond to calls for civility, courage, responsibility, curiosity, mastery of a skill or kindness. Those foundational terms of any stable society have become something like a punchline.

If we mock courage, we nurture fear and complicity. When we dismiss empathy, cruelty will fill its place. When we don’t demand integrity, we shouldn’t be surprised at a contagion of cynicism.

Greatness, after all, is not deliberately pursued – or even measurably achieved – it is, perhaps like happiness or life satisfaction; earned and acquired tangentially – as an unintended side effect.

One of the enduring philosophical assumptions of the 19^th Century – and beyond – was the concept of progress – that humanity, as a species, was going forward; was, in more ways than could be measured, improving, building a stronger, better, safer, more productive more welcoming world for successive generations.

Making the world a better place for the future has been something like a guiding principle for generations.

But that guiding principle has been fading lately.

Some are convinced that the world is going to end soon, others are convinced that we have the right, if not duty, to exclude, erase and destroy certain other cultures. Or any cultures.

Young people are making the ultimate life choice based on what they see as the likely world for their future children; the birth rate around the world is dropping dramatically.

From the cost of living to employment and career prospects to cataclysmic weather to intrusive technologies to war, conflict, chaos and historic pandemics on our margins in every direction, uncertainty – if not unrelenting disaster – seems around every corner – or, by some divine entity, penciled-in on every calendar.

So the obvious question in the 2020s is, “are we there yet?”. And if we aren’t already, we are getting there in record speed.