The following review of Re-imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times featured in the journal Paradigm Explorer, issue 131 (2019/3).
Subtitled ‘finding hope in difficult times’, this penetrating book is both a radical diagnosis of US social ecology and a prescription for a New World. It comes out of a Steiner social background relating culture, politics and economy and our respective roles within these spheres. On the one hand, it diagnoses the corruption of the US system in terms of militarism, racism, inequality, greed, oppression and a plundering economy based on neoconservative principles – the shadow of prevalent policies, but also offers concrete hope based on witnessing and engagement rather than withdrawal and passivity. The author has no illusions about the American Empire Project in terms of will to power, chillingly quoting Kissinger’s six essential principles of international politics in terms of maximising its interests, maintaining military power, promoting regional rivalries and conflicts, managing information and hiding strategic interests, overt and covert use of power, and war as an essential activity. This is the prevailing ‘realism’ reflected in policies pursued by the US, Russia and China. And as the author rightly points out, it is also consistent with disturbing questions about 9/11 and the War on Terror. He also details the political tactics used in order to maintain power and control (p. 112).
The third and fourth parts discuss the crisis of Western capitalism and looking for hope in difficult times. We need to exercise both imagination and will in addressing structural evil and developing a coherent philosophy of hope. The author suggests a number of practices in this respect: reflection, seeing the good, recognising the gift in daily life, appreciating nature and practising moral discernment. This is an intentional journey of transformation, healing, reconnection, renewal and co-creation. As Jacob Needleman also suggested in his book on the American Soul, Americans need to reconnect with their founding principles and ideals rather than fool themselves that these are still being put into practice through exceptionalism. The author lists a number of political starting points in terms of restoring and deepening democracy, building a sustainable and just stakeholder economy, including an Automatic Payment Transaction Tax on financial transactions, and protecting and extending freedom and mutuality in cultural life. The book is equally strong on diagnosis and prescription reflecting both pessimism and a potential optimism if we take future into our own hands.
Paradigm Explorer 2019/3
You can read more about Re-imagining America: Finding Hope in Difficult Times by Christopher Schaefer Ph.D here.
